“The Enchanted Worlds of Marta Janik” is the title of an article written by Christopher Visconti for Deutsche Welle in 2018. I remember being outraged at these enchanted worlds and the cities I designed, whose streets would be strolled by zebras…. Today I am no longer so outraged. So here I am posting, in memory.
“If Marta Janik could design her own city, zebras would stroll the streets, dancers in tulle would ride the subway, and a carousel would spin on every street corner. The Polish designer and illustrator doesn’t fit in with introverted, tough Berlin, where she has lived since 2011. There is lightness, humor and a great deal of warmth in her collages.
I’m a bit retro,” says Marta Janik, probably meaning to reach for elements and associations that give her collages a taste of the early 20th century, when men wore summery mustaches and women wore wide-brimmed hats. Her works are created by hand, glued together from images scrounged from old newspapers, postcards bought at a flea market or faded photographs. From these small elements, which any of us would overlook, the Polish illustrator composes whole images, surreal stories that take on completely unexpected shapes and meanings.
– Every collage maker collects illustrations that have somehow interested him. Sometimes I see a shred of an old newspaper on the street, some piece of silverware, and that too goes into my collection, waiting for the moment when everything starts to compose into some new whole,” says the designer. – The best place to search is, of course, antique shops, it’s a real mine of wonderful illustrations, where you can find completely unexpected things.
The renaissance of the collage
Marta Janik has been making collages for a long time, but just now is the time when this form of image creation is becoming more and more popular. The method of combining various elements appears on posters for opera performances, on album covers or, most recently, on advertisements for Radio Eins, a popular radio station in Berlin. The most common inspiration here is the early experience of modernism: Rodchenko, László Moholy-Nagy, Max Ernst. In the Polish illustrator’s case, it’s a little different. In the background we feel a whiff of surrealism, that element of reality remembered from a dream, and even more the atmosphere and ideas taken from Dadaism, which breaks aesthetic traditions, is playful and values artistic freedom above all else. – I do not divide faces or figures as collage artists often do. Rather, I arrange new meanings and scenes from whole elements, whole silhouettes. My paintings are meant to be beautiful,” says the illustrator.
“Przekrój” Magazine
Marta Janik’s work has attracted the attention of the cult Polish newspaper “Przekrój,” now coming out in an online version and as a printed quarterly. The designer’s first collage adorned the cover of the February issue in the electronic version, the next will already appear in the paper version at the end of the month. – Many people tell me that my illustrations are a great fit for the iconic newspaper. “Przekrój” was founded in 1945 on the initiative of Marian Eile, who was the magazine’s editor-in-chief for 24 years.
The magazine was intended to depart somewhat from the coarse aesthetics imposed by the communist system, so news from the world appeared, as well as reports and articles that did not necessarily represent the party’s position and the worker-peasant-led class struggle emphasized by other newspapers. And all this was sovereign, with a Krakow flair, laced with wit and amusing aphorisms. The popularity of the weekly is evidenced by the fact that in 1970 it reached a circulation of more than 700,000 copies. “Przekrój” was read by literally everyone. Also interesting was the period of the 1990s to 2009, when a lot of art appeared in the magazine. One issue, for example, was prepared by Zbigniew Libera, and jokes were drawn in it by Wilhelm Sasnal and Marcin Maciejowski. Today, as a quarterly magazine of 164 pages, “Przekrój” is gaining another generation of readers, reaching a circulation of 130,000 copies.
Praise for kitsch
“I love kitsch,” – says Marta Janik, who even wrote her master’s thesis on the subject at Jagiellonian University’s Polish Studies Department.
“The concept of kitsch originated in Germany. It originated in the 19th century in academic circles, especially around the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and originally meant a flimsy fake,” – explains the artist. Kitsch is actually everywhere: in literature, art, film and everyday life, she adds.
The term is very capacious. In pop culture, camp has become fashionable – a kind of conscious kitsch, where the artist focuses on seemingly ephemeral aspects and exaggerated, sometimes even pathetic gestures. On the one hand, we have trivial literature and B-grade films, on the other hand, artists who consciously operate with kitsch, such as Madonna or David Lynch. Accurately in the case of Marta Janik’s collages I would say that there is perhaps a bit of sentimental kitsch, but above all it is an excellent example of good taste.