Word on Inspiration – The Absurd and Imagination (Tadeusz Baranowski)

As sometimes, today I’m going to speak about some of my inspirations, so if you’re interested what drives me to commit the crucial sin of being creative – keep reading.

I remember times, when as a small, silent but curious child I was going through the libraries of one of few of my schools. As I had not been the proud citizen of big city, the quality of content available in most of these book chapels was good enough. After being tragically infused with the colorful and witty world of Asterix, my prime subjects of hunts were comics. And these were, and still are, treated as an unwanted child in most of the libraries. But one day, scanning through the dull western, realistic stories, slightly-propagandish comics for youth and polish answers for Asterix, something strange happened.

Cold, blue color on the borders, going around incredibly colorful and detailed picture of some space-whale (or anything) with a large letters, proudly presenting the comics by Tadeusz Baranowski: “Na co dybie w wielorybie czubek nosa eskimosa”*. That was a strike of luck. This one particular comics (and other pieces by Baranowski, like Orient Men: Forever Na Zawsze, Podróż Smokiem Diplodokiem, Antresolka Profesorka Nerwosolka) stayed with me for a long time and till this day I remember them well. These comics are usually filled with short stories, sometimes connected with one longer story, but often they are as crazy as tea party in Wonderland. The sheer amount of absurd and incredibly smart word-play (which is the reason why these comics were never popular abroad) makes them so god damn great and enjoyable, that it is hard to forget them.

And we still have to talk about the style. What Baranowski did was rather unusual in Polish comics’ scene – he completely abandoned any type of realism in his artwork, he took the existing object or animal and twisted it completely, giving them their own meaning and soul. Complete with beautiful color scheme (highly impressive, considering fact, that printing companies in the end-of-XX-century Poland were obviously poor) these artworks were amazing and stunning, especially for a young lad like me, who was always looking for a touch of madness in artworks.

To conclude this short text – Baranowski is great, it’s a shame that his name will probably stay unknown for the big bad world, but for what he did for me, for amount of happiness and joy his comics were giving I will always be in his debt. Thank you and I hope your comics will never be forgotten.

*- It’s a smart play on words which together sounds like a small poem (look at the ends of the words: na co dy-bie w wie-lo-ry-bie czu-bek no-sa e-ski-mo-sa), the translation would be: What the point of the nose of Eskimo is looking inside the whale but it loses all of that crazy magic, sorry for all of you who cannot handle the Polish language.