"There are no innocent. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility."
Stieg Larsson, "The Girl Who Played With Fire"
At the end of the last year I got a quite noble
task, namely preparing a series of illustrations related with the Baptism of
Poland (2016 is the 1050th anniversary of this event). The National Centre for
Culture (NCK) gave me a great deal of freedom regarding technique and subjects,
with only one stipulation: "no controversial themes". When the
condition "no controversial themes" was repeated for the third time
during the preliminary talks, I began to ponder about what so controversial
could appear there... but haven't come up with anything brilliant.
Anyway, here are some of these works. Ready for a short history lesson? Here we
go!
"Unification of Tribes" - one
of the main consequences of Christening of Poland was unifying few tribes and creating one land with one
sovereign.
"Old Beliefs" - that's the sad
one actually. Statues of ancient gods were being destroyed on a massive scale and most
Slavic beliefs gone irrecoverably, as they weren't written down.
"Writing" - Writing came to Poland along with Christian
monks. Finally!
"Architecture and Art" - here on the
example of St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków.