Pan Miś's Planet: A World of Fragments and Remnants.
On the Oeuvre of Michal Walczyk

He can be found on the Internet: he publishes photographs of his works on the Instagram account Planeta Pana Misia. He was discovered by Pavel Konečný, an eminent Czech collector of non-professional art who, during his stay in Kraków for a film screening dedicated to art brut creators, showcased photographs from his visit to Pan Miś in Szczawno-Zdrój near Wałbrzych, along with the works he purchased.

Michal Walczyk (or Pan Miś) is a rather classic outsider: stubbornly sticking to his own vision, not modeling himself on others (the eventual inspirations slipped to him by his brother Maciej Walczyk are processed in his own way, in a unique, individual style). Furthermore, the creator does not produce works on commission, and he refuses to part with those he has already created [Walczyk]. These are generally traits quite frequently encountered among creators of the art brut movement, constituting the specific characteristics of this phenomenon (disinterestedness, artistic self-sufficiency, and inventiveness are listed as criteria of raw creation by the prominent expert on the subject, Alain Bouillet [Bouillet 2011:147]).

The Mythical and Narrative Universe of Pan Miś (Michal Walczyk)

The world of Pan Miś is an extraordinary one. It is populated by figures from mythology, the Bible, history, pop culture, and family history: Henry II the Pious (Duke of Silesia, Kraków, and Greater Poland), the Railwayman, the Man Fighting the Death Machine, Zawisza the Black of Garbów, the Slayer of the Teutonic Knights, the Cannibal, the Werewolf of Silesia, the Evil Spirit, the Dog-Man, Gniewosz, the Demono-Mutant, the Haunting Wolf-Man, Krwawy Wilk-Lech (Lech the Bloody Wolf), the King of Werewolves, the Ghost of the Harlot, and the Lady with a Bat. Each character possesses their own history, a narrative that gradually expands: these heroes may appear in several versions, and over time they usually gain new companions, friends, allies, enemies, girlfriends, etc. It is a living world that continuously evolves and spreads; successive figures appear like Schulzian days, “they shoot up, irregular and unequal, unformed and fused together, like the fingers of a monstrous hand, budding and curling into a fig sign” [Schulz 1998:97].

Although Bruno Schulz wrote about the phenomenon of time, and in the case of Michal Walczyk we are speaking of a specific personal, spatial, and narrative universe, the convergence highlighted here does not seem accidental. The world of Pan Miś possesses an eminently mythical character, and it is a myth just as individual and singular as the oneiric pictorial and literary spaces of the author of The Cinnamon Shops. At the very heart of this microcosm lies the figure of its designer and creator – he occupies the position of director, scriptwriter, and set designer. He arranges his actors, assigns them roles and stories, and places them in an appropriate setting: a significant portion of Walczyk's works consists of sculptures or bas-reliefs (the latter dominate), though paintings also appear, perhaps less frequently, building a background for the characters' actions (although it must be noted that some of them constitute fully autonomous, typically pictorial works).

The persona of the creator takes on the traits of a creator-god (his brother, Maciej Antoni Walczyk, called this the apt term "Geppetto Syndrome" [Walczyk 2022d]; it would perhaps not be out of place to also reference the tale of the Golem created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague, a legend that fundamentally reproduces the myth of Adam as the only man not born of a mother but molded by God from dust)¹. The author becomes the viewer's guide through the presented world, explaining it by narrating the relationships and events that bind his heroes together². He unites them into groups constituting a sort of "dramatis personae". This theatrical metaphor is by no means accidental; Michal Walczyk's sculptures and their planned display evoke quite explicit associations with the theatrical tradition. On one hand, they bring to mind "tableaux vivants" (living pictures), a 19th-century theatrical form appearing at the conclusion of staged plays, which also served as a parlor game. On the other hand, they suggest an association with Czech puppet theater (Czech: loutkové divadlo), a phenomenon that has a long and highly serious tradition in the Czech Republic³.

Among creators of raw art, the American outsider Henry Darger seems, in certain respects, close to Pan Miś. Throughout his life, Darger created the impressive cycle The Realms of the Unreal, describing the struggle of the Vivian Girls leading a children's rebellion against their oppressors [Rhodes 2015:100-104]. The sovereign and constantly expanding world of Michal Walczyk possesses an analogue character. The motifs, characters, and inspirations drawn from the surrounding reality or suggested by his brother Maciej Walczyk are transformed by the creator in an absolutely original way, turning them into integral elements of his own myth. Their original models cease to be recognizable, at least at first glance. Thus, in the composition The Man from Deserted Lower Silesia, an attentive recipient will detect the motif of the Pietà, but it will be harder to guess that the inspiration was Michelangelo's sculpture (Pan Miś also readily reaches for apocalyptic motifs or Greek mythology)⁴.

The Oeuvre as an Intellectual Bricolage

The way in which available inspirations are transformed into new wholes and how they function in a new context brings to mind the concept of bricolage coined by Claude Lévi-Strauss. The French researcher compared this form to mythical thought, viewing it as a parallel phenomenon:

“(...) a 'bricoleur' is someone who works with his hands in devious ways compared to those of a craftsman. Now, the characteristic of mythical thought is to express itself by means of a heterogeneous repertoire which, even if extensive, remains limited; it must nevertheless use it, whatever the project may be, because it has nothing else at hand. Thus, mythical thought appears as a kind of intellectual bricolage, which explains the relations observed between them” [Lévi-Strauss 1969:31].

Lévi-Strauss emphasizes primarily the fact that this activity is carried out using already existing tools and materials that happen to be at hand:

“The bricoleur's instrumental universe is closed, and the rule of his game is always to make do with 'the means at hand', that is to say, a finite set of tools and materials at any given moment, which is moreover heterogeneous because the composition of this set is not in relation to the current project, nor indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions that have arisen to renew or enrich the stock, or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions and destructions” [Lévi-Strauss 1969:32].

The phenomenon described by Lévi-Strauss resembles a process of recycling, where already used elements are re-employed. Similar processes take place within mythical thought, whose productions, as the researcher points out:

“(...) reduce themselves to a new arrangement of elements whose nature is not modified depending on whether they figure in the instrumental set or in the final arrangement (...) One might say that mythological universes are condemned to come apart barely after being formed, so that from their fragments new universes may be born. This profound remark, however, overlooks that in the course of this uninterrupted reconstruction using the same materials, old ends are called to the role of means: what was signified turns into signifier, and vice versa” [Lévi-Strauss 1969:37].

Such an approach to the process of myth generation corresponds to Roland Barthes' findings in his famous Mythologies – the linguistic sign becomes a signifier element (signifiant) for the myth, to which a new meaning (signifié) is attached, while the original linguistic meaning is not entirely displaced but coexists with the mythological meaning [Barthes 2000:241]. Lévi-Strauss highlights the similarity of mythical thought to the phenomenon of bricolage: “the characteristic of mythical thought (...) is to build structured sets out of the debris and residues of events” [Lévi-Strauss 1969:38].

Technical Dimension and Semantic Spheres in Walczyk's Art

The work of Pan Miś fits into the described phenomenon of bricolage in both of its dimensions. There is no doubt that his creative technique bears the clear traits of this form – the creator utilizes materials available to him, accidental, with irregular shapes, sculpting on both sides to fully exploit the raw material⁵. The sculptures are accompanied by paintings, sometimes forming a background, other times being autonomous and independent plastic works. Michal Walczyk also supplies the created scenes with written comments, attached on slips of paper or pieces of raw wood.

The manufacturing process of the sculptures is also complex. A drawing is first made on a wooden board, then the contours of the representation are cut out, decorations are made with a pyrograver along with sculpted elements (the works generally have the character of reliefs with a specific, original texture), and finally, the whole is covered with paint. Walczyk displays great originality and resourcefulness in his "majsterkowanie" (bricolage) – the blocks sculpted on all sides simultaneously are particularly interesting, reminiscent of totemic art or pagan-Slavic traditions (the author is also interested in Slavic mythology, and the compositions themselves are called within the family circle "światowidy" [Svantovit] [Walczyk 2023]).

On the other hand, the concept of bricolage in Michal Walczyk's work can be applied to the semantic sphere, to what Lévi-Strauss called mythological thought. This is related to the aspect signaled above: the use of motifs drawn from the most diverse cultural traditions, ranging from ancient mythologies, through Christian traditions (the Apocalypse cycle), history and legends (especially of the Silesian, Czech-German borderland), high, official art (Michelangelo, but also Matejko or Beksiński), family traditions (the railwayman great-grandfather) [Walczyk 2022c], up to characters and motifs from pop culture (The Witcher and Batman). All these motifs combine in his work into a new, coherent whole, creating a personal, disturbing universe full of passion and darkness.

Analysis of the Artist's Raw Source Texts

These characteristics are present not only in the author's plastic creation, they reveal themselves also in his writings. One can cite here a longer text commentary with which the artist provided a complex of 5 sculptures. Pan Miś presents the successive characters taking part in the presented drama as follows:

Several aspects stand out in this text. First, the author places considerable emphasis on the relationships and connections between the characters, almost building a sort of family tree. This dimension can be interpreted as a desire to conceive the presented world as a coherent and closed whole that possesses a more general meaning, building its distinct mythological aura. Let us quote a passage from the writings of Bruno Schulz:

“The essence of reality is meaning. What has no meaning is not real for us. Every fragment of reality lives by virtue of participating in a universal meaning [Schulz 1998:384]. (...) We forget, using the casual word, that these are fragments of ancient and eternal stories, that we build, like barbarians, our houses with the debris of sculptures and statues of gods” [Schulz 1998:384].

Identity, Peripherality, and Autotherapy

The second issue worth raising is the fact that the characters presented here function in a space of an eminently borderland character: the recipient's attention is particularly drawn to the epithets relating to their ethnic ambiguity, to their complex, non-homogeneous identity (a Pole from Hungary, a Czech-Bavarian princess, a Silesian Czech, a Bavarian-Tyrolean Polish woman, half-Pole half-German). This aspect is not limited to the ethnic dimension alone. Similar traits – transience, peripherality, incoherence – seem to also connote attributes such as the "illégitimité" mentioned above, the fact of being both a monk and a robber simultaneously, or the fantastic hybridity of the hero (man, wolf, and dog at the same time).

Pan Miś's desire to accent identity issues can be interpreted as a compensation for his personal life situation, his own sense of uncertainty or disorientation in the world. On the other hand, let us notice that these characters reveal a certain heroic trait, reminiscent of the heroes of gothic romances. The author constructs here a prototype of a hero who is a man simultaneously excluded and rejected, yet strong and valiantly struggling against fate. This image can be treated as a projection of the vision of his own person, which is confirmed by the opinion of his brother Maciej Walczyk (“he models himself on Batman and The Witcher, dark heroes/avengers, and adopts such a posture” [Walczyk 2022b]).

As Aleksandra Kunce writes regarding glaning as a metaphor for the identity movement: “Gathering oneself 'from' encountered fragments of contexts, shreds of different realities reveals much regarding the mechanism of identity (...) In gathering oneself (...) creation is undisguised” [Kunce 2004:90-91]. The sculptures of Michal Walczyk and the accompanying texts can therefore be viewed as a manifestation of a process of searching for oneself and one's place in the world. In this sense, his art can also be perceived as a form of art-therapy.

The Sphere of Reception and the "Myth of Art Outside Culture"

The motif of bricolage can still be applied to another aspect, namely the sphere of reception. The recipient of intuitive art very often attempts to use cultural traditions familiar to them as interpretive clichés (“close to surreallism”, “reminiscent of magical realism”). The collision with altérité, the uncanny⁶, triggers an instinctive urge in the viewer to domesticate it.

It is no coincidence that the prominent expert Aleksander Jackowski wrote, in the context of art brut, about the “myth of art outside culture” [Jackowski]. He touched at that moment upon the problem of a mythopoetic fabric characteristic of this phenomenon as such – the belief that art brut is true, authentic art, which, in times of progressive commercialization, has preserved its original essence and meaning.

The sculpted and pictorial universe of Michal Walczyk fits perfectly into the reflections formulated here: it constitutes an autonomous creative phenomenon, striking in its originality, behind which undoubtedly lies a desire for meaning and order. The Planet of Pan Miś awaits its explorers.