Manekin na krzyżu analiza jednego rekwizytu – wielki krzyż w Wielopolu, Wielopolu Tadeusza Kantora
Mannequin on a Cross an Analysis of a Single Prop – the Great Cross in Wielopole, Wielopole by Tadeusz Kantor

Summary/Abstract: The spectacles proposed by Kantor produced a powerful tide of religious and liturgical motifs. It is outright astounding that they had been discussed so rarely as an intrinsic theme worthy of a closer examination. At every step of the way Wielopole, Wielopole is full of crosses. Can we, however, pause only to declare that this is a lower rank reality? Naturally, we could do so. Kantor himself suggested this solution: “I was raised at a presbytery. I was familiarised with all activities and objects. They are the same for us. Even this object – the Cross – for me is an object like... well, my table in the new studio”. Nonetheless, if we take a closer look at Wielopole, Wielopole we shall come across innumerable references to liturgical ceremonies (in particular the “stations” of the Cross). It becomes, for all practical purposes, impossible to believe that everything is a “table in the new studio”. True, the Theatre of Death is just that but even at the simplest level the associations made by every spectator, even unconsciously, follow a further path. Obviously, the Cross was the instrument of the Passion and Death of the Christ, but we cannot forget that without the Resurrection it would have remained a mere empty symbol of a two millennia–long history of Christianity. Its application in the Theatre of Death cannot be meaningless. Even if Kantor were to have deprived it of all sacral connotations it would still be some sort of a theological feature referring indirectly to transgressing the condition of death. The presented text is, therefore, an analysis of meanings associated with the use of the great Cross in Wielopole, Wielopole.

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