The motif of the window and the experience of latency in the work of Tadeusz Kantor

The window is a recurring image in the imaginarium and the art of Tadeusz Kantor. Fixed in his memory at an early age, it resurfaced in the spectacle Wielopole, Wielopole (1980) as a plain object "of the reality of the lowest kind", and in the 'cricotage' A Very Short Lesson (1988) as a quasi stage prop charged with metaphysical meaning. The window motif is also a persistent feature of his graphic art. Most notably, it appears in the drawing Man and window (1971), a picture for the Dead Class (Window) from 1983, an autothematic cycle of paintings You cannot look inside through the window with impunity (1988-1990), and Kantor's last dated drawing of pigeons being watched through a window. Kantor's fascination with the window as an objet d'art can be explained by his philosophical aesthetics (especially the use of objects as markers of the 'spaces' of the stage action). This article analyzes the image of the window as a 'site' of special significance in Kantor's art (an object that encapsulates the antynomy of inside/outside, or a claustrophobic incarceration/a barrier to entry) in the context of Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht's theory of latency (i.e. the inability of throwing off the past, the suspension of time symbolized by artistic constructs of imprisonment).