The Great Boredom of Contemplation: Franciszka Themerson’s Experimental Records of Illness

Abstract

The article discusses the concept of experimental and illness-related life-writing records on the basis of Franciszka Themerson’s correspondence, and her correspondence-related drawings and works of art. I have established that the avant-garde artist was using coherent compositional methods in taking up the topic of her illness both in her life-writing records and in her avant-garde art. The tactics of “transformation” in her correspondence, drawings and paintings assumed the form of self-irony, joke, distancing herself from her own body in the state of illness. The analysed correspondence is one of few cases of the painter’s autobiographical records we know of; they were stored in the Museum of Art in Łódź, as well as in the National Library of Poland in Warsaw (The Themerson Archive).