Admirers of contemporary art have long since got used to nearly full unification of art and life, both in the contents and the ways of manifesting artistic attitudes. The attempts have been intensified to include within the work of art the output of contemporary civilisation - either physically or only symbolically - and - at many levels the attempts to link the two such remote and hateful to each other spheres of life which art and technique still were not long before.

On the other hand, facing the constant, prevailing interference of civilisation and culture phenomena in our life, many artists try to awaken in themselves and in other people imagination limited by conventions. Many of them carry it out in a very spectacular way though they are hardly noticed, like in case of events held in some remote places by the representatives of land-art or arte povera, the others come up with very ephemeral and intimate actions whose records are preserved only in films and photographs.

Undoubtedly the source of this kind of expression lies in the temptation to get closer to nature and the search for the deeply hidden truth about man, the truth which often lies in the ways of existence and the forms of expression. These forms include nearly all manifestations of imaginative activity, as well as the disdained forms of life, even those which have been regarded as belonging to the 'animal' stage of development.

As a consequence of this search and a new recognition of primary and individual layers of consciousness, feelings, emotions an artist's unique language and a mysterious ritual are usually created.

Everybody is aware of great ritualization of our everyday endeavours, being involved in the play of complicated behaviour, conventions; family, school, professional and religious ones. Objects - fetishes replaced gods and human authorities. Nature, once a source and a partner of man, with its language which used to be listened to, being in danger itself, stopped being asylum for people alienated and subject to civilisation rituals.

Thus it is a peculiar paradox that in the search of what is genuine, not branded with utilitarianism and characteristic of people, though often associated with the world of common archetypes and symbols, we create another ritual which is a result of being fed up with noisy reality. We form a spontaneous and friendly ritual. The ritual of necessary tranquillization.

Sometimes these areas are reached suddenly and accidentally. As it somehow occurred to Barbara Dawid's 'forest' cycle of graphics, the series of works where the so-called contemplation of nature is in close-up, like when we face a partner for a conversation. As a result fragments of tree trunks constitute the foreground of the graphics, shown in the background within human sight. The artist is not interested in the traditional image of a tree, full yet superficial characteristic of the motif. A detail understood in a traditional way (leaves, branches) does not function here. Other details are essential, those which - like texture, cracks and scratches - make the image, the portrait of 'an alive person' veracious and influence the quality of contrast between the realistic foreground and the created background. The latter is flat and apparently abstract. It draws our attention to the fact that an object taken out from a given fragment of reality - sketched and - as a drawing - photographed, finally transferred onto paper as a graphic, starts to live its own life in another surrounding. Contrast between two plans lets purely plastic values like space, rhythm and contrastive forms exist. Due to the monumental foreground and the vertical construction, the composition does not have to be more dynamised. Tranquillity of the graphics is intensified by the artist only in one of the works where both the warmer colour and more numerous lines of direction tensions introduce dramatic value within the area of the work.

In the cycle discussed the artist tries to define the border beyond which the subject of art loses its realistic character and enters the world of abstract signs. What draws our attention are photogravures which, considering the type of plain-air they were created in and most of all the character of images and the artist's intentions, constitute the intermediate stage between the graphics discussed earlier and the whole cycle of large photographic works. They are the example of 'creative atavism' which justifies meeting the primary needs to mark one's presence in reality, they enable us to reveal everyday reflections and experience. It is expressed here in the form of signs free of culture tradition. Most often nature itself suggests the type of the drawn symbols. Sometimes they seem to be right under the surface, an accidental arrangement of branches and grass encourage to complete the picture. Yet what the artist has in mind is not the creation of any permanent work of art, what is more - transience of her manifestation is almost natural for her endeavours. The results will last only a few minutes, some of them will be preserved by nature for a longer time until the signs are washed away by water, blown away by the wind or trodden by people. A long-lasting trace of interference will only be a photograph or a graphic work following it.

The very gesture of creation becomes ritual in its character. The message might be a reflection of personal cosmogony functioning only in the artist's subconsciousness. It obviously comes out of the need to recognise and tame the surrounding world.

At this stage already drawing is most important. Sketching it on sand the artist consciously rejects what is traditionally accepted, resigning from paper as the conventional material, attributed to this kind of artistic expression by a long tradition. In contemporary art such activities are the result of going beyond the limits which were created both by traditional painting and sculpture.

The significance of drawing as a result of a gesture is emphasised by limiting the artistic means which are to be used in the technique of reproduction. The works are monochromatic, the colour and its temperature go with the situation the image was created in.

The non-teleological character of the message is preserved in the series of photographs made in the gummi technique, the works documenting the next stage of Barbara Dawid's activity, despite the fact that along with the spiral, circular and rectangular abstract symbols, the world presented also consists of the objects which have or might have their realistic equivalent in the world of objects surrounding us.

The set of objects inherited unexpectedly (metaphorically and literally) got the artist to make an emotional effort which was to deprive this output of civilisation of its sense of purpose. Without their owner-collector things for the first time lost the sense of their existence. There was still the useful function left, which might have been denied by creating the drawing compositions presenting the appearance of things, arranged one next to another in new contexts. The unreal useless abstract objects-machines were created (even from this point of view that they were just drawn). Even their aesthetic value ceased to be significant; there were only the reflections of objects in objects themselves left, being alive not more longer than a few hours. As far as perception goes these peculiar creations existed only thanks to the interference of the photographic medium.

This sort of artistic reflection contributes to a long traditional discourse on the potential, tasks and limits of art, on mutual relations between different records of an object's appearance and their relationships with the original prototype.

These reflections seem to be essential the moment we notice the fact that the subsequent works focus on man whose trace appears on sand as a result of semi-magic activities, similar to those which had a testimony in thousand-year-old rock engravings or paintings. Barbara Dawid's drawings resemble the Palaeolithic prints or contour outlines of palms carved or obtained by means of ochre spilt on rock or pre-Columbian pictures of creatures 'out of this world'. In the works of the contemporary artist the act of creation is most important at the beginning, confirming one's existence, leaving a phantom trace in reality, first a short term one, at the moment of physical contact with a fragment of nature, later a long term one, owing to the properties of a camera. In this context the decision to use the gummi technique to preserve the results is essential. Gummi works are soft, varied in textures to be obtained. The artist could use the traditional bromine technique or attempt to obtain a similar artistic effect. Yet she clearly tries to stress the characteristic granulation of the gummi surface, the effect of being out of focus, she indulges in losing some details.

In the following works the outlines of silhouettes appear to be alive. In one of the drawings the subsequent contours present phases of human movement. The figures in the composition look at each other, communicate in gestures easy to be recognised. Next to the phantoms of the authoress there appear figures from her nearest surrounding, as if escaping from the world of everyday struggle with reality. The artist seems to create a kind of enclave evoked by a series of 'ritual' gestures. The latest works are more emotional. It is expressed not only by introducing human figures and their mutual relationships into the area of drawings but also by emphasising the expression of emotions by new artistic means. Colour is more important here, it builds mood. It becomes more abstract and does not help the means imitate nature.

The characteristic feature here is that at this stage of creation, in the search of basic original sources of emotions and impulses, the artist penetrates the area of eroticism, the sphere of human emotions so much dominating since the origins of art. One of the cycles of works under the discussion is entitled Ziemia, Powietrze, Czas /The Earth, Air, Time/ . Let us have a look into some aspects of time which appear to be the result of using this notion by the artist.

In Barbara Dawid's work like in case of other artists of the same sensitiveness there are some perceptible though assumptive borders which divide it into the subsequent stages. In the cycle of early big photographs the material used to construct a work certainly conveys the trace of secondary use. The whole activity is the synthesis of the elements of various realities. We clearly feel that the material used to build the message had a character of an object, formed deliberately for non-artistic purpose. The fact of its secondary use for another purpose than the original one introduced an element of time discontinuity into the work. Taking into account the fact that the element of the primary system provided the material for the new unity , we can also say that there was a simultaneous transfer from one language level to another.

In the following works time discontinuity can also be observed. It is obvious. We are aware of the period of time which sometimes separates the subsequent stages of the artist's work. The reason for this may lie in the gradual use of the succeeding media, which demands some technical involvement. It may disturb some admirers of art. If we assume, however, that by means of the ritual gestures she builds, first of all for herself, a mythical closed world, we will agree that time can not have the linear but the point and circular and revolving character and the phenomenon of overlapping the elements of the artist's language and the language which may come back to us from the past seems to be obvious.

Dariusz Le.nikowski

Translated by Elżbieta Rodzeń-Leśnikowska