Roman Honet and Zdzisław Beksiński – a Fellowship of Fantastic Imagination

Abstract

The article compares the poetry of Roman Honet and the paintings of Zdzisław Beksiński. Departing from the general similarities between the artists, consisting in the presence of the aesthetics of the grotesque, fantasy, oneirism and surrealism, the author outlines some more specific similarities. Both artists, for instance, can be situated in the field of fantasy art, in which an important role is played by the incorporation into the image of miraculous and fantastic elements, a coherent imaginarium and creative techniques distorting the representation. Both Honet and Beksiński are reluctant to explain the significance of their works, giving the recipient the freedom to make associations or emphasising the intuitive nature of the creative process. Using representations of anthropomorphic hybrids, both artists point to the complex status of non-human entities, and hence also to the human being, in which the animal and the social are combined.