'Touch' or the Chopin medal by Ewa Olszewska-Borys
What (Ewa Olszewska-Borys) is attempting is one of the things I find most intriguing and exciting about post-Art Nouveau medallic art: it completely gives up trying to create an illusionistic, "three dimensional" visual world (which was, in fact, one of the accomplishments of medallic sculpture at the end of the 19th century--that they moved beyond the traditional planar and circular definitions of a "medal space," turned more and more to plaques, plaquettes, and off-round forms, and even at times created the illusion of perspective and depth) and instead goes for a virtual visual reality. Think of the 1924 Marseilles medal: the obverse is not, in fact, a "scene" from a quaint Marseille waterfront--(although it is possible to see--to "read into" the image of the steamstack and the Garde that exact interpretation)--but a placing on the medal's surface of a selection from such a scene. Why? Because the waterfront does not continue beyond the streamstack as it would in the real world. Because no boat approaching the shore of the Old Port ever had the words "Foire International de Marseille" surrounding its steamstack like a half halo. Because--a subtle point, this--it is obviously a memory piece, not an attempt to reproduce how Marseille truly looked. The hill of the Garde, for instance, is far steeper in the image on the medal than it is (or ever was) in real life. That is the sort of distortion that memory (or love, or hate, or recollected attention) makes. She wrote: "The impact of a portrait depends on its emotional content, which reveals the artist's attitude towards the subject, and also on the artist's ability to render, besides the likeness, non- physical elements of human personality by visual means." Yes! That is exactly the reason why at first glance her Chopin piece, which appears the simplest of them (it really isn't!) is so strikingly effective. Between Chopin's ear on the one side and his fingertip on the other is neither Chopin's body (as a purely figure art would inform us) or his nervous system (as moderm medicine might have it) nor even the stillness of the air waiting to be filled. In fact, I would go further than she seems to go. What is between them (the ear and the fingertip) is only the medal itself, which can be held in the hand, both sides touched at once, instantaneously as it seems, and THAT is the distance between his ear and his fingers. So it's not only the visual effect of the medal, but the imagined (anticipated) tactile effect that is so remarkable here. Apparently simple (like the design); apparently smooth (like the surface); outlined beautifully and absorbing. (I am describing Chopins Preludes, which I have played and loved for years, not the medal. And that is the point exactly--it could be either the music or the medal--and she captures those elements of Chopin's personality, of Chopin's music, in the medal itself.) It's a wonderful piece.
Joseph Styles.
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