Chateau Saint Point 1982

Włodzimierz Zakrzewski made this painting of Chateau Saint Point with oils on canvas. The way Zakrzewski lays down paint is so physical and direct. You can almost feel the bristles of his brush churning the colors together. Look at how the ochres of the building meet the sap green of the vegetation, thick slabs of paint juxtaposed with loose scumbles of color. It’s not really about the Chateau itself, but more the act of painting it. The lower register of the painting shows this approach clearly. It’s all about the materiality, the texture, the surface. It's like he's wrestling with the paint, pushing it around, and letting the process itself dictate the final image. Maybe he saw himself as a kind of action painter, but with a landscape instead of an interior space. This feels like an artist like Courbet, who was unafraid to embrace the ambiguities of painting. Zakrzewski understands that art is more about the conversation, the exchange of ideas, than any one fixed meaning.