Marta Smolińska
NAUSEA AND ECSTASY
THE PICTORIAL TREATISE ON WOMAN BY BEATA EWA BIAŁECKA

Woman (truth) will not be pinned down. In truth woman, truth will not be pinned down. That which will not be pinned down by truth is, in truth – feminine. This should not, however, be hastly mistaken for a woman’s femininity, for female sexuality, or for any other of those essentializing fetishes which may still tantalize the dogmatic philosopher, the impotent artist or the inexperienced seducer who has not yet escaped his foolish hopes of capture.
Jacques Derrida

In his novel “The Agony and the Ecstasy” based on the biography of Michelangelo, the author (Irving Stone) established a topos of how the creative activity of the grand master of Renaissance should be perceived. Looking at the 2014 painting “Nausea” by Beata Ewa Białecka, I could not resist the temptation to transpose both the title and the corresponding myth onto the work of this painter. For years Białecka has been painting women and, however hieratic they may seem, they are also full of ecstasy, self-assured and self-appreciative. In the feminized world of the artist, nausea replaces ecstasy.

NAUSEA

The canvas entitled “Nausea” depicts a woman in the underwear kneeling and leaning forward, putting the fingers of her left hand into her mouth inducing vomiting, while gathering the hair on her neck with the other hand. Four ribbons–streamers stem from her back. They are covered with the inscription “Lacrimosa dies illa” – a quotation from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s mourning mass – Requiem. In front of the kneeling figure, in the puddle of water, a lamb is standing in a small white bowl. From the first moment, the whole composition seems polysemic, rooted in numerous contexts: the initial months of pregnancy accompanied by frequent morning nausea, the religious iconography and Mozart’s famous piece, but also the 1938 novel by Jean-Paul Sartre “La Nausée” and popular culture, in which the gesture of putting fingers into one’s mouth indicating nausea is an expression of disapproval – isn’t that how the title character of the popular American series Ally McBeal reacted (or was it Murphy Brown? I might not be an expert in TV series but we are definitely talking of a cultural cliché here). The structure of the painting leads my interpretation through the domains of both high and popular culture, blurring the borderline between the two spheres so clear-cut by the modernists.

The woman in Białecka’s paintings is not suffering from any autogenous nausea caused by the sudden surge of progesterone in the first weeks of pregnancy; she initiates it herself. Unexpectedly we become the observers, not to say voyeurs of the intimate ritual celebrated “on the stage” of the painting. The public display is emphasized by a curtain which does not camouflage or cover the embarrassing situation but serves as its background. Obviously it is not the biology that rules this woman’s body, she herself is in control of her physiology by evoking vomiting. The obvious association of nausea accompanying pregnancy is brought into question and the viewer gets involved in the deeper search for the causes of this state.

Thus the attention is drawn to the lamb in the bowl, which is exactly where one would expect the repulsive vomit. In Christian iconography the Lamb of God – Agnus Dei is a symbol of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice on the cross to redeem humankind. In universal terms it references the sacrifice of an innocent, pure being to God in order to be cleansed of sins. In Białecka’s painting, the lamb is exposed in a white bowl placed in a puddle of water or – maybe – tears: lacrimosa means tears. But who would have shed them? Is the lamb the reason for the woman’s nausea? What role does the tiny figure play in the whole composition? And what kind of sacrifice does it represent? Who has born or is still bearing it? In traditional Christian art, the triumphant Lamb is portrayed with a streamer with a cross on it and an aureole, in “Nausea” however it is deprived of these attributes. The lamb is hornless too, which turns it into a helpless sheep, such as used to be dedicated for a sacrifice in ancient Rome during wedding ceremonies to ensure fertility for the young couple. Again, the connotation with female pregnancy is evoked.

The picture belongs to the “Lacrimosa” cycle of paintings and the quotation from the Requiem seen on the streamer directs our attention to the notions of mourning and lament. Music full of pathos and deeply moving choral singing resonate in our imagination. The woman might have lost a baby then? Or maybe the opposite has happened: the moment she discovered her pregnancy marked the end of her personal freedom? The streamers with the inscription “Lacrimosa dies illa” that in the Polish version mean: “the day is shed in bitter tears”, are radiating from her body.
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