It is always wrong to reduce a whole museum to just one work of art. However, if I absolutely had to do it here, at the National Museum in Warsaw, I would go to Ferdynand Ruszczyc and his masterwork "The Soil". That is a painting of such internal power and primordial intensity that you have to make sure you take it all in slowly, calmly, getting lost in the rough textures of what you are seeing. Because it is not even about the details. This time, it is all about the sheer grandiosity of those horrifying clouds that the lonesome farmer is carrying on his shoulders.
Oddly, I have always believed Ferdynand Ruszczyc to be a Belarusian painter. He was born in Belarus and died there (Bohdanow village in the Western part of the country), he spent his childhood in Minsk and he identified as Belarusian. However, Poland claims Ruszczyc as its own, even despite his early education in St. Petersburg as well as the fact that much of his life as an artist was spent in Vilnius. Having said that, the artist held Polish citizenship and it was in Poland that he got his recognition. To me, the point of the argument centres around the very painting. "The Soil". This bold, challenging work was rejected by St. Petersburg for its radical break with conventions but was accepted in Poland that immediately recognised "The Soil" for what it was: a masterpiece of impressionistic realism. That, as well as Ruszczyc's subsequent career in Poland, guarantees the rightfulness of Poland's claims.
The National Museum in Warsaw displays great works of international, and internationally recognised, art. In its essence, however, it is a Polish museum. The first floor is devoted exclusively to religious paintings, icons, sculptures and installations, which subdues your spirit and sets the mood for the whole experience. And then, upstairs, Gustave Courbet and Paul Signac, while certainly good, do not really overshadow the works of Polish art. Alfred Kowalski's travelling stories of grim realism, Piotr Michałowski's striking portraits from the 19th century, Aleksander Gierymski's early impressionism... These are all works that give credibility to Polish art, which is precisely the point of any national museum.
Still, while I was impressed by the story behind Stanisław Wyspiański's creepy "The Mulchs" and the tasteful, slightly mysterious expressionism of Konrad Krzyżanowski, it is Ferdynand Ruszczyc and "The Soil" that have really stayed with me. I remember how once, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at "Woman with a Parasol" (which could qualify as my favourite painting of all time). Well, the National Museum of Warsaw gave me something similar in the sense that I could not look away from Ruszczyc's painting even as people were rushing by me and a group of Polish children were listening to a lecture behind my back. Monet's masterpiece is a work of ecstatic beauty and subtle impressionism, but this is something completely different.
With "The Soil", it is the physical, physiological effect that absorbs you. The painting is huge, but that is the only way for it to exist (I am enclosing it here, but it has to be seen live). It is not that "The Soil" drags you into its frame - it is that the painting bursts out of it. And you feel small, and insignificant, and utterly gripped, and a tiny step closer to discovering what art really stands for.
