One of Poland’s best-known contemporary painters, Marcin Maciejowski’s paintings reveal both a strong fascination with the past as well as a desire to engage with the discourses of today. The artist sources his imagery from a variety of media, including his own photographs, capturing moments in time that range from the seductive to the mundane. The work Yves Saint-Laurent (2023) shows a cropped image of a fashion model walking toward the viewer on a runway. The motif stems from a Polish fashion magazine from the 1990s, and in the bottom left corner the image is prominently captioned with the designer’s name. For his rendering of the clothes’ fabric, Maciejowski drew on sculptural forms, specifically on Michelangelo’s Madonna della Pietà (1498–99), creating a ‘sculptural form on canvas,’ as he explains. By incorporating this art-historical reference into the composition, Maciejowski plays with ubiquitous pathos formulas that have been present for centuries.

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