Philosophical Marginalia by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

This article develops the idea which stood behind the exhibition entitled Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz – Philosophical Margins held at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, in 2004. This exhibition focused upon the hitherto unknown forms of Witkiewicz's creative activities: it presented the notes and drawings that the artist and writer made in the 1930s in the margins of the philosophical books he read. Witkacy's marginal notes constitute often humorous comments to the texts he studied and are intertwined with notes of a personal nature; the drawings he added at page edges suggest motifs known widely from his paintings. The purpose of the exhibition was to draw an analogy between Witkacy's artistic concepts and his philosophical thinking. The article is meant as a reflection upon the question of place and role of philosophy in his output as a whole.