Zdzisław Beksiński: Sexy Sadist!

Introduction

0:00Please enjoy this ringback tone while your podcast is reached.

0:11This is Raquel and Chelsea, and you're listening to Baroque Bitches. Welcome to Baroque Bitches, your art and art history gossip podcast. I'm Raquel. I'm Chelsea. We're going to get into it and the down and dirty to you on this highbrow art on this lovely Thursday.

Halloween Plans

0:47Friday evening, probably Friday. Thursday. We're in October. We're getting into Halloween. We're doing it. We're creepy. Well, I'm creepy today. I'm creepy every day. You're creepy every day. I keep it on the inside.

1:06Oh, my gosh. Happy Halloween-y. Happy Halloween-y. What are you doing for Halloween? Tell me, what is the tea on the costumes, the marine life costumes? What's happening? What aren't we doing for Halloween? We have a Halloween party this weekend. And then the town... Children or adults? It's a combined situation. Some friends are having us over. And then, actually, that same day, our town has, like, the commercial trick-or-treating where all the, you know, businesses open up.

Chili Cook-Off

1:39Big, big news, though, in the Viramontes house this last weekend, we participated in a chili cook-off at Diego School. First place. First place. What? Are you serious? Okay, to be fair, there were only five entries, but yes. Well, that's not bad. One of five. So, yeah. It's been a good week. We got, you know, Halloween parties coming up. That's a win. We got Trick-or-Treat. And then we got Trick-or-Treat again. And then we got Tio de los Muertos. And then we got a hell of shit going on. Hell, yeah.

2:10It's going to be a busy couple weeks.

Personal Updates

2:11How are you doing? How's Nana? I'm, I'm, Nana's good. We're going to the, we're going to the, yeah, totally doing. We're going to the doctor tomorrow. So, that's going to be, and that's going to be our first outing. Hear all about it on our Patreon if you want to know about our lives. Lots of stuff going on in the life. But I am going to, this Halloween, we are doing Haunted Harbor. We're, you're doing it. We're doing it.

2:42That's also my anniversary. Yeah. So, we are going to get spooked on the Queen Mary. If you want to know more about the Queen Mary, you're going to enjoy our pages. Oh, yeah. We do a whole thing on the Haunted, that Haunted Bitch. On that Haunted Bitch. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Yeah. So. So. Yeah. I will see, I will let you know if I find any ghosts on the Queen Mary. We need to hear all about the ghost situation. Yeah. I need to know all about that stuff. Well, thank you. We're doing pumpkin carving tomorrow.

3:14Oh, my God. Adorable. Yes. Can't get enough. Yes.

Zdzislaw Bekinski Introduction

3:18Like, are you, well, actually, that segues really quite perfectly into today's episode. So, my bestie bitches, grab your drink of choice and your emotional baggage because today we're diving into the very, very dark, dramatic, absolutely unhinged life of Poland's most iconic and tragic artist, Zdzislaw Dekczynski. Oh, very Polish. I'm going to mispronounce that so many times.

3:49Just, oh, don't even count. Very Polish. All of my Polish ancestors are, like, rolling in their fucking grave. Yes. I've got a little pole. I got a little pole. I know. We're just two pole locks over here trying to think. Yes. Interesting. Let's get into it. What? This one? I have no idea. Dude, I was going to ask. Like, do you have anything about this guy? I mean, I feel like I've seen this style of painting before, but I don't know what's going on here. Dude, it's so good. So, I mean, it's so sad, but it's so good.

4:21I mean, we're talking family tragedy, artistic isolation, OCD quirks, lots of hot, gossy stuff. So, are you ready? Somebody has anxiety.

4:37All right. Are you ready? So ready. Let's visualize.

Bekinski's Early Life

4:58The things I imagine, the ones that catch my attention, take place in a meta-reality. So, here it is. I order via my computer an improved version of Alicia Silverstone with pronounced sadistic tendencies. Just in case, I lower her age to 18 and I lengthen her legs by 10 centimeters. To feel intellectually humiliated, she will have six doctorates, a diploma from MIT, and the strength of Andres Galoda and the black belt in karate.

5:31I press the enter key. I press the enter key. Someone is at my door, and I hear a knock. I open it, and there she is. The 18-year-old MIT professor with her six doctorates, completely naked. I receive a blow to the stomach, and I fall. She ties me up and gags me. Then for two hours, sitting on my head, she suffocates me in various ways, breaks my arms and legs, tears off my fingers and nails. I have multiple orgasms, and then, in a spasm, I die.

6:08So, welcome to Zhizhitsla Bakshinsky, sexy sadist. Oh, God. Okay. Step on my ball. Oh, my God. Okay. I feel like, I mean, if you're into it, don't yuck my yum, right? Whatever. I, like, actually hate that phrase. I don't know why I hate the, like, don't yuck somebody's yum. I hate that phrase. I mean, I support the concept, but, like, the actual phrase kind of gives me a little

6:42ick. Like, don't yuck somebody's yum. It is. But I want to say, like, I will not knock you for liking something. I just don't. Whatever. Whatever. Don't yuck my yum. I always say, like, listen, if it doesn't send you to the hospital, we're good. Like, no. I mean, so. Fine line. Fine line. Fine line. Fine line. I bet you any EMT that's listening right now is, like, do not take your advice. Oh, my God. Don't shove the gerbil off the butthole. No. No. No. No.

7:12No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

7:22Y'all know what I'm talking about. Y'all go to Michael's. Y'all go to Target. You guys know. You guys know.

7:35Rack, what do you think the worst part about being an artist is? Business. Even though we are businesswomen, it sucks. Right. The website, the marketing, the selling of the stuff. Ew. I don't want to do that. However, there's a pretty cool platform called Art Storefronts. Oh, my God. Do you mean the ultimate website builder, marketing tool, and art selling platform designed specifically for art bitches? Oh, yeah. Not only that, but they also have a supportive community of over 15,000 artists, and you can be one of them. One of us. One of us. And hello, the holidays are coming up. Get that cash, art bitches.

8:06And Art Storefronts will actually throw in their build and optimize your site add-on service totally free when you mention the Baroque Bitches Podcast at sign up. Um, that's like an $1,800 service. Right? Check out artstorefronts.com, the all-in-one solution for growing your art or photography. Business.

8:27This one. Okay. So, I want to preface this with a little disclaimer. This episode will contain adult themes. There is violence, sexual content, schmooicide. Proceed listening with caution. Be aware of those little ears around you that may be listening. And trust that if you have to skip this one, we love you and we'll catch you in the next one. Okay. So, sorry. I should probably put that disclaimer before Visualize because it has-

9:00You guys get it. I feel like you guys are weird. You get it. Yeah, you get it. You get it. You like all this stuff. I mean, honestly, I feel like we get sexual and violent like every episode. Yeah. You like it. You like it. But yeah, so this is just, okay. So, this monologue is actually taken from Zhizhzhzhal's quotes and it's the intro monologue to a movie called the last family which i highly recommend um which chronicles like his life in warsaw

9:34and it does just a phenomenal job so if you're in for like a very sad watch get into it but this just want to set the tone get a little you know gnarly right from the beginning perfect time to get in to get cozy get ready get your kleenex yes get your snacks and cry and get drunk and watch these movies yeah absolutely watch your list that is too sad for a happy time yeah this one's not

Bekinski's Artistic Career

10:07going to be bright warm and fuzzy so age sex location asl so we're going to early mid 1900s in senok poland cute we never we don't go to poland enough we really should i mean i don't know we're like descendants so we should try to do this more um but senok was a tiny little town tucked into the southeastern part of poland and at the time our story begins would have been roughly like 10 to 15

10:41000 residents so obviously because i'm a gilmore's girlfriend cannot stop being basic i'm going to reference that this is like stars hollow of southeastern europe kind of vibe cute cute town was dependent on local industry crafts and that classic who's married to whose cousin kind of social ecosystem was a melting pot of ethnicities pols jews ukrainians all trying to navigate the post world war one chaos in the newly resurrected polish republic yeah she's finding herself she's we're in

11:17our discovery era a lot going like also our trauma era yeah post-trauma and nestled in the scene picture misty hills like horse-drawn carts yes very little central heating was the bekshinsky family yes yes yes yes so these are not your run-of-the-mill peasant stock no no no the bekshinsky's were upper middle class educated henny they owned a carriage and auto body workshop making you guessed it

11:48carriages and carriages and automobiles a little drivey thing little drivey thing so daddy daddy daddy is stanin's law bekshinsky i'm obsessed i mean yes but we're definitely not getting warm and fuzzies here from dad dad had the pressure being the second in line at the carriage and automotive factory so he didn't have time to be like you know a dad or warm and fuzzy

12:21he's very just like you know like and uh can only be described as immaculately immaculately tense mom mom unfortunately we're not getting any better on the mom's side so zizit's law's relationship with his mother was complicated strained and by his own account emotionally distant in a lot of interviews he describes his childhood as very unhappy and specifically noted that his mother was overbearing critical and possibly emotionally manipulative

12:56wow yeah not not great not great from the beginning setting the tone not getting any love from either parent so then you know as any overbearing and like uh meticulous person would do uh they decide to have a baby and i'm duh yes and yeah and on february 24th they're gonna love that they're gonna love it here they'll love it here we are really cut out to be parents obviously we don't love anything

13:32and we're at work so we hate everybody and we're very tense uh on february 24th 1929 our little jiu-jitsu baby was born making him a pisces pisces baby does that track we do get a lot of pisces artists we get lots of good pisces pisces are great artists they're super artsy fartsy fartsy fartsy they're dreamers they're poetic weirdos of the zodiac they're sensitive creative

14:04sensitive emotionally unhinged pretty much yeah six ways to sunday oh i love a good pisces they want to know how you're feeling it's so good absolutely feels good so baby bex our haunted boy from early on he was giving i'd rather be drawing in my room than kicking a soccer ball around with other kids and like honestly me too dude my soccer days as a kid were spent mostly daydreaming in the field i hated running soccer is the worst one day they made me halfback and i literally

14:41thought i was going to die that's the position where you have to like run back and forth and back and forth i almost threw up in the middle of the field and that's abuse it actually is i much preferred being the goalie because you got to stand in one place and kick the ball really far goalie but and then the pressure is on in that one moment and you're like oh shit i forgot i do stuff oh shit and then it's like then everybody hates you yeah that's actually true everybody would get really mad at you yeah i was a volleyball girl of like i mean my favorite parts were like kicking

15:15the ball far and getting the orange slices the orange slices like the little pudding cup yeah that's all i like the snack well pudding cup yeah now give me my pudding cup and leave me the fuck alone tell me to be running anymore well yeah so that's exactly obviously how he felt we get it we get it we get him but he so he was like a really smart awkward obsessive kid from a very young age he had obsessive compulsive tendencies had to line things up just right

15:48intense marriage to routines zero tolerance for messes he's just like oh yeah i mean yeah so he's like a stressed out dude and not getting any help or support from mom and dad and then they aren't equipped for that because they're kind of the same way yeah and then on top of that world war ii rolls in oh shit when he's just 10 years old nazi occupation boom soviet liberation quote unquote the whole region was flipped upside down

16:24his family survived but like most polish families they're fucked up after that how can you not be you're fucked for a while yeah emotionally financially logistically logistically physically physically mentally yeah it's all uh-oh we're gonna be all fucked up now i just can't even imagine yeah so what does any emotionally complex and more traumatized introvert with a precision obsession and zero social interest do with his life he goes to architecture school of course

16:57okay yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah trucks you guys are weird you get architects are weird so in 1947 bekshinsky enrolled at the krakow university of technology to study architecture and fucking hates it and it's gone immediate fail um he found it boring restrictive and frankly beneath his chaotic chaotic dream dreamscape of the soul okay drafting buildings to code following rules yeah yeah yeah absolutely no

17:31no no no no it's so not your thing dude no no not for me not for me nah but i feel like there's just this like eastern european of european military militarism like very hard work ethic that he has and he commits and finishes and graduates anyway even though he hated it the entire time so in 1952 he graduates get the paper get that paper yep get the paper and then literally immediately is like i'm never going to use this i'm not doing this yeah yeah i think a lot of us feel

18:05yeah that kind of sums up my college degree yeah i'm never gonna use it ever again and so post architecture bekshinsky this is where she gets weird and so it's not what the polish ministry of culture ordered at all between world war trauma cold fish parenting and a country under constant political upheaval jiu-jitsu had a front row seat to instability and like any good repressed creative he buried it all in his art thank god for us so now we're in the early 1950s jiu-jitsu has

18:40back in his hometown of sanak degree in hand zero intention of designing literally anything for actual use he doesn't want to work in the family biz doesn't want to build those houses he just wants to create and so he does what any post-grad would do moves into his parents basement and starts an art collective there you go done mom i'm just gonna do art in the basement with my friends it's a club leave us alone bring us some sandwiches an hour

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20:16oh god so he starts this art collective with his friends called the anti-photography art collective and let's pause and zoom out for a sec because we need a little art context so poland in

Polish Art Scene

20:31the mid 20th century as you can imagine is not like heavily embracing people drawing outside of the lines after world war ii the country was tucked under the very stylish but restrictive umbrella of the soviet sphere which meant state-controlled culture the aesthetic of the day was like socialist realism aka strong well-lit factory workers gazing nobly into the horizon we're happy because we're we work we like to

21:02work we like it we love grain and tractors we love this yes okay i mean it's propaganda with good posture right yeah oil paint dedicated to convincing everyone that communism was both sexy and thriving and over in the photography scene things weren't much better perfect photography quote-unquote was the dominant aesthetic which meant super polished

21:33technically flawless totally soulless art so think of it as like it's pretty think of it as like the instagram influencer area era of the 1950s like crisp lighting balanced composition every shadow doing exactly what i was told to do it was about purity and clarity and quote-unquote objective truth which is like cute but also completely allergic to emotion imperfection or like the human experience so yeah

22:04yeah that's pretty stuff we're good at it we're really good at it and just look good enjoy it this is our lives look how pretty our lives are which i mean it's that serves its purpose but beckshinsky shows up and he like the weird kid in class he insists on doing you know his own thing yeah so he's like what if what if photography was like actually ugly on purpose so and this will become a constant theme

22:38of beckshinsky he likes to take every medium and push it to its limits and try a bunch of different things experiment a ton just see what the fuck happens because why the fuck not so his group um stages a chaotic little exhibition in glee weiss and beckshinsky shows 15 photos and one of them is called sadist corset and this one is fucking legendary

23:11go ahead and look it up in it you'll find his muse sophia the icon the muse the unpaid model the legend oh yeah she stands behind a chair her body wrapped in string freaky it's freaky i mean yeah and imagine this dropping in like 1950s because now we're desensitized like nothing surprises us right but to see this in an art setting would have been like what

23:46whoa yeah even google wants to blur it it's definitely giving like surrealist bondage energy and poland was just simply not ready critics were torn between this is genius and should we call somebody because we're worried yeah clutching pearls we're clutching pearls for sure it's just a little string on a little like fat booty hello and if you look at all of his other photography you'll see things like uh a woman's

24:20face wrapped in gauze uh photo with a woman of a woman with her face burned and a hole where her face was uh just different kind of experimental stuff but all kind of with the same figurative work um trying to utilize an alternative human experience experience so let's talk about the girl oh so who's the girl in the photo who is she nice booty yeah we will have pictures on our patreon

24:55yes absolutely absolutely so zizitza met zofia stagitz stagikwiksh in krakow and somehow amidst all the existential dread and camera equipment sparks flu she was a literature teacher intelligent composed and shockingly tolerant of this chaos if he was a haunted crypt she was the sensible librarian who decided to marry the crypt oh yay we love that you need to have a

25:29normie yeah i know you need a normie and she's definitely his normie who like studies him she's the steady hand the one that grounds him cute um their wedding was super fucking weird it was peak bekshinsky energy inconvenient low-key curse zizitza apparently hated formal events and asked no one to come didn't tell his father and then even asked the priest if he had to be there

25:59he was like um okay you actually need to be here because like i don't want anybody here interesting okay yeah and there's no photos of the wedding none zip nada because the friend who was supposed to bring the camera forgot it so the only record of this deeply weird deeply bekshinsky wedding lives in letters like this one where bekshinsky basically writes the wedding happened it was fine i was there unfortunately oh god okay so this just like sets the tone because sophia

26:32and bekshinsky have a loving relationship but he also is just this incredibly complex ocd person that his his existence is very challenged and difficult and she has to constantly take a back seat to to his yeah to his like mental health issues yeah mental health issues and for the sake of him being an artist so she blessed her patient's soul she probably just smiled politely and made sure he

27:08didn't want her off mid-ceremony to sketch a haunted mannequin or something so okay yes i mean that's hard that's uh that that's hard but good for her for like you know understanding yeah so let's get into some of his like weird stuff yeah so he hated the smell of poop to the point of like it being a terrifying experience for him okay famously famously squeamish about the human body in real life couldn't handle

27:45mess dirt anything like sticky or biological okay which is like hilarious because once we get into his paintings you'll see that 90 percent of his art looks like melting flesh and like bones so a lot of times a lot of times your work is kind of for me anyway working out thing it's yeah i used to paint my own my my biggest fears yeah yeah yeah like sometimes you yeah you got to like work it out oh you got to

28:16work it out or or there might be like an obsession with with goopy stuff goopy human biology stuff yeah he's just so he's he's just so freaked out by it that he can't handle it in real life but but can handle it in a painting yeah or something i don't know i don't have the answer no a million percent he was obsessively tidy he wasn't warmer outgoing he didn't like people he like being in a social

28:49setting was his absolute nightmare but he was funny in that dry deadpan you're not sure if he's joking kind of way when asked about the meaning of his paintings he'd often shrug and say things like i paint because i have nothing better to do he was obsessed with new technology cameras audio equipment and later computers often recording everything in his life on video camera and in

29:19late in later years he switched fully to digital art so imagine yeah so with all these like baggage of fun facts surrounding our guy we have to give it up for sophia because she handled the real world logistics so he could disappear into whatever creative wormhole he was obsessing over that week photography gets it she just gets it he's so lucky he found someone that got it absolutely absolutely absolutely she got it she gets it it's wild okay you love him okay he's talented

29:55all right so in the early 1960s digit's law focus shifts from photography to sculpture

Bekinski's Sculpture

30:05because apparently painting regular nightmares wasn't physically demanding enough so these were they're all like very body horror in 3d think rough twisted forms that look part human part machine part was this found in a haunted house he sculpted with plaster and metal bending them into these weird strange tortured figures that felt halfway between like birth and decay and a lot of his work is all about tension like beauty dang tangled

30:41with grotesque you can't it's giving it's giving silent hill it's totally giving silent hill it's definitely like every horror fans fucking manifest in art like in 3d situation yeah this is the vibe this is vibing i'm vibing with it this is fucked and by the mid to late 60s jizzle moved on to painting and this is where things get truly unhinged in the best way so this is fantastic realism his magnum opus

31:13era if heronimus bosch and metallica had a love child and raised it on polish catholic guilt fucking amazing picture these massive intricate canvases filled with desolate wastelands where the sky looks like it's having a panic attack flesh-colored cathedrals made of bones and tendons faceless elongated beings that could be like angels or demons or your fucking ex-boyfriend i don't care who you want it to be but everything was painted with such precision that it almost feels

31:49like too real like you're looking at something you're not supposed to see yeah these are really fucked up they're good though they're really well done though too really really making it worse sad they're really sad and it's making it worse that it's painted so well i know uh dystopian yes dystopian for sure and silent hill this is all totally totally totally and the work

32:20i mean we can never truly interpret it correctly because bekshinsky never wants to talk about what the work actually means like most artists he's like you figure it out he doesn't title things everything's entitled so it leaves and forces us to interpret it on its own but like i don't want to be left alone with these for too long no yeah these are haunted they're haunted oh i'm into it get into it so let's talk about the part that all art historians listening are probably gonna like

32:58you know raise their eyebrows too and they whisper about it number one so bekshinsky was reportedly into bdsm yeah yeah mr melancholy himself had a spicy side it's wildly wildly believed and hinted at in both letters and early photographic work that he had a sadomasochistic streak maybe even identifying as a sadist and if you're suddenly picturing those early photography photographs in a new light yeah so in sadist corset you'll remember like his wife is wrapped this wasn't just avant-garde surrealism

33:36this was him expressing something real and he talks about it as if um like in letters we we don't know his perspective but we know from his wife's letters to a friend that she had an extremely difficult time with it and was like what do i do because like i'm not into this she's not into it yeah okay so what's he doing i mean or is she trying is she trying to get into it i feel like

34:14in those photos we see her trying to get into it but then i like a sharp drop off yeah because i we're lucky let's just say this she's lucky that he has such a vivid imagination that it doesn't seem that he actually realizes any of this in real life and he mostly works it out within the art okay so okay he's got something that he can kind of keep in his head for yeah and that he's basically painting things what it felt like to be aroused and terrified at the same time okay yeah wow

34:49interesting yeah of like you're still gonna be with the person that's like not into what you're into sexually i can't imagine having to like live in that existence you know or how many of us are living in that existence without exposing what you what you're really interested in because it's too too much of a faux pas freaky and like you don't want to freak them out i don't know i don't have the

35:19answer i don't have the answer if you guys have just let us know the answer let us know if you have shit like that going on because we'd love to talk to you well whatever your truth is those rumors definitely add another layer to understanding him and the work for sure pain and beauty were never separate for him like in his real life in the work they were always tangled inseparable thing and what better thing to do when you live like that than bring another small

35:52sensitive child into the mix yeah i know so they have a son tomek bickshinsky arrived in 1958 okay i don't think the world was ready i mean imagine your dad's like painting nightmare architecture made of bones scenes and your mom is only the only tethered to sanity in the house yeah and dinner conversation probably sounds something like how was school fine what's on the easel a rotting angel

36:23dissolving in its own sorrow cool yeah so growing up in the bickshinsky house school was basically like being raised inside of a fever dream but zofia made it work she was gentle nurturing endlessly patient the glue holding the whole operation together yeah tomek adored her she was the light and all the shadow but his relationship with his father was complicated he was one of those kids who came out of the womb already wearing like a metaphorical black turtleneck definitely sensitive introspective

36:58obsessed with music and film and he had this perfect storm of like genius and sadness that makes him both fascinating and emotionally exhausting so in the movie yeah in the movie it's very plain to see that tomek is probably autistic okay and growing up in a world that wasn't built for him is incredibly challenging okay um i mean he has obsessive like obsessions with music to the point of like

37:34like it being so precious to him um and it just it just shows i can't like i can't imagine growing up in a time where there's like no information on autism and your parents are just trying to understand you but also like fearful of you and can't like just can't do it so yeah and they're trying to figure out their weird dynamic too and yeah i mean and honestly they're narrow spicy too they're having a hard time too they're all having a hard time they're probably all overstimulated and

38:05they have no idea how to deal with it yeah so they move from sanak to warsaw and warsaw is not the same gilmore girls vibe it's more like the five freeway on a bad day just like a concrete jungle think concrete block apartment building better stuff to the room with people yeah until mack fucking hates this place um and he's very outwardly destructive about it and very vocal about it um in adulthood he becomes a radio dj film translator and cult icon of poland's moody intelligentsia

38:42his radio shows were legendary he played like depeche mode the cure film okay that's cool yeah no he's like a very cool guy but he also is very vocal with his parents about how difficult his experience is and is constantly talking outwardly about how he's going to kill himself oh so this yeah fucked up to hear okay and it's like it's interesting because he also is like humorous about it

39:16yeah um yeah he's self-deprecating he's self-deprecating for sure yeah at one point he goes around sanak posting an obituary for himself okay even getting his grandma involved to post the obituary everywhere and when people are like concerned he like thinks it's a big fat joke he's like whatever um yeah so he's interesting living just a severe like a life burdened with

39:49severe depression severe anxiety and often speaks about death and existential dread and that poetic way too honest way that made people worry yeah yeah and then it's like okay well shoulda is this your art or should do we need to talk or like somewhere i don't know well i do think that his dad making all these like death related paintings and him growing up looking at them all the time probably normalizes the concept of death for him in not the healthiest way or it's like or it's like death as

40:26like an artistic metaphor more more than like i'm really gonna kill myself of no i'm i'm gonna kill myself like metaphoric it's an allegory like it's art it's that death is art kind of a vibe it could be could be his vibe especially coming from someone who did grow up only on halloween but like around extremely fucked up scary horrific things right like no no no that's all for fun that's all fun

40:57right that's all creative fun stuff but then other people are like how do you live and like don't get me wrong like the the dummies would scare me at night sometimes like i would go out of the room and be like oh yeah my dad okay i'm sorry my dad scared the shit out of me because we had we made all these dummies and they're like life-size monsters right so we got like frankenstein wolfie all that stuff and we kept him up in the attic and then we would you know take him down for like the month before

41:28halloween and i remember my dad took them down and like set them all up in my room so oh my god no yeah when i got that's fucked up i still remember that i'm like i almost peed my pants oh my god and he's like you know that they're right there like they're always right above your room i was like i know but like dude they're like human-sized people and i'm like a little kid no but it was also like wonderful and super entertaining and really funny well it's like a double-edged sword i guess and i feel like

42:00that's like exactly the struggle that tomec is going through is like dealing with his dad being so like like like it's not like his dad like his dad is obviously severely anxious depressed ocd but he also has this kind of like sarcastic humor about death and has a very like different look on life and so tomec has uh multiple suicide attempts and at one point in the movie

42:36his dad says like he thinks it's a really brave thing to try and kill himself and like tells the doctor like if this is what he wants like should we even save him because like obviously i'm sad but if he's trying to take this decision into his own hands like let him you know it's tricky what like what a crazy fucking like perspective though to be like how brave you know yeah that just goes to show

43:08bekshinski's like understanding of of life and maybe even that empathy for his son's experience um yeah i mean that's and he's not getting that of the year for sure no of like that's crazy because i feel like if it wasn't your kid maybe i would like understand a lot but but also like if it's your kid i would understand that's our core yeah that's our core but just keep business ski

43:38that's our core i know interesting interesting okay so then he on the second suicide attempt he tells him he's like dude you can't do this anymore with your mom while she's alive like absolutely not it's just killing your mom like your mom's gonna freaking it can't deal with this don't do this yeah and he does make good on that promise okay so that's good that's something yeah um but unfortunately

44:10in 1999 sophia gets sick and a few months later passes away shattering the whole family dynamic um and obviously devastating her son she's like the anchor in this fucking chaos yeah she's the only normal one really yeah i know and so a year later at the age of 41 tomas succeeds and finally makes good on killing himself oh shit okay so wife's gone son's gone kids gone kids gone okay

44:49wow wow so obviously his jesus law is like devastated completely hollowed out he later said that after losing them his only reason for living was waiting for death so fucking heartbreaking the kind of generational sadness that feels like almost not real yeah but he does continue to make art and he's just sitting holed up in this apartment surrounded by his painting his grief and a computer full

45:24of surreal digital art that looked like nightmares rendered in windows 98 yes okay remember he's like a total techie guy he loves yeah he loves that so he shifts from painting to 100 making art on the computer which i just think is so funny yes um i mean i played doom growing up i played doom on the pc scared the shit out of me the shit out of the floating heads that come at you you guys know if you're old i did not play but it sounds absolutely terrifying

46:00no thank you it's scary to this day it's fucked up it's scary i'm like i had i would have bad dreams about those fucking floating skulls oh my god coming at you absolutely not he played that he had to play doom he played doom he probably did well i mean so he took grief itself and made that into his medium he once said what i paint is not meant to frighten but to move i seek beauty even in the horror which is a beautiful thing to say for a guy

46:34whose art looks like satan's pinterest board so by 2000s he was kind of this like recluse legend the mysterious beloved artist of doom he lived alone in a warsaw apartment mostly avoiding people but occasionally chatting with friends online he'd even send them little smiley faces and emails which coming from bick shinsky is like a full-on emotional outburst but despite the isolation he kept evolving he kept evolving making his little digital art using he's happy in there he's happy in that little shit apartment like he likes it well but that shit gets fucked up so he hires

47:11like a cleaning lady and okay in february of 2005 was brutally murdered in his apartment by his caretaker's caretaker's teenage son so i know it's fucking gnarly so okay so okay okay okay back up so he has a caretaker so he's old he's older okay um and he has like a caretaker and a cleaning lady

47:42and their son conspirizes with his cousin to rob bick shinsky and he comes to the door to rob him and bick shinsky's like no i'm not giving any fucking money and then apparently he stabs him 17 times what the fuck oh it's just like crazy goes to his cousin and like his cousin comes and when he realizes like oh fuck this robbery's turned into a murder they for some reason pull him out to the

48:15balcony um and like his body his body out to the balcony and when the police found him the apartment was just still like canvases lined the walls his computer sat open mid-project he spent his last day doing what he always did painting like his entire life dialogue with death and in the end death answered back i mean geez okay that's fucking fucking crazy right have we had one of our artists be murdered

48:49i don't know if we've had one of our artists be murdered i don't think we've had a murdered artist yeah this is the first full-blown murder for artists yeah we've had artists that have murdered other people yes but we haven't we haven't had a death by murder death by murder artists i know except for anna mendieta yeah oh yeah oh yeah anna mendieta was murdered okay that was that was like a year ago i totally forgot yeah let's watch good one holy shit wild um is only the beginning

Legacy and Influence

49:26i mean so his influence stretches from horror films to metal album covers to anyone who's ever looked at the dark and seen something beautiful in it because that's what he did he found poetry in decay so yay but we like that yeah we like it's weird you guys yeah he's gonna look at this work yeah it's weird it's so gnarly and i mean again because they're all entitled i didn't really want to get into specific pieces because it'd be really tough but yeah oh y'all got kind of like a similar

49:59vibe here on like a creeping creepy creepy creepy creepy creepy creepy creepy creepy oh good one good so you all need to watch the movie the last family i had to get like a weird european streaming network subscription yeah you had to get like a uh uh what's it called if we had a teenager around yeah vpn a vpn you had to get a vpn for another foreign country it was actually it was on hbo at

50:34one point i guess but they took it off anyways it was a great movie it's really sad but i feel like it dives into the life of both uh jiu-jitsu and tomec and and his kid yeah this kid was really interesting too so we'll have to i mean he could be a whole pod but person at the party who is he okay so if jiu-jitsu uh bekshinski were around today i feel like he'd probably be like elon musk okay okay they're both

51:09visionaries obsessed with building worlds no one's asked for yeah but bekshinski didn't require a launch pad just a brush and the disturbing imagination and while elon's busy trying to colonize mars bekshinski would have painted what it looks like after humanity ruins it after he ruins it rusted towers of bones tesla logals half-breeding red dust and ai androids praying for a reboot and i feel like they both they're they only exist propped up by like strong

51:42women right okay yeah i feel like elon musk had has a bunch of kids that he also like yeah i feel like elon musk is like yeah bekshinski is probably like a step up in being a good father yeah and like actually being a dad even though he's has he has he's not conventionally good at it yeah strange approaches when it came to his son's mental health but like he yeah and elon was he's not

52:18even trying with his kids with his kids but no but i could see the manic very manic they're both very manic both obviously mental health disorders and obviously like yeah unconventional ways of thinking about others and very like self-obsessed because i do think bekshinski was kind of there's no other way for him to understand life than his own if that makes sense certain people are capable of

52:50like yeah so or just like very like very pragmatic about it of like oh if you're gonna kill yourself why don't you just like either do it or don't do it i was like uh oh not the best uh what i don't care but mom like mom really cares yeah like you're freaking around like don't do this anymore until she's dead then we'll figure it out can you imagine like dad and i feel like elon musk

53:22would say something like that to his kid yeah and that must feel so fun his kids know not to come to him to any for anything i think yeah interesting interesting guy at the party we haven't had elon guy at the party yeah i mean that's probably because yeah i mean he's the worst but we like most of these people i mean and we like zzitzla we do like zzitzla yeah yeah we like him i mean on but i know i could

53:53see their frantic frantic interesting be unusual behavior being and just like saying yeah i wonder what bekshinski would do with a twitter account that's like really you know what unhinged things would come out of that yeah of like oh you're getting flagged but i feel like he would love tech and he'd love like all the stuff that's going on that elon musk has like made so yeah i think he'd be a big part of it he'd be happy about seeing his wiener rockets go up and his wiener rockets

54:28he'd be happy about that good one good spooky one this one was disturbing yeah i know i'm okay dun dun dun i like it well we're gonna have a lot more coming up we're we have a ton more coming up for spook fest even if we're having more out you guys join the patreon and get some spookies join the patreon if you can't that's okay totally chill totally chill okay that's it just keep

55:02listening wow we love you bye

55:23so so Thank you.

56:07Thank you.

56:37Thank you.