I went to see Julian Stanczak speak about his life and work at RISD, in 2003. Out of all the lectures I saw there, Julian's stuck with me the most.
Julian spent most of the lecture talking about color. He explained briefly about his methods and their origins, how the careful geometry was a result of him having only his left-hand (his entire right arm was permanently paralyzed in a concentration camp at age 10); any precision required tape to create guides before the paint was applied.
He mentioned color so many times, at one point my friend Katie leaned over and said jokingly, "I wonder what his favorite color is." I laughed, partly because it was a good joke but also because Julian was so serious and solemn- he hadn't smiled once or made a single joke the entire talk.
When Julian finished his talk, the audience began asking terrible questions. It was a huge auditorium, with hundreds of people, and after this wonderful lecture, the first question someone asked was "do you drive a green volvo?" Julian squinted at the man who asked the question and didn't even bother to respond. The man clarified, "I thought I saw you earlier driving down such-and-such street" to which Julian quickly replied, "No."
A few more dumb questions, and then silence. It was hard to believe that with an audience filled with artsy people, no one had any decent questions to ask.
Way up near the back, I raised my hand, and Julian pointed to me. "What is your favorite color?" I asked. The audience laughed, another stupid question perhaps, but at least it was a funny one.
But Julian didn't laugh; he didn't even smile. He looked at me for a moment, and then, completely straight-faced, he asked me, "How can you ask that?"
"I love color itself," he continued, "and you can not single out colors on their own- any color will look, feel and act differently depending on the colors which surround it. The way that colors interact with each other, I love that. And there is an infinite spectrum. Someone says 'blue is my favorite color' - what blue? there are an infinite number of colors, all within the spectrum we categorize as blue..."
He continued on this theme for some time, brilliant and mesmerizing, and I'll never forget it.
Julian was born in Poland in 1928. When he was still a young boy his family was taken from their home and forced into concentration camps. He was separated from his family and sent to a labor camp in Siberia where, from starvation and excessive labor, he lost the use of his entire right arm, which he never regained (he was right-handed).
Amazingly, he not only escaped but made it all the way to Persia, where he joined a small resistance army "because they had food." Eventually he made his way to a refugee camp in Uganda, and finally, at age 21, he made it to the USA.
Julian explained that ever since he'd been a boy, he'd wanted to go to America. All the time he spent as a refugee, he built up this idea of the "American Dream" even though he didn't know what it was.
When he finally arrived in New York, this skeletal, handicapped boy named Julian was taken into a shelter where they brought him food, and as he ate, they kept bringing him more soup and bread, and he kept eating it, until finally he couldn't eat anymore. He didn't understand what was happening, because he had never been full before. He had never once in his life had more food than he could eat, and that's when he realized what the American Dream meant to him- this feeling of being full.
