Institute of Art History

PROBLEMS OF WOODEN SACRED ARCHITECTURE IN THE LUBLIN REGION COMING FROM THE PERIOD BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS
Wooden architecture has been a typical element of the Polish landscape for a few centuries. A special role is played by churches that at present are slowly disappearing from the architectural landscape. Ones that were built in the period between the two World Wars are a separate group. After
the end of World War I and after Poland regained independence the problem appeared with choosing a proper architectural form for new churches. The structure, planning arrangements, and spatial solutions that were used, combined with the investors’ preferences, decided that traditional architectural forms dominated; they referred to the “familiar” current and historical styles. A search for “familiarity” understood as referring to the patterns from the past, ranged from the Zakopane Style architecture that was popular at the end of the 19th century, to the type of church characteristic of the Polish highlands, with a dominating spire over the façade. A review of the forms of the wooden churches built before the Second World War in the Lublin region allows stating that they are typical against the background of wooden sacred architecture of the whole country.
In the Lublin region about forty wooden churches were built; and nearly half of them do not exist at the moment, or they ceased to perform their original function. The most interesting ones include the projects carried out by professional architects, bound up with the state administration.
Bohdan Kelles-Krauze was the author of three wooden churches in the region: in Leszkowice, Klodnica Dolna and Olbiecin. Tadeusz Witkowski designed the church for the Dziesiata Quarter in Lublin, transferred to Pilaszkowice in the 1980s. An interesting project of a church in Biala Ordynacka
with picturesque “sobotas” and a characteristic roof in the Zakopane Style by Franciszek Kopkowicz finally was not carried out.
A serious problem is posed by the slow “dying” of wooden churches built in the interwar period that are relatively new monuments of the past. Often they are too small for their parishes and they cannot win a competition with more impressive, new brick or concrete structures. Even if they are
entered in the list of vintage buildings, it does not always protect them efficiently.

Po zakończeniu Wielkiej Wojny Polska odzyskała długo oczekiwaną niepodległość. Dla nowo odrodzonego państwa kwestią kluczową stała się materialna i duchowa odbudowa poczucia tożsamości narodowej jego obywateli.
Tożsamość narodowa może opierać się zarówno na pozytywnych, jak i negatywnych postawach. Niniejszy artykuł dotyka jednego z aspektów polityki II RP wobec budowania polskiej tożsamości, opartej na negacji "Innego" - posługując się terminem Emmanuela Lévinasa - koncentrując się na losach cerkwi prawosławnych w okresie międzywojennym.
Sytuacja Kościoła prawosławnego w II RP była dość trudna. Brak regulacji prawnych sprzyjał masowym akcjom rewindykacyjnym, które skutkowały zniszczeniem, a w najlepszym wypadku konwersją dawnych cerkwi na kościoły katolickie. W Polsce centralnej w pierwszych latach po odzyskaniu niepodległości dominowały spontaniczne reakcje społeczeństwa na religijne symbole carskiej rusyfikacji,
jakimi bez wątpienia były cerkwie. O ile "odmoskwianie" większych polskich miast było "emocjonalnie" usprawiedliwione, o tyle ostatnia faza akcji rewindykacyjnej spowodowała wzrost antypolskich nastrojów wśród społeczności Ukraińców i Białorusinów (w większości prawosławnych). W konsekwencji była to polityka krótkowzroczna. Negacja tożsamości ‘Innego’ w imię umacniania własnej identyfikacji narodowej utworzyła słaby fundament, który rozpadł się wraz z wybuchem II wojny światowej.

After the end of World War I, Poland regained its long-awaited independence. For the politics of the newly reborn state, question of material and spiritual reconstruction of the state and rebuilding the sense of national identity among its inhabitants became a priority. National identity may be based on positive as well as on negative social attitudes. This paper examines one aspect of the policy of building Polish identity, implemented by authorities in the Second Polish Republic, as well as results of founding it on the negation of the “Other” – using Emmanuel Lévinas’ term – by focusing on the Orthodox Church and fate of the Orthodox churches in Poland in the interwar period.
Situation of the Orthodox Church in the Second Polish Republic was very difficult. Absence of legal regulations was conducive to mass recovery actions, leading to demolition, or at best, conversion of the former Orthodox temples into Catholic churches. In central regions of Poland, first years after regaining independence were dominated by spontaneous reactions of the society towards religious symbols of the bygone tsarist Russification – which undoubtedly Orthodox churches were. While the ‘re-Moscow--ing’ [odmoskwianie] of the major Polish cities was ‘emotionally’ justified, the last phase of the reclamation actions increased the anti-Polish attitudes among the Ukrainian and Belarusian (mostly Orthodox) communities. In consequence it was a shortsighted policy. Negation of the “Other’s” identity in the name of reinforcing national single-ethnic self-identity provided weak foundations for the state, that collapsed with the outbreak of World War II.

Sculpture, as an element of public space, found its special place within the urban space. The 1960s and 1970s were especially important moments in the history of sculpture. Many artistic symposia and plain-airs had been held in numerous Polish cities. Those events contributed to the appearance and proliferation of new sculptural forms. The housing estates that were built at that moment, provided the ideal space for three-dimensional forms integrated into the architectural layout, harmoniously co-creating and domesticating the city chaos and the sense of lostness within the closest surrounding of the man. One of the most important initiatives in the 1970s were Lubelskie Spotkania Plastyczne 1976 (eng. Lublin Visual Arts Meetings). Several dozen artists from the whole country took part in them. The participants designed and created murals, mosaics and sculptures, which were placed on the gable walls of the blocks of flats, situated on the squares and along the alleys of the housing estates of LSM (Lubelskiej Spółdzielni Mieszkaniowej, eng. Lublin Housing Cooperative). Many of them still exist, such as for instance sculptures on Mickiewicz and Piastowskie Estates, and the mosaics on Słowacki Estate. The artists – authors of these works of art had different aims. Some of them created autonomous works, intended to function independently of their surroundings, but most of them were supposed to actively co-create the existing socio-urban space. Introducing art into dwelling places was supposed to be an important factor in the education of aesthetics as well as an evidence of integration of fine arts into the urban environment. Following the observation of architect Jan Żochowski, one may divide all projects into two main groups referring to two decades – periods in which particular estates were built. For older ones – like Mickiewicz and Słowacki Estates – the artists mainly prepared propositions subtly complementing the already existing architectural space. The second group – projects for housing estates based on the idea of panel building (Krasiński, Sienkiewicz, Konopnicka and Prus) – characterized by variety of solutions, interfering more conspicuously with a repetitive layout of “factory of houses”.

The paper presents architectural plans of selected school buildings, designed during the interwar period in Lublin. Their architectural style is characterized by changes typical for tendencies present in Polish architecture at the moment: from traditionalism, popular in the 1st half of the 1920s, through gradual simplification of the detail and the shape of the building in the 2nd half of the 1920s, up to mature modernism of the 2nd half of the 1930s.

The article aims at juxtaposing selected works by Adam Marczyński considering the issue of opticality or visuality of sculpture. These terms refer to Clement Greenberg’s notes on modern sculpture and his statement that new sculpture under the modernist “reduction” has turned out to be almost as visual as painting. The works by Marczyński from 1960s and 1970s are usually discussed in relation to constructivist painting-object. At the beginning of the 1960s the artist gave up traditional painting and turned to half-spatial collages made of pieces of wood, cardboard or rusty metal. He also started to create sculptural forms during artistic outdoor meetings, like Composition of Variable Elements (1st Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elbląg, 1965) or Light Tower (together with Janusz Orbitowski, Symposium Wroclaw ’70, 1970, unrealized project). Above mentioned forms are discussed here together with Marczyński’s Interventions presented at the 8th Meeting of Artists and Theoreticians in Osieki (1970). The last one consisted of wooden cases – the form of which he has already used to create rhythmic compositions: series Open Arrangements and Decompositions – this time placed directly on the trees, in the natural environment. Except for the perspective of the opticality it also touches upon the question of dualistic mobility: its interaction with space and relation to the spectator.

This article concerns the recent strategies adopted to deal with the heritage of Polish culture from the communist period. These strategies include: a growing interest from the point of view of monument protection authorities and artistic associations in the architecture of the Polish People's Republic, the educational activities of newly-established thematic museums and commercial events that invoke nostalgia for the past. After 1989 the problem of the presence of symbols of Soviet domination emerged, many of them have been systematically removed from the landscape, yet the issue of their future has maintained its importance. This issue leads to the question of a moral assessment of architectonic heritage.

The article aims to analyse the status of the object in the neo-avantgarde practice of selected Polish artists in 1960s assemblages, from the perspective of the ‘material turn’, initiated by postructuralism’s
crisis of representation in the social sciences and humanities. Trespassing on the intellectual ground associated with traditional painting, which was conceived as a flat two-dimensional surface,
led the artists to introducing objects from real life into their art, this gave the artwork containing objects new life and ‘personality’. The paper focuses on the works by four prominent modernist Polish artists: Erna Rosenstein, Włodzimierz Borowski, Tadeusz Kantor and Alina Szapocznikow. Taking into account the differences between their artistic attitudes and personal experiences, one may observe a common interest in the materiality of the world that resulted in a variety of object interpretations (Rosenstein, Borowski, Kantor) as well as the reification the body (Szapocznikow). Reference to Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory also creates a new perspective for research on the objects in works
of art (Kantor).

This article will cover a number of issues concerning artistic events indicated in the title with emphaisis on the activities or projects of the artists actively involved ‘ordinary citizens,’ the inhabitants of Poland’s Western and Northern Territories, where Poles were resettled after
1945, in the process of co-creation/reception of their artistic work. An attempt will be made to answer the following questions: To what extent did the en plein air events and symposia de facto realize the ideas propagated by the communist authorities in Poland? Perhaps these artworks, originally intended by their creators to enliven the public space, are now perceived from the contemporary perspective and have finally triumphed over empty communist dialectics, creating artistic value that Pierre Bourdieu could include within the scope of objectified forms of cultural capital? Did they really contribute to the cultural ‘domestication’ of the northern and western territories, where the dicussed events were organized? Also, last but not least: the question concerning the nature of the aforementioned participation – what was the nature of the contribution from the individual participants to the co-creation and realization of the projects?

This article addresses the results of the artistic event Space of the City, organised in Chełm in 1978 by Bożena Kowalska, the then curator of the Galeria 72. She invited 16 artists to create projects for sculptures
that were supposed to be delivered later in a material form and located within the space of the city. None of them were eventually realised.

In 1965 Gerard Kwiatkowski and Marian Bogusz organized the first of the Spatial Forms Biennales in Elbląg - a city based in the so-called "Recovered Territories". Selected artists, supported by ZAMECH mechanical plant and with the permission of the communist authorities, created several dozen huge metal sculptures known as "Spatial Forms". This was the biggest experiment combining art and industry in Poland or even in Europe. The aim of the article is to juxtapose the role of this phenomenon, namely how the creators of the Biennales found a balance between artistic freedom and political limitations, these limitations were forced upon the artists in a way that might prompt one to recall, Foucault's manner of "discipline" (Foucault, 1973). The author of the article also touches upon the question of the contemporary view of the Elbląg Biennale from the perspective of the avant-garde myth of social and collective participation in artistic creation.

During the period of political Thaw, Adam Marczyński (1908-1985) – a member of a Kraków artistic group – created a series of compositions, mainly in the monotype technique, depicting organic forms reminiscent of allusive abstraction. The essay is an attempt to confront these works with the myth of artistic freedom commonly associated with that historical period as the result of the unwritten consensus between
the communist authorities and artist circles. The idea of transcendence of form seen as a common point connecting Piet Mondrian’s concept of reality and Adam Marczyński’s abstract works is an important problem also discussed by the author.

The implementation of the new ideological and artistic concept of the Museum and Memorial in Sobibór on the site of the former Nazi German death camp selected in the 2013 competition is discussed. The winning design is analysed; apart from the arranging of the area of the former camp, it also envisaged raising of a museum, the latter stage already completed with the building opened to the public in 2020. The concept of 'space of engagement' is proposed by the Author as best characterising a memorial site created on the premises of the former Nazi concentration camps and death camps for the people of Jewish descent. As a departure point, earlier examples of commemorating similar sites are recalled, beginning with the early monuments from the 1940s, through the 1957 competition for the International Monument to the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp, the latter of major impact on the process of the redefinition of monuments. The then awarded design of the The Road Monument by Oskar Hansen and his team, however unimplemented owing to the protest of former Auschwitz prisoners, became from that time onwards a benchmark for subsequent
concepts. Also the mentioned memorial design on the area of the former Belzec extermination camp from 2004 is related to James E. Young’s concept of a counter-monument.
The main subject of the paper’s analysis is, however, the reflection on means thanks to which the currently mounted Museum and Memorial in Sobibór, including the permanent display at the newly-raised Museum, become 'space of engagement' for contemporary public on different perception levels of their multi-sensual activity essential in the process of remembrance.

This paper addresses and compares the issue of introducing new art forms into the city space in order to revitalise or gentrify it, in two different political and economic realities: that of Poland under Communism and in the era of the free market. The phenomenon of the biennales, which were most frequently organised in the 1960s, is analysed, based mainly on the First Elbląg Biennale of Spatial Forms in 1965, as is one contemporary revitalisation process which has been
achieved thanks to artistic activity, namely, the case of the Gdańsk Shipyard. These artistic phenomena are presented against the backdrop of the political and economic realities of Communist Poland in the 1960s, where they had to find a balance between artistic freedom and
political limitations, as well as contemporary post-1989 Poland, where economically-conditioned artistic activities (intended to revitalise the post-shipyard space) clash with the hard rules of the free-market economy.

The article is an analysis of selected works of art of Polish artists of the 1970s: compositions by Adam Marczyński from the "Variable series" (the second half of the 1960s and 1970s), the "Multipart" action by Tadeusz Kantor (1970) and figures by Karol Broniatowski (from the "Threat" and "Big Man" series, 1976-1977), in which the title dispersion is understood as a consequence of the disintegration of the prototype by initiating a further journey of its already emancipated components. The material turn perspective was also referred to in the analysis: Bruno Latour's non-anthropocentric Actor-Network Theory (ANT), according to which it can be assumed that a work of art and its creator constitute a certain social network within which all "actors" function on equal terms in the community of "humans and non-humans", as well as the anthropological theory of art by Alfred Gell, who proposed replacing the study of the object of art as a carrier of symbolic meanings with the study of a work of art as an object in a network of relations, trying to answer questions about the motives and contexts of action of social "makers" (artists) and their production of "indexes" (works of art). In the study, the act of the initial ordering of the system in a work of art and its subsequent disintegration-dispersion-is assessed from the perspective of the concept of entropy, derived from the field of physics, which is a measure of the degree of disorder in a given system-and its opposite, negentropy.

Abstrakt
Znaczenie zagranicznych wojaży artystów dla ich dalszej formacji jest bezsprzeczne. W niniejszym artykule autorka dowartościowuje podróże bliskie, wywodzące się z potrzeby ucieczki artystów z miasta na wieś w celu szukania inspiracji w otoczeniu natury. Ich bezpośrednim następstwem były licznie powstające kolonie artystyczne, zwłaszcza w pierwszej połowie XX wieku. Tytułowe „powroty do natury” ukazano, opierając się na kazusie Adama Marczyńskiego (1908-1985) z Grupy Krakowskiej. Polski malarz znany jest przede wszystkim z kompozycji abstrakcyjnych, półplastycznych obrazów-obiektów wypełnianych drewnianymi kasetonami z ruchomymi klapkami. Równolegle do poszukiwań w obrębie sztuki niefiguratywnej tworzył liczne szkice z natury, a także wysmakowane kolorystycznie portrety i widoki. Artysta nigdy nie zrezygnował z tego rodzaju twórczości, dając upust zamiłowaniu do obserwacji natury wyznaczającej rytm jego życiu i sztuce – naturalny i wolniejszy poza miejskim gwarem.

Abstract
The significance of foreign travel for the development of artists is undeniable. In this article, the author emphasises the value of short trips, which reflect artists' need to escape from the city to the countryside to seek inspiration in nature. One direct consequence of such trips was the creation of numerous artistic colonies, especially in the first half of the 20th century. The eponymous "returns to nature" are exemplified by the case of Adam Marczyński (1908-1985) from the Kraków Group. The Polish painter is primarily known for his abstract, semi-sculptural paintings filled with wooden panels with movable flaps. Alongside his exploration of non-figurative art, he created numerous sketches from nature, as well as beautifully coloured portraits and landscapes. Marczyński never abandoned this kind of artistic expression, giving vent to his passion for observing nature, which set the rhythm of his life and art-natural and slow, away from the hubbub of city life.

Abstrakt
Edward Krasiński, rzeźbiarz i malarz, jeden z najważniejszych polskich artystów lat 60. i 70. XX wieku, jest znany przede wszystkim ze swoich artystycznych interwencji z użyciem taśmy blue scotch. W niniejszym artykule autorka skupia się jednak na grupie prac rzeźbiarskich Krasińskiego pod nazwą „Dzidy”, które artysta wykonał około połowy lat 60. XX wieku przy użyciu drutu i elementów drewnianych. Julian Przyboś, poeta i krytyk sztuki, nazwał te linearne kompozycje „rzeźbami napowietrznymi”, ze względu na sposób ich prezentacji w otwartej przestrzeni. Celem artykułu jest zaproponowanie nowego odczytania tych kompozycji na podstawie komentarzy prasowych Przybosia. Najważniejszymi aspektami, które zostały wzięte pod uwagę, są: dynamika kompozycji, kształt, kolor, interakcja z otaczającą przestrzenią, powiązanie z Teorią Miejsca, która określa relacje między dziełem sztuki, zajmowaną przez nie przestrzenią a odbiorcą, a także charakterystyczne dla tego okresu zainteresowanie artysty zdobyczami nauki i techniki.

Summary
Edward Krasiński, sculptor and painter, one of most important Polish artists of the 1960s and 1970s, is mainly remembered for his artistic interventions with the use of the Scotch-Blue tape. In the article, however, the author focuses on the group of sculptures known as “Dzidy” (“Spears”) made by Krasiński in the mid-1960s using wire and wooden elements. Julian Przyboś, Polish poet and art critic, called these linear compositions “overhead sculptures”, because they were presented in an open space. The aim of the article is to propose a new way of reading the compositions based on the press commentaries by Przyboś. The most crucial aspects to be taken into account are: dynamism of the compositions, shape, colour, interaction with the surrounding space, link with the Theory of Place which defines the relationship between an artwork, the space it occupies and the viewer, as well as the artist’s interest – typical for this period of time – in the achievements of science and technology.