Iwona Kabzińska - szkic do portretu. Inspiracje kubistyczne (original) (raw)

Constellations of Stains: The Matter of Experiencing and the Measure of Writing in the Essays by Józef Czapski and Marta Piwińska

Czytanie Literatury. Łódzkie Studia Literaturoznawcze

This text is an attempt at repaying the author’s debt (both as an academic intellectual and as a regular reader) towards two inspiring essayists: Marta Piwińska and Józef Czapski. From the latter, the author of the article gained a lesson in establishing an intimate relationship with a work of literature he reads or a painting he views. From Piwińska he learnt the poetics of a mentally disciplined essay and gained the ability to associate the readings of the literature of the Polish Romanticism with contemporary sensitivity and the grand works of high modernism of the 20th century. In this article, the author analysed the records of fragments of the life and artistic struggles included in eight essays by Czapski (from the Patrząc and Czytając collections) as well as extensive essays with a literary studies’ focus by Piwińska (from books: Złe wychowanie and Juliusz Słowacki od duchów). The author focussed on the essayistic studies of the experiences of lostness and tiredness, the wor...

"'The time of visionary artists has come to an end'? Manuela Gretkowska's literary and political activity"

"Women's Writing Online", 2009

While in her early writing Manuela Gretkowska played with the categories of gender, sexuality and nation, deconstructed them successfully, using the literary strategies and figures such as parody, camp, grotesque, in her recent novels she faces the problem of female experience in Poland (or the experience of Polish women) along with the one of description of such, implying the notion of political involvement of the writer. Works such as "A Pole" (2001), "A European" (2004) and "A Citizen" (2008) grasp not only personal experience of a female author (pregnancy, literary work, decision to settle down in Poland), but the political situation of Poland having the direct impact on the life of Polish women (EU accession, anti-abortion wars, the position and influence of the Catholic Church, political activity of the Women’s Party established by Gretkowska). Without feminist labelling Gretkowska in fact demonstrates and achieves what may be considered the core of feminist rhetorical policy (personal is political, feminist moment of truth, consciousness rising and speak out), though creating and sustaining the tension between the female experience (Polish Mother, domestic martyr) and feminist activity (warrior, political advocate). Interestingly, her recent works are written in a form of diary, which shortens the distance between the author’s personal “message” and perception of readers, who are allowed to find the “truth” about themselves (their own lives) in the act of identification with the author’s experience. According to Adriana Cavarero ("Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood", 2000), one’s basic drive is for listening to the story of one’s own life narrated by the other. In the act of storytelling selfhood is established and recognized in the public sphere. As for Hannah Arendt, to whose works Cavarero refers, private life is meaningless for others; it is deprived of memory, language, history. Reading Gretkowska’s novels, Polish women are encouraged to build their political subjectivity, recognize their individual and collective needs and desires, learn how to fight for their rights. Openly a(nti)political in her early works, Gretkowska has recently become politically involved in the public and literary activity. The aim of the paper is to grasp this change not only in textual but in rhetorical aspect of her fiction as well, accompanied by the change(?) in women’s reflection on their situation in Poland after 1989.

Andreja Kuluncic: DISILLUSIONED ART

Andreja Kulunčić sees art as exploration and process; in accordance with Kubler’s theory of time that is flowing like fiber clusters, where each fiber can be an art style or movement, her creations in various media are often works in progress, stretching over several years and operating as a cluster archive (Foster’s “archiving instinct” in art), filled with data inputted over the predetermined duration of the project. The medium/method of Andreja’s discursive artistic work is borrowed from sociology and marketing, and inserted into the ordinary media flow, inviting the heterogeneous and voluntary audience to participate actively; its object of study is the political space (transition), the existential space (city) as the (urban) framework of life; “traditional urbanity” and the city of cultural consumption (Boyer); social relationships and social practice; conflicts within the relative security of the society.

Nursing and Reading. Affective Realism in Andrzej Wróblewski's Painting

Andrzej Wróblewski. Waiting Room., 2020

Andrzej Wróblewski's painting has already achieved the status of a cult classic. His works are usually interpreted as a confrontation with war, the system, or totalitarianism—that is, as “political.” Understanding politics in this way—separating its “public,” “general,” or institutional aspects from direct, lived experience—is at odds with dialectics, whose complex trajectory the young Warsaw-based painters attempted to follow shortly after the war. Zbigniew Dłubak quoting György Lukács, the manifestos of the first exhibitions of modern art, and Wróblewski's notes and texts all clearly indicate the necessity of moving beyond the classical (at least in liberal-conservative political thought) division between the public and the private in the analysis of avant-garde art of that period.1 From a feminist perspective, which I will develop here, I can only applaud the overcoming of this separation.

THE INTERTWINING OF PHENOMENOLOGY AND CUBISM — IN THE ANALYSES AND WORKS OF ART OF CZECH ARTISTS AND THEORETICIANS JAROSLAVA VYDROVÁ

This study derives from the genealogy of phenomenological and cubistic aims and their thematic interests at the beginning of the 20th century in the Central-European milieu. In the first part, we observe common and close questions of Husserl's philosophy on the one side and the new artistic initiative of cubists on the other. This level of observation and comparison is in the second part recognized and deepened thanks to the analyses of Czech philosophers (Bayerová, Patočka, Mathauser), theoreticians (Vlček, Kramář, Lamač and others) and works of cubists themselves (Kubišta, Filla, Hofman and others). The philosophical scope of the consideration also opens the principal question — which is the topic of the third part of the study — of the intertwining of phenomenological and cubistic methods (epoché, reduction and pictorial elaboration). Because it is not one unitary style, Cubism brings with it a complicated interpretative task: in relation to this, we present the polemic concerning the use of polyperspectivity and geometrisation; thanks to phenomenology, their deeper meaning can be revealed. We identify as phenomenological tendencies in cubistic works of art, their claim to liberate perception, to create pure forms and to refuse the symbolic, representative and imitative function of art. We analyse these questions with respect to the creative possibilities of the subject/artist as well as the pictorial/ perceptive character of the world.

The Image of Homeland in the Works by Alphonse Mucha “Madonna of the Lilies”, the Poster for “The Lottery of the Union of Southwest Moravia” and the Poster for “The Slav Epic Exhibition”

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 2020

Understanding the specifics of creativity, the features of the artistic method of not a single artist can be achieved without a meaningful analysis of their works. The purpose of this study is to analyse three works by the Czech artist A. Mucha “Madonna of the Lilies”, the Poster for “The Lottery of the Union of Southwest Moravia” and the Poster for “The Slav Epic Exhibition”, to reveal the programmatic content of each of these works, as well as their general artistic idea. The works by A. Mucha were analysed using the method proposed and justified in the field of theory and history of culture by the Russian scientist V.I. Zhukovsky. This technique determined the logic of analysis of the selected works. Such methods as observation, formalisation, analysis, synthesis, analogy, extrapolation and interpretation were applied. The result of a methodical analysis of the three selected works by A. Mucha testifies to the programmatic creativity of the artist, to a single semantic regularity...