Traits of pop art could be found in the figurative painting of the 1960s that Piotrowski called 'non-socialist realism'. One of the crucial traits of pop art is the mimicry of the surrounding non-artistic visual culture. Though in Poland there was no overly blatant, colourful, consumerist iconography like the American one, obviously it doesn't mean there was no visual culture at all, and that artists didn't emulate, and ironically scrutinise it in their work.
One of those who did was painter Jerzy Krawczyk. In Prowincja (żarty) from 1964, he depicted a provincial newspaper from Działoszyno. It's very in line with what Warhol or Oldenburg were doing, even though ads in provincial newspapers were formally as far from billboards on Times Square or Sunset Boulevard as one could imagine. But they were precisely their local counterpart – instantly recognisable elements of a new, trashy mass media culture. We can also find some more direct pop references in Krawczyk's work, even if formally they call to mind Giorgio de Chirico's 'proto-pop' still lifes from the mid 1910s, with objects like biscuits and matchboxes, more than actual 1960s pop art. In Self-portrait with Flowers, he meticulously depicted a can of tomato juice (with the label in English), inevitably calling to mind Warhol's Campbell's Soup in a bit rougher socialist entourage. As Anna Kołos wrote:
Why shouldn’t we consider it in the context of pop art representation? Just because they lack specific pop art glamour of consumerist culture? If we finally managed to provincialize not only Europe, but the whole art world, American mass culture imagery would be considered as local and specific, as Socialist common iconosphere regardless of any axiology. Pop is not to be defined by virtue of the content, but – the medium.
Polish artists were not particularly interested in depicting Hollywood icons who became kind of depersonalised cultural fetishes in America, but it doesn't mean they didn't refer to completely different icons being used and abused in their own political climate. So instead of Liz Tayor or Marilyn Monroe we have... Rembrandt. As Kołos pointed out, the Dutch master appeared in paintings of several artists from the Eastern Bloc – from Krawczyk in Poland to Rudolf Fila in Slovakia, and Laszlo Lakner in Hungary. Why, though? It could be seen as a mockery of the state narrative placing Rembrandt as a kind of patron for socialist realism. Kołos writes:
Involving Rembrandt in pop representation becomes a highly ironic gesture intended to examine not only the borders of art itself, but also the limits of the ideological comment on art. Thus, Central European quotations in art gain their specific meaning, which are barely comparable with those of Western artists.
Dobson's and Jurry's flat and colourful painting are also more than a simple formal response to the art of Derek Boshier or Tom Wesselmann. Their paintings are undoubtedly influenced by the pop aesthetic, though they are not really connected to the consumerist world. They are tied to specific elements of state propaganda, banners, and city decorations for public marches on May 1st, and the heavily metaphoric Polish Poster School, rather than Pepsi ads. The distinctive trait of Polish pop art of this era is then its focus on the visual language itself, rather than on specific products or people. Neither Kalina Jędrusik nor any other local music of film star of the era became an abundant icon like Elvis. Their media coverage wasn't enough to make them reproduced in paintings and lithographs.
Holes in the curtain