How Picasso, Foucault & Atwood Found Inspiration Behind the Iron Curtain
Pablo Picasso, Michel Foucault and Margaret Atwood were all in Poland at various points during its period under the communist regime. These visits proved to be quite influential – and ultimately inspired some of their unique visual, philosophical and literary concepts.
During Pablo Picasso’s only stay in Poland, in 1948, he visited Kraków, Oświęcim and Warsaw. As he later recalled, the journey to war-damaged Poland shocked him and changed his way of thinking about many aspects of life.
Picasso came to Poland with the French poet Paul Éluard for the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Wrocław. The trip to Wrocław was Picasso’s first flight in his life. For this occasion, the Polish Government flew him from Paris on a private jet. The Congress itself was rather propagandist in its formula and was meant to portray communists as supporters of peace. Some of the guests became enraged with the Congress, due to absurd speeches and being searched continuously by the secret service. Some guests left the event, and others took their objections to the press. In the end, the event itself became a bit of scandal. It didn’t deter Picasso’s high spirits, though.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
'Mermaid with a Hammer in Her Hand' by Pablo Picasso, 1948, view from the exhibition of the exhibition 'Pablo Picasso. Transformations', National Museum in Warsaw, 2002, photo: Ireneusz Sobieszczuk
After Wrocław, Picasso visited Warsaw. A known workaholic, as soon as he arrived there, he painted portraits of the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg and his guide and translator, Ewa Lipińska. In Warsaw, Picasso was also given a tour around the National Museum by its director, Stanisław Lorentz. Picasso was a chain smoker, and to this day, is the only person who has ever been allowed to smoked in the museum. Perhaps in thanks for this privilege, he granted to the National Museum some of his plates and graphic arts, mostly lithographs.
Wherever Picasso appeared, he left a unique work of art. The same happened in Warsaw, where he made an homage to the symbol of this city – the mermaid. The artist spontaneously drew a mermaid in charcoal in an apartment block that was under construction. Picasso’s interpretation of the mermaid of Warsaw (measuring at 1.8 metres x 1.7 metres) held a hammer instead of the traditional sword. When the building’s construction was finished, the family of a railway worker found the painting in their flat. This work generated so much attention that visitors flocked to the flat every day. In the end, the family grew weary of all the visitors and painted over the drawing in 1953 – and so Picasso’s mermaid has been lost forever.
Not lost, however, are depictions of Picasso’s inspiration drawn from Polish folklore. He painted his partner, Françoise Gilot, in a coat that he bought while in Poland. The painting is called Woman in an Armchair No. 1 (The Polish Cloak).
Michel Foucault – scandals & secret service
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw, 1962, photo: Jerzy Makowski / Forum
Michel Foucault came to Warsaw in October 1958, where he took a position as the director of the newly founded French Cultural Centre at Warsaw University. It was in Warsaw that he finished his doctoral thesis, later published as Madness and Civilization.
When he arrived in Warsaw, Foucault stayed at the Hotel Bristol. Back then, it was the most exclusive hotel, albeit one that was the most infiltrated by the secret service. The hotel staff shadowed the guests. If a hotel guest was more of interest to the secret service, then the room might be bugged or even filmed. After living in Hotel Bristol, Foucault moved to a flat in the city centre of Warsaw which was rented for him by the French embassy.
Remigiusz Ryziński, the author of the book Foucault in Warsaw, speculated that the Palace of Culture that was built in the Stalinist era – looming over the city and visible from the street where the philosopher lived – could have inspired the notion of the panopticon.
Apart from Foucault’s professional life, his social circle included people like Leszek Kołakowski, from whom he borrowed books, and mostly other gay men:
Text
They all met with Foucault: the Countess, because he knew the language. Jurek, because he knew the Countess. Waldek, because he wanted to go to France. Mirek, because he followed Stefan everywhere. And Stefan, because he liked a good time. Apart from them, everyone in Warsaw knew one another. It was a closed environment. They also knew Michel Foucault. People said: that Frenchman, you know. And everyone did know.
Author
From ‘Foucault w Warszawie‘ (Foucault in Warsaw) by Remigiusz Ryziński, trans. S. G. Bye
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
Michel Foucault, photo: Sipa / East News
Some of the boys even had keys to Foucault’s flat and hosted parties there. Sadly, in the end, Jurek proved to be a registered communist agent on a honey-trap mission. During one of his meetings with Foucault, the secret service entered the flat, threatening French embassy with the ‘scandalous’ evidence. Later on, the philosopher mused about his experiences in Warsaw in an interview:
Text
In the silences and everyday gestures of a Pole who knew he was being watched, who waited to be out in the street before telling you something, because he knew quite well that there were microphones everywhere in a foreigner’s apartment. In the way, voices were lowered when you were at a restaurant, in the way letters were burnt, finally in all these tiny suffocating gestures.
Author
From ‘Je Suis un Artificier’ (I Am a Pyrotechnist), 1975. trans. C. O’Farrell
Foucault had to leave Warsaw in a hurry in July 1959 – probably to avoid diplomatic scandal related to his homosexuality as well as due to pressures by the secret service.
However, his connections to Poland did not end there. In the 1980s, after Martial Law was declared, he worked with exiled members of Solidarity on a committee that was set up to assist those detained in Poland and lobby for international support.
Margaret Atwood – between reality & fiction
In literature, the laws of what’s real or even possible can be easily changed. In some novels, though, the line between fact and fiction is especially blurry. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is just one masterfully done example.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a work of speculative fiction. It describes the world where the former United States after the second civil world, became a totalitarian state: Gilead. Society is organized by the militarised regime of violent religious fanaticism with its secret police, where women are deprived of control over their own reproductive functions. The titular handmaids are fertile women whose sole purpose is to provide high-ranking officials with children.
The author started working on her futurist, anti-utopian book in 1984 while she was living in West Berlin on a writing fellowship that provided funding to artists to work in the West German district occupied by the allies. The novel itself at that time was only a sketch, and what inspired it was the history of the American Puritans and their ascetic, Bible-based lives with ironbound patriarchal family structures.
Yet Atwood’s experiences of Eastern Bloc also defined this book. Her travels to Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and witnessing the realities of living in a surveillance state, also enriched her vision. She mentioned that living through the Cold War was instructive to the mood she created for Gilead. Her visit to Poland absolutely informed the atmosphere of the novel:
Text
I experienced the wariness, the feeling of being spied on, the silences, the changes of subject, the oblique ways in which people might convey information, and these had an influence on what I was writing.
Author
Margaret Atwood, ‘The New York Times’, March 2017
Thus, her Soviet surroundings helped her write about a world in which a religious right creates a totalitarian state with its resistance, conspiracies and violence.
Due to the popularity of the novel itself, as well as its 2017 televised adaptation, The Handmaid’s Tale became an international symbol of protest, mainly when women’s rights are involved.
Written by Olga Tyszkiewicz, Jul 2020
Sources:‘Foucault w Warszawie’ by Remigiusz Ryziński (Warsaw 2017), ‘Je Suis un Artificier’ in ‘Michel Foucault: Entretiens’, ed. Roger-Pol Droit (Paris 2004)
[{"nid":"5688","uuid":"6aa9e079-0240-4dcb-9929-0d1cf55e03a5","type":"article","langcode":"en","field_event_date":"","title":"Challenges for Polish Prose in the Nineties","field_introduction":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary\r\n","field_summary":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary","topics_data":"a:2:{i:0;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259609\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:26:\u0022#language \u0026amp; literature\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:27:\u0022\/topics\/language-literature\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}i:1;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259644\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:8:\u0022#culture\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:14:\u0022\/topic\/culture\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}}","field_cover_display":"default","image_title":"","image_alt":"","image_360_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/360_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ZsoNNVXJ","image_260_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/260_auto_cover\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=pLlgriOu","image_560_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/560_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=0n3ZgoL3","image_860_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/860_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ELffe8-z","image_1160_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1160_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=XazO3DM5","field_video_media":"","field_media_video_file":"","field_media_video_embed":"","field_gallery_pictures":"","field_duration":"","cover_height":"991","cover_width":"1000","cover_ratio_percent":"99.1","path":"en\/node\/5688","path_node":"\/en\/node\/5688"}]