Antoni Michalak,
UKRZYZOWANIE ZE SW. MARIA MAGDALENA / THE CRUCIFIXION WITH ST. MARY MAGDALENE,
1931, oil on canvas
Excerpts from the Bible and exceptional works of Polish art and literature lead us through successive rooms of the Museum of Literature in Warsaw, as if we were being led through the streets of Jerusalem, through the events of the most important week in the life of Christ, into a space of suffering, pain, humiliation, death, to resurrection, joy and ultimate triumph. This voyage simultaneously leads deep into the history of Polish culture, as the streets and walls of this symbolic Jerusalem bear paintings, sculptures, tapestries and prints by Polish artists and verses by Polish poets of the last two centuries. The narrative structure of the exhibition is based on the events of Holy Week as they were distributed in time according to the Gospel. The symbolic timeframe of the story are the eight days from Palm Sunday to the Sunday of the Resurrection. The exhibition has been divided into eleven sections: "Jerusalem," "Betania" / "Bethany," "Ostatnia Wieczerza" / "The Last Supper," "Getsemani" / "Gethsemane," "Litostrotos" / "Lithostrotos," "Via Crucis" / "The Way of the Cross," "Ukrzyzowanie" / "Crucifixion," "Depositio," "Kenosis," "Resurrectio" and "Emaus." On view are such notable works at
Jacek Malczewski's ZMARTWYCHWSTANIE / RESURRECTION and CHRYSTUS W EMAUS / CHRIST AT EMAUS, Antoni Michalak's UKRZYZOWANIE / CRUCIFIXION,
Jozef Pankiewicz's POJMANIE CHRYSTUSA / THE TAKING OF CHRIST and UKRZYZOWANIE / CRUCIFIXION, Albert Chmielowski's ECCE HOMO, Jan Styka's GOLGOTA / GOLGOTHA,
Wojciech Weiss's ZDJECIE Z KRZYZA / DESCENT FROM THE CROSS and ECCE HOMO,
Witold Wojtkiewicz's CHRYSTUS I DZIECI / CHRIST AMONG THE CHILDREN, Edward Okun's JUDASZ / JUDAS,
Leon Wyczolkowski's GLOWA CHRYSTUSA / HEAD OF CHRIST, Adam Bunsch's NIEWIASTY U GROBU / WOMEN AT THE TOMB,
Tadeusz Borzozowski's MESJASZ III / MESSIAH III,
Jerzy Nowosielski's WJAZD CHRYSTUSA DO JEROZOLIMY / CHRIST'S ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM, Stanislaw Rodzinski's UKRZYZOWANIE / CRUCIFIXION, Kiejstut Bereznicki's ZDJECIE Z KRZYZA / DESCENT FROM THE CROSS, Grzegorz Morycinski's WIELKI TRYBUNAL / THE GREAT TRIBUNAL and Janusz Marciniak's OSTATNIA WIECZERZA KOSMICZNA / THE COSMIC LAST SUPPER.
Adam Bunsch,
NIEWIASTY U GROBU / THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB,
1930, oil on canvas
Also on view, paintings by
Jan Matejko,
Jozef Mehoffer, Zofia Stryjenska, Maria Hiszpanska-Neumann, Wilhelm Kotarbinski, Marek Zulawski and Tadeusz Boruta, drawings by
Jan Dziedziora and
Jacek Sempolinski, prints by Wiktoria Gorynska and Marek Jaromski, the tapestries of Wojciech Sadley, and sculptures by
Alina Szapocznikow and Gustaw Zemlo. Literature excerpts supplementing the exhibition are by authors like
Adam Mickiewicz, Cyprian Kamil Norwid,
Zygmunt Krasinski, Leopold Staff, Jerzy Liebert, Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski,
Julian Tuwim,
Kazimierz Wierzynski,
Roman Brandstaetter, Tadeusz Micinski, Boleslaw Lesmian,
Zbigniew Herbert, Father Janusz St. Pasierb, Karol Wojtyla, Father Jan Twardowski and Piotr Mitzner.
Polish literature provides us with the earliest extant references to the Passion. In the Middle Ages these came as mystery plays, Passion sermons, Marianic songs, and lamentations. The history of literature in the vernacular Polish begins precisely with these works. Since the early days of the Polish State, representations of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have been in evidence in places of worship, found their way into the everyday reality and homes of members of all estates and communities, and constituted part of the canon of subjects taken on by succeeding generation of artists.
Edward Okun,
JUDASZ / JUDAS, 1901, oil on canvas
"Over the last two hundred years, Polish artists have focused above all on the motif of the Passion, Christ's suffering, perhaps because in 19th century Polish art it was used regularly to symbolize the political death of the nation," write curators Jacek Chromy and Lukasz Kossowski in the exhibition catalogue. "During the times of the Polish People's Republic, religious art was prevented from developing freely. It constituted a margin of the art that was presented in museums and official art salons. It was almost a private form of art, created at one's own risk. The secularized and fundamentally non-symbolic art of today often treats Christian iconography in an instrumental manner. It has inherited a perception of the artist as someone who argues with God, a concept that dates back to the Romantic era. The unfortunate thing is that gradually the artist forgets his Great Interlocutor and focuses primarily on his own, many times imagined, suffering. The great dialogue is thus transformed into a mundane artistic monologue. There have been moments in the post-war history of Poland when presentations of the suffering of the individual and the nation did enter into the realm of the sacred. One such episode occurred in the 1980s, when during the night that was Martial Law, churches served as exhibition spaces for independent art, art in which the drama of the everyday acquired a religious dimension, when artists assumed artistic tasks that they often combined with a moral or even spiritual message. (...) Artistic testimonies of individual religious experience of the 1980s have been forgotten now in the times of the 3rd Republic. Art looks at the scared from a safe critical distance. Religious art does not exist in the public sphere. What does is quasi-religious, artistic campaigning."
Jan Styka,
GOLGOTA/ GOLGOTHA, 1895 (?), oil on canvas
"This Christ who sits atop a white donkey, painted by Jerzy Nowosielski in a manner that references the Byzantine-Ruthenian canon, does He resemble the Christ who entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?" we read in the guidebook to the exhibition. "Does the sad and helpless Jesus from Witold Wojtkiewicz's 'CHRYSTUS WSROD DZIECI' / 'CHRIST AMONG THE CHILDREN' or Jesus alone in a crowd from Jan Wydra's 'CHRYSTUS W MIESCIE' / 'CHRIST IN THE CITY' bring to mind Christ as He lives in the pages of the Gospel? Does the Christ from Jacek Malczewski's canvas 'ECCE HOMO' not tell us more about Malczewski than it does about Christ? In seeking repeatedly to examine what paintings of Christ tell us about their authors, we cannot help but to ask the fundamental question - what do artists think about Christ? The Fathers of the Church were the first to express the belief that the Truth has many forms and colors; they were surely unaware that their intuitions would be variously confirmed over the centuries in works of religious art, including those on view in the exhibition 'Wielki Tydzien' / 'Holy Week' at the Museum of Literature. Does the variation in the currents represented here, currents that summarize the history of Polish painting over the last one hundred plus years - from the academism of Styka, through the symbolism of Malczewski, the expressionism of Weiss and the historical realism of Michalak, to the phenomenal linoleum prints of Jaromski - not contain more or less distant reflections of this One Truth - in its many shapes and colors?"
Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature
(Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza)
Rynek Starego Miasta 20, Warsaw
tel. (+48 22) 831 40 61, 831 76 92
www.muzeumliteratury.pl/wielkitydzien