The "Unknown Culprits" group and Legia Warsaw Ultras, tifo display during a football match between Legia Warszawa and ADO Den Haag, documentation: Adam Polak, Piotr Pytel, 2010, photo: press materials of the MMA
A pointillist-style portrait of Pope John Paul II, which upon closer look is a grouping of people photographed from up above, was created by Piotr Uklański in 2005. It is widely accepted as the first work of the new patriotic trend. Joanna Mytkowska in an interview called this piece reactionary. In 2011 at the Pulaski Parade in New York the artist presented a blown up "White Eagle". It was then that the phrase "new national art" was coined.
Łukasz Ronduda and Sebastian Cichocki, curators of the exhibition, explain the trend of National (patriotic) art as "a concealed but at the same time predominant element of visual culture in Poland. In the course of our work we had to abandon our own prejudice (…). It was an attempt at seeing an exact reverse of the world of modern art, at looking at something, which seemingly is 'perfectly not meant for us'".
Patriotic art easily stirs up controversies which aren’t necessarily a result of purely artistic practices. This trend is politically involved and refers to ideas and emotions, which are marginalized in the discourse of modernity. It stands in opposition to left-wing critical art, which is popular among art institutions. It promotes family, religious and patriotic values. A recent scandal involved Kazimierz Piotrowski, curator of the exhibition Thymos. Art of Anger 1900-2011, which was held last year at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Toruń. Mr. Piotrowski expressed that he believes in the "assassination theory" (of the late Polish president Lech Kaczyński, who died in a plane crash nearby Smoleńsk on the 10th of April 2010) and that it is his ambition to present at the exposition "the scale of the anger that was born on the 10th of April". There he presented a work which consisted of copies of letters from the hull of the presidential plane, which formed the sign "TUSK 154M" (the aircraft was a Tupolev Tu-154M, Tusk is the surname of the current prime minister of Poland who was in office at the time). The word play suggests his involvement in the crash. Many of the artists, who were to participate in the exhibition, withdrew their works as a sign of protest, when they learned about Piotrowski’s piece.
The exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art reveals the sources of the national ideology. The artifacts it shows were mostly created outside the official contemporary art circuit. The curators explain,
The art presented at the exhibition appears in the media, at demonstrations, near churches, on football fields, in television and in cinemas. Basically everywhere. It is least probable to encounter it in galleries of contemporary art. We learned about the next interesting work most often from newspapers and magazines, both from Gazeta Wyborcza and right-wing periodicals.
That is how Zbigniew Dowgiałło’s Smoleńsk was chosen for the exhibition. In the eighties the artist was one of the leading figures of the "new expression" trend. His apocalyptic painting showing the presidential plane crash nearby Smolensk was ready on the first anniversary of the tragic event. However the biggest national museums and galleries refused to put it on public display. Smoleńsk was finally put on show in a church in the Warsaw district of Bielany thanks to father Wojciech Drozdowicz. Although the work teeters on the brink of kitsch, the curators say that one might find in it formal references to works by such artists as Tintoretto, El Greco, Titian, Michelangelo and Edvard Munch.
A model of a monument commemorating the Smolensk crash, which was submitted for a competition co-organised by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, has a similar theme. The work shows a little girl sitting on an obelisk. The child is playing with a toy plane, which is broken in half. Ronduda and Cichocki claim this work has a semblance in style to the hyper-realistic sculptures of Jeff Koons.
Also tifo displays created by football fans are present at the exposition. The celebration prepared by supporters of the Legia Warsaw club in 2012 for the match against the Dutch team ADO Den Haag, consists chiefly of an image of Christ and a sign, which says "God save the fanatics".
The gargantuan statue of Jesus from Świebodzin appears in photographs exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, as do the flower carpets from Spycimierz, which are annually prepared by local families on occasion of the Corpus Christi holiday.
The authors of the exhibition attempt to define national-patriotic realism. They point out to its most important characteristics such as large scale, emotionality and communalism with its ability to animate social masses. In their opinion some of the works capture national and religious meanings in modern forms.
National art is intelligible, it isn’t afraid of humiliating itself aesthetically. It meets the public’s demands. That is why the curators associate it with social realism. It is an "art and visual culture, which operates comprehensively in every field. It intends on shaping the country in a specified way" explains Łukasz Ronduda.
For more information see www.artmuseum.pl
Curators: Sebastian Cichocki, Łukasz Ronduda.
Opening: 2nd of June 2012, time: 19:00
This exhibition will be open until the 19th of August 2012.
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
3 Pańska street
00-124 Warsaw
Tel. (+48 22) 596 40 10
Fax: (+48 22) 596 40 22
www.artmuseum.pl
Source: press infromation, www.artmuseum.pl, www.bęczmiana.pl