Art under Martial Law
On the morning of 13th December 1981, Poles woke up in the new political reality of the Martial Law period. Iconic images of tanks on the streets of Warsaw were captured by photographer Chris Niedenthal and painter Edward Dwurnik and the entire artistic landscape of Poland was changed. Here, Culture.pl considers the impact of Martial Law on Polish Art.
The orchestra aboard the Titanic
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The deliberations of the Congress of Polish Culture, 1981, photo: Mariusz Szyperko / CAF / PAP
On 11th December 1981, at Warsaw’s Dramatyczny Theatre in the Palace of Culture and Science, art historian Jan Białostocki opened the Congress of Polish Culture. The initiative was aimed at discussing the state of Polish culture in practically all industries, which arose along the lines of the Gdańsk Agreement. The Congress was a grassroots initiative (without the permission or involvement of the communist regime) that also was funded with public means. In his inaugural address, Jan Białystocki stated:
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The breakthrough that Poland experienced in August of 1980 was the work of labourers. [...] What happened during the days and weeks of that watershed time was directly inspirational to our creative and cultural circles. It was quite simply an unprecedented phenomenon.
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Someone told me that the Congress of Polish Culture would resemble a concert by the orchestra aboard the Titanic. This very pessimistic comparison does have a certain bit of likelihood to it.
A young critic present in the room drew attention to the generational context of the event, noting the pantheon of Polish cultural celebrities had omitted their own mistakes when giving instructions to their successors:
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Here is a group of experienced people, a group of creators who today negatively assess what they themselves have helped to create, and now, they are advising on how to build [...] culture from scratch – and better. However, they do not advise themselves anymore, but have instead begun to advise us.
This critic was Anda Rottenberg. The resulting text, Dla Kogo ten Kongres? (Who is this Congress For?), was not able to further contribute to the discussion on the direction of the development of Polish culture, for the political situation was about to change. Rottenberg wrote her text the night of the 12th/13th of December, after the second day of the congress. The deliberations planned for the last day never took place. Instead, a handwritten note was hung on the door of Dramatyczny Theatre: 'The Organisation Committee informs that by the decision of the Mayor of the City of Warsaw from 13.12.1981, the Congress of Polish Culture has been disbanded due to the introduction of Martial Law in Poland'.
Can you shake hands with Urban?
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Władysław Hasior's studio, now Władysław Hasior's gallery, photo: YarrekPhoto.eu/ Tatra Museum in Zakopane
A year later, the Association of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP) reassembled, but only temporarily. When leaders of the group refused to withdraw support for Solidarity's speeches, ZPAP was suspended again for 'anti-state' activities. At that point in time, ZPAP was the only organized professional association of visual artists and possessed a substantial budget and well-established administration. Several thousand artists belonged to the association and the group oversaw galleries, specialist shops, and printing houses. All of those assets were taken over by the state.
In place of the disbanded organisation, the authorities appointed a number of new entities. Their numbers were mainly reinforced by faithful party activists – artists signed up reluctantly and in small numbers. One of these so-called ‘neo-unions’ was Związek Polskich Artystów Malarzy i Grafików (ZPAMiG, Association of Polish Painters and Graphic Artists, trans. AD), established after the end of martial law, in February 1984. Inner circles were not thrilled with the neo-unions, so the authorities decided to build their symbolic capital using appropriate pressures. One of the founding members of ZPAMiG was the painter Edward Dwurnik, who was preparing for a residency in Germany. The party offered him a simple deal – a passport for his signature. Dwurnik did not want to risk his career, so he agreed and was permitted to leave. For some in his artistic milieu, however, this was an act of open betrayal. Others understood Dwurnik’s difficult situation. Of his decision, one German critic wrote that Dwurnik:
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…found himself between a rock and a hard place: supporters of Solidarity understand his paintings, but they do not understand his attitude towards the government. Authorities of the state and the party inversely: they value his political concession, but not his artwork
ZPAP's decision to support Solidarity's postulates was a prelude to their subsequent boycott of state art institutions. During the Martial Law period, this unofficial boycott united a significant part of the artistic milieu – to the extent that breaking it exposed one to ostracism.
The sculptor Władysław Hasior, a member of the Organising Committee of the Congress of Polish Culture who held a prominent position within the cultural elite, became convinced of this. In 1981, Hasior acquired a new space for his studio. Haisor was renovating the space and preparing for an exhibition when martial law was declared later that year. The artist was faced with a difficult decision – continue with his planned show or boycott in a show of political defiance. Hasior, like Dwurnik, prioritized his exhibition and new studio space.
When Hasior’s exhibition opened, martial law had already lasted for four months. Most artists were boycotting public institutions, so the party was quick to capitalize on Hasior’s willingness to go forward with his show. Jerzy Urban, a Polish journalist critical of Solidarity, appeared at the opening and some never forgave Hasior for shaking his hand. Hasior also accepted the invitation of General Jaruzelski to become a member of the National Council of Culture. Many remembered the decisions he made until his death in the late 1990s – premature on account of alcoholism, perhaps exacerbated by his ostracization from the artistic community.
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Teresa Murak, 'Procession with the Cross', 1983, photo: Marcin Appel
The boycott of state institutions caused a search for other spaces in which artistic life could flourish. And since the Church became one of the opposition's allies, church porches for some time turned into galleries sympathising with the artists' opposition. In them, an ambiguous, though important, chapter in the history of Polish exhibitions known as Church Art is recorded.
This is the moment when curators start appearing in the foreground. Or at least, that is what they could be called based on Anglo-Saxon or French artistic lingo; in Poland, the word 'commissioner' was still dominant. There was no doubt, however, that their role was becoming ever more significant. Church exhibitions drift in the direction of sweeping metaphors and spectacular works. For some of the critics of that time, they were already becoming a bit fusty. On the other hand, with the use of art, even if sometimes unbearably pathetic, the seeds of Polish curation are sowed as a separate field. In this respect, the exhibitions in the church porches are practically avant-garde. Dorota Jarecka wrote that they are 'the missing link, the moment of transition between the thematic – engaging the national iconosphere – demonstrations such as ‘An Own-Portrait of the Polish People [...] by Marek Rostworowski from the 70s and original collective exhibitions in the 1990s’. She added:
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All were subordinated to some curatorial – aesthetic, political or historiosophical – idea; everywhere there, apart from the works of art, a new quality appeared – of the exhibition itself.
In the West, the most prolific curator of the curatorial revolution was Harald Szeemann (about a decade earlier), a curator of the exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Forms (Works – Concepts – Processes – Situations – Information) in Kunstahelle Bern in 1969.
The curatorial duo – Janusz Bogucki and Nina Smolarz – became the leading figures in the church exhibitions movement. Bogucki drew his curatorial ideas directly from Szeemann. After going to documenta 5 in 1972 – curated by Szeemann – he wanted to transform the Galeria Współczesna (Gallery of Contemporary Art), which he oversaw with his first wife Maria Bogucka, into a 'new type of gallery,' placing more emphasis on action as well as education, and not just the presentation of ready objects. Bogucki, however, left Galeria Współczesnej in the mid-1970s and at the end of the decade began intensely to seek an idea for new exhibition forms. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, he organised meetings with artists and critics at the monastery in Laski. When working on the exhibition Znak Krzyża (Sign of the Cross) during the period of Martial Law, he was already thinking about the Church not only as a temporary alternative space to state galleries, but also as an institution that should be included in the circulation of contemporary culture. He yearned to 'raise an institutional church that shall aid in the building of culture'.
Over the years, the Bogucki and Smolarz duo organised ensuing exhibitions in ecclesiastical spaces, practically until the end of the decade, though by then the choice of venue was no longer out of necessity, but rather to make a clear declaration. Their attitudes, however, should not be viewed in black and white terms nor treated as purely conservative. Conceptually, future projects of the duo did not necessarily fit smoothly into the Church's expectations. As Jarecka observed:
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…the concept of ecumenism, proposed by Bogucki and Smolarz, who in 1987 within the frames of the project ‘The Path of Lights – Ecumenical Meetings’ inside the Catholic Church of Divine Mercy on Żytnia Street in Warsaw organised a Jewish chamber and chapels: of Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths, was already then enraging the Church, and today it would probably be utterly unacceptable. Of course, if one were to look at everything from the perspective of alternative attitudes and social circles, such as those of the Łódź Strych (Attic), Kultura Zrzuty (Pitch-In Culture), Luxus Group, etc., then Bogucki and Smolarz's exhibitions were not a revolutionary or subversive concept, but rather a utopia of a return to faith, a dream of rebuilding a humanistic, integral vision of man and culture.
The new socially engaged art
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Jarosław Modzelewski, 'Strzemiński mourning Malewicz', 1985, oil on canvas, 139 x 214 cm, property of the National Museum in Warsaw, photo: National Museum in Warsaw
The church exhibits were associated with the space both formally and ideologically – just look at the titles: Sign of the Cross or Apokalipsa – Światło w Ciemności (Apocalypse – Light in the Dark). In them, there was no shortage of site-specific works linking political commentary with religious imagery. Pojazd Betlejemski (Bethlehem Vehicle) by Jerzy Kalina, for example, was exhibited in front of the St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Warsaw and referred to the murder of Jerzy Popiełuszko, a priest associated with Solidarity. These exhibitions contributed to the revaluation of the perception of socially engaged art, which had thus far been judged rather negatively in Poland during the communist regime because of associations with socialist realism.
However, the new socially engaged art was not valued exclusively in positive terms. In the mid-1980s, polemics initiated by the text of the critic Krystyna Czerni played out on the pages of the periodical Znak, indicating the shallowness of the symbolism and poor quality of many of the works presented as a part of the in-church shows, what Czerni called 'little nooks of national-religious memorabilia.' She argued the shows resembled the weakest socialist realist art, but on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
From this rather bipolar situation, between the state institutions and church porches, a new generation broke out, mainly of neo-expressionist painters who treated the reality of the late communist regime after martial law with irony; they were rather contemptuous towards artists' associations, and they organised exhibitions in private homes.
Anda Rottenberg found herself as a leading critical voice of this generation of artists. She was, above all, close to the Gruppa painters, whom she wrote about – with references to the pathos characteristic of the previous years – a year after the end of martial law:
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They enter free of any past burdens. They are not concerned with disputes about the language of art or disputes about avant-garde – these worries belong to the older generation. They do not have to contradict themselves, prove anything to themselves; they neither continue with nor sever with anything. They are foreign to the dramas of self-betrayal, which we dealt with very often after 13th December. Also foreign [...] are conversions. They enter like children for whom the baptism of history saved them from purgatory for a moment before the Last Judgment.
The period of Martial Law left traces in Polish art even at the end of the century. ZPAP was resurrected after the end of the communist regime, but its former significance was not regained. Although the association still likes to play the card of the first organisation that supported the Gdańsk Agreement, it remains a relic of a bygone era. Some artists are permanently marked as being strike-breakers because they ignored the milieu's boycott of art institutions and are therefore excluded by the scene.
Only recently has Hasior's Photographic Notebook, a colossal part of his oeuvre, been retrieved and begun to slowly gain its rightful place in the artistic historiography of recent decades. In turn, the somewhat exaggerated image of the opposition being submissive towards gallery productions and Church Art will allow for a clearer separation and differentiation of the 'third way' in the history of art. Here, we might turn to the alternative art of the 1980s under the sign of the new expression or the Łódź Kultura Zrzuty, in which politics was defined completely differently than before.
Originally written in Polish, translated by Agnes Dudek, Nov 2021
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