
Walking Women from the series India, ink, 1956.
Conference reports The case of Tadeusz Kulisiewicz Exploring the role and life of artists during Cold War
Around 20 researchers met in the Polish city of Kalisz for two days in mid-October, to present their on-going projects exploring issues related to artists in the political systems of the countries of Central Europe after 1945.
Published in the printed edition of Baltic Worlds BW 2019:4, p 59-61
Published on balticworlds.com on February 25, 2020
The 3rd edition of the Kalisz Conference: “Artistic contacts between political blocs after World War II in Central Europe: visual arts, power, cultural propaganda”, October 18–19, 2019, organized by the Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Kalisz Society of Friends of Sciences.
Around 20 researchers met in the Polish city of Kalisz for two days in mid-October, to present their on-going projects exploring issues related to artists in the political systems of the countries of Central Europe after 1945. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, art and architecture in the interwar and postwar era in an ideologically divided Europe have been of continuously growing interest, not only for museum curators but also for art historians. After the break-up of the Cold War blocs, what first emerged as a whole series of international exhibitions to “bring out” art from Eastern Europe has gradually evolved into more thoughtful considerations, especially when looking at current art historical research. As the late art historian Piotr Piotrowski has argued, despite good intentions from the curators, those first comparisons approached the artists from Eastern Europe from the perspective of a Western model. This approach to both curating exhibitions and conducting art historical research has now developed into a more nuanced way of dealing with artistic practices during the time marked by cultural propaganda and cultural diplomacy. It was in this larger framework that the 3rd edition of the Kalisz Conference situated its theme: “Artistic contacts between political blocs after World War II in Central Europe: visual arts, power, cultural propaganda”.
Kalisz and Kulisiewicz’s problematic past
For readers not familiar with the geography of Poland, Kalisz is the second biggest town in the province of Greater Poland Voivodeship, located in the west central part of the country. The city grew out of a medieval settlement and is an important regional industrial center with notable factories such as the former piano factory. Historically the city was a center along what is called the Amber Trail, the trade route along which amber from the north and the Baltic Sea was transported to the Mediterranean. Because of its proximity to Germany the city was destroyed by the Prussian army during World War I. It was however quickly reconstructed, in much the same fashion as the rebuilding of Warsaw after its destruction by Nazi Germany. Thanks to this restoration, the city is a unique example of interwar architecture with its eclectic style. It was in this city that one of Poland’s most recognized draftsmen and graphic artists, Tadeusz Kulisiewicz (1899—1988), was born. The conference organizers used Tadeusz Kulisiewicz as a complex case in terms of art history, a starting point in order to ask how an art historian can unpack a problematic past, at the level of an individual artist.
Recurring subjects in Kulisiewicz’s art were the human being and the landscape, which he explored in an expressive style, directed by his way of experiencing the world — “strongly and emotionally”, as art historian Anna Tabaka, member of the organizational committee from Kalisz Society of Friends of Sciences, explained it in her conference paper. Other motifs were the peasant and the poor living in the city. Tadeusz Kulisiewicz gained his reputation in the second half of the 20th century, propagated by the communist authorities, and became part of the official cultural politics of the People’s Poland. Kulisiewicz’s specific destiny, to be an artist used to celebrate the success of Polish art abroad during the Communist regime and a beneficiary of the system, served as the entry point for the organizers to create a set of more general questions for the conference, addressing what many artists from the period and location in Europe faced. As the conference’s two program directors, Anna Tabaka and Makary Górzyński, poignantly formulated it in the printed guide accompanying the conference:
How has the history of the art of the countries of the former Eastern bloc changed from 1945 and after the break-up of the Cold War blocs? What sorts of subjects and artists are being “hushed” in monographs, synthetical and cross-sectional studies? How do art historians handle the political burdens and the ideologization of art and artists such as Kulisiewicz? What does this message teach us about the present?
The many conference presentations testify to the growing interest in researching this part of the history of Europe, rethinking its relevance and not dismissing it as mere propaganda. Joanna Kordjak, from the National Gallery of Art Zachęta in Warsaw, opened the conference from a Polish perspective, presenting a current series of exhibitions examining the directions of cultural policy during 1949–1956. She pointed out that this approach of shifting focus from the symbolic, old centers of Paris and New York will open up new routes to research. Importantly, these routes are not only between East and West, but also between what were called the “brother countries” of China, India, Cuba, Mexico, and within the Eastern bloc. The research at the museum and the series of exhibitions started in 2013 and will continue in the coming years.
Questions of methodological concern were raised not only in individual presentations and panel discussions, but also in the coffee breaks, pointing to its relevance for the overall conference theme. Two issues stood out as particularly urgent: First, where and how to get access to a time period that has been more or less suppressed, and, second, what to research in order to speak from other perspectives apart from the official one that is already public.
The first question could be exemplified by Anna Zelmańska-Lipnicka’s presentation. Zelmańska-Lipnicka, from the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw, researches the cultural exchange between Poland and France in 1945-49. She raised her concern about the scattered and incomplete material stored in archives of different political and administrative institutions, often both in the home country and abroad. This points to a larger obstacle in this research field: much basic research needs to be carried out before one can proceed to examining the intended topic.
On the second question relating to objects of study, Francesca Zanella, professor of Art History at the University of Parma, emphasized that art historians need to pay closer attention to what objects of study we rely on — many of the case studies presented at the conference were exhibitions. Zanella herself focuses on the Milan Triennale during the 1950s and 60s, aiming to investigate the international dimension of a series of triennial exhibitions in order to examine the relevant diplomatic relations, ideological debates, and curatorial ideas. Zanella addressed the issue of methodology relating to the study of exhibitions, and the relevance of her point should not be underestimated in view of the growing field of exhibition history or exhibition studies, where many conferences, book anthologies, and courses take art exhibitions of various kinds as their starting point. This is not a problem per se, but there is a lack of coherence when it comes to methodological issues, as Zanella pointed out. The question art historians need to raise is how to understand the exhibition as an object of study.
In addition to exhibitions, artists’ sketchbooks, notebooks, and diaries stood out as further commonly used sources of research material. Anna Tabaka uses diaries to get closer to what Tadeusz Kulisiewicz himself thought about social, political, and artistic issues when, for example, travelling worldwide and exhibiting in the name of the Polish people. Another example was the presentation by Katalin Cseh-Varga, from the University of Vienna, who uses artists’ own writing to examine what she calls the “mindset” of artists in relation to specific events. Her presentation looked into how two artists from former Czechoslovakia, Julius Koller (1939—2007) and György Galántai (1941—), reacted to the Documenta 5 exhibition (1972) in Kassel, curated by Harald Szeemann. Her thorough comparison between the two artists’ different attitudes to the exhibition — Koller’s “ordered and structured” notebook and Galántai’s “emotional” diary — unpacked the phenomenon of both Szeemann, as a superstar curator, and Documenta, as the canonical exhibition series, in an unexpected way. Her conference paper exposed what one can call the agencies of the artists from Eastern Europe, working against preconceived ideas of them as passive receivers of thoughts from the West.
Art history of transnational contacts
Katalin Cseh-Varga referred to her way of conducting a close reading of a specific time and place as following her colleague in Vienna, art historian Christian Kravagna in his Transmoderne (2017), where he asks for an “art history of contacts”. I would like to stress this as the foremost ethos in many of the conference papers, and as a closing remark I would like to give one more example of what could be considered a study of the art history of contacts. Veronika Rollová, from the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague, researches the ceramic symposia in Central Europe during the 1960s. In her paper she showed how these symposia served as real platforms for creating networks and meetings between artists from the two political blocs. Due to the peripheral status of clay the artists could meet and work collectively, circumventing official control. To conclude, the case of Veronika Rollová is not only a case of an art history of contacts, but of transnational contacts, and it serves to reflect the overall ambition and importance of the 3rd edition of the Kalisz Conference. ≈
References
- This has been discussed from different angles and approaches by scholars such as Clair Bishop, “Introduction, Exhibiting the East since 1989”, in Art and theory of post 1989 Central and Eastern Europe: a critical anthology, Ana Janevski & Roxana Marcoci (eds.) (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018); Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, in “The resilience of the Periphery: Narrating Europe through Curatorial Strategies”, in Johan Fornäs (ed.), Europe faces Europe: Narratives from Its Eastern Half (Intellect, 2017); Piotr Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-Garde in Eastern Europe, 1945—1989 (London: Reaktion Books, (2005) 2009).
- Piotrowski, In the Shadow of Yalta, 24.
- From a city guided tour organized by the Kalisz Society of Friends of Sciences, October 18, 2019.
- Anna Tabaka, “The views of Tadeusz Kulisiewicz (1899—1988) in light of the materials from the artist’s Kalisz archive” trans. Aleksandra Hadryś -Williams (paper presented at the 3rd Kalisz conference, Kalisz, Poland, October 18—19, 2019).
- Makary Górzyński, Sylwia Pierucka & Anna Tabaka (eds.), “Artistic contacts between political blocs after World War II in Central Europe: visual arts, power, cultural propaganda”, 26th publication of the Kalisz Society of Friends of Sciences (Kalisz: the Kalisz Society of Friends of Sciences publishing house, 2019), 12.
- Joanna Kordjak, “’Where is your France?’ Artistic geography during the Cold War” (paper presented at the 3rd Kalisz conference, Kalisz, Poland, October 18—19, 2019).
- Anna Zelmańska-Lipnicka, “Cultural exchange between Poland and France in the years 1945—1949 basing on the documentation of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs” (paper presented at the 3rd Kalisz conference, Kalisz, Poland, October 18—19, 2019).
- Francesca Zanella, “Artists and designers from east central Europe at the Milan Triennale during 50s and the 60s: diplomatic relations and ideological debates on the role of the art and design” (paper presented at the 3rd Kalisz conference, Kalisz, Poland, October 18—19, 2019).
- Natalie Hope O’Donnell discusses this study field and its relevance for different disciplines such as exhibition studies, art history, and, new museology, in her dissertation Space as Curatorial practice: the exhibition as a spatial construct (Oslo: The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 2016), 42—62.
- Tabaka, “The views of Tadeusz Kulisiewicz (1899—1988) in light of the materials from the artist’s Kalisz archive”.
- Katalin Cseh-Varga, “Artist Sketchbooks and Diaries. Thinking about Art in Times of Information Blockade” (paper presented at the 3rd Kalisz conference, Kalisz, Poland, October 18—19, 2019).
- I rely on the argumentation by Amy Bryzgel in the introduction to her Performance art in Eastern Europe since 1960, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 1—9.
- Veronika Rollová, “Ceramics Symposiums as Platforms of International Artistic Contacts in Central Europe in the 1960s” (paper presented at the 3rd Kalisz conference, Kalisz, Poland, October 18—19, 2019).