Czas wołających na puszczy. Słów kilka o prorokach i heretykach abstrakcji
Time of Voices in the Wilderness. Selected Remarks about the Prophets and Heretics of Abstraction

Summary/Abstract: The onset of abstraction is firmly linked with the figure of the artist-prophet. Its application cannot be reduced to exalted rhetoric, relentlessly dressing artistic reality in a sacral costume. We encounter prophetic motifs in statements made by, i.a. Kandinsky and Malevich. Their “prophetic nature” appears to be not merely a formula of self-creation or even more so a cheap trick with whose assistance the history of art and publicists subsequently wished to present the coryphaei of abstraction The prophetism of abstract artists also did not constitute an attempt at a “restitution of religion” nor can it be reduced to a propaganda of theo- and anthroposophy, on which it thrived, but is rather part of a modernistic return to post-secular Romantic motifs. The presented article is an attempt at deciphering this prophetism from the vantage point of, i.a. reflections about the prophets proposed by Abraham J. Heschel, as well as the heritage of Romanticism.

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