Od stylu i daty do rzeczy i gestu. Kierunki i perspektywy badań nad wnętrzami mieszkalnymi
From style and date to things and gestures. Directions and perspectives of research on residential interiors

Summary/Abstract: The article concerns the directions and perspectives of research on residential interiors in world and Polish science in recent years. Connected a few decades ago, on the one hand, with the history of architecture, and on the other with the currents of research on material culture, they have gained autonomy for some time, and previously unused written and visual sources were activated in them. The precursors of the history of residential interiors as a separate research direction were Mario Praz and his La filosofia dell’arredamento (1965), and the continuator of Peter Thornton and his studies from the 1970s and 1980s. They dealt with the issue in a stylistic and chronological perspective, basing mainly on visual sources from the period. Since then, the awareness of the issues involved in the phenomenon of a residential in­terior has grown enormously. The research has made a transition from the perspective presenting the historical interior as an image of the epoch or individual artistic experience framed within the framework of style and chronology, to perceiving it as an area of dynamic tensions between architecture, furnishings and the user, along with its surroundings of cultural contexts. The social dimension of interiors is perceived as the territory of various social practices that are relationally dependent on architecture, serving to build forms of identity, memory and social status. The interiors are also subject to reflection in the area of the history of consumption, the transfer of goods, luxury, and finally fashion and taste.

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