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The Shapes of Memory. Selected Aspects of Contemporary Art

Author(s): Eleonora Jedlińska
Subject(s): History, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Cultural history, History of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: Polish artists; German camps; war experiences, contemporary art; extermination
Summary/Abstract: The present publication, containing fourteen essays dedicated to selected artists and their work, is a structurally cohesive analysis of the phenomenon of memory of World War II experiences and the Holocaust – of trauma reflected in works of art. The works of Władysław Strzemiński, Barnett Newman, Marek Rothko, Tadeusz Kantor, Moshe Kupferman, Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski, Marek Chlanda, Luc Tuymans, Zofia Lipecka, Rafał Jakubowicz and Elżbieta Janicka have been showcased. The artists presented in the volume – born around the end of the nineteenth century, during the war as well as in the 1970s – focused on an issue which became fundamental in the 20th- and 21st century art: the memory of the Holocaust catastrophe and its impact on the lives of generations born after the war. It is a book indicating the value and necessity of the existence of art, poetry and music against constant attempts to face the past, the most distant, ancient, so that this measure can translate – in the final analysis – into finding a meaning in anything precious that has survived, which in itself creates, in Benjamin Buchloh’s words, a “model of historical memory and continuity of experience.” The book’s target audience are people interested in contemporary art, wondering about the condition of man in the current reality – readers whose concern is an attempt to protect memory and rethink history.

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