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In one of his letters written in 1937 the émigré Walter Benjamin mentioned the encroaching future as “a time to dream about a bombproof shelter”. Today, those words are becoming disturbingly topical. Once again, just as during the period of Benjamin’s enforced emigration, the question of literal and metaphorical homelessness, the absence of a home, the search for a haven and associated hospitality (or its lack) returns both as a figure and a concrete, individual experience. Tomasz Szerszeń would like to take a closer look at this problem via the experiences of his voyages: to Kharkiv, an important cultural centre along the Ukrainian-Russian border, a city of “vagabonds and poets”, and to the Greek island of Samothrace, the historical site of the Kabir mysteries and today an island of “defectors from civilisation” and “inner émigrés”, situated close to the transit routes followed by refugees sailing from Turkey. In both cases the real experiences of homelessness and seeking asylum appear within the context of images – photographs and films – connected with those concrete places. What is the relation between homelessness and hospitality? Can images render this complicated union? And finally: can photographs and images as such be homeless or hospitable? The frame for this dissertation is documenta 14 that takes place in Athens (2017), as well as Jacques Derrida’s essay Of Hospitality and Paul Virilio’s project Bunker Archeology. Finally the text creates a sort of Benjaminian constellation or cartography of Europe in crisis anno domini 2017.
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The author analyses assorted versions of the bride occurring in selected spectacles by Tadeusz Kantor by closely following the evolution of this motif, significant in Kantor’s oeuvre. The article also focuses on the status of the Kantorian mannequin, changing in the course of successive theatrical realisations and described upon certain occasions by the artist as a “puppet” or a “wax figure” that could function as the actor’s “companion”, his sui generis prolongation (similar to the bio-object), a supplementary doppelganger or a model of the actor’s performance. Within this context references to the symbolism of Blok or Maeterlinck assume an essential rank as does situating the dramatis persona between life (actor) and death (mannequin and its variants) as well as the consequences of such a borderline quality for the staging.
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The article presents two artists: Stanisław Wyspiański and Tadeusz Kantor, who in their works applied the idea of liminality so as to describe their psychic states and attitudes towards art. The titular liminality is conceived in accordance with the theses propounded by Arnold van Gennep. At the same time, the discussed authors were not interested in rite de passage as a ritual derived from folk qualities but were fascinated solely by the moment of suspension, i.e. a liminal situation, without proposing its unambiguous solution. The author commenced her analysis by considering the Strawman dramatis persona from Wyspiański’s play Wesele, which the playwright employed to introduce into Polish art an interest in liminality as a state of suspension. An inevitably cursory analysis demonstrated the extent to which the introduced straw character differed from the aesthetic norms and canons of the period and became a highly unique creation that throughout the whole twentieth century intrigued and inspired various authors. Tadeusz Kantor, who was enthralled by Wyspiański, borrowed the latter’s predilection for liminality, which he put to a different use. The dissimilar character of the approach to rite de passage was, in the case of both artists, the outcome of different experiences, not merely aesthetic but also personal. The individual life story of both men generated the necessity of a different comprehension of death, dying, and illness and thus self-perception vis à vis the world. Liminality, which the Young Poland-era poet found so fascinating, turned into an extremely capacious category, making it possible to perform certain transgressions in art. The author attempted to demonstrate the way in which Kantor made use of liminality by treating it slightly perversely or irreverently – on the one hand, by resigning from the Strawman’s straw and, on the other hand, by standing on the threshold of illusion and disillusion.
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In this essay the author discusses Cinema in the work of Witkacy, particularly its absence. He refers to many of Witkacy’s Western contemporaries as being fascinated by this increasingly dominant 20th Century medium, which Witkacy seems to have ignored despite his interest and participation in a wide range of modern aesthetic practices including painting, photography, mass produced portraits, and theatre. Part of the explanation for this, it is suggested, may lay in the relative underdevelopment of cinema in Poland prior to World War II; most of the local cinema produced was in the form of highly conventional romances, with an avant-garde cinema only developing towards the end of Witkacy’s life. The author continues to present a very succinct account of how Witkacy’s work has been transmuted into the medium of Film and Television.
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The author addresses the extent to which Witkacy’s work should be seen in relation to Romantic playwright Juliusz Słowacki who began the Artistic Theater in Poland according to Witkacy’s own words. While subsequent creators of Artistic Theatre, especially Stanisław Wyspiański, the author of symbolic national dramas, attracted much attention among Witkacy scholars, Słowacki has been barely mentioned in the context of Witkacy theatre. The author compares Słowacki’s ‘Kordian’ with Witkacy’s ‘John Mathew Charles the Furious’ and concludes that both the protagonists’ dilemmas and their self-referential statements are profoundly connected. In addition, the author presents an analysis of both Słowacki’s and Witkacy’s treatment of the motifs of ‘Violence’ ‘A Corpse’ ‘A Dream’ and ‘A Ghost.’ It is argued that Witkacy deconstructs national myths and pushes romantic imagination to the limits, developing elements of romantic fantasy bordering on surrealism typical of Słowacki into modern surrealistic theatre.
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Text analyses selected examples of photography, painting and video installations (Bernhard Prinz, Bill Viola, Peter Holl, Adrian Gottlieb, Marcin Liber) stressing classical rules and inspirations, as well as elaborating context of visual turn (parallel to the end of art concept). Not only classical patterns and rules are presented but also weighty philosophical ideas are discovered with the use of transdisciplinary methods. Finally, the fundamental questions concerning aesthetic and metaphysical determinants of art in contemporary works are raised (Plato, Kant, Scheler) in context of human identity discovered in hermeneutic interpretation and experience of beauty.
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„The end of art” means that art is marked by finitude, thrown into finitude and given over to its presentation. Finitude implies a lack of totality, the impossiblity of closing one's being in oneself, and, therefore, the necessity of being in relation, of being outside of oneself. Art that presents finitude is an art of being outside of itself. This means that every time there is art, it exists as something other than itself. This structure of „being-as” seems to be one of the main effects and meanings of “the end of art”. These theses are developed by way of an analysis of Hegel, the Jena Romantics, Danto and Kosuth's text 'Art after Philosophy'.
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Damien Hirst is a “post-artist”; in other words, he is an artist who began his work after “the end of art.” He is a representative of the group called Young British Artists. In the article, his work becomes a pretext to take on the problem of “the end of art” and to discuss the difficulties with analysis related to it, thus defining the purpose and the aesthetic value of an art work. The author compares and critically considers the views of three art theorists: Donald Kuspit, Jean Baudrillard, and Arthur C. Danto. In the context of their theories, the author also analyses some chosen artworks of the so-called post-art.
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This article presents two opposing opinions on the condition of modern art. These have been authored by a philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy, and a scholar in Indo-European culture, Bernard Sergent. The former states that modern art has very favorable conditions for development and presentation. In his opinion, most recent works of art constitute a continuation of Hegel’s figure of a young girl, discussed in the article on the example of Alina Szapocznikow’s sculpture Trudny wiek. The latter, however, judges the condition of art very severely, especially considering the situation of French museums and art galleries in recent years. This issue, however, has a much broader reach and can easily be applied to the situation in Poland. The author of the article does not settle this dispute, but leaves the final judgment to the reader.
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In the article I propose an analysis of both the opinions about “the end of art,” that have been appearing for a long time and the changes in understanding the meaning of symbols in culture. In connection with the problem of symbols, I refer to the philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, as well as to the personalistic hermeneutics of Luigi Pareyson. Asking if there exist such concepts of culture that would make the use of the term “end of art” irrelevant, I answer yes and I give the example of the concept of form by Pareyson. Additionally, I make the point that Pareyson’s form is a symbolic one. Finally, I try to outline a hermeneutic interpretation of one of the art works shown at the 54 Venice Biennale
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A work of art exists through images. The determinants of a work of art seen as an image are the following: vision; the carrier of the image, the object produced and/or the chosen artefact; the surroundings of the carrier, in which it is placed; the functional context of the work the “subject” of the image, i.e., what is seen, the thing portrayed in the image; the world of the “subject” of the image; the onlooker, the viewer of the image; the “ideatic” context of the image, and of its subject in particular (“the world of ideas”). Essentially, the category of “image” determines the character of a work of art. Yet on a more basic and original level, it determines the very way the human world exists, and human beings themselves. Thus art becomes significant for human beings.
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The article shows the ways in which the process of aesthetization of everyday life affects our perception of the human body in postmodern societies. The beauty of the body is no longer defined with reference to the objective aesthetic norms shared by all the members of the society, but it is rather defined individually. The body is shaped according to it, thus becoming an “aesthetic project”.
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The main topic of this article is sacrum in the art of young polish artists. The first part is focused on methodology and defining such terms as sacrum, numinosum, transgression, initiation. In the second part the author explores the art of three young artist groups: Pracownia Struktur Mentalnych, Galeria “Praca” and Galeria “Dzika 6 na 79”. Some specific pieces of art are analyzed, including body art, performances, and videos.
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This paper is a reconstruction of Stefan Morawski’s understanding of what a work of art is. Three fundamental aspects are taken into account, namely: the ontological status, axiological status, and hermeneutical status of a work of art. This reconstruction includes as its sources diverse papers published by Morawski in various places – a diversity which attests to the constant modifications of his conclusions.
More...Próba Heideggerowskiej wykładni sztuki masowej
The text attempts to find a way for Heidegger’s aesthetics, especially the concept of the truth of a work of art, to be applied to the analysis of the phenomenon of mass art. It takes as its point of departure Benjamin’s notion of mass art seen as art deprived of aura, i.e., art that is not situated in space and time. Merging Benjamin’s conceptual apparatus with Heidegger’s indicates that the notion of mass art needs major deepening. Above all, if we define high art in terms of existential truth and, in consequence, the way the work of art transcends the world in which it is rooted, then the non-auratic art will be defined by the notions of existential untruth, i.e., what will be pointed to is the way it is rooted in the world of Dasein. While the works of elite art always transcend this world, the works of mass art never do – they are worldly entities; they belong to the world (within-the-world entities). It means that the works of mass art have to be analysed primarily in terms of the ideological structures of the world in which they are rooted. This bears a number of ramifications for works of mass art, such as that they are not independent beings, but rather structural units, and also that their non-temporality is not just a result of the way they are produced and distributed, but also an effect of their origins in Dasein. Bearing in mind the structural character of the works of mass art, it seems necessary to outline a division into popular art, alternative art, and experimental art.
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This article is an attempt to compare the ways of understanding and interpreting art during the late 19th and early 20th century with the art criticism of the interwar years. To this end, the author presents an array of critical texts devoted to a single artist-sculptor, Xavier Dunikowski, who was active at the junction of the two eras. The focus of attention, however, is not only on the critics' views and opinions of the artist's work, but also on the nature of their language of expression, their discourse, and their criteria of evaluation. A look at the styles of reception predominant in each era will allow the author to pinpoint the transformation of art criticism that took place after World War I, as well as the prevailing patterns in the language of interpretation. This will make it possible to paint a fuller, more complex image of the art criticism of that time.
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