DOI article:
III. Utopias and Anti-utopias
DOI article:Piotrowski, Piotr: Post-modernism and post-totalitarianism: the Poland case of the 1970s
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51723#0246
ded not only by censorship which performed its task
in a flexible way, depending on the political needs
of the authorities, but also by its twin - and possibly
more powerful - instance: self-censorship. The artist
knew the price of the prison velvet. Whenever the
authorities were making his/her cell more spacious
and gave him/her more liberty of expression inside
it, the temptation to break free would decrease.
At various stages of the development of Com-
munist totalitarianism, artists were given different
rôles. In the times of Lunacharsky, their task was no
doubt defined very precisely - active propaganda;
however, in a panoptic, post-totalitarian society he/
shy was supposed to perform more subtle functions.
What guaranteed him/her the “velvet” of the prison
cell was civil and political indifférence. On the one
hand, authorities demanded frorn him/her neutrality,
non-criticism, and respect for the ritual linguistic
conventions, yet on the other -1 believe - also activi-
ty, formal experiments, and modern or, shall we say,
post-modern stylistics which would confirm the
“modernity” and “occidentalism” of the post-totali-
tarian society. The authorities which in the seventies
were busy building the Second Poland did not need
soc-realist propaganda any more, but art that would
be both modern and non-critical, not violating the
Status quo, and respecting the post-totalitarian mecha-
nisms of the functioning of society that was - at the
same time - totalitarian and consumerist.
The occidentalization of the Polish People’s
Republic (or PRL) in the seventies fostered a good
climate for the development of post-modern tenden-
cies in art; the climate which was much more favo-
rable than the “post-thaw” atmosphère of the previ-
ous decade. That paralleled the processes of the
conventionalization and commercialization of post-
modern art in the West. The art of the former coun-
ter-culture penetrated into the establishment.
A symbolic moment in that process was the Kassel
exhibition Documenta 5 in 1972, where Herald Szee-
mann (the organizer of the exhibition) invited the
artists who five years earlier contested Documenta,
introducing them into that same largest art market in
the world. In Poland, together with the liberalization
of both personal and institutional contacts with the
West, the models which came from that direction
5. Natalia Lach-Lachowicz: Consumer AH, 1974; Muzeum
Sztuki Lodž
were welcome. I am not saying that the authorities
stimulated the réception of post-modernism in Po-
land; what I am saying though is that they tolerated
or even recuperated that réception, since such
a stratégy confirmed the image of the country be-
longing to the orbit of Western culture.
In Poland in the seventies, the increase of the
number of artists referring to post-modern artistic
models, galleries interested in that kind of art, Con-
ferences, meetings, etc., was really imposing. Up to
now there is no documentation of what was going on
in that period. What has been published are only frag-
mentary materials concerning particular groups. It
is obvious that among a large number of artists,
events, and manifestations one may find interesting
and significant examples. Such artists of the seven-
ties as Andrzej Dlužniewski, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, or
Krzysztof Wodiczko, entering the tradition of criti-
cal art, reformulated in the direction which may be
called meta-critical, since it aimed at an analysis of
its own tradition. Yet those artists cannot be called
signum temporis of that decade, although - as they
hâve often stressed it - they were part of it.8 Thus
their work will not be the object of our attention; in
other words, it is not critical art that will be discussed,
but the kind of art which was much more characte-
236
in a flexible way, depending on the political needs
of the authorities, but also by its twin - and possibly
more powerful - instance: self-censorship. The artist
knew the price of the prison velvet. Whenever the
authorities were making his/her cell more spacious
and gave him/her more liberty of expression inside
it, the temptation to break free would decrease.
At various stages of the development of Com-
munist totalitarianism, artists were given different
rôles. In the times of Lunacharsky, their task was no
doubt defined very precisely - active propaganda;
however, in a panoptic, post-totalitarian society he/
shy was supposed to perform more subtle functions.
What guaranteed him/her the “velvet” of the prison
cell was civil and political indifférence. On the one
hand, authorities demanded frorn him/her neutrality,
non-criticism, and respect for the ritual linguistic
conventions, yet on the other -1 believe - also activi-
ty, formal experiments, and modern or, shall we say,
post-modern stylistics which would confirm the
“modernity” and “occidentalism” of the post-totali-
tarian society. The authorities which in the seventies
were busy building the Second Poland did not need
soc-realist propaganda any more, but art that would
be both modern and non-critical, not violating the
Status quo, and respecting the post-totalitarian mecha-
nisms of the functioning of society that was - at the
same time - totalitarian and consumerist.
The occidentalization of the Polish People’s
Republic (or PRL) in the seventies fostered a good
climate for the development of post-modern tenden-
cies in art; the climate which was much more favo-
rable than the “post-thaw” atmosphère of the previ-
ous decade. That paralleled the processes of the
conventionalization and commercialization of post-
modern art in the West. The art of the former coun-
ter-culture penetrated into the establishment.
A symbolic moment in that process was the Kassel
exhibition Documenta 5 in 1972, where Herald Szee-
mann (the organizer of the exhibition) invited the
artists who five years earlier contested Documenta,
introducing them into that same largest art market in
the world. In Poland, together with the liberalization
of both personal and institutional contacts with the
West, the models which came from that direction
5. Natalia Lach-Lachowicz: Consumer AH, 1974; Muzeum
Sztuki Lodž
were welcome. I am not saying that the authorities
stimulated the réception of post-modernism in Po-
land; what I am saying though is that they tolerated
or even recuperated that réception, since such
a stratégy confirmed the image of the country be-
longing to the orbit of Western culture.
In Poland in the seventies, the increase of the
number of artists referring to post-modern artistic
models, galleries interested in that kind of art, Con-
ferences, meetings, etc., was really imposing. Up to
now there is no documentation of what was going on
in that period. What has been published are only frag-
mentary materials concerning particular groups. It
is obvious that among a large number of artists,
events, and manifestations one may find interesting
and significant examples. Such artists of the seven-
ties as Andrzej Dlužniewski, Jaroslaw Kozlowski, or
Krzysztof Wodiczko, entering the tradition of criti-
cal art, reformulated in the direction which may be
called meta-critical, since it aimed at an analysis of
its own tradition. Yet those artists cannot be called
signum temporis of that decade, although - as they
hâve often stressed it - they were part of it.8 Thus
their work will not be the object of our attention; in
other words, it is not critical art that will be discussed,
but the kind of art which was much more characte-
236