DOI article:
Skubiszewski, Piotr: Facing the work of art: memories of my student years
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52521#0013
TURNING POINTS:
HISTORIES OF ART HISTORY
IN POLAND AND EUROPE
Piotr Skubiszewski
FACING THE WORK OF ART.
MEMORIES OF MY STUDENT YEARS
A former student of art history at the University of Poznań and then a fac-
ulty member in its Department of Art History is bound to find a centennial
of academic art history in the capital city of Wielkopolska a natural occasion
to remember the university milieu that formed his intellectual profile and
determined his career. In fact, he has a choice between two ways. First, he
can make an attempt to describe that milieu in terms of the history of the
discipline and academic teaching, as well as, trying to be impartial, analyze
the achievements of the faculty in his student years and dehne their methods.
Second, he may take a look at his university education and the direction of his
academic work in the perspective of his own life, in terms of personal mem-
ories, knowing of course that those memories will be subjective and partial.
I have decided to choose the latter option.
I started attending lectures on art history immediately after passing my
high school duals on May 17, 1949, a few months before enrolling at the
university. Before the academic year was over, I managed to listen to several
ones. Those were the lectures of the Rev. Professor Szczęsny Dettloff on the
fifteenth-century Venetian painting. They were delivered in the lecture room
of the Department of Art History on the fourth floor of the Collegium Maius.
I remember to have understood almost nothing. When later, as a student,
I was learning the vocabulary of the discipline, how to analyze the work of art,
and - above all - how to evaluate the place of an individual artwork in the ar-
tistic process of an epoch, I realized the reasons for my ignorance. My studies
made me understand that the perception of the work of art is a human skill
of its own kind and that either high school or common elementary education
could not, and perhaps still cannot, prepare the young mind for this task. An
element of the human encounter with art is inner experience - impressions
HISTORIES OF ART HISTORY
IN POLAND AND EUROPE
Piotr Skubiszewski
FACING THE WORK OF ART.
MEMORIES OF MY STUDENT YEARS
A former student of art history at the University of Poznań and then a fac-
ulty member in its Department of Art History is bound to find a centennial
of academic art history in the capital city of Wielkopolska a natural occasion
to remember the university milieu that formed his intellectual profile and
determined his career. In fact, he has a choice between two ways. First, he
can make an attempt to describe that milieu in terms of the history of the
discipline and academic teaching, as well as, trying to be impartial, analyze
the achievements of the faculty in his student years and dehne their methods.
Second, he may take a look at his university education and the direction of his
academic work in the perspective of his own life, in terms of personal mem-
ories, knowing of course that those memories will be subjective and partial.
I have decided to choose the latter option.
I started attending lectures on art history immediately after passing my
high school duals on May 17, 1949, a few months before enrolling at the
university. Before the academic year was over, I managed to listen to several
ones. Those were the lectures of the Rev. Professor Szczęsny Dettloff on the
fifteenth-century Venetian painting. They were delivered in the lecture room
of the Department of Art History on the fourth floor of the Collegium Maius.
I remember to have understood almost nothing. When later, as a student,
I was learning the vocabulary of the discipline, how to analyze the work of art,
and - above all - how to evaluate the place of an individual artwork in the ar-
tistic process of an epoch, I realized the reasons for my ignorance. My studies
made me understand that the perception of the work of art is a human skill
of its own kind and that either high school or common elementary education
could not, and perhaps still cannot, prepare the young mind for this task. An
element of the human encounter with art is inner experience - impressions