DOI article:
Turowski, Andrzej: L'imagination au pouvoir: Art history in the times of crisis, 1960s-1970s
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52521#0249
Andrzej Turowski
L’IMAGINATION AU PO UVOIR:
ART HISTORY IN THE TIMES OF CRISIS, 1960S-1970S
The present paper on art history practiced at the University of Poznań in
the context of changing theoretical and research tendencies is rather personal
and not very academic, and I have no intention to make any far-reaching gen-
eralizations. My scope is quite narrow: about fifteen years, from 1965 till the
end of the 1970s, which is just a fragment of the century-long history of the
Poznań Institute of Art History What follows, are mostly my recollections,
but they will also refer to my present reflection on art history, rooted in my ex-
perience in the 1960s, and somehow - perhaps obliquely - touching upon the
general turn in the humanities, largely caused by the social crisis and cultural
revolution of 1968, which resulted in introducing imagination into positive
knowledge and critical thought. I will address an apparently simple question:
how did it happen?
Among items found during archaeological excavations in my private ar-
chive, both private and typical for my generation, I find a veritable bric-à-brac:
the 1956 issues of Współczesność, with the title provocatively beginning with
a small "w," Bonjour, tristesseby Françoise Sagan, dims of the Italian neoreal-
ism, watched in student clubs that were popular after the Thaw, Grotowski's
performances in the Theater of 13 Rows in Opole, William Gibson's "Two for
the Seesaw," starring Cybulski and Kępińska, in the Warsaw Ateneum The-
ater, Komeda and Ptaszyn Wróblewski's jazz basement somewhere in Poznań
(maybe in Wilda), also Poznań poetry festivals with the rebel poet Andrzej
Bursa from Cracow, the first exhibition of Vedova's abstraction, organized by
Professor Zdzisław Kępiński, a surprising show of Henry Moore's sculpture
at the National Museum. Besides, continuous hitchhiking all over Poland
with books, mostly translations of contemporary world literature: Sartre and
Camus; Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Capote; the French "Nouveau
Roman": Michel Butor and Alain Robbe-Grillet, also Beckett, and the Polish
writer Marek Hlasko who was a genuine star. But first of all, Sartre's essay
Marxism and Existentialism, written especially for the Polish reader.
L’IMAGINATION AU PO UVOIR:
ART HISTORY IN THE TIMES OF CRISIS, 1960S-1970S
The present paper on art history practiced at the University of Poznań in
the context of changing theoretical and research tendencies is rather personal
and not very academic, and I have no intention to make any far-reaching gen-
eralizations. My scope is quite narrow: about fifteen years, from 1965 till the
end of the 1970s, which is just a fragment of the century-long history of the
Poznań Institute of Art History What follows, are mostly my recollections,
but they will also refer to my present reflection on art history, rooted in my ex-
perience in the 1960s, and somehow - perhaps obliquely - touching upon the
general turn in the humanities, largely caused by the social crisis and cultural
revolution of 1968, which resulted in introducing imagination into positive
knowledge and critical thought. I will address an apparently simple question:
how did it happen?
Among items found during archaeological excavations in my private ar-
chive, both private and typical for my generation, I find a veritable bric-à-brac:
the 1956 issues of Współczesność, with the title provocatively beginning with
a small "w," Bonjour, tristesseby Françoise Sagan, dims of the Italian neoreal-
ism, watched in student clubs that were popular after the Thaw, Grotowski's
performances in the Theater of 13 Rows in Opole, William Gibson's "Two for
the Seesaw," starring Cybulski and Kępińska, in the Warsaw Ateneum The-
ater, Komeda and Ptaszyn Wróblewski's jazz basement somewhere in Poznań
(maybe in Wilda), also Poznań poetry festivals with the rebel poet Andrzej
Bursa from Cracow, the first exhibition of Vedova's abstraction, organized by
Professor Zdzisław Kępiński, a surprising show of Henry Moore's sculpture
at the National Museum. Besides, continuous hitchhiking all over Poland
with books, mostly translations of contemporary world literature: Sartre and
Camus; Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Capote; the French "Nouveau
Roman": Michel Butor and Alain Robbe-Grillet, also Beckett, and the Polish
writer Marek Hlasko who was a genuine star. But first of all, Sartre's essay
Marxism and Existentialism, written especially for the Polish reader.