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Wojciech Włodarczyk

called Malarstwo polskie: modernizm [Polish Painting: Modernism], In fact,
however, both books must be approached as a whole.3 A quarter of century lat-
er, two studies with the word "modernism" in their titles came out: in 1999,
Znaczenia modernizmu. W stronę historii sztuki polskiej po 1945 roku [The
Meanings of Modernism: Toward a History of Polish Art after 1945] by Piotr
Piotrowski, and in 2000, Budowniczowie świata. Z dziejów radykalnego mo-
dernizmu w sztuce polskiej [Builders of the World. From the History of Rad-
ical Modernism in Polish Art] by Andrzej Turowski. Certainly, "modernism"
in Piotrowski's book means something else than in Turowski's one, while
both authors (close to each other due to their similar approaches to the con-
cept's origin) differ from Juszczak who never accepted their understanding of
the term.
A strong point of Juszczak's approach to modernism has been his analysis
of paintings: thick description and grounded theory confirmed by the anal-
ysis of the idiom of criticism, to mention only luminism and intensivism.
Moreover, Juszczak placed in the tradition of both reflection on history and on
art the heritage of Jan Matejko and the Cracow conservatism of the late 19th
century as interpreted by Marcin Król. Elżbieta Grabska, a major scholar spe-
cializing in modern art, to whose work I will be referring below, distinguished
among three meanings of the term "modernism." First, it was, just like for
Juszczak, a synonym of the Young Poland (Młoda Polska). Second, it was the
art of Vienna around 1910, according to Andrzej Olszewski.4 Third, "mod-
ernism" was close to the idea of modernity, at that time anachronistic and
unclear, perhaps with the exception of "modernist architecture," also called
so by Olszewski. Juszczak's approach did not undermine those distinctions
but resulted in a rare, and maybe the first of its kind, deeply rooted in works of
art and theoretically justified, interpretation of a current in modern Polish art.
A rejection, or perhaps reduction, of the semantic Held of Juszczak's con-
cept of modernism took place around 1989 m consequence of an invasion of
postmodernism, which was hrst documented by literary scholars.5 In 1987,
the Polish translation of Postmodernist Architecture by Charles Jencks was
published, and next year Marcin Giżycki published his influential antholo-

3 Even though there ar emany studies on Polish modernism in plastic arts, they are
incomparable to studies of literary scholars on literary modernism. Both books by Juszczak
are far superior to other texts that deal with art at the turn of the 20th century
4 A. Olszewski, Nowa forma w architekturze polskiej 1900-1925. Teoria i praktyka,
Wrocław 1967.
5 See Odkrywanie modernizmu, ed. R. Nycz, Kruków 1998. An overview of the rela-
tions between the avant-garde and modernism can be found in J. Orska, Przełom awangar-
dowy w dudziestowiecznym modernizmie w Polsce, Kraków 2004.