Instytut Historii Sztuki <Posen> [Editor]: Artium Quaestiones (31.2020)

400 Mariusz Bryl
Mariusz Bryl
Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
ARTUR GROTTGER'S PAINTING THE BAR CONFEDERATES PRAY BEFORE
THE BATTLE (OF LANCKORONA?): HISTORY, LITERATURE, VISION
Summary
The subject of the paper is a painting by Artur Grottger, which has not yet been the
subject of close art historical analysis, hindered by the complicated history of the paint-
ing as a material object: from its creation ( 1861-1863) and being exhibited in Vienesse
Kunstverein in 1864 (titled Das Gebet vor der Schlacht. Episode aus der vergangenen
Zeit in Polen), via its appearances and disappearances in the arena of history till its
present status of an object in a private collection, which limits its accessibility The re-
construction of the process of constituting its present title ( The Bar Confederates Pray
Before the Battle of Lanckorona], reveals the problematic status of the reference to the
specific battle fought during the Bar Confederation ( 1768-1772). The confrontation of
the pictorial presentation with a real course of the battle of Lanckorona (23 May 1771 )
proves that it was not Grottger's imperative to reconstruct in a probabilistic manner
neither the place nor the course of the specific historical event. The analysis of the
common for the artist and its public cultural competence, whose basis during that
epoch was literature, does not yield an unequivocal identification of specific historical
figures or literary motifs as references for the painting. This probabilism of heterono-
mous, historical and literary references, increases the autonomy of Grottger's painting
as a visual medium.
Following the tenet of art historical hermeneutics that it is not contextual referen-
ces but the pictorial potential activated by the artist that defines the actual status of the
represented event, the subject of the next part of the text is the vision-oriented logic
of the painting. The main reference is Michael Brötje's theory according to which the
surface of the painting (not the material, covered with paint, picture plane - die Fla-
che- but immaterial, invisible instance - die Ebene) constitutes the ultimate instance
for both represented reality which it transcends and whose boundaries it establishes,
and for the spectator, who confronts this reality in the process of viewing with the pic-
torial surface and its boundaries. In the process of viewing, which consists in the inter-
action between structural properties of the painting and the postulated by the viewer
relating to the surface, the spectator experiences, as his or her own, the truth about the
confederates' origin, their connection with nature, their religiosity rootedness in the
motherland, death as their destiny and their devotion to the ultimate absolute instance.
The very experience, residing in the medium, ultimately determines the status of the
heteronomous in relation to the painting, historical and literary references.

Keywords:
the Bar Confederation, Artur Grottger, historical/literary references, autonomy/het-
eronomy relationship, art historical hermeneutics