Bulletin du Musée National de Varsovie (20.1979)

The Polish State was one of the most powerful kingdoms in Barocrae Europę. Interior and
exterior reasons caused its decline and fali in 18th century. Three mighty neighbours seized
parts of Poland in the three „partitions", the last one (1795) following the first Polish rising
against Russia under the lead of General Tadeusz Kościuszko, famous for his share in the Ameri-
can fight for independence. Risings took place again in 1830/31 and 1863/64 as well as in 1846.
Ali of them were unsuccessfull.

It was only after the first World war in which Russia opposed the other two occupying powers —
Germany and Austria —■ that a reconstitution of the Polish independent state became possible.
The exhibition shown in the National Museum in Warsaw from llth December 1978 to 25th
February 1979 was devoted to the artistic documentation of the Polish Road to Independence,
to the works of art of varied ąuality which reflected historical events and expressed national
feelings in that period.

The present issue of our Bulletin includes two articles, based on papers read during the seminar
organized at the time of the exhibition, the complete materials of which will be published in
Polish. We hope that information given in the two articles will introduce the readers inte-
rested in problems of 19th century national iconography into the specific character of Polish
imagination of that period.

The editor

Jan Białostocki

ART, POLITIGS, AND NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE

From Classical times on one of the topoi of artistic biography was to stress artists' concentration
on the problems of art and their lack of interest, not to say contempt, for public life. It was
probably the attitude not so much of artists themselves but rather of historiographers, chroniclera
and critics which found expression in their writings about artists. One feels in their formulations
the contempt of the partizans of contemplative life for the „world" and its affairs, which should
not occupy the mind of a sage. The emperor is not worthy even to return to him what is his —
was maintained. It was proclaimed that ars auro prior, whereas political life is a struggle for
gold, for power and all that which remains under the sway of Heli. A creative life was considered
more valuable than a simply active life and creation of an artificial world was more appreciated
than transformation of the real one, which was also — no doubt — a more difficult thing indeed.

Protogenes should have painted indifferently his pictures in the hue and ery of the battle
when Demetrios was capturing Rhodos1, as Parmigianino did during the Saceo di Roma.
About Jan Lievens it has been written by the Burgomaster of Leiden, Jan Orlers, that the artist
was so much engrossed in copying the etchings by Buytewech, that he did not notice the revolu-
tion done by the Remonstrants in Leiden in 16182.

The artists were assimilated to thinkers and scholars: the story of Archimedes drawing his
geometrical figures during the battle at Syracuse is generally known. In the confrontation with
the world and its dirty matters a sage and a creator is defeated. It is better for him to stay elear
of such business. The politics is the domain of kings and let it go its way without involvement
of those who care about lasting values, possible to attain only in concentration and through
assiduous work, far away from the tumult of this world.

1. Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XXXV, 105.

2. H. Schneider, Jan Lievens, Haarlem, 1932, p. 14.

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