DOI Heft:
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DOI Artikel:Włodarczyk, Wojciech: "Aspects of Socialist Realism": Exhibition in the National Museum in Warsaw
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18904#0098
The organisers of the cxhibition in the National Museum did not intend to prcsent Polish
socialist realism in its entirety. In their search for the interpretative key, they turned towards
the poster. According to Maryla Sitkowska, works of socialist realism may be best characterised
and singled out from other works on the basis of the former's „poster-like" quality (implying
a utility function, lucidity and a moralising quality). Sitkowska adopted Jan Słomczyński^
classification from 1947, and divided posters into ,,active" and ,,informative" ones, but it is not
quite elear whether the division should apply to the subject or its handling. Maryla Sitkowska
applied the division to the exhibits and consequently had them split into propagandist works
and ones dedicated to the „cool registration of daily, thwarted, crammed, provincial reality".
Yet the paintings by the foremost Warsaw Armory Show painters, Jan Lebeinstein and Barbara
Jonscher, lithograps by Jan Tarasin and Walerian Borowczyk, drawings by Jan Dziędziora
and Marek Oberliinder (Fig. 4), though roughly performing the ,,c;)ol registration" function,
do not fit within the framework of socialist realism as prescribed by the authorities. Their fabric
as drawings and paintings is evidently quite different.
Two other facts should bc taken into account if the poster has becu accepted as the starting
point to the interpretation of Polish socialist realism. One is linked with the position of the
different branches of art within the doctrine of socialist realism. Painting and architecture
(and sculpture, subordinated to the latter) had traditionally had the foremost position in aest-
2. Włodzimierz Zakrzewski, Harrawing, 1951, oil
vi
on canvas, Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe
88
socialist realism in its entirety. In their search for the interpretative key, they turned towards
the poster. According to Maryla Sitkowska, works of socialist realism may be best characterised
and singled out from other works on the basis of the former's „poster-like" quality (implying
a utility function, lucidity and a moralising quality). Sitkowska adopted Jan Słomczyński^
classification from 1947, and divided posters into ,,active" and ,,informative" ones, but it is not
quite elear whether the division should apply to the subject or its handling. Maryla Sitkowska
applied the division to the exhibits and consequently had them split into propagandist works
and ones dedicated to the „cool registration of daily, thwarted, crammed, provincial reality".
Yet the paintings by the foremost Warsaw Armory Show painters, Jan Lebeinstein and Barbara
Jonscher, lithograps by Jan Tarasin and Walerian Borowczyk, drawings by Jan Dziędziora
and Marek Oberliinder (Fig. 4), though roughly performing the ,,c;)ol registration" function,
do not fit within the framework of socialist realism as prescribed by the authorities. Their fabric
as drawings and paintings is evidently quite different.
Two other facts should bc taken into account if the poster has becu accepted as the starting
point to the interpretation of Polish socialist realism. One is linked with the position of the
different branches of art within the doctrine of socialist realism. Painting and architecture
(and sculpture, subordinated to the latter) had traditionally had the foremost position in aest-
2. Włodzimierz Zakrzewski, Harrawing, 1951, oil
vi
on canvas, Warsaw, Muzeum Narodowe
88