DOI Heft:
Nr. 2-3
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#0101
The use of two division and classification criteria, the morphological criterion, dividing the
materiał into persuasive and registcring works, and the thematic criterion, should be seen as
a flaw though it enhaneed the variety. Rigonrosly obeyed, the criteria led to the disruption of
series of prints so that individual pieces hung in different places.
Despite the numerous critical opinions, the exhibition in the National Museum was a meaning-
ful contribution to research on socialist realism. The authors' intention to consider the art of
socialist realism and research into it irrespective of emotions that the Stalinist period still arouses
in Poland is quite significant. (Whether the result came up to the intent is another matter.)
This is how I understand their attempt to single out the „registering" works of socialist realism
or to bring out the hidden dialogue in which some paintings from that period were engaged, to
quote Maryla Sitkowska.
Serious reserch into Polish socialist realism started more or less ten years ago and is developing
at a slow pace, one of the reasons for which may be that the art and the experience of the period
are still vivid and provide an important though negative point of reference also to contempor-
ary artists and researehers. There are grounds for believing that the resonance of the exhibition
Aspects of Socialist Realism will stimulate further research.
Translated by Joanna Holzman
5. Aspects of Socialist Realism, exhibition in the National Museum in Warsaw, 1987, detail
91
materiał into persuasive and registcring works, and the thematic criterion, should be seen as
a flaw though it enhaneed the variety. Rigonrosly obeyed, the criteria led to the disruption of
series of prints so that individual pieces hung in different places.
Despite the numerous critical opinions, the exhibition in the National Museum was a meaning-
ful contribution to research on socialist realism. The authors' intention to consider the art of
socialist realism and research into it irrespective of emotions that the Stalinist period still arouses
in Poland is quite significant. (Whether the result came up to the intent is another matter.)
This is how I understand their attempt to single out the „registering" works of socialist realism
or to bring out the hidden dialogue in which some paintings from that period were engaged, to
quote Maryla Sitkowska.
Serious reserch into Polish socialist realism started more or less ten years ago and is developing
at a slow pace, one of the reasons for which may be that the art and the experience of the period
are still vivid and provide an important though negative point of reference also to contempor-
ary artists and researehers. There are grounds for believing that the resonance of the exhibition
Aspects of Socialist Realism will stimulate further research.
Translated by Joanna Holzman
5. Aspects of Socialist Realism, exhibition in the National Museum in Warsaw, 1987, detail
91