DOI Heft:
Nr. 1
DOI Artikel:Rottermund, Andrzej: Stanisław Lorentz as an authority on Polish art of the enlightenment
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18948#0013
3. Stanisław Lorentz
with the Portrait of
Stanisław Kostka Potocki
by David
in the background,
during the preparation
for an exhibition
Tresors d'art polonais.
Chefs d'oeuvre des
Musees de Pologne,
Bordeaux, May 1961
knowledge of Prof. Lorentz’s views, it is difficult to appreciate. In all his
comprehensive works about Polish architecture in the Enlightenment era, he
disputed the theses of Siegfried Giedon, Fiske Kimball, Emil Kaufmann, and
Nicolaus Pevsner. These experts, as a result of their interest in the eras preceding
and following the Enlightenment, broke down the concept of Classicism to the
point at which it almost ceased to exist. They treated Classicism as the last
expression of the Baroąue and interpreted later works as the vanguard of
Romanticism. Lorentz, however, argued that the influence of Enlightenment
ideas on art, and particularly on architecture, expressed themselves in the
expanding goals architecture had set for itself. The purpose for commissioning
an architectural work was not only, as in the Baroąue, the demonstration or
praise of one’s family, dynasty, State, institution, religion or the sophisticated
refinement of one’s taste, but also the expression of social and civic ideals. The
recent changes in social structure brought such social tasks to architecture
commissions by private individuals as well as by institutions. The new forms
appearing in buildings were a reflection of Enlightenment ideas in architecture,
characterised by logie, harmony, and rhythm. It was precisely this view of
Enlightenment architecture, different from those of German and Anglo-Saxon
scholars, in which the originality and value of Lorentz’s work lies.
His first articulation of the idea was embodied in the major exhibition
The Century of the Enlightenment in Poland, which opened in December
1951 at the National Museum in Warsaw. Lorentz was the inspirational
impetus, curator, and scholarly consultant of what was the most comprehensive
display of Polish Enlightenment art and culture ever mounted. The pubhcation
11
with the Portrait of
Stanisław Kostka Potocki
by David
in the background,
during the preparation
for an exhibition
Tresors d'art polonais.
Chefs d'oeuvre des
Musees de Pologne,
Bordeaux, May 1961
knowledge of Prof. Lorentz’s views, it is difficult to appreciate. In all his
comprehensive works about Polish architecture in the Enlightenment era, he
disputed the theses of Siegfried Giedon, Fiske Kimball, Emil Kaufmann, and
Nicolaus Pevsner. These experts, as a result of their interest in the eras preceding
and following the Enlightenment, broke down the concept of Classicism to the
point at which it almost ceased to exist. They treated Classicism as the last
expression of the Baroąue and interpreted later works as the vanguard of
Romanticism. Lorentz, however, argued that the influence of Enlightenment
ideas on art, and particularly on architecture, expressed themselves in the
expanding goals architecture had set for itself. The purpose for commissioning
an architectural work was not only, as in the Baroąue, the demonstration or
praise of one’s family, dynasty, State, institution, religion or the sophisticated
refinement of one’s taste, but also the expression of social and civic ideals. The
recent changes in social structure brought such social tasks to architecture
commissions by private individuals as well as by institutions. The new forms
appearing in buildings were a reflection of Enlightenment ideas in architecture,
characterised by logie, harmony, and rhythm. It was precisely this view of
Enlightenment architecture, different from those of German and Anglo-Saxon
scholars, in which the originality and value of Lorentz’s work lies.
His first articulation of the idea was embodied in the major exhibition
The Century of the Enlightenment in Poland, which opened in December
1951 at the National Museum in Warsaw. Lorentz was the inspirational
impetus, curator, and scholarly consultant of what was the most comprehensive
display of Polish Enlightenment art and culture ever mounted. The pubhcation
11