Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (20.2020)

13. Wilhelm Wachtel,
Awaitingpogrom, ca. 1935,
Museum of the Borderlands
in Lubaczów, inventory no.
ml/106ia/ii. Photo after:
<https://tinyurl.com/
n879x7re>
a see p. 258

head with her left hand resting on a bundle, and a baby boy is napping on her
lap. Behind the woman there is an undefined object, perhaps a suitcase with
belongings, with the other two sleeping children leaning against it. To the right
of the composition sits a worried-looking elderly couple. A woman in a modest
outfit, covered with a scarf flowing to the sides, and a man with a long grey beard,
in a frock, and a skullcap. They both hołd their heads in their hands in a gesture
of worry and anxiety.
Wilhelm Wachtel again builds the atmosphere of the work with a play of light
and shadow that brings out the faces of the people represented and their gestures.
Dark spots resembling clouds swirling in the background are also disturbing.
The composition is calm and elear in its arrangement, focusing the viewer’s gazę
on the face of the woman and the sleeping boy, to which straight lines could be
drawn by following the gazę of the elderly couple. With this procedurę, the art-
ist created a relationship between the viewer and the depicted character, so that
the former would empathize with the situation of the latter, and get closer to
those who suffered banishment.
Awaiting pogrom108
The artist continues the narrative of the persecution of the Jewish community
in the next image of the series (see: Fig. 13). In the foreground, there are three
men in the prime of life, facing the viewer against the background of a house
with an open door, in which one can see a woman looking nervously around
and a child hiding under her arm. On the left, we see an old Jew in a dark
frock and with a Staff, who turns towards the woman. The men standing in
front of the building seem to be waiting. Two of them are armed, the first on
the left with an axe and the other with a cane. The third clenches his left hand
into a fist, and hides the right hand nonchalantly in his jacket pocket. The
fact that the feet of each of the figures are slightly set forward gentle renders
the composition dynamie. The woman also breaks the calm of the scene. The
movements of her hands, one grasping the open door and the other pointing
at the old man, seem violent and anxious. The climate of fear is completed by
the expressions on the faces of a woman and a child, their mouths wide open,
and their eyebrows raised.
The title of the lithograph clearly States that the men depicted on the fore-
ground were given the task of defending their own community - women,
children and the elderly - against the attackers. In this case, the artist refrains
from playing with chiaroscuro, and builds the atmosphere through gestures
and the arrangement of the figures’ bodies, as well as the weapons in the hands
of the defenders.
The sight of armed men staring at the viewer as an observer makes him reflect
on his own relationship with the depicted community. This confrontation makes
him feel like one of the potential torturers. Wachtel therefore analyses the pheno-
menon of stigmatization experienced by the Jewish community in the diaspora,
and forces the viewer to position himself in this conflict.
108 W. Wachtel, Awaitingpogrom, ca. 1935, lithograph, 59.5 x 43.5 cm, mkl, inventory no. ml/io6ia/ii,
<http://judaika.polin.pl/dmuseion/docmetadata?id=65ó4&show_nav=true> (accessed on
25.04.2020).

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ARTICLES Maksymilian Puzio