DOI Artikel:
Leśniakowska, Marta: Pomiędzy. Archeologia badań nad architekturą międzywojenną w Polsce w perspektywie inkluzywnej demokracji spojrzenia
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45167#0075
74
MARTA LEŚNIAKOWSKA
niczona53. W tym rozszerzonym polu lokuje się też historia „niezobowiązująco naszkicowana” w appendixie
Miłobędzkiego, którego treść w ostatnim wydaniu Zarysu (1988) została co prawda przeciągnięta umownie
do roku 1950, ale merytorycznie nie wniosła niczego ponad to, co znalazło się w tekście z 1968 r.54, jakby
Miłobędzki manifestacyjnie omijał aktualizujące perspektywy badawcze i tematy mogące potencjalnie naruszyć
skonstruowany przez niego obraz. Nie rozstał się też ze starą, teraz tylko lekko skorygowaną o przesunięcie
generacyjne regułą czasowego dystansu jako, jak ciągle wierzył, niezbędnego gwaranta uniknięcia badawczego
subiektywizmu. W końcówce lat 80. był to jednak pogląd coraz wyraźniej odrzucany wobec dochodzącej do
głosu nowej historiografii i krytycznej historii sztuki/architektury z jej inkluzywną demokracją spojrzenia.
IN BETWEEN;
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RESEARCH ON INTERWAR ARCHITECTURE IN POLAND
AS SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY OF THE GAZE
Summary
This article, as pail of the “new historiography”, deals with the beginnings of modem research on interwar architecture in Poland.
The author considers said stalling point to be in the first edition of Adam Miłobędzki’s Outline of the History of Architecture in Poland
(1963). Miłobędzki was one of the foremost scholars of architecture in Poland and his book was reprinted three times (1968, 1978, and
1988). Thanks to its modem synthesizing forni, it occupied from the stall a key position in the Polish literature on the subject, and to
this day remains a model academic textbook. A strictly personal work, it used the most up-to-date knowledge of the histoiy of Polish
architecture at that time, and underlined Miłobędzki’s individualism and intellectual independence from the authorities. The “outline”
was not constructed to be a denotative (unequivocal) collection of objects-facts symbols, but rather a connotative (equivocal/polysemous)
text open to interpretations. It had, however, the features of a propaedeutic, using cumulative knowledge in an evolutionist manner and
according to a phasic model. The histoiy of architecture is narrated through the description of buildings chosen for their innovative role
in histoiy. In the system of historical lineality applied therein, the histoiy of architecture breaks off at the beginning of the First World
Wai; thus excluding the interwar period. Its absence was collected by the addition of a short appendix to the second edition (1968),
entitled “Conclusion. Architecture after the First World Wai”. According to Leśniakowska, the inclusion of the appendix was the result
of influence by the neo-avant-garde movement in ait and architecture, activated by a generation of modernist “resistance” to socialist
realism (of which Miłobędzki was pail), which appealed in the mid-1950s. Leśniakowska acknowledges the added “Conclusion” to be
the founding text for the study of interwar architectural culture, and reveals its complex simultaneous synchro-diachronic connections,
intersections, contexts and sociocodes. The author analyses the reasons why the Outline initially ended on the caesura of 1914; it was the
result of a directive of post-war academic ait histoiy which stipulated a one hundred years distance from the subject of research. This
mied out movements from the mid-19th century and excluded contemporary culture from ail historical studies as being more suitable for
ait criticism than histoiy of ait. It was not until the last edition (1988) that Miłobędzki shifted this caesura to around 1950, which could
be explained by the influence of revisionist tendencies in the humanities after the Second World War. Among others, James S. Acker-
man considered the separation of histoiy and criticism as unnatural and harmful, leading to limitations and negative cognitive effects.
Looking at this dispute from the perspective of the “new historiography”, so vital for shaping artistic/architectural historiography,
Leśniakowska points out that the exclusion of the modem/contemporary ait and architecture exposes the mechanism of submitting the
studies on ait to a system of authority and domination, which teaches the “correct” understanding of the past without the phenomena
which could pollute it. The exclusion of the interwar period was therefore a “significant oversight”, a decision rooted in the symbolic
order of knowledge-authority, a symptom of the problem of “using” ait histoiy by a suitably programmed new memory in accordance
with the then doctrine of managing tradition. In the theories of text and of seeing (image as text; text as artefact) and in the system of
representation, that which is omitted is pail of the message, which, with the help of performative practices, provides knowledge about
the author of the information. Hermeneutical reading of the Outline by Miłobędzki, and of his index of architectural values, allows
us to see how architecture appeals as that which is “visible”, and is filled with (politically desirable) meaning. In the index of values
established by Miłobędzki, the work of modernist architects was sanctioned, showing not only (and not as much as) what but why there
were various forms of modernism in Poland, and how they shaped the mosaic or patchwork landscape of the interwar architecture. The
appendix to the Outline has the characteristics of a subjective “attendance list”, which by questioning the automatism and authoritarianism
of the “war” caesuras, points out to a cluster of issues that in the 1960s and the contemporary methodological consciousness outlined the
preliminarily image of architecture in Poland. They set out the future direction of research on the aits of the first half of the 20th century,
which came to the fore with the “new historiography” and critical histoiy of art/architecture with its inclusive democracy of the gaze.
transl. Katarzyna Krzyżagórska-Pisarek
53 N. Bryson, Art in context, [w:] The Point of Theory: Practices of Cultural Analysis, ed. M. Bal, I.E. Boer, Continuum, New
York 1994, s. 66-74.
54 Miłobędzki, Zarys dziejów... (1988), s. 291-310: rozdział Eklektyzm, nowa sztuka, modernizm (ok, 1870-1950).
MARTA LEŚNIAKOWSKA
niczona53. W tym rozszerzonym polu lokuje się też historia „niezobowiązująco naszkicowana” w appendixie
Miłobędzkiego, którego treść w ostatnim wydaniu Zarysu (1988) została co prawda przeciągnięta umownie
do roku 1950, ale merytorycznie nie wniosła niczego ponad to, co znalazło się w tekście z 1968 r.54, jakby
Miłobędzki manifestacyjnie omijał aktualizujące perspektywy badawcze i tematy mogące potencjalnie naruszyć
skonstruowany przez niego obraz. Nie rozstał się też ze starą, teraz tylko lekko skorygowaną o przesunięcie
generacyjne regułą czasowego dystansu jako, jak ciągle wierzył, niezbędnego gwaranta uniknięcia badawczego
subiektywizmu. W końcówce lat 80. był to jednak pogląd coraz wyraźniej odrzucany wobec dochodzącej do
głosu nowej historiografii i krytycznej historii sztuki/architektury z jej inkluzywną demokracją spojrzenia.
IN BETWEEN;
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RESEARCH ON INTERWAR ARCHITECTURE IN POLAND
AS SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY OF THE GAZE
Summary
This article, as pail of the “new historiography”, deals with the beginnings of modem research on interwar architecture in Poland.
The author considers said stalling point to be in the first edition of Adam Miłobędzki’s Outline of the History of Architecture in Poland
(1963). Miłobędzki was one of the foremost scholars of architecture in Poland and his book was reprinted three times (1968, 1978, and
1988). Thanks to its modem synthesizing forni, it occupied from the stall a key position in the Polish literature on the subject, and to
this day remains a model academic textbook. A strictly personal work, it used the most up-to-date knowledge of the histoiy of Polish
architecture at that time, and underlined Miłobędzki’s individualism and intellectual independence from the authorities. The “outline”
was not constructed to be a denotative (unequivocal) collection of objects-facts symbols, but rather a connotative (equivocal/polysemous)
text open to interpretations. It had, however, the features of a propaedeutic, using cumulative knowledge in an evolutionist manner and
according to a phasic model. The histoiy of architecture is narrated through the description of buildings chosen for their innovative role
in histoiy. In the system of historical lineality applied therein, the histoiy of architecture breaks off at the beginning of the First World
Wai; thus excluding the interwar period. Its absence was collected by the addition of a short appendix to the second edition (1968),
entitled “Conclusion. Architecture after the First World Wai”. According to Leśniakowska, the inclusion of the appendix was the result
of influence by the neo-avant-garde movement in ait and architecture, activated by a generation of modernist “resistance” to socialist
realism (of which Miłobędzki was pail), which appealed in the mid-1950s. Leśniakowska acknowledges the added “Conclusion” to be
the founding text for the study of interwar architectural culture, and reveals its complex simultaneous synchro-diachronic connections,
intersections, contexts and sociocodes. The author analyses the reasons why the Outline initially ended on the caesura of 1914; it was the
result of a directive of post-war academic ait histoiy which stipulated a one hundred years distance from the subject of research. This
mied out movements from the mid-19th century and excluded contemporary culture from ail historical studies as being more suitable for
ait criticism than histoiy of ait. It was not until the last edition (1988) that Miłobędzki shifted this caesura to around 1950, which could
be explained by the influence of revisionist tendencies in the humanities after the Second World War. Among others, James S. Acker-
man considered the separation of histoiy and criticism as unnatural and harmful, leading to limitations and negative cognitive effects.
Looking at this dispute from the perspective of the “new historiography”, so vital for shaping artistic/architectural historiography,
Leśniakowska points out that the exclusion of the modem/contemporary ait and architecture exposes the mechanism of submitting the
studies on ait to a system of authority and domination, which teaches the “correct” understanding of the past without the phenomena
which could pollute it. The exclusion of the interwar period was therefore a “significant oversight”, a decision rooted in the symbolic
order of knowledge-authority, a symptom of the problem of “using” ait histoiy by a suitably programmed new memory in accordance
with the then doctrine of managing tradition. In the theories of text and of seeing (image as text; text as artefact) and in the system of
representation, that which is omitted is pail of the message, which, with the help of performative practices, provides knowledge about
the author of the information. Hermeneutical reading of the Outline by Miłobędzki, and of his index of architectural values, allows
us to see how architecture appeals as that which is “visible”, and is filled with (politically desirable) meaning. In the index of values
established by Miłobędzki, the work of modernist architects was sanctioned, showing not only (and not as much as) what but why there
were various forms of modernism in Poland, and how they shaped the mosaic or patchwork landscape of the interwar architecture. The
appendix to the Outline has the characteristics of a subjective “attendance list”, which by questioning the automatism and authoritarianism
of the “war” caesuras, points out to a cluster of issues that in the 1960s and the contemporary methodological consciousness outlined the
preliminarily image of architecture in Poland. They set out the future direction of research on the aits of the first half of the 20th century,
which came to the fore with the “new historiography” and critical histoiy of art/architecture with its inclusive democracy of the gaze.
transl. Katarzyna Krzyżagórska-Pisarek
53 N. Bryson, Art in context, [w:] The Point of Theory: Practices of Cultural Analysis, ed. M. Bal, I.E. Boer, Continuum, New
York 1994, s. 66-74.
54 Miłobędzki, Zarys dziejów... (1988), s. 291-310: rozdział Eklektyzm, nowa sztuka, modernizm (ok, 1870-1950).