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‘… EITHHER VERY YOUNG OR DEAD…’ ‘THE LIMBO OF THE SCATTERED PRESENCE‘. EDITORIAL DISCUSSION

Magda Ujma: Why is it women we think of when we say ‘ageism’? When I invited different people to write texts on the subject, they all wanted to write about old actresses or old female artists and curators. It seems one‑dimensional.

Kinga Nowak: The problem simply affects women more, because they are perceived through the prism of appearance and attractiveness, and when these features are gone, women lose their major assets. They don’t cope so well with ageing, but it affects men, too. For example, Grzegorz Sztwiertnia, in the text published in this issue of ‘Elementy’, wrote about the exhibition he had made in Nowy Sącz. And he shows there very well how difficult it was.

MU: It’s not as obvious as in the case of women.

KN: Yes. It affects matters less related to appearance, and more to vitality or physical fitness.

After the dark 1980s, […], we had  a need for new faces and new heroes of artistic life. At that time, Ras­ter built its success on being young, untainted by the previous reality, and promoting a new, apolitical art

Michał Zawada: The ‘cult of youth’ has prevailed across the Polish artistic community for at least two decades. Mature professors and artists were treated with esteem in the classical academic narrative, but at least since the beginning of the 21st century there have been numerous initiatives aimed only at the youngest participants of the art scene. We can also get an impression that the threshold of youth is systematically lowering, as if there was some genetic or biological change in our species. It used to be forty years, then thirty‑seven, thirty‑five, thirty‑three, today you can say that thirty is becoming the threshold.

The mythical threshold represents the moment when access to the open field of art may close. This is sensed by students who are aware that the time for the debut has shortened significantly. Today, competitiveness begins already during the studies – careers begin to accelerate, there is a hunt for those who seem the freshest and therefore the most attractive to the circles of art galleries or criticism. These are most often people under the age of 30. In Poland, there’s a tendency to begin art studies immediately after graduating from secondary school, which means that, statistically, it’s very young people who study art. Of course, there are also older students, but the overwhelming majority of those starting the academy are people around the age of nineteen or twenty, who graduate at the age of twenty‑five. And if they haven’t gained visibility in gallery spaces by that point, they begin to look over their shoulder. This tension can be seen not only in graduates, but even in 4th and 3rd year students. The lack of exhibition proposals is recognised as a significant problem, it is talked about in the studios, and the lack of interest begins to stigmatise.

MU: The cult of youth is a feature of our post‑transformation reality in general. After 1989, there was a need to clean up the field of art and introduce new phenomena and new names. After the dark 1980s, when many artists compromised themselves by collaborating with the authorities, we had a need for new faces and new heroes of artistic life. At that time, Raster built is success on being young, untainted by the previous reality, and promoting a new, apolitical art, which was – as they called it – surface art, a new trivialism describing the new little stabilisation. That was when the figure of the artist‑master began to enter a crisis. Who was the last master? Perhaps Kantor – and he died precisely on the threshold of the great change.

Jakub Woynarowski: In the 1990s, the category of young art began to take shape in the general awareness. Famous auctions and ‘compasses’ of young art turned up, treated as a radar trying to home in on the freshest, newest phenomena. Let us note that, at the same time, no other age group of artists have got any designation at all, not only seniors or doyens but, above all, the middle‑aged group. It remains unnamed, and this is a wide age range, currently ranging from about thirty to sixty.

KN: That means the greatest part of the creative life.

JW: And it encompasses most of the artists. Meanwhile, what is considered to be key period is when a narrow window opens between the end of studies and the so‑called ‘walk through the desert’, those few years after graduation, when the artist confirms that he or she is able to function in the field of art at all. And we have to remember about such conditions as starting a family, which brings a limitation of mobility and exclusion from scholarship trips… At the same time, we are dealing with the deficit, increasing with age, of the energy which must be put into the so‑called ‘mingling’, meaning the broadly understood networking, which is certainly an important category defining the functioning of the artworld. There are a lot of people who disappear after they are thirty or thirty‑five. This threshold is, indeed, regularly set in scholarship and competition regulations. In their manifesto, Łukasz Surowiec and Marta Romankiv raised the issue of the age caesura, indicating the need to abolish it as one of the matters to be attended to. Incidentally, the magic limit of thirty‑five years of age is in place not only in Poland. Recently, attention has been paid to the organisation of art residence spaces. They usually don’t include an option of stay of families or guardians with children. By default, residences have been associated with a way of functioning that favours freelancers and young people, not bound professionally, without a full‑time job, a family, or a permanent residence. If we follow the lists of young artists who were at the top at some point, it turns out that entire age groups gradually disappear from sight.

KN: Because if they don’t fall out of the field of art at all, they simply stabilise. But this makes them no longer interesting, because they are so repetitive…

JW: And yet it’s very good to dig into the selected topic, gradually deepening the search. Meanwhile, the need for novelty forces a constant rotation in the ‘field of visibility’. At some point, when applying for some scholarship applications when I was still eligible for them, I realised I was competing not only with my students, but also with the students of my students.

KN: There is a certain difference between the circulation in galleries and in institutions. In the gallery circulation, the threshold is much higher, meaning the younger the person, the better, because youth bears a kind of overproductivity. The case is a bit different for institutions. They do allow slightly older people. In galleries, we have a choice: either very young or dead…

MU: The emphasis on the young generation is related to the logic of the market.

JW: The new product logic.

MU: Galleries work according to trends: they introduce new products or refresh old ones. And since it’s difficult to radically refresh the old ones, especially those between thirty and sixty, it’s better to go for the subsequent waves of ‘youth’. In my opinion, the logic of the market is also related to the functioning of the peripheral, Polish art field, the institutional one: it is easier for employers to simply pick young people who can be squeezed like a lemon. They haven’t yet been bound by commitments of life, they have no families, they’re mobile and so on.

JW: They’re less experienced, so they don’t know all the ‘tricks’ yet.

MU: They have no experience, so they can’t set conditions. In cultural institutions, older employees are often marginalised or cast off; examples include the well‑known Nomus scandal concerning Aneta Szyłak or an earlier one, with Adam Budak at the Bunkier Sztuki. Older people are experienced and set conditions, so reaching for young people who are saturated with artisol, have enthusiasm and passion, and can be used for ridiculous amounts of money, brings nothing but benefits to the institutions.

MZ: Favouritism towards young people is visible in art competitions and scholarships, but also – what’s particularly surprising – in collections. For example, the mBank collection contains only young art. Why does this happen? The answer is very simple.

KN: It’s ch3eaper.

MZ: Fishing out students as an investment opportunity.

MU: So, the situation of young artists is a poorly recognised aspect of ageism.

MZ: Yes, what prevails in the case of young artists is the problem of pressure for which they’re often not ready. The requirements towards them used to apply to mature creators. Now a twenty‑five‑year‑old must formulate a mature statement and be ready for absolute independence, to make very difficult decisions related not only to the topics they raise but also to the marketisation of their own work. Every call from a gallery and every token of a curator’s interest is treated as a signal of perhaps the only chance for a career. It’s extremely difficult to navigate in such situations, especially when you have no experience. This also means that, in the didactic process, it’s difficult to find the right balance between supporting independent work in the conditions of the capitalist art market and taking care to maintain the integrity and self‑esteem independent of commercial success.

MU: The situation in the field of art reminds me of the situation on the music market. The labels hunt for young, inexperienced performers. And it’s only many years later that they regain their artistic freedom.

As an example, I want to name a couple of painters whom I value very much. They are Marina Adams and Stanley Whitney, two abstractionists who emerged at a very mature age.

MZ: That might be a good analogy. In the 1970s or 1980s, it was rare for the first single to top the charts. Now, if the first one doesn’t catch on, the artist gets written off.

KN: I wonder if treating art so temporarily is the specificity of our market. Young people are not aware that they must create in the perspective of several decades and they must spread their forces over this period. How to avoid burnout and stay fresh? At the same time, it’s difficult to postpone the decision to start.

But there are also reverse fashions. In American art, I see a vogue for discovering older artists. As an example, I want to name a couple of painters whom I value very much. They are Marina Adams and Stanley Whitney, two abstractionists who emerged at a very mature age. Although they created over the years, their career developed very slowly, until their breakthrough. They are probably in their seventies now, and their works are so fresh that it is difficult to find them a counterpart among the young. These people enjoy painting, it’s very obvious they have retained their inventiveness and energy.

MU: I will add the example of Tomasz Zawadzki, who told me recently that the older he gets, the more he puts everything else aside and wants to devote himself only to painting. And that he finally feels calm and is able to do light things that he could not do before.

JW: Exactly, it’s hard to stay calm when you’re in a frenzy, trying to make it before closing the narrow five‑year window that allows you to make a career.

Some things do not matter to them, which translates into a greater sense of peace. Early artistic activity, on the other hand, is associated with the generation of continuous movement.

MZ: Although the contemporary field of art, at least declaratively, is characterised by inclusiveness and pluralism, the varying pace of maturation is often forgotten. We’re all different, but we’re all supposed to be mature around the age of twenty‑five. The experience of working with students shows how these people come to binding solutions at a different pace. Sometimes it may be in their second year of studies, sometimes many years after graduation.

JW: It’s also worth remembering that most of the fresh graduates from the academy face a crisis related to leaving the existing environment and entering completely new relationships and a new model of work, related to the lack of any guardianship. Only those who are the best, the most effective, the fastest in adapting to the situation, will survive. These people must create their own infrastructure. Sometimes they spontaneously form groups. Collectives are often a springboard for individuals – it is rare for an artist with no connections to suddenly appear out of nowhere and cope perfectly. Older artists have the liberty of doing certain things. Some things do not matter to them, which translates into a greater sense of peace. Early artistic activity, on the other hand, is associated with the generation of continuous movement – the greater the accumulation of people and events in a short period of time, the better. Overproduction is a phenomenon typical of the period of the end of studies and the period immediately following the studies.

MU: And what would you say about the aforementioned ‘middle‑agedness’? I wonder how this period of the artist’s life can be problematised, what questions could be asked. What are the models of being an artist between youth and old age?

KN: The great advantage is being associated with the college one has graduated from; it makes it possible to spread productivity over many years. People who don’t have such opportunities seem to fall out of the environment and then it’s very difficult for them to return to the art scene. It is good if someone manages to enter into cooperation with a gallery and the cooperation is constructive. The gallery can spread the presence of the artist in question over some years.

MU: This explains why there’s such a great rush to get a PhD in the arts. Everyone hopes to prolong the protected environment of education, but also to find a job afterwards.

MZ: Act 2.0. redesigned the form of doing PhD studies by closing cross‑institutional studies and reducing the pool of eligible people even more. However, this is worrying.

MU: But what are middle‑aged artists’ strategies for survival? I’m thinking of Jakub Ziółkowski, who has gained such a position on the market that he works directly with collectors. On the other hand – but this is already a different generation – Zofia Kulik, who established a foundation. And Zuzanna Janin, who at one point opened a gallery.

JW: Creating a gallery is also young artists’ strategy. The problem is that these places rarely persist for more than a few years.

KN: Until a certain extent, we can accept that the gallery sells our works as goods, but at some point, we want to manage it by ourselves. And if you are in such a position that you can afford it, you try to become independent, gain more influence on your work.

MU: Some artists work in cultural institutions. This often happens in smaller towns. I’m now thinking of Leszek Golec, settled for years in Orońsko, at the Centre of Polish Sculpture. In addition, an important stage in the artist’s life is often the decision to move, most frequently to Warsaw.

KN: The pandemic situation made the need to be in the centre less important, because a lot can be done online, without having to be so present. Sometimes Instagram is enough.

JW: It was possible to function remotely before but, on the other hand, I’ve witnessed that even after the pandemic, many people prefer to meet up ‘in real life’. If I propose an online conversation, it often turns out not to be an option, because it’s not going to be a ‘real’ meeting and contact with the artist must be direct – preferably in a natural environment, i.e., in their studio, if they have one (implicitly: they should have one).

MU: I’m still trying to find the key to middle age. Its distinguishing mark is the (relative) stabilisation, which entails settling down and giving up intense social life. The person has already found a place at some point in the network, has reached some level in the hierarchy… what’s next?

JW: There comes a time when you give up on it, simply due to the lack of time to generate the ‘energy foam’ around yourself. You prefer to create something specific, something for yourself.

MZ: Running a gallery gives you an opportunity to get to know people you wouldn’t meet in other circumstances. Contacts are established by making exhibitions and these are contacts with artists, but also with curators and the whole environment related to art. A gallery can be a good networking tool. Similarly the studio, because some studios at academies operate in this way.

KN: It’s very important that we stay at our place, and others visit us, you can invite someone from Poznań, Wrocław, Łódź, and you don’t necessarily have to leave.

MU: Zuzanna Janin worked in a similar way, making her TV shows and inviting various people to interviews. This is also the way Jadwiga Sawicka works: previously, she travelled extensively around Poland and the world, and now she works as a city curator‑activist in Przemyśl. She invites people to her place, on her own terms. Artur Żmijewski was a curator too and has an editorial episode at ‘Krytyka Polityczna’ in his biography as well.

JW: They use the capital accumulated earlier…

MU: I also think of Robert Kuśmirowski, who had an exhibition in a different place every month when he was a young artist. But later he slowed down and now, if he engages in solo exhibitions, he invites groups of friends to take part. He made a conscious decision that his recognisability and capital are to work for the benefit of people who are not visible. He draws in people who function on the periphery of the field of art.

JW: This is the advantage of middle age, when you can take the liberty to do what you want – for example, generate visibility where we are dealing with its deficit.

MZ: We haven’t said it yet, but the competitiveness we are discussing is primarily due to the huge number of graduates. Every year, there are several hundred people – these fresh painters, sculptors, intermedia artists, printmakers, photographers.

We can also get an impression that the threshold of youth is systematically lowering, as if there was some genetic or biological change in our species. It used to be forty years, then thirty‑seven, thirty‑five, thirty‑three…

JW: The question is how many work later in the field of art. From time to time, radical ideas appear to limit the number of places at art colleges. But after all, you can get to the college by taking the last positions on the list, and then achieve spectacular success. Therefore, this extra group is necessary – accepting more people makes it easier to select the most talented.

KN: It’s good when those who have not stayed in the field of art then strengthen their home region or work using their education, because they build social awareness of art in this way; the more such people there are, the higher the likelihood that society will be opening up to art.

JW: The specificity of artworld is that it’s very selective when it comes to distributing attention, and therefore it’s easy to omit someone who is slowly building their career and accumulating all the necessary points in the résumé, but without generating visibility. Sometimes such a person misses the floodlight at a given moment and just goes on unnoticed. There is no shortage of such, precisely from the middle‑aged cohort, who are neither old nor young, not classics yet, but no longer debutants looking for their place either.

MU: I’m curious, in whom do you see the potential for becoming a classic? For example, Dawid Radziszewski tries to make a classic of Adam Rzepecki. And what do you think is the place of Józef Robakowski? He’s a classic, after all. But one that doesn’t let other classicise him.

KN: The case of Rzepecki is similar. They don’t aspire to become classics. There’s one more thing that connects to what we’re talking about. Every time we show something, we’re confronted with evaluation. And when you’re young, you have to give in to this assessment, but later you don’t always want to and don’t strive to confront criticism. And perhaps a later start, related to pursuing a career in a semi‑visible way, carrying the need to expose oneself to evaluation, is simply very difficult. For this reason, people simply give up making a career, even at the cost of visibility.

JW: And in terms of retrospective exhibitions, which are a sign of becoming a classic, or at least aspiring to this status, it is worth remembering that in the university nomenclature – in the reports that we have to fill in – a retrospective is defined as an exhibition covering a period of at least fifteen years of creative activity. According to evaluation definitions, the moment of the first retrospective happens therefore fifteen years after graduation, around forty. However, this requires a certain continuity, which is broken if someone leaves the field of art or changes the nature of their activity. For example, they move into the area of cultural animation or change the circuit, switching to the field of film or theatrical set design. There are many such cases.

MZ: I like it that there’s no longer a dominant belief that the only perspective for someone who studies art is to make a career in a Warsaw gallery. You can retrain, look elsewhere, and there are simply more opportunities for female graduates.

JW: Besides, we often have a clearer hierarchy of visibility in other creative circuits. In the case of film, there’s an entire festival circuit (often functioning in the ‘open call’ mode), which allows the work to live, win awards, gain visibility among various juries, critics, and audiences. Film works don’t get lost so easily and even if they aren’t appreciated, they generally remain noticed. There are websites where all this is noted, evaluated, reviewed by Internet users, and so on. Meanwhile, works from the field of contemporary art often end up in a complete media vacuum. Therefore, it’s very easy to make someone absent – it’s enough that a few people from the centre deliberately ignore something. In the film circuit, someone’s trajectory remains visible. In the case of the literary circuit, a published book, meetings, festivals, competitions, reviews, databases all remain. All this, to a minimum extent, gets recorded somewhere, is subject to verification, and builds up. At the same time, if someone has had a lot of scattered exhibitions in important places but has never got a retrospective or a cross‑sectional article in the industry press – their creative path has not been naturally summarised and made visible. If they have not made the effort to build such a story for themselves, to put up a digital epitaph on the Internet, then what remains as an alternative is often the limbo of the scattered presence. An additional problem is that even exhibitions in prestigious galleries often don’t receive a single review, let alone reliable documentation. At this point, a large part of our exhibition history is saved only on Facebook – it remains to be hoped that this database won’t be erased too quickly.

MU: Hence the importance of the activity of people such as Konrad Ciszkowski who travels around Poland and photographs artistic life because that’s his hobby. He visits not only exhibition openings but also studios.

JW: Whenever I look for the documentation of an exhibition, I inevitably go to him, because he’s one of the few people doing it consistently. And he really travels around Poland. In general, however, there’s a lack of people or institutions that would compile a visual archive of artistic life systematically, on an ongoing basis.

MU: And galleries often have a problem with documentation. It’s either poor or absent altogether.

JW: However, if the practice of creating comprehensive databases was common, it would certainly help to maintain the visibility of vanishing artists who have been functioning for a long time, even though they’re less organised.

MZ: It’s actually a structural problem that we’re dealing with. This is precisely what causes the unequal distribution of visibility between generations of artists.