Focusing on selected works by the pioneers of abstract art active in the opening decades of the twentieth century and by artists of the subsequent waves of geometric abstraction both in Poland and in the world, the paper demonstrates how the reduction to geometric forms enhances the contemplative aspect of art. Understanding geometry and, more broadly, mathematics as a carrier of mystical message emerged already in antiquity and can be associated with Pythagorean notions. Modern art revived this conception of geometry.
The paper discusses the first individual exhibition of Zbigniew Libera (curated by: Marek Goździewski, Laboratorium Building at the Zamek Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, 1992). The artist decided to display three installations: Minuta milczenia – Minuta milczenia; Model końca; La baigneur (The Bather), as well as two drawings, Bez tytułu and [Pathos] with fragments of texts. The main objective of the article is to provide an interpretation of these works. It applies the classic iconological method developed by Erwin Panofsky, with gnosis and Gnosticism indicated as the iconographic context. Meanwhile, the iconological layer encompasses three major aspects: 1) the trauma of the absence of mourning in the modern world, and the philosophical issue of the mind-body relationship, dealing with the difficult heritage of the past; 2) the criticism of the operation of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution in the context of institutional responses to heresies; 3) the 1990s fascination with alternative spirituality.
The paper is an attempt at a reflection on the relations between Polish contemporary art and the romantic tradition, however, understood not in its messianic and Promethean version, but in the convention of the so-called dark romanticism and in light of the uncanny content of the texts of culture of the period. The article provides an analysis of art created recently, which more and more often comes to be filled with surreal characters typical of romantic works: spectres, apparitions, ghosts, vampires, revenants, but also witches and crones. It explores wherefrom this marked turn towards the surreal and the uncanny in the art of the past several years.
During the recent decade, one could observe in the humanities a tendency to reinstate the notion of myth, and attempts at developing new theories going beyond anthropocentric limitations. The characteristic feature of these phenomena is the turn to the superhuman and the irrational.
In the paper, I have presented political pitfalls and shortcomings of such an attitude, at the same time outlining an alternative for the dialectical and speculative overcoming of the aporia inherent in the dualist take on the opposition between the rational and the irrational. For that purpose, I used a critical presentation of Alexandr Dugin and his impact on the politics of the Russian Federation.
The paper aims to present the influences of occultism on the development of the Central European avant-garde, particularly the surrealism of the 1930s and the 1940s. On the one hand, the occultists endorsed the rebellion against the tyranny of reason, which for many avant-gardists embodied the triviality of human life, blocked by the censoring forces of family and public duties. On the other hand, they constituted an inexhaustible source of props, activities, and rituals. Both aspects were extremely important both for the representatives of Czech artificialism (Toyen, and Štyrský), and Surrealism (Teige, Nezval); however, they gained particular importance in the theories and practice of Romanian surrealists: Victor Brauner, and, above all, Gherasim Luca and Gelu Naum. The crucial elements of the occultist thought here are the mysterious figures (vampires, media), as well as objects rendered independent from the control of reason. The space through which these processed beings endowed with a new status are able to reach consciousness is the paper’s eponymous ‘dangerous territory’, as described by Breton, which became the metaphor (merely a metaphor?) for the alliance of the proto-language with the proto-image.
The paper is dedicated to Waldorf education as a proposal to transform man and the world, stemming from the crisis of culture, norms and authorities. The author provides an account of the foundation of Waldorf schools in Germany and in Poland, focusing, above all, on the elements of Steiner’s education through art. She understands the latter as the type of education for the future, enabling one to come in contact with the sacred and create new social utopias.
The paper situates iconic works of avant-garde art, as well as its typical founding myths (such as that of the white cube of the gallery hall) in the context of esoteric symbolism, presenting the heritage of the twentieth-century art as a direct continuation of much earlier cultural phenomena. Combining into a coherent whole textual and visual components, the author uses in practice the unconventional methods of knowledge production available in the field of contemporary art.
One of the factors determining the character of art at the outset of the twentieth century was the development of the occult sciences, which at that time were at the centre of European ideological debate. Esotericism attracted people striving to understand themselves and the world, seeking the truth and the meaning of life. For artists, anthroposophy proved to be one of the most inspiring esoteric sciences. The audacious artistic ideas puts forth by Rudolf Steiner aroused interest in the artistic milieux of Warsaw, Lviv, and Krakow. Many Polish artists, fascinated by Steiner's visionary projects encompassing architecture, industrial design, sculpture, stained-glass making, and glass carving as well as new stage forms (the so-called eurhythmy) were actively involved in anthroposophical circles, attending the Doctor’s lectures held throughout Europe.
The paper focuses on the phenomena of occultism in the territory of the ussr before the country’s formation, during its formation, and in the period of its collapse in 1991. I selected four instances demonstrating how the esoteric thought of the times influenced various milieux. At the turn of the twentieth century, when the influence of occultism was at its peak, the borderlines between science and arcane knowledge were blurred. Seemingly as alien to materialism as can be, occultism functioned on par with scientific research.
The paper focuses on the oeuvre of Maria Anto, comprising both her paintings and her private accounts of dreams, as well as the artist’s amateur poems. Anto’s works were analysed in the light of her oneirically poetic artistic practice. The author studies not only the transfer/transformation of poetry into oneiric visions and their visual representations, but above all the interrelations between the word and the image. Anto’s painting, regarded as surrealist, through the recurrent elements constituting an intimate bestiary and non-mimetic projection of autobiographical experiences (dreams, visions, fascinations, fears) is brought closer to the genre of avant-garde poetry. Anto’s artistic attitude was also interpreted in the context of the transcendent, mediumistic and utopian art of such artists, as Erna Rosenstein, Urszula Broll, and Ewa Kuryluk.
The paper considers a short period in the oeuvre of Zbigniew Makowski – a several months’ stay in Paris in 1962 – and demonstrates that the catalyst for transformations and the stimulus that resulted in the existing artistic and existential experiences crystallising in a new magical painting formula, was surrealism in its late stage, particularly André Breton and Gérard Legrand’s L’Art magique (1957), but also the concepts of exhibitions, such as Intrusion in the Enchanters Domain (D’Arcy Galleries, New York 1960–1961). In the case of Makowski, these sources of inspiration are rather atypically associated with his fascination with the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. The magic of the artist’s paintings created in the 1960s consists above all in the sensual illumination, the marvellous, achieved through the use of painting techniques. At the same time, Makowski introduces a lexicon of signs that refer at once to basic sensual experiences and to the esoteric tradition.
