Aleksy Wójtowicz
WHAT MAY BE SEEN AND WHY THAT EXACTLY? ART COMPETITIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CONSERVATIVE SWING

On 20th June 2024, Andrzej Biernacki was dismissed from the position of director of the Museum of Art in Łódź. For some in the Polish artistic community, this date has become the symbolic end of the conservative swing –pressure on art and its consecrating institutions exerted by neoconservative authorities since 2015. For historians of contemporary Polish art, the impact of the conservative swing may be a key factor in capturing the dynamics of the symbolic struggles, as well as in describing artistic and institutional strategies between 2015 and 2023. Operating in conditions of specific pressure from the political sphere and implementation of neoconservative cultural policy resulted not simply in the weakening of the prestige of local consecrating institutions (and therefore – those that have the potential to create hierarchies and canons) in favour of other entities, mainly related to the art market. What also changed were the strategies used by other actors on the art stage – in particular young artists whose creative careers began during the rule of the United Right. The present text is dedicated to these people – as witnesses of an unprecedented institutional crisis and at the same time as participants in symbolic struggles in the field. Art competitions, commonly treated as tools which may (but by no means have to) support careers, or – following the observations of sociologist Piotr Szenajch – regarded as a specific type of vehicles for advancement within the field will provide context for analysing the change in strategy and its relation to the conservative swing.

A conservative swing withing the conservative swing

In trying to define what the conservative swing means, readers interested in art in Poland come up against two definitions of this term, or rather – the outcome of its evolution, which began around 2014. Together with the opening of a group exhibition entitled Co widać. Polska sztuka dzisiaj (What May Be Seen. Polish Art Today) at Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the conservative swing appeared as a term for “withdrawn, conformist attitudes focused on the closest environment, maintaining a certain type of social and material order in which artists grew up”, but it also signified art which is “not devoid of artistry and panache” and “of elegant nature”¹ whose conservatism refers primarily to traditional means of expression, not the content. For this reason, the curators of the exhibition also used the term “modern visual art” interchangeably, and in the discussion accompanying the exhibition, other meanings of the term conservative swing also appeared such as “loosening ties with the avant‑garde” and “new academism” as well as (to a slightly lesser extent), threat that may result from the consequences of social polarisation and the growing impact of neoconservatism. The attempt to diagnose the current state of the field indicated there – in this case using the example of an exhibition of selected art strategies and tendencies in one of the most important consecrating institutions in Poland – contained the observation that we are dealing with the latest art, which accepts the status quo, while in a way celebrating the development of the local art market and the stabilisation of the position of national institutions. Moreover, the exhibition curated by Sebastian Cichocki and Łukasz Ronduda presented artists who were already present – both in the gallery and institutional circulation, mostly with a relatively stable status, for whom presence at this exhibition was a confirmation of their position. The canon‑forming effort was also imprinted in the very title of the event, where “what you can see” may be interpreted as what is already visible, important and legitimised by the prestige of the institution.

After 2015, following the victory of the United Right in parliamentary elections, the notion of the conservative swing evolved. The concept of “a good change” advocated during the election campaign assumed overcoming the liberal status quo by means of a comprehensive replacement of elites and values. In the context of culture and art, the priority was to establish a new canon of texts and cultural works, consistent with neoconservative cultural and historical policy, by means of ideologically motivated interference in the programmes of entities endowed with the highest symbolic capital in the field. Declaratively, the “good change” in culture assumed pluralism – the inclusion of marginalised attitudes and works; while in practice it was a revision of the latest history of art by eliminating its relationship with the liberal narrative and stigmatising broadly understood non‑conservative attitudes as morally and artistically questionable evidence of colonial and political (party) dependence². The evolution of the universal meaning of the term conservative swing after 2015 – and particularly after 2019 – was impacted by external factors: the term referring to the formal aspect of works and a withdrawn attitude of artists, transformed into a term describing a specific situation in the field of art (and at the same time in culture): strong political and economic pressure, striving to eliminate previous artistic hierarchies and an attempt to establish new ones. Along with this change in meaning, the term conservative swing began to emphasise primarily the conservative content of works, but also their form, as well as the views of artists and the institutional context. However, when analysing the reception of young people’s works over the last decade, one may get the impression that the term conservative swing (in both senses) played a key role in symbolic struggles not only between the conservative and liberal camps, but also contributing to the polarisation within the liberal camp in the field of Polish art.

Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the field of art, both of these conflicts may be described as a struggle for possible autonomy and defence against a specific coup d’état. In the Rules of Art, such an attack is defined as “efforts to impose principles of external hierarchisation by using political power (state intervention, including by commissions and administrative bodies, in the internal affairs of fields of cultural production), economic power […], the power of the press”³. In the case of the described ideological conflict after 2015, the “takeover of institutions” by neoconservatives was perceived as an event which resulted in loss of trust of the field in the newly appointed directors and the circles associated with them, and a rapid decrease in the prestige of the institutions which they started to manage⁴. In other words, the attempt to establish a new canon and hierarchy proved ineffective because the previous consecrating institutions lost their symbolic power. On the other hand, as a result of the institutional crisis that was brought about, some of the competences related to establishing hierarchies and managing capital were taken over by private entities such as commercial galleries or other non‑institutional players on the art market. An assessment of this situation – and especially its long‑term effects on the autonomy and shape of the field – is ambiguous and problematic for the participants themselves. In a radical interpretation of the rules of the art field, the situation of a take‑over of competences which establish hierarchies by entities associated with the commercial segment may also be described as a specific coup d’état, but as one that was carried out by the economic field. According to Bourdieu, commercial entities are players in the art field whose role in building the canon and hierarchy is burdened with accusations of mercantilism and conservatism (both formal, content‑wise and political; as a bourgeois attitude celebrating the status quo)⁵. According to Luc Boltanski, the take‑over of tools and competences for establishing hierarchies by the art market is the result of the acceleration of circulation modes in favour of the capitalist mode, attuned to late­‑capitalist reality. The researcher described it in the context of mature art markets where for decades assignation of value to works of art has been undergoing systematic and radical acceleration⁶ and consequently, diminishment of the role of non‑commercial entities (such as critics, institutions or the so‑called third sector) in defining the hierarchy of importance of artists and their works. And although in the Polish case the acceleration of circulation described by Boltanski has been visible for a dozen or so years (roughly since the first de­cade of the 21st century), the last de­cade seems to be an exceptional moment in this process – mainly due to the rapid pace of change. This situation, in addition to the previously described favourable political conditions, was also shaped by the short‑term art boom related to the COVID‑19 pandemic, as well as by the dominance of the belief that a real alternative to institutions in crisis and their weakening role are commercial entities, wrongly perceived in the liberal perspective as apolitical and autonomous from the field of power. Therefore, the conflict in the milieu consisting of those opposing pressure from neoconservatives took on complicated dynamics.

Analysing the impact of the conservative swing (in both senses) on the reception of art by the youngest people whose debut or the beginning of a full‑fledged artistic career took place between 2015 and 2023, I indicated several possible reasons for this conflict. Among them, I mentioned an aversion to nonrepresentational trends, well‑established in Polish art history, and their identification as an inadequate and morally questionable attitude. I also drew attention to an attachment to the category of generationali­ty and “generational manifestos”, as well as distinct discrepancy between the expectations of art critics which clearly disregard the reality of working in the field and the current state of art production⁷. This last factor seems to be key to understanding contemporary art strategies in the Polish art field and to specifying the significance of economic incentives in art self‑censorship. In the last decade, the youngest in the field have become witnesses and participants of an exceptional situation which arouse in 1989 – a significant strengthening of the commercial sector, a sudden weakening of the role and prestige of institutions while operating in the face of censorship motivated by moral and political factors.

Competitions as vehicles for advancement

In his book entitled Odczarowanie talentu. Socjografia stawania się uznanym artystą the author, sociologist Piotr Szenajch postulates an examination of vehicles for advancement in the context of bio­graphies of artists. The concept, directly derived from the metaphor of the social elevator, for Szenajch signifies events or environments which “move towards larger capital resources, towards prestigious fields and towards the relevance of discourses which feed these fields. This mobility may also have the dimension of intellectual, identity or aesthetic transformation; transformation of expectations and imagination, and lastly of practices and predispositions” ⁸. The sociologist notes that the role/path of such a vehicle “is not equally simple, uniformly vertical or pre‑planned by anonymous architects. It also requires more effort and empowerment. The vehicle […] also allows to capture much more complex, diverse, subtle and subjective changes”⁹. Among the examples of such tools, he does not directly mention art competitions, but due to the role that some of them play in the field, they may be described as such. Winning a prestigious competition for a young artist, especially a debuting one, rapidly changes her position among other young people, and the title of a prize‑winner may attract the interest of critics, institutional and commercial entities and collectors in her work – in other words, the prize means not only the acquisition of an amount of money, but also hypothetically social and symbolic capital. In a somewhat broader understanding of vehicles for advancement – taking into account their collective nature, as Szenajch points out ¹⁰ – competitions play a role in the transformation of a larger number of people and entities: they may sometimes initiate visibility for persons other than those awarded, including for art trends and attitudes. This is particularly true in the case of local art criticism, where prestigious competitions (due to the frequency with which they are held) are an opportunity to diagnose the state of the field (of “generation” or area), much more often than institutional group exhibitions or review‑style shows. The aspect of rivalry systemically inscribed in competitions and of arbitrary quality assessments of submitted works is also associated with better visibility outside specialist media, as well as potential emotional involvement of the audience, especially in online polemics. Art competitions may therefore be interpreted as vehicles for advancement, which are temporarily designed (and perceived) as social elevators, where, however, the prize‑winners might not be the only ones who advance in the hierarchy, or even – due to a combination of various factors – the validity of their victory may be questioned, as a result of which their status will not undergo significant change or will be lowered¹¹. When talking of competitions as social elevators, I have in mind the default association of winning with the accumulation of capital and a guarantee of further success, regardless of its actual consequences. For obvious reasons, this more realistic narrative (which concerns the “measurable effects of winning”) is not propagated in promotion campaigns of competitions while discussions accompanying them emphasise examples of the most visible prize‑winners as resources supporting the prestige of such events.

When looking at the evolution of art competitions in Poland between 2015 and 2023, three clear trends may be singled out – a change in the perception of their role and conditions of opera­tion, the disappearance of prestigious competitions organised by institutions and an overrepresentation of the number of painting competitions in relation to other fields. While the change in the perception of competitions among participants in the field (especially the youngest – to whom a significant part is addressed) has been relatively slow over the last decade, the disappearance of institutional competitions and the emergence of new ones – painting competitions – is a phenomenon of the last three to four years. I consider these three interconnected trends to be important for changing the strategy of young artists, and consequently, also in the context of assessing the long‑term effects of the conservative swing (in both senses). The year 2021 saw the final editions of prestigious competitions held by public‑private partnerships. These competitions were of interdisciplinarity nature or actually focused on progressive forms of expression with moderate potential for commercial success (performance, video art, sound art, installations, i.e. fields associated with the so‑called institutional circulation). In the case of Spojrzenia (held in partnership between Deutsche Bank and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw), the 10th and final edition of the competition took place in a new, horizontal formula, which did not select a single prize‑winner, and all the participants of the competition (two men artists and two women artists and one collective) were considered winners¹². The decision to discontinue the competition was dictated by the withdrawal of the competition’s long‑term partner – a German bank – from its operations in Poland. In the case of the Hestia’s Artystyczna Podróż (a partnership between the insurance company Ergo Hestia and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw), the discontinuation of the competition after 20 years of presence was most likely caused by a conflict between the organisers and the participants in the competition. The double, 19th and 20th edition of the Hestia’s Artystyczna Podróż brought not only disappointment with the reduction in the number of finalists, a verdict in which half the number of people were awarded in this “double” edition of the competition, but also the disclosure of unsatisfactory conditions offered to the participants¹³. An emotional reaction of the organisers to criticism on social networking media indicated differences in the understanding of how competitions for young people should be held, especially in the context of the COVID pandemic and the broader discussion on competitions as vehicles for advancement, which swept through following Jindřich Chalupecký Award in the Czech Republic and Oskár Čepan Award in Slovakia ¹⁴, as well as Turner Prize in Great Britain. In the same year, the Project Room competition (Ujazdów Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw) also ended in its former formula with the 2020/2021 edition, which brought a horizontal verdict – all those who qualified for the competition were considered prize‑winners¹⁵. The following edition brought a change in the formula (raising the upper age limit to 40 years of age, an open call, but the method of selecting one prize‑winner typical of previous competitions was retained), however, due to staff changes in the institution and, consequently, a radical swing in the programme towards conservatism, the competition lost its prestige in the field¹⁶.

The year 2021 was therefore an important moment for the Polish art field in the context of art competitions – two prestigious, interdisciplinary competitions, whose young participants had the opportunity to exhibit in important institutions, disappeared forever, and the third one lost its prestige due to the context of the “takeover” of the institution by neoconservatives. Two of them (Spojrzenia and Project Room), discontinuing operation took into account the postulates for the need for changes in the organisation, the organisers of the third (Hestia’s Artystyczna Podróż) – defending what was perceived as an outdated conservative competition formula of “the winner takes it all” – decided to close the competition.

Disproportion and discussions

To what extent has the combination of these factors changed the competition field itself? No competitions with similar ambitions and institutional support have been established so far in place of the three most important vehicles for advancement – for instance, in 2020 the Polish auction platform Allegro.pl, together with the magazine Contemporary Lynx, initiated Allegro Prize¹⁷, also an award addressed to those using various media, but in the form of an international competition, without institutional support and not intended exclusively for young people. The ING Polish Art Foundation Prize at ING Bank,¹⁸ set up in 2017 is aimed at those working in Poland, but only at the ones who exhibit at the Warsaw Gallery Weekend – an event that brings together and promotes commercial entities selected by the WGW company, thus constituting a hypothetical vehicle for advancement for only a very narrow group of young artists. On the other hand, awards given by art schools (such as UpComing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw or the nationwide Best ASP Diplomas at Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk) largely reflect internal policies of Polish art schools related to the mechanisms and hierarchies of selecting individu­als representing a particular school (or departments) in a given year. This is therefore a narrow representation and provides opportunity for wider visibility to just a several or a dozen graduates at most.

In the general reception of young people’s work and attempts to diagnose its state, the argument about the overrepresentation of painting is common¹⁹ however, lack of prestigious competitions aimed at artists working in fields other than painting is relatively rarely pointed out. And looking more broadly at the field of Polish competitions, so is the relatively low prestige of interdisciplinary competitions which have survived recent years²⁰. These factors are not perceived by critics as key ones which impact strategies for operating in the field – although the discussion accompanying last year’s edition of Polityka’s Passports (an award granted by the weekly magazine Polityka)²¹ indicates that artists in addition to the institutional crisis and the development of the commercial segment, mention precisely this component as one of the elements of this situation²². The disproportion between non‑painting and painting competitions is also indicated by examples of new contests which have appeared on the Polish scene in recent years – such as Lubelska Wiosna National Painting Biennale (since 2021) and Krupa Art Foundation Prize (since 2024), addressed to young people (i.e. up to 35 years of age) involved in painting. In addition to them, there are still prestigious, institutional competitions of this type, such as the Bielska Jesień Painting Biennale (Bielska Galeria BWA) and Geppert Competition (organised in cooperation between the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław and BWA Wrocław). The example of these two events also indicates attempts to open up the definition of painting, as competition exhibitions include the so­‑called painting/painted objects and an attempt to update the formula for selecting the prize‑winners – the jury verdicts from the last editions (2023) in both cases somehow took into account the postulates present in the long‑standing discussion on competitions and their role in the neoliberal perspective. In the case of Bielska Jesień, the decision to award three equivalent prizes, despite its relative conservativeness, received negative feedback, but not from participants or critics, but from the woman director of the institution organising the competition and from art collectors present at the post‑competition discussion²³. From the perspective of these individuals, such a verdict was supposed to result in a lowering of the competition’s rank, devaluation of the prize itself and its prestige, as well as lack of respect for the prize‑winners of previous editions. Similar arguments also accompany the debate on the future of the Chalupecky Award, which has been going on for several years now, one of its best‑known winners – David Černý – together with the conservative circle of Czech artists, demands the restoration of the “old” formula of the competition, which selects just one prize‑winner²⁴.

The basic issue that I have highlighted in this text seems to be the paradox that affects the subject of art competitions in Poland. They are perceived as an important factor which supports the careers of young people, meant as social elevators or even an indispensable component of a model career path which takes into account the factor of competition and positioning oneself in a peer group, field or milieu while their impact on changing art strategies is insufficiently emphasised. Obviously, overrepresentation of painting competitions and the simultaneous disappearance of non‑painting competitions is not the only reason why the proportions of artistic production in Poland are generally changing. I suggest that this change should be analysed in a broader context of the two conservative swings and acceleration in the circulation mode of the value of art works. That is, of the institutional crisis caused by the conservative swing (in the political sense), which led to both disproportion in the number of competitions and weakening of art work circulation from the so‑called institutional circulation with lower sales potential. It is therefore the aftermath of what and who cannot be seen in institutions – that is, radical reduction in the visibility in the field of art works that are not paintings. In other words, what is at stake is the production of works (such as installations, sculptures, performances, video art, audio art, etc.) which have little chance of being shown to a wider audience. What is also significant apart from individual choices of artistic path, is what and who is visible – winners of competitions, mainly painting competitions, sales records reported by high‑circulation and specialist media, texts on ambitions to diagnose the field on the basis of competition exhibitions (again – painting exhibitions) and exhibitions held by commercial entities, largely focused on painting as the main medium with sales potential. Attempts to popularise art and art collecting also focus attention almost exclusively on painters – a good example of which are, among others, the verdicts of the successive editions of Polityka’s Passports (the only art competition covered by high‑circulation media and on television) in the field of visual arts; the example of the film Ile za sztukę directed by Andrzej Miękus, advertised as “the first documentary about the art market in Poland”²⁵ or a short‑lived art boom related to the COVID‑19 pandemic, from which painting also indirectly benefited as the most frequently purchased (especially by novice collectors) field of art. For the art community and particularly its youngest participants, these were clear signals encouraging them to change their tools of expression and adapt their strategy to the significantly narrowed possibilities offered by the current state of the field compared to previous years: “taken over” institutions, lack of non‑painting competitions, market pressure on hierarchies shaped by sales prices. The conservat­ive (formal) swing seen as a strong tendency in Polish art back in 2014, became somewhat prophetic, confirming intuitions about the segment of Polish art which can function in a relatively stable manner regardless of political conditions and institutions. On the other hand, the conservative (institutional) swing put to test the autonomy of the field which turned out to be relatively resistant to ideological pressure from the ruling party, but the situation of commercial entities taking over the canon‑forming competences is new for it, which raises the question of maintaining possible autonomy. The combination of the two conservative swings clearly contributed to changes in the number and nature of art competitions: those specific vehicles for advancement which still play an important role in regulating visibility in the field of visual arts. Both of people, works, trends, and the fields of creativity themselves, not only maintaining the systemically established high position of painting, but also indirectly contributing to its domination at the expense of others. In other words – painting monoculture, a phenomenon which will require research in the coming years.