The Post-War History of Pictorialism as Exemplifi ed by Exhibitions at the Zachęta and the Kordegarda (1953–1970)

• Authors: Kobylińska-Bunsch, Weronika

Abstracts

EN

Existing academic works examining Polish artistic photography in the 1950s and 1960s are most often based on an analysis of the debates taking place within professional circles and the views of specifi c artists as expressed in the specialist periodicals that were published at that time. Such diagnoses are frequently based on a single and very particular source, namely the monthly magazine Fotografi a. The pages of this periodical project an image of an artistic society enjoying a relatively high degree of autonomy. The present study represents a different research approach, inspired e.g. by the works of Bruce Altshuler and Kenneth Luckhurst, who postulated the re-orientation of art history away from biographical works focused on the individual subject towards a discipline understood as the history of exhibitions. Following the course set by these scholars, one may come to the conclusion that an analysis of the place which photography held in the offi cial exhibition strategy implemented in the 1950s and 1960s in the prestigious Warsaw galleries of the Kordegarda and the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions (CBWA) may provide an interesting and new contribution to the current state of research. A study based on an examination of the history of exhibitions may help to answer the question whether all forms of photography were equally approved by the authorities at a time when the rules of the cultural policy of the People’s Republic of Poland became more lenient. It also makes it possible to evaluate the degree to which autonomy and heterogeneity (features which may be associated with the magazine Fotografi a) were legitimised through presentation in a state-owned, politicised public space. Conducted from the perspective of exhibition history, the analysis presented herein makes an important shift in the signifi cance of Pictorialism – from a topic on the margins of academic interest to a harbinger of modernity, and thus a central subject in the discourse on Polish photography in the post-war period. Rather surprisingly, it appears to be the slogan that legitimised the more innovative and modern forms of photographic art in the offi cial contexts of the day.

Keywords

EN

Pictorialism; photographic exhibitions; Zachęta; the Central Bureau of Art Exhibitions; Kordegarda

• Publisher: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
• Journal: Ikonotheka
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 26
• Pages: 193-212

Contributors

author

Kobylińska-Bunsch, Weronika

Identifiers

DOI

10.5604/01.3001.0010.1678