akademia 2007+

summary
The Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, since it became independent in
2001, organises nationwide scientific conferences, habitually followed by
conference publications consummating the event. The history of this volume
is slightly more complex than usual. It includes a selection of texts
resulting from three national conferences organised by the Academy at
the initiative of the Department of Art History and Theory. The first conference,
Graphic art – perspectives took place in the autumn of 2005, the
second, Modern art contexts, in the autumn of 2006, and the third, Academy
2007 +, in January 2008. Several texts (Adam Romaniuk, Adam Bartoszek)
were especially commissioned to complete the emerging whole.
Two of the essays printed here have been published before: the text by
Grzegorz Dziamski and one of the two by Antoni Porczak. The idea behind
publishing this book arose from some obvious substantial considerations:
the current state of affairs in art in general and at the Academy
in particular. The texts in this volume comment on that state at a particular
point in time and in a more narrowly defined area: graphic art. There
are no references to other artistic fields like painting on the one hand and
design on the other, with the sole exception of the Ewa Stopa-Pielesz text.
There is no reason for it other than that in the field of graphic art during
the past few years there have been tendencies that changed its self-identification
the most, and therefore have been widely discussed, namely the
passage from traditional to digital media.
The volume is composed of four parts: On art, On graphic art, On
the Academy, On the problems of art. The first part comprises five texts, commenting
on the current state of affairs in art in broader terms. The text by
Andrzej Kisielewski Pastiche strategy, or the presence of avant-garde tradition
today, presents how the universalistic demand of historical avant-garde is
shown from the perspective of a researcher – art historian in a time when
the commonly employed strategy is that of parody, euphemistically called
pastiche. It uses the examples of the outstanding personalities of Polish art
in the 1990s and the beginning of the 21 st century: Zbigniew Libera, Katarzyna
Kozyra, Paweł Althamer, Elżbieta Jabłońska and Robert Maciejuk.
The text by Bernadeta Stano, The atopic interiors of Christian Tomaszewski
and Robert Kuśmirowski, points to a problem similar in its nature, but located
within the matter of creation itself. By performing a critical decomposition
of the two artists’ exhibitions, the author reveals their constitutive
relations, which are the real and unreal, created readymade, copy-original,
real illusion, the presence of a trespasser, and above all the artist’s mockery,
this time directed against himself. An unusual conclusion to this issue
is the subject of the artistic strategy of Wojciech Ćwiertniewicz, discussed
by Janusz Antos. The text Practicing utopia. On the relation between
modernist abstractions with circles and the Diaries of Wojciech Ćwiertniewcz
shows the consistency of the artist’s reflections expressed in his diaries
and the artistic practice of painting circles. It reveals itself as an unusual
meditative pose and a way to penetrate abstraction, practicing a private
utopia. Apparently from a completely different side, but in fact similar, the
problem of teaching art history appears in a extensive presentation of the
works of a Japanese artist in the text The art of Nobuyoshi Araki, or the dilemmas
of an art history teacher. The artist, considered a source of controversy
and confusion, as the ambivalence surrounding him seems to be
very skilfully animated by a precise dosage of gestures ranging from pornographic
(all possible variations of female nudes, including bondage) to
verging on exhibitionism (showing his beloved wife suffering and dying
of cancer). In the end, the resulting sadness and loneliness of man in the
world is another universal story of humanity. The final text, Citations or
translations? The reinterpretations of old art in contemporary Polish art by
Violetta Sajkiewicz is devoted to the phenomenon of imitative techniques
common in contemporary art. Referring herself to the analyses by Beata
Frydryczak, Stanisław Czekalski, as well as Bryson and Mieke Bal the
author analyses the art of Agata Bogacka, Paulina Ołowska, Zofia Kulik,
Przemysław Kwiek, Anna Ostoya, Kamil Kuskowski, Grzegorz Sztabiński,
and Marek Glinkowski.
The second part is devoted to ongoing discussions within the
field that return to confront the fundamental question: what is graphic
art? Asking this has become relevant again due to turbulent changes
caused by the widespread use of digital techniques in the creation, record-
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