akademia 2007+

ing and printing of images. On graphic art opens with a text by Dariusz
Gajewski The idea of graphic art: between digital print and traditional workshop,
in which the author, mostly on the basis of his experience of the International
Print Triennial in Krakow 2003, recapitulates the problem of
graphic art faced with the digital medium by defining anew the relationship
original – copy through the introduction of a new analytic category:
principal image – subsidiary image. The text that follows, Dialogue with
digital shadow by Adam Romaniuk, reports on the transition from traditional
to digital medium, at the heart of which is a new way of understanding
and constructing the matrix. It is a fundamental issue like a rite of
passage, defining anew the ontology of the discipline. The two analyses
are supplemented with a text by Paweł Frąckiewicz The garden of graphic
art – modern cultivation techniques, which takes up a related subject: what
is media art and its relationship with graphic art. The recently emerged
trend of creating art that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplines
(in this case, graphic art) inspires a reflection on its beneficial liveliness
on the one hand, and on the other a danger of dissolution of what
is familiar and essential in what is non-identifiable already at its point of
departure. In turn, Mariusz Pałka’s Graphic art – from matter to ideology
refers to the expression of technical skill as a sine qua non rule of graphic
art. He identifies the alchemy of printmaking with the alchemy of creation
contained in the mark of the tool, the living and only sign of professional
mastery. He chooses Toshihiro Hamano and Günter Dollhopf as his allies.
An ordering tendency is exemplified also by Grzegorz Banaszkiewicz in
his analysis of the vocabulary currently used in graphic art – The terms of
graphic art, leading to the conclusion of constructing a schematic ordering
graphic processes. Stefan Speil (Will there be beauty in diversity?) once
again referring to great artistic events, in this case the 51 st Venice Biennale
in 2005, focuses on the invasion of photography in graphic art, seeing it
as a danger to its identity, which in connection with the dominant role
of electronic media will cause a transition from intended visualization to
factual hallucination. The short text by Wiesław Przyłuski The memory of
matter – its role in shaping intaglio printmaking is in fact an artistic credo
of a graphic art practitioner, looking with affection at the engraved mark
he leaves. This mark is the captured memory of matter, which is released
again in the process of revealing the image as an image of the world. The
part is summed up by a personal appeal of an artist, Jan Berdyszak to his
colleagues. It is a call for an appropriate graphic culture built on constant
self-improvement and keeping a sensitive attitude as the only remedy to
the practice of suppressing humanities at universities and closing down
classic printmaking studios at art schools on the excuse of lack of current
interests, attention of the public and external needs.
Part three, On the problems of the Academy, opens with an exposition
by Aleksandra Giełdoń-Paszek, Eulogy to thinking, about the heritage
of academicism in teaching practice at modern Academies. By following
the traces of historically shaped academicism and their complete lack in
the artistic practice of the young generation of artists, the author reaches
a conclusion of the paradoxical situation of academicism in the Academy
today. Historical academicism remains only as the shape of a necessary
model which must be employed in teaching, but its content can be, and
indeed is, unrestricted, often directed against academic art in any form.
Similarly devoted to the teaching curriculum is the text by Dorota Głazek:
Academy – curricula. Beginning with Vasari’s Florence Academy and Accademia
degli Incammineti of the Carracci brothers at the end of the 16 th
century, through the proliferation of art schools in the 18 th century, the
Academies of the 19 th century as a model for those existing today, analogous
teaching programs can be found everywhere. If they are a good preparation
for the modern times is a subject for another discussion. A similar
tone of concern over an equilibrium between the old and the new, tradition
and experiment can be found in the text by Ewa Stopa-Pielesz The dialogue
of tradition and experimentation in modern typography. The dynamic
development of modern typography is a well known fact, but the stages
of this development and the nature of its novelty are not common knowledge,
as well as what really is this peculiar métier of the designer-typographer
and the place of typography in graphic design and artistic education.
Be as it may, here as elsewhere tradition without experimentation is dead
and experimentation without tradition is useless. Very significant text
in the third part is without a doubt that by Grzegorz Dziamski, Academy
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