The other side of the Elbe River: interventions in art, modernity, and coloniality in Poland

Thesis

The artistic practices of Zofia Stryjeńska (1891-1976), Władysław Hasior, (1928-1999), Teresa Murak (1949-) and Roman Stańczak (1969-) all bear testimony – in their own distinct ways – to the ‘shock of the new’, the massive rupture brought by modernisation and capitalism in twentieth-century Poland. Spanning the interwar period to the post-communist era, their works register, mediate and work through the lived experiences of a constantly changing (semi)periphery, marked by visions and plans of accelerated progress, technological advancement, and triumphant sovereignty. However, the works of the four artists I focus on reveal a more complicated and ambiguous condition, one that challenges any propagandistic claims of either the spectacular success or complete failure of those programmes. Stryjeńska, Hasior, Murak and Stańczak explore nuanced material reality marked by the coexistence of divergent historical patterns, asynchronous matter and overlapping temporalities. In their works, this complexity often manifests itself in the uneasy – and often volatile – conjunction of older, archaic or semifeudal elements with modern ones, a combination deeply revealing the dynamics of capitalism in (semi)peripheral areas of the world-system. This aspect is crucial to understanding the historical vision and political stakes that Stryjeńska, Hasior, Murak and Stańczak put forward: their artistic practices are deeply attuned to uneven material realities marked by both capitalist modernisation and the remnants of older economic formations and forms of collective consciousness. In fact, their works articulate a vision of the present where the past – old patterns, artistic traditions and images, remnants of the feudal past – are not just a lingering echo but a coeval and constitutive part of peripheral modernity.

Authors: Michalska, DJ

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-bdkmxyamx
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Eastern Europe; contemporary art; modern art; capitalism; colonialism; Poland
• Subjects: Art and history