The Album Polish Art and the Writing of Modernist Art History of Polish 19Th-Century Painting

Anna Brzyski Constructing the Canon: The Album Polish Art and the Writing of Modernist Art History of Polish 19th-Century Painting Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 3, no. 1 (Spring 2004) Citation: Anna Brzyski, “Constructing the Canon: The Album Polish Art and the Writing of Modernist Art History of Polish 19th-Century Painting,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 3, no. 1 (Spring 2004), http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring04/284-constructing-the- canon-the-album-polish-art-and-the-writing-of-modernist-art-history-of-polish-19th-century- painting. Published by: Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art Notes: This PDF is provided for reference purposes only and may not contain all the functionality or features of the original, online publication. ©2004 Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide Brzyski: The Album Polish Art and the Writing of Modernist Art History of Polish 19th-Century Painting Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 3, no. 1 (Spring 2004) Constructing the Canon: The Album Polish Art and the Writing of Modernist Art History of Polish 19th-Century Painting by Anna Brzyski In November 1903, the first issue of a new serial album, entitled Polish Art (Sztuka Polska), appeared in the bookstores of major cities of the partitioned Poland. Printed in a relatively small edition of seven thousand copies by the firm of W.L. Anczyc & Co., one of the oldest and most respected Polish language publishers, and distributed to all three partitions by the bookstores of H. Altenberg in Lvov (the album's publisher) and E. Wende & Co. in Warsaw, the album was a ground-breaking achievement. It was edited by Feliks Jasieński and Adam Łada Cybulski, two art critics with well-established reputations as supporters and promoters of modern art. However, what distinguished Polish Art from earlier publications was not its authorship, since Polish critics often published books dealing with native art, but rather its novel format and ambition. The album was the first Polish—and one of the first European— art publications to rely on full-color photomechanical reproductions, rather than descriptions of artworks. It included sixty-two color and three black-and-white plates, which illustrated sixty-one works by twenty-five Polish painters. Each plate was accompanied by a short essay written by one of twenty contributors, who included, in addition to the two editors, eminent Polish journalists, writers, artists, and art historians. Even more striking than its use of illustrations, was the album's content. Polish Art was the first Polish language art publication intended for the general public that embraced the conventions of canonical art history in order to identify the greatest Polish painters of the nineteenth century. In a striking example of historic agency, it set in place the canon that to this day informs public perception and scholarship on the period. The album's didactic tone and nationalistic message, its focus on visual, rather than verbal presentation, and use of expensive folio format and high-quality paper; in short, qualities that identify it as an early example of the ubiquitous "coffee table" art book, were calculated to appeal to a particular audience. They were aimed at educated, patriotic, middle class readers, whose disposable income could accommodate the album's subscription price of thirty Austrian crowns, and whose social identity required at least a cursory familiarity with national culture. The acceptance or rejection by this group of the album's two implicit claims: the identification of modern art with quality and the definition of national artistic tradition as a gradual evolution towards modernism, had serious consequences. The album's intended readers were also the primary consumers of contemporary art. They constituted the public that attended shows, read reviews, purchased catalogues, formed the membership of the local art societies, sponsored public art projects, accorded recognition and status to artists in their mists, and, of course bought, original works. The editors' awareness that the album's target audience constituted the primary support base for contemporary art informed every aspect of the project, from the album's content to its physical appearance. Although the work's full title, Polish Art. Painting. 65 Reproductions of Works by the Foremost Masters of Polish Painting suggested a historic survey of the greatest Polish painters, the album's "gallery of national masters" was far from comprehensive or inclusive. It included no artists born before 1800. Furthermore, while it spanned the nineteenth century, it clearly focused on the century's last quarter, the period associated with the emergence in Poland of self-consciously modern art, christened by the 52 Brzyski: The Album Polish Art and the Writing of Modernist Art History of Polish 19th-Century Painting Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 3, no. 1 (Spring 2004) critics in the mid 1890s as modernizm, after the German Modernismus. Of the twenty-five artists featured in Polish Art as "the foremost masters of Polish painting," fifteen (sixty percent of the total) were still alive in 1903 and all, without exception, would have been identified by contemporary critics as modernists (moderniści). All fifteen were members of the artist-run exhibition society, the Association of Polish Artists "Sztuka" (Towarzystwo Artystów Polskich "Sztuka"), founded in 1897 by a group of progressive Krakow painters to promote modern Polish art, namely, their own work, at home and abroad. Seven were the society's founders.[1] Among the fifteen were also six current and three future professors, as well as a current director of the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, which, after its 1895 reorganization, functioned as the institutional base for Polish modernizm and played a key role in transforming modern art into fully mainstream, academic practice.[2] The album's emphasis on the last quarter of the nineteenth century was in marked contrast to how the national painting tradition was previously characterized. Although not much had been written on the subject prior to 1903, there was a major exhibition organized in Lvov in 1894, which aimed to survey the history of Polish painting. In 1897, a companion volume to the show entitled One Hundred Years of Painting in Poland, 1760-1860 was published by Jerzy Mycielski. Mycielski's book provided a highly detailed account of the careers of Polish painters active from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. It was broadly inclusive and encyclopedic in character, giving no emphasis to any stylistic tendency or particular period within the hundred-year span covered by the show. It mentioned ninety- eight Polish painters, fifty of whom were active in the second half of the nineteenth century. [3] Of that group, Polish Art recognized a total of six. Despite the blatant omission of key figures—painters such as Henryk Siemieradzki, Józef Simmler, or Józef Brandt, who were recognized as significant national artists, but whose work was fundamentally at odds with modernist values—Polish Art did not meet with a hostile reception. It was received enthusiastically by the Polish press and hailed as a monumental achievement. The notices announcing its publication and reviews that followed were without exception highly complimentary. No one seemed to have noticed the publication's highly partisan nature. And, interestingly, no one since then has seriously challenged its judgments. The fact that a hundred years later, the canon of nineteenth- century Polish painters set up by Polish Art still looms large—informing public perception and curatorial practice, as well as scholarship on the period—raises several questions. Why was it so readily accepted, despite clearly evident bias, and why did it prove so enduring? What conditions were present in 1904 that allowed such an uncritical and overwhelmingly positive response? What, if any, strategies did the editors use to ensure this outcome? Was, for instance, their choice of format—reliance on color reproductions, in particular—significant in this respect? More broadly, what can we learn from this specific publication about the process and conditions under which the canon of nineteenth-century European art emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century? And what does it suggest about the relationship of canonical art history not only to particular ideologies, in this case modernism, but also to specific conditions of the art market? The modernist bias of Polish Art is not surprising when one considers the identity of the album's two editors. Feliks Jasieński and Adam Łada Cybulski, were members of the closely- knit Krakow art community. Prior to undertaking work on Polish Art, both wrote criticism for 53 Brzyski: The Album Polish Art and the Writing of Modernist Art History of Polish 19th-Century Painting Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 3, no. 1 (Spring 2004) a broad range of Polish-language periodicals and newspapers, gaining reputations by 1903 as vocal supporters of modernism.[4] Jasieński, in particular, was an important figure in the early history of the movement (fig. 1). A son of a prosperous landowner, he was not just a sympathetic critic, but also a passionate collector, popularizer, and promoter of modern art. Jasieński spent much of his youth abroad traveling throughout Europe. He eventually settled in Paris, where he developed an interest in contemporary art and became well acquainted with artistic and literary modernism. It was there that he began collecting contemporary and Japanese art, focusing in particular on acquiring prints. On his return to Warsaw in 1889, he immediately began using his growing art collection to establish and maintain a public presence. He organized temporary exhibitions of prints from his holdings, gave public lectures on modern art, and eventually began publishing his views. He also became a member of the Warsaw Society for Encouragement of Fine Arts, a local art society, which operated the city's main exhibition venue. There he played an important role as an early supporter of Polish impressionism and an advocate of artists whose work challenged traditional stylistic and thematic norms.

Load more