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The Perception of Traditionalist Artistic

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The Perception of Traditionalist Artistic Irena KOSSOWSKA M. Copernicus University in Torun; Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw REINVENTING HISTORIC STYLES: THE PERCEPTION 196 OF TRADITIONALIST ARTISTIC TRENDS IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE OF THE 1920s AND 1930s Key words: East-Central Europe, interwar art, traditionalism, neorealism, neoclassicism, national identity, national art, national style. Traditionalism and its diversified framings consti- institutional and state authorities, and a prevalence tute the focus of my essay, which refers to an inter- of national cultural values strongly anchored in the national conference convened under the joint aus- past. Consequently, a multi-layered current in the ALIJOS, METODOLOGIJOS pices of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy visual arts, which in the 1920s and 1930s re-esta- of Sciences and the Institute of Art History of the blished vital contact with the art of bygone epochs Jagiellonian University in September 2006. Owing while aspiring to modernity, was brought to the to the collaborative effort of the two organizational bodies, the venue of the two-day symposium titled Reinterpreting the Past: Traditionalist Artistic Trends in Central and Eastern Europe of the 1920s and 1930s was shared between Warsaw and Cracow. E: RAIDA, PERSON E: RAIDA, The gathering of invited speakers comprised both distinguished scholars and young researchers from Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Ukraine1, who willingly modified their tight professional schedules in order to profoundly contribute to what I would venture to call a pioneering debate devoted to the traditionalist current evolving in East-Central Europe between the two World Wars. It seemed of key importance to create a platform for exchanging scholarly findings, experiences and commentaries with regard to the interwar rebirth of traditionalist norms and values in the individual countries.2 The conference discourse drew attention to the ide- ology, which professed a restoration of the socio- political order destroyed during World War I and Cover of the proceedings of an international conference its aftermath, and proved emblematic of a yearning organized by the Institute of Art. (Polish Academy of for stability. Traditionalism heralded a revival of Sciences, Warsaw) and the Institute of Art History (Jagiellonian University, Cracow), Warsaw-Cracow, 21–23 universal moral values providing a firm basis to September, 2006. MENOTYRA VIDURIO IR RYTŲ EUROPOS ŠALYS EUROPOS MENOTYRA IR RYTŲ VIDURIO fore during the debate of the conference. The pre- of ‘Italianness’. The exhibition was to contribute to sent research on this movement demonstrates a rich a shift in artistic priorities transposing the centre array of artistic attitudes assumed under the over- of aesthetic ‘innovation’ from cosmopolitan Paris lapping or synonymous labels (depending on the to Rome, deeply embedded in the native, classical definition) of Traditionalism, Neo-Classicism, Neo- tradition. Realism, and Neo-Humanism. Reinterpreting the 197 After World War I, a new artistic sensitivity came Past encapsulated the explorations of diverse idioms into being in Europe. It was based on cultural of classicism and realism evolving throughout the memory, and repudiated not only the fragmenta- central and eastern regions of Europe, while con- EUR AND EAST IN THE MIDDLE HISTORY ART tion and decomposition of form as presented by textualizing these phenomena within the artistic Cubism and Futurism, but equally the primacy of developments initiated in the West prior to and after pure sensualism and the dissolution of tangible the Great War. shapes in a shimmering painterly tissue as derived During the decades between the two World Wars, from Impressionism. Those artists who elected to the redefined versions of classicism and realism pre- draw upon historical styles announced their com- vailed over the revolutionary ethos of modernism mitment to the tangible reality and tactile qualities that emerged in the pre-World War I period, and of the reconstituted and explicitly delineated plastic kept evolving during the 1920s, as exemplified by form. The Neo-Classicism of the 1920s, however, the wide spectrum of derivatives of Cubism, Futu- was to be distinguished from the academic compro- rism and Constructivism. Both Neo-Classicism and mising and ‘misuse’ of the antique. The objective of Neo-Realism resulted from a rejection of the self- the new generation of classicists was to transpose referential experimentation with nonrepresentatio- and paraphrase ancient prototypes instead of sla- nal and abstract form manifest in modernism, and a vishly imitating them. Similarly, the new paradigms denunciation of the intellectual speculation typical of realism were to diverge from the nineteenth-cen- of the avant-garde. Symptoms of exhaustion from tury descriptive naturalism and sterile mimetism on the battle of the ‘-isms’ and the imperative for artis- one hand, and to separate from the psychoanalytical tic novelty could be observed throughout postwar aspirations of Surrealism, on the other. Further- OPE: PROCESS, PERSONALITIES, METHODOLOGIES PROCESS,OPE: PERSONALITIES, Europe. In the early 1930s, the vital energy of the more, the traditionalists denounced radical defor- modernist movement with its universalizing ambi- mation of the pictorial space, arbitrarily distorted tions and utopian visions of society was clearly on shape, and anti-naturalistically treated colour as the ebb. manifested in Expressionism. Moreover, as early as the 1920s, a number of Euro- In Germany, Post-Expressionist tendencies, as ref- pean art critics, theoreticians and artists had become lected in what Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub had defi- sensitive to the expansiveness of trends originating ned in 1923 as ‘Die neue Sachlichkeit’, began to pre- from the cosmopolitan École de Paris, and were vail alongside the trend that Franz Roh proclaimed thus determined to counteract these widespread in his 1925 book Nach-Expressionismus3 as ‘magic trans-national influences. After the presentation of realism’.4 Numerous illustrations incorporated in School of Paris at the 1928 Venice Biennale, a coun- Roh’s publication demonstrated that figurative ter-exhibition titled Appels d’Italie was organized painting informed by ‘museum art’ was unfolding by Mario Tozzi, Waldemar George and Amédée in the 1920s into a rich and diversified spectrum, Ozenfant in 1930. In the catalogue essay George ranging from Pablo Picasso to Otto Dix, and from proposed a common aesthetic programme for the Giorgio de Chirico to Léonard Foujita. It is worth Italian participants of the show (Carlo Carrà, Mas- noting that artists of Central European background simo Campigli, and Mario Sironi, among others) (e.g. Eugeniusz Zak, Mojżesz Kisling, Tamara Łem- and their French counterparts (La Fresnay, Amédée picka, Otakar Kubín, Jiří Kars) were also considered Ozenfant, and Léopold Survage, to name but a few), exemplary of this new tendency. Roh’s book revea- seeking to emphasize the primacy and superiority led an attempt to establish a common denominator for these diverse (in some cases divergent) artistic Nouvelles, thus reasserting the offensive of tradi- approaches and formal vocabularies, mostly by con- tionalist trends. Hence, by the early 1930s, George trasting them with various formulae of modernism. was only one of many French commentators and critics writing from a variety of political and aest- The liveliest impulses for the development of the hetic standpoints who believed that a ‘return’ to the new formulae of classicism and realism drew their 198 human subject matter in visual arts had superseded sources from Italy. Magic Realism referred to the modernist experimentation in anti-naturalist, abs- ‘pittura metafisica’ of Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo tract, and nonrepresentational vocabulary. Carrá, Gino Severini, and Giorgio Morandi, and the poetics of Neue Sachlichkeit was akin to the idioms At that time, in an industrialised and urbanised of representation employed by the exponents of the world threatened by the spread of technology and Novecento trend. The Italian Neo-Classicists (seve- mechanization in all aspects of life (a widespread ral among them initially concentrated around the and variously voiced conviction in tune with Oswald Valori Plastici journal) nurtured the Novecento cur- Spengler’s catastrophic theory about the decline of rent by referring to what was defined as traditional Western civilization), searching for roots in a natio- italianità. They declared a return to figurative art, nal cultural tradition came to be fully acknowledged rehabilitating the clearly defined plastic form and and sanctioned. Nostalgia for human values, indivi- easily understandable topic as well as promulgating dualism, subjectivism, and emotionality had emer- monumental art. The introduction of murals and ged. The human figure planted in social, national ALIJOS, METODOLOGIJOS bas-reliefs to official culture emerged from the ele- and regional realities became the focus of attention vation of public culture in the 1930s. Mario Sironi, for Neo-Humanists across Europe. In the percep- among other theorists, has been credited with fos- tion of the advocates of traditionalism, the universa- tering this tendency with his Manifesto delle pittura lising aspirations of the radical avant-garde concur- murale published in December 1933, and signed by red with the ambitions to standardise the patterns Massimo Campigli, Achille Funi, and Carlo Carrà. of
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