IKONOTHEKA IKONO THEKA 30 30 2020 30 www.wuw.pl Ikonotheka 30 grzb 11.indd 3 21/04/21 15:41 IKONO THEKA 30 The Journal Founded by Jan białosTocki (1921–1988) EDITED BY Marcin Lachowski ediTors-in-chieF Zuzanna Sarnecka, Wojciech Szymański EDITORIAL BOARD Deborah Howard (University of Cambridge), Grażyna Jurkowlaniec (University of Warsaw), Sergiusz Michalski (Universität Tübingen), Andrzej Pieńkos (University of Warsaw), Antoni Ziemba (University of Warsaw) commissioning ediTor Dorota Dziedzic ediTing Denys Kaidalov Institute of Art History of University of Warsaw 00-927 Warszawa, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28 phone: +48 (22) 552 04 06, fax: +48 (22) 552 04 07 e-mail: [email protected] www.ikonotheka.ihs.uw.edu.pl It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain appropriate permission for the reproduction of any copyrighted material, including images © Copyright by Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2020 Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 00-838 Warszawa, ul. Prosta 69 http://www.wuw.pl; e-mail: [email protected] Dział Handlowy WUW: phone: +48 22 55 31 333 e-mail: dz. [email protected] http://www.wuw.pl/ksiegarnia ISSN 0860-5769 e-ISSN 2657-6015 LAYOUT: Beata Stelęgowska IKONOTHEKA 30, 2020 Contents Introduction / 5 arTicles Tomáš murár “A work of art is an object that necessitates contemplation”. Latency of visual studies within the Vienna School of Art History? / 9 aleksandra Fedorowicz-Jackowska ‘Through a Microscope from a Telescopic Distance’: Witkacy, Cameron and the Photography of Faces / 31 łukasz kiepuszewski Face Substances. The rhetoric of Kapists’ self-portraits: between self-reflection and confession / 51 anna cheipesh The Impact of Historic Events on the Formation of the Creative Method of Ernest Kontratovych in the Early Period (1930s-1940s) / 69 szymon pioTr kubiak Gratitude. The Red Army Memorial in Szczecin: A Geographical, Topographical, and Biographical Perspective / 89 kamila dworniczak Defining Reality: Photography and the Surrealist Concept of the Image in Poland in the 1940s / 113 pioTr maJewski Constructing the canon: exhibiting contemporary Polish art abroad in the Cold War era / 135 3 Contents karolina kolenda The Grass is Greener: Władysław Hasior in an Ecocritical Perspective / 155 ewa kędziora Archaeology of the present. Israeli art after the Al-Aqsa Intifada / 173 marTa wódz Intimate listening and sonic solidarity. Radio in the works of Radio Earth Hold collective as a way towards the sonic turn / 191 reviews kamila dworniczak Symcha Trachter. Reconstruction / 211 IKONOTHEKA 30, 2020 Introduction We are delighted to present you the 30th volume of “Ikonotheka”, devoted to the issues of 20th-century art and current artistic phenomena. The volume consists of articles analyzing selected important topics, which show the wealth and variety of research areas explored by art researchers of the younger generation. By presenting them in this issue we want to signalize a different approach to “canonical” topics, however, it isn’t a systematic and comprehensive revision of long-established re- search models. The selection of articles includes an in-depth study of painters’ artistic declara- tions based on the interpretation of self-portraits of members of the Komitet Paryski (Łukasz Kiepuszewski) as well as a suggestive exploration of photographs of faces in Witkacy’s oeuvre (Aleksandra Fedorowicz-Jackowska). Another example of ap- proaching general problems from a different angle is the detailed analysis of the process of emergence of regionalisms and national schools in the art of the interwar period based on the works of Transcarpathia artists (Anna Cheipesh). Political and historical contexts vividly accompanied the post-war art in the official sphere, manifesting themselves as monumental sculpture (Szymon Piotr Kubiak), in the creation of the artistic canon by means of exhibitions of Polish art abroad (Piotr Majewski), and in an individual dimension of artistic searches and experiments (Kamila Dworniczak). This subject has also become a source of new, eco-critical interpretations of Władysław Hasior’s landscape projects (Karolina Kolenda). Nowadays the political dimension is gaining the most striking and often dra- matic form of expression in the works of artists from Israel and Palestine. The presentation of artistic ways of coming out of isolation and self-critical views of one’s own tradition and identity are the focus of two articles in this volume (by Ewa Kędziora and Marta Wódz). This volume opens with an important methodological study on the historical dimension and constant influence of the Vienna School of Art History by Tomáš Murár. The article thoroughly describes the long-standing and enduring presence of interpretive models of the past in the changing reality. It seems to be an appropriate introduction to the complex subject matter presented in the volume that views the history of art as an open discipline, still subjecting artistic facts and their historical interpretations to continuous reflection and reinterpretation. 5 Introduction The articles presented in this volume were collected in 2018. Due to editorial changes and the coinciding development of materials published in the 29th issue, the texts are published now. I would like to apologize to the authors for this uninten- tional delay. Marcin Lachowski ARTICLES IKONOTHEKA 30, 2020 Tomáš Murár insTiTuTe oF arT hisTory, czech academy oF sciences, czech republic orcid: 0000-0002-3418-1941 https://doi.org/10.31338/2657-6015ik.30.1 “A work of art is an object that necessitates contemplation”. Latency of visual studies within the Vienna School of Art History? Abstract This article investigates a research method of the so-called Vienna School of Art History, mainly its transformation by Max Dvořák around the First World War. The article suggests the possible influence of Georg Simmel’s philosophy on Dvořák in this time, evident mainly in Dvořák’s interpretation of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s art, written by Dvořák in 1920 and published posthumously in 1921. This another view on the Vienna School of Art History is then researched in writings on Pieter Bruegel the Elder by Dvořák’s students Hans Sedlmayr and Charles de Tolnay when Tolnay extended Dvořák’s thinking and Sedlmayr challenged its premises – both Tolnay and Sedlmayr thus in the same time interpreted Bruegel’s art differently, even though they were both Dvořák’s students. The article then suggests a possible interpretative relationship of the Vienna School of Art History after its transformation by Max Dvořák with today’s approaches to art (history), mainly with the so-called visual studies. Keywords: Max Dvořák, Vienna School of Art History, Georg Simmel, Visual Studies, Charles de Tolnay, Hans Sedlmayr. Introduction In Max Dvořák’s text on the art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, written in 1920 and published posthumously in 1921,1 a reference to Georg Simmel’s interpretation of 1 M. Dvořák, Pieter Bruegel der Ältere, Wien, 1921. Max Dvořák was born in 1874 in Roudnice in Central Bohemia, he started to study history at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, then 9 Tomáš Murár Michelangelo from 1910 might be found,2 which can indicate Simmel’s influence on Dvořák’s reading of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s art. This hypothesis can lead us to a different understanding of Dvořák’s art-historical method emerging in the time of World War I,3 as a starting-point of an approach to art history rooted in the so-called Vienna School of Art History,4 but with indications similar to today’s ways of interpreting visual arts, diverted from modern art history toward visual studies.5 Following and, so to speak, having in the peripheral vision recent Sjoerd van Tuinen’s take on Mannerism as a concept related to art history as well as to phi- losophy after transformation of both disciplines mostly after the 1980s,6 thus when also Arthur Danto’s and Hans Belting’s seminal concepts of the end of art and art history were published,7 and when theories of Bildwissenschaft and visual studies started to appear,8 this study opens a possibility of another – and most importantly much earlier – concept of art history aimed at other than formal or iconographical concept of visual art. Van Tuinen, in his aspiration to “reconnect ... systematic sense of mannerism with its art historical sense,” when, “mannerism is a concept of becoming specific to art, occurring in the 16th century qua historical “style”, it is not limited to art”,9 overlooks Mannerism as it was formulated by Max Dvořák, who was the first one who came up with this concept in the sense used in the modern history of art of he transferred to Vienna University to the Institut für österreichische Geschichtsforschung in 1894. There he became interested in art history and attended the lectures of Franz Wickhoff. In 1905 Dvořák took over an assistant professorship after Alois Riegl, and in 1909, after Wickhoff’s death, Dvořák became a full professor and he stayed at the Vienna University until 1921 when he collapsed during one of his lectures. In the first phase of his professional career as an art his- torian Dvořák built on Riegl’s and Wickhoff’s method by searching for evolutionary principles in art; however, in the face of the approach of World War I he altered his method to focus more on the inner-spirit of artworks. See P. Betthausen, P. H. Feist, C. Fork, eds., Metzler Kuntshistoriker Lexikon, 2. Auflage, Stuttgart – Weimar, 2007, pp. 68–71. 2 M. Dvořák, „Pieter Bruegel der Ältere“, in: Idem, Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte. Studien zur abendländischen Kunstentwicklung, Leipzig, 1924, pp. 217–257, cit., p. 220. 3 This thesis of Dvořák’s reading of Bruegel’s art through the notion of collapse of the the known world in the World War I, aimed at Dvořák’s connection to Alois Riegl’s art-historical method and its relation to early phenomenology, was elaborated by the author of this study in: T.