CULTURAL STUDIES APPENDIX ENGLISH EDITION 2019 Nr 1 KITSCH IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE KITSCH IN CONTEMPORARY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: dr hab. Brygida Pawłowska-Jądrzyk, prof. UKSW (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) DEPUTY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: dr Piotr Jakubowski (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) STAFF MEMBERS: dr Agnieszka Smaga (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) prof. dr hab. Ewa Szczęsna (Warsaw University) MANAGING EDITOR: dr Dorota Dąbrowska (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) ASSISTANT: mgr Katarzyna Gołos-Dąbrowska (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) ADVISORY BOARD: dr hab. Anna Czajka-Cunico, prof. UKSW (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) dr hab. Dorota Kielak, prof. UKSW (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) prof. dr hab. Teresa Kostkiewiczowa (Institute of Literary Research of Polish Academy of Sciences) prof. dr Luca Lecis (Università degli Studi di Cagliari) prof. dr hab. Mieczysław Mejor (Institute of Literary Research of Polish Academy of Sciences) dr Alberto Pirni (Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, Pisa) prof. dr Bernd-Juergen (Warneken, Empirische Kulturwissenschaften, Ludwig-Uhland-Institut, Tübingen) dr hab. Jan Zieliński, prof. UKSW (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw) TRANSLATION: Biuro Tłumaczeń Lingua Lab, ul Piastowska 8a, Kraków REVISION AND PROOFREADING: dr Małgorzata Ciunovič Jacek Łuczak LINGUISTIC EDITION: dr Piotr Jakubowski COVER DESIGN: dr Agnieszka Smaga LOGO DESIGN: Marek Ostrowski TYPESETTING: Maciej Faliński Website: www.zalacznik.uksw.edu.pl Email: [email protected] ISSN 2392-2338 The primary version of the journal is an on-line one. Illustrative materials are published under the quotation rights; the Creative Commons licence’s conditions (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs) do not apply on them. Wydanie dwóch anglojęzycznych numerów czasopisma „Załącznik Kulturoznawczy” – zadanie finansowane w ramach umowy 850/P-DUN/2018 ze środków Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę. Cultural Studies Appendix. Special Edition – English Issue 2019/1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 7 CULTURAL STUDIES’ INQUIRIES Edward Kasperski What is Culturology? 9 Robert Piłat Duration of Things and Duration of Culture 41 THEMATIC SECTION: KITSCH IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE Dagmara Jaszewska Gombrowicz’s Kitsch in the Context of (Post)Modernity Theory 51 Brygida Pawłowska-Jądrzyk ‘Subsequent Spirituality’ and Emotional Kitsch-Spheres in Two Literary Depictions (Irzykowski – Dehnel) 69 Aleksandra Hudymač Kundera’s Struggle with Kitsch – on The Unbearable Lightness of Being Once Again 87 Dorota Dąbrowska On the Relationship of Kitsch and Persuasion 99 Tomasz Kuźmicz Superhero of the Polish People’s Republic on the Example of Andrzej Kondratiuk’s Hydro-puzzle 111 Izabela Tomczyk A Heterogeneous Character – Opera, Circus and Kitsch in Filip Bajon’s Film Aria for an Athlete 127 Anna Pięcińska ‘My Art is the Daughter of Baroque and Psychedelia’ – The Art of Guillermo Pérez-Villalta in the Context of the Phenomenon of Kitsch 145 Barbara Stec Notes on Kitsch in Architecture. An Illusion or an Ersatz of Happiness? 161 Marta Mikołajewska Life as Kitsch. Notes about Bio Art 173 Beata Skrzydlewska On the Reasons for the Presence of Kitsch in Contemporary Religious Space 189 Piotr Jakubowski Alan Kurdi’s Online Resurrections – Omran Daqneesh’s Online Reanimations 203 INTERPRETATIONS Jacek Kopciński Faust/ina. In Radiance by Artur Pałyga 257 Katarzyna Taras The Role of the Camera in Wojciech Smarzowski’s Films 285 VARIA Jan Zieliński Proust and the Ollendorff’s Method 299 Agnieszka Smaga Influence of Digital Medium on the Construction of New Interdependencies between Text and Image 321 PHOTO-ESSAY AND AROUND Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch From Precise Objectivity to the Borderland of Reality – Reflection on Stefan Wojnecki’s Early Works 345 Monika Kostaszuk-Romanowska Theatre on the Water. The Aquatic Element in Contemporary Polish Theatre 361 Małgorzata Wrześniak The Story of One Theme – on the Relationship Between Jewellery and Architecture 379 PREFACE The presented special issue of the „Cultural Studies Appendix” – an academic journal of the Institute of Cultural and Religious Studies at Faculty of Humanities of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw – features translations of various archive articles, which were published in previous issues of the journal over the period 2015-2017. The texts included in the thematic section, entitled Kitsch in Contemporary Culture, were originally published in issue 3/2016. Staying true to the concept of interdisciplinary studies and the idea of studying the multitude of aspects of culture, its complexity and convolution, we decided to focus our academic endeavours on a number of issues, processes, texts and artistic depictions connected with various forms and manifestations of kitsch in contemporary culture. The phenomenon at hand seems to be important for studies in humanities, particularly those that concern the area of artistic cultural texts – since kitsch can be mediated by arts, literature, painting, music, sculpture and architecture, as well as those which aim for exploring the links between the nature of civilisational changes and transitions, and the processes occurring in the sphere of social behaviours, collective and individual mentality, values and ideas. Undoubtedly, we live in a time where kitsch is expanding. This phenomenon is associated primarily with the impact of mass media on the consciousness of contemporary individuals, particularly the pursuit of self-fulfilment and success that they promote and push onto people. Researchers studying this issue look at kitsch from many points of view, presenting a variety of classifications for cultural texts, which they tend to consider manifestations of ‘creation in a bad taste’. Thus, some of the deliberations focus on kitsch in television (in its many forms) and in opera, as well as religious, social, patriotic, totalitarian, Hollywood, exotic and even academic kitsch. These are of course selected randomly from among many kinds of kitsch. At the same time, the opinions that kitsch and ‘true art’ are entangled in the dialectic relation of mutual links and references, as well as that kitsch – despite being disregarded and despised – is a crucial element of the artistic system, seem to be justified and well-grounded. There is little doubt that high art pieces and kitsch enter into various kinds of relationships with each other, what is more, there are reasons to believe that sometimes only a mutual connection ▪ www.zalacznik.uksw.edu.pl 7 PREFACE between them allows them to achieve the expected aesthetic effect. This means that even an outstanding work can annex and use various elements and qualities that at first seem despicable – this happens for example in the case of La Strada by Federico Fellini, a film which is sometimes referred to as ‘kitsch with a philosophical load of Hamlet’. We encourage you to explore the issues related to kitsch and other interesting topics undertaken outside the thematic section of this issue of the „Cultural Studies Appendix” together with Polish scholars. The Editorial Staff Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Polska (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL) Cultural Studies Appendix – English Issue 2019/1 CULTURAL STUDIES’ INQUIRIES WHat IS CulturOLOGY? Faculty of Polish Studies, Edward Kasperski University of Warsaw I. THE COnteXT, SUBJect anD CHARacteRistics Of CULTUROLOGY Culturology deals with a study of culture with the intention to encompass it in its entirety, cognize its complexity and the processes occurring within it as well as identifies the qualities decisive for its hypothetical unity and for its relative difference from the other domains of being1. The difficulty in solving the latter issue stems from the fact that – quite literally – the ‘entirety’ of culture is of tentative, ephemeral, mobile, multi-shaped nature, thus it relentlessly changes its content and boundaries. It is so because its resources include such diverse classes of artifacts – seemingly of no common denominator – as: tools, utensils, machines, means of transportation, architecture, scientific discoveries, works of art, music, texts, customs, institutions, lay and religious rituals, etc. Additionally, all of the above evolve in time and differ according to the type of their society of origin and its spatial context. As a result, it proves much easier to recognize cultures created and practiced by various communities, situated in a specific time and a defined space, than to characterize ‘global culture’ or ‘culture in general’. 1 The origin of the term ‘culturology’ is in itself complex. The author regarded as its creator is a German scholar Wilhelm Friedrich Ostwald, a chemist and philosopher, Nobel prize laureate in chemistry, and the author of the seminal Energetische Grundlagen der Kulturwissenschaft (1909), who was the first to use the term with regard to culture in 1913. However, renown and wide significance were rendered to the term by an American anthropologist and theorist of culture Leslie A. White (1900-1975). See: Carneiro 2004: 165. The term ‘culture’ is discussed also by: Ort 2003: 19-20. ▪ www.zalacznik.uksw.edu.pl 9 EdwArd KASpErSKI Moreover, the same applies to all the various fields of culture (customs, arts, technology, consumption, etc.), which in contrast to extremely heterogeneous and internally diversified entirety of culture are characterized by a relative uniformity,