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2010 (rok LXIV) |
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Danuta Benedyktowicz, Zbigniew Benedyktowicz The Home the Way of Being Maria Poprzęcka At Home Jacek Waltoś The Studio – Partially Domesticated, Portable or Transitory Elżbieta Wolicka-Wolszleger To Reside in a Novel The characteristic features of the later works by Paul Ricoeur (I have in mind his trilogy Time and Narrative and the anthropological summa Oneself as Another) include a „linguistic turn” – concentration on the philosophical problems of language. The heart of the matter, however, concerns speech and a semiotic system isolated from the context and functioning according to conventionally established rules. Ricoeur considered both the vernacular and linguistic creations within the cultural circuit in the categories of a „discursive instance” (a term introduced by Émile Benveniste), and as a consequence – within an existential and onto-anthropological perspective as the modus of the human condition: the hermeneutic envisages „being-in-language” as an inseparable feature of „being-in-the-world”. „Discursive instances”, i. e. acts of interpersonal dialogue and communication as well as the creation and reading of narrative works in the form of biographies or autobiographies, historiography and literature, poetry and art (mutatis mutandis including normative resolutions, political institutions, social organisations, etc.) are not reduced to the sphere of „objective facts”: the products of cultural creativity and the tools of social communication. From the hermeneutic point of view they are predominantly intermediaries of the self-understanding and self-confirmation of the human subject – his „self-confirmation in being”. Narrative works in particular – novels – become the determinants of dynamic identity, „being-oneself” (soi-même) amidst the variable turns, tenuous connections and chaotic variability of life and history following their courses. The human „I” emerges in the course of reading and interpreting linguistic products as a „project” of the different possibilities of „being-oneself” in a confrontation with „the other” (un autre): we understand each other only by following a roundabout road amidst the signs of mankind rendered indelible in works of culture. Culture conceived as a human „world of life” (Lebenswelt) can be, however, both an offer of individual self-realisation and a „source of suffering” and personal alienation. Can one find oneself at home in this „world” by „changing it into speech” which according to Heidegger is the dwelling and refuge of the essence of man? This is the hope placed by Ricoeur in an erudite and extremely extensive hermeneutic „dialogue” with traditional philosophy, claiming that an interpretation is the response to the fundamental alienation established by the objectivisation of man in the works of the discourse, comparable with the objectivisation that is the outcome of his work and art. Ewa Rewers The Home in the Intellectual Landscape of the Twentieth/Twenty First Century. From Philosophy towards Activism This statement is composed of three parts, with the first introducing the conceit of the relational space that appears between traditional opposites, such as: private space – public space. In relational space the home remains a real place, but its location becomes mobile. Between enrootment and mobility there comes into being a thick network of connections, transitory and hybrid forms. In the second part the Aristotelian conception of the „good life” is interpreted as an element of the realisation of the modern promesse de bonheur, assuming the form of assorted cultures of dwelling. The last part discusses three vectors of relational space in which we may place – in different forms – modern cultures of residence. Their foundations are composed of: 1. The philosophy of enrootment, 2. The philosophy of the language, 3. The philosophy of activity. Each also possesses its negative version, in which the prime categories are re-deciphered, re-interpreted, deconstructed and, finally, rejected. Zbigniew Rybczyński The Home is a Woman! Eli Barbur The Space of the Lost Home The author recollects the successive homes and places where he lived: Paris, Warsaw (50 Nowy Świat Street), Copenhagen and Tel Aviv. In this manner, he spins a tale about lifelong wanderings and searches for his own home-place, a lost childhood... Wiesław Szpilka To Return Home? The presented sketch is an attempt at delving into the present-day condition of the home, with the latter treated as a form of human existence. At the onset of the twenty first century its basic property is the dissolution or loss of the home. The horrific twentieth century, whose spiritual and physical destruction of the home was a significant element and homelessness – a prominent effect, brings forth the gravity of this phenomenon. The author endeavours to demonstrate the way in which the home creates existence and reinforces it, the manner in which it is submerged in a mythical aura, associating it with that which is primary, intensive, obvious and full of sense. The experiences of the last century revealed the fragility of this construction, depriving it of the obviousness of duration. Can such a mythical home be regained, and is there a path of returning to it? How is one to deal with such a loss without negating it and, at the same time, treating it as something ultimate and without a solution? The story about Zakopane is a project of evading the ultimate. Czesław Robotycki „The Home Made Out of Newspaper” in the Prose of Horst Bienek „It is no longer possible to return to the childhood home. But we can imagine that childhood, describe it and, in this fashion, halt it in time…” wrote Horst Bienek, the author of a tetralogy about Gliwice (Die erste Polka, Septemberlicht, Zeit ohne Glocken) and other recollections (Reise in die Kindheit, Birken und Hochofen. Eine Kindheit in Oberschlesien and Beschreibung einer Provinz) also relating to this particular town. The experience of losing a private homeland comprises an anthropological problem, which played a relevant part in Bienek’s writings: the Silesian motif of the author of the Gliwice reminiscences can be deciphered as a response to the question: who am I, and where is my home? In the case of Bienek, the site – Gliwice – assumes the form of a phantasm of the imagination, despite the detailed and precise descriptions. Reality succumbs to idealisation and hence to sui generis deformation. Bienek was well aware that the mythologisation of space is a specific process of imbuing with autobiographical recollections. He also realised that by travelling across Silesia he finally ended the rite of passage and experienced something that should have occurred a long time ago by severing all ties with his unfinished childhood. The literary psychological portrait of the inhabitants of Silesia, constructed by Bienek out of his emotions, can be of help while recreating a cultural reality in a way characteristic for the historian and the anthropologist of culture. After all, Beschreibung einer Provinz recalls in places an on-the spot record and the so-called field notes of an anthropologist. The author used for his purposes the same sort of sources as those studied by the ethnographer. He obtained information about Silesia by reading old newspapers, calendars, nineteenth-century novels as well as old medical and sightseeing descriptions. Bienek collected telephone books, city plans and the biographies of real persons from the time of his childhood. He was also familiar with the reminiscences of the former residents of the town. Maria Lipok-Bierwiaczonek The Silesian Home. Canons of Beauty, Spaces of Contact, the Passage of Time The Silesian landscape is often identified with steel mill chimneys, mine shafts and red brick housing estates. All these elements are branded with specific decline – they bring to mind the past, the history of the development of Silesian industry, capitalist industrialization from the turn of the nineteenth century as well as its socialist counterpart from the time of the six-year plan and the subsequent period. The discussed examples of three workers’ housing estates (Giszowiec, Nikiszowiec and Murcki) make it possible to understand the phenomenon of moulding socio-cultural communities – strongly integrated, living according to identical models, observing the same rhythm of daily life and celebrating the same cycle of festivities. First and foremost, these were communities associated with a single employer-patron. Contemporary redesigning as a rule obliterates the character of the described houses and estates, as exemplified by the loss of the lauba and, as a consequence, a socially important space of contact. The spirit of the Silesian home is retained more in the people, their stories, family histories, manner of perceiving the world and the cherished system of values. Tomasz Rodowicz My Home Tomasz Rodowicz, a former member of the Centre for Theatre Practices „Gardzienice” and today the chairman of the' Chorea' theatrical association, speaks about his experiences of the home. The presented reflections concern primarily the expedition made in 1982 to Lapland together with the Gardzienice company, with some of the participants getting lost in the course of a foot trip across the vast empty spaces of the local tundra. The reader learns about a miraculously discovered hone – the small hut of a local reindeer farmer, the connected feeling of safety, and the fall of the Romantic myth of an artist compelled to struggle for survival. The author declares that all those experiences had to a great extent moulded his world outlook and the trends of his subsequent artistic quests. Stefan Gunnar Paulsson The Concealed Home The author considers problems developed in his Secret City: the Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945. Here, the question of the home mingles with the biography of the author and his mother. Janusz Barański The Home – the World of Serious Life The thesis of this article focuses on the ritual function of the home. The point of departure are the findings made by researchers studying the functions of the home, primarily Danuta and Zbigniew Benedyktowicz, who indicate the overwhelming mythical role played by the home (the home-centre, the home-dream, the home-cosmos or even the home-chaos), its magical-ritual role (the zakladziny practices, the site of carrying out the rites of transition and fertility, the archetypical foundation of processes of individuation, the holy corner conceived as a prolongation of liturgical rituals) or social role (the place of the formation of basic competences for living in a group, interaction with the outer world, the storehouse of clan tradition). The above-listed functions are confirmed by suitably formalized practice that, however, constitutes only a small part of symbolic interactions, in which the residents remain with their homes. An interpretation category applied to indicate un-formalised interactions is the concept of rituality, derived from la vie serieuse expounded by Durkheim and le mythique formulated by Barthes. Thus understood rituality is a variety of ritual behavior – scattered, unconscious, stream-like – that acts as an intermediary between our relations with the outer world; at the same time, it serves the shaping of personal and group identities. This is the case of communication (self-communication – Lotman), whose partners (intermediaries) are also material objects, including the home. Due to its indistinct nature one should speak about this instance of rituality/communication first and foremost in the categories of causality, the individual emotional/cognitive act. The symbolic of the home and all sorts of artifacts that make it up obtains in this manner an intimate form, and the home itself assumes the form of an indexical cipher applied by the person (persons) living in it. This is a home inscribed into individual (collective) personality. A reverse process also takes place: personalities are moulded by the symbolic baggage of the home. In this interpretation, we may ascribe to it the role of the generalised other (Mead). Jacek Jan Pawlik African House as a Sacred Space. Ethnological Study of the North-Togo The house can be considered as a metaphor of life. It is a place where human life begins and ends. It is also the proper place for preparing food and a place to eat a meal. This paper, based on ethnological data from the North of Togo, presents African house as a sacred space, separated from the outside world by the compound wall and is sanctified through the regular offering of sacrifices being done inside. The comparative description of the house building in the different ethnic groups shows multiple similarities. The only difference concerns the presence or absence of vestibule and the position of granary inside or outside courtyard. The African household forms members of family living in the compound. It is a group of kin bound through the common goal, the surviving. The group of kinship includes also the defunct who support and protect living members of family. The sacrifices offered in the honor of ancestors ensure material prosperity and procreation capacity of women. The house is also a place of ritual enacting, especially in case of rites of passage and rites of crisis. The African house is a proper place for maintaining the life – physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. Dariusz Czaja My Mobile Home. The Travelling Artist This anthropological interpretation envisages the outstanding documentary film by Bruno Monsaingeon: Piotr Anderszewski. Voyageur intranquille (Medici Arts International 2008) predominantly as a particular 'text of culture', made up of assorted semantic ingredients. The author analyses not so much a portrait of the artist but, primarily, a story about the home. Or more precisely: about different homes, those enrooted in actual space and those suspended in spaces of a more subtle nature. A story about leaving the home and returning to it. About seeking a home or home-oriented nostalgia. On the literal level: about a train carriage changed into a temporary home. Finally: on the last level of this film: a story about a home created out of sounds, fleeting music constructions, erecting an ethereal albeit real space of a home. The interpreted film is also a story about dwelling, connected with empirical topography, which it is possible to measure by means of geographical parameters; it is also a film about the sort of residence that Martin Heidegger described while commenting on the famous refrain from Hölderlin: „Man dwells poetically on this earth”. Piotr Borowski The End of the Song The author of the text discusses the experience that inspired him to make the film Koniec pieśni (The End of the Song). Recalling his childhood and quests, he mentions a fascination with the culture of the eastern borderlands and their cultural diversity. Subsequent theatrical searches carried out together with the 'Gardzienice' theatre company demonstrated the need for a longer expedition, conducted with a small group of people and rendering possible in-depth cultural barter. The three-months long excursion to the Belorussian borderland produced an impressive collection of folk music performed by the local inhabitants. The End of the Song is a record of a nostalgic trip, in whose course the author toured the same places 27 years later. Wandering from home to home, he played archival recordings to the families of long deceased singers. Music becomes a carrier of a tradition that has passed away together with people. This voice from the past evokes the most human emotions and sets free assorted recollections and nostalgia. At the same time, it urges to pose numerous questions about contemporaneity and tradition. Wojciech Michera The Homelessness of Odysseus Ithaca is the arche and telos of Odysseus’ journey – the home, conceptualised as a permanent and reliable pole of human existence, contrasted with magical, fictional lands that cannot be localised on a map. The author, however, presents the non-obvious nature of this classical opposition (domi /foris) and reveals the deconstructive potential of Homer’s Odyssey. He does so by focusing on two particular elements of the narration: the first is the cyclical nature of Odysseus’ returns and resulting non-conclusiveness. The second circumstance is the 'great sign', mega seam (23,188), confirming the identity of the returning Odysseus – 'enrooting' this identity in the original construction of the home. The author demonstrates that this sign is connected directly with events transpiring in the cave of Polypherne, which becomes the reason why the centre of the home sphere and the very identity of Odysseus are branded with an inner 'lack' and receive the status of literary fiction. Katarzyna Kubat The Insane Asylum – Site and Experience The purpose of this text is to depict the sort of mental hospital that emerges from widely understood medical literature – reports, scientific articles, textbooks intended for nurses and psychiatrists as well as special- occasion material. The application of an anthropological interpretation – by referring to the symbolic of the home, mental illnesses, the problem of liminality and otherness, as well as rules organising scientific cognition and treatment, including the mechanism of control, discipline and punishment – makes it possible to treat the 'insane asylum’' as a paradoxical and ambivalent space. The principle of ambivalence may be observed by considering the terrain of the hospital in different interpretations, as an example of a situation of an encounter of the intellect and mindlessness, an asylum and a prison, a refuge and a place of exile. It reflects not only the culturally determined ambiguity of madness, but also the specificity and 'inner rent' of the psychiatric discourse, in which the biological and humanistic perspective constantly confront each other; this, in turn, can affect the way of conceptualizing mental disturbances, the perception of the sick and subsequent therapy. Janusz Marciniak 'The Homeless in Poznań'. The Poznań Projection by Krzysztof Wodiczko The Poznan Projection concerns social exclusion and, primarily, homelessness, unemployment, their causes and consequences and the ensuing question of alcoholism. Its display served the subjectivisation of the excluded and drawing attention to their life situation. 'Hopefully, the project will create a dual socio-aesthetic situation of the sort in which the town will enable the ‘strangers’ to develop and enforce their weakened or destroyed capability of becoming open and sharing difficult experiences within public space, and will enable the public to grow closer to the ‘strangers’ and recognize their role as the main protagonists and actors of the city’s Agon' (K. Wodiczko). Krzysztof Wodiczko The Town, Democracy and Art Doctoris lectio – a lecture presented by Krzysztof Wodiczko upon the occasion of the inauguration of the 2007/2008 academic year at the Academy of the Fine Arts in Poznan, following the ceremony of granting him the title of doctor honoris causa. Krzysztof Wodiczko Towards an Active Monument ('Vehicle for the Homeless', 'Veterans as the Monuments of Their Trauma'). A lecture read by Krzysztosz Wodiczko at the opening of a seminar on Conflict. Trauma. Art at the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities in January 2010. Barbara Mijakowska 'Homelessness' in Venice Reminiscences of a keeper of the installation Guests by K. Wodiczko at the Venice Art Biennale in 2009. Bogdan Chmielewski, Witold Chmielewski, Wiesław Smużny The 'Lucim 111' Group Since 1977 Bogdan and Witold Chmielewski and Wiesław Smużny have been documenting artistic and social campaigns in the village of Lucim. Their unusual undertakings are not merely an attempt at restoring identity and the awareness of a community to the inhabitants of the small village but also at establishing 'here and now' a unique axis mundi – the symbolic home. Urszula Ślusarczyk From the Motif of the 'Home' to the Idea of 'Transparency' as a Path of Existence A sui generis commentary on a series of paintings entitled Within the Range of Wooden Architecture, executed by the author. An attempt at resolving the questions: 'Which home is artistically of special significance to me? Can the artist find himself at home amidst his works? '. Patrycja Cembrzyńska On the Home which Grew Out of the Ground – a recorded interview with Jan Bujnowski Jacek Waltoś Homelessness – the Destroyed Home, the Unattainable Home A text accompanying the exhibition „The Reduced Home. Homelessness. The Home in Contemporary Art” at the Municipal Art Gallery, Czestochowa, 2010). Andrzej Zwierzchowski 'Returns to the Past' A record of a speech given by a painter and lecturer at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts during the conference: 'The Home – the Path of Being' (Częstochowa 2010), on the relations between the word (the process of naming a thing) and the image in contemporary art. Marek Przybył The Studio as the Home of the Artist’s Imagination The author – a painter of the Imaginary Portrait of Francis Bacon. Studio – describes his direct contact with the canvases of Francis Bacon. This meeting not only 'opened his eyes' to purely painterly questions, but also made it possible to establish the symbolic relations between the studio – the artist’s workplace and his imagination. Renata Rogozińska Homelessness as the Path of Creation The topos of sacrificing the home (conceived not as a dwelling but as a 'community of love') on the altar of art dates back to antiquity, although its strongest resonance took place in the nineteenth century. It is present in, i.a., the reflections of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, in which man’s greatness, symbolised by the saint and the genius, is closely connected with solitude. Homelessness/solitude is, therefore, not only hopelessness and abandonment but also, according to Levinas, courage, pride and sovereignty. It assists the artist in attaining inner autonomy, sets free the power to understand, and favours raising oneself above human measure. Only (absolute!) solitude reveals that which is most important: it is the condition for discovering the truth. The shape of a tower assumed by the studios of Hubert von Herkomer or Carl Gustav Jung, ostentatiously inaccessible to others, should be recognised as a spectacular manifestation of the artist’s inner exile. The category of homelessness is also associated with a train station waiting room, which for Simone Weil comprised a sui generis niche for reflection, or the hotel room, in which Albert Camus wrote. It is by no means an accident that the formal and ideological model for images of the atelier, universal in painting, was the depiction of St. Jerome or St. Augustine in their workshops. After all, they comprise a representation of the supreme form of a free and beautiful life – bios theoretical, or the Latin vita contemplative – a life consisting of contemplating that which is beautiful because it is invariable, eternal and divine, and thus of studying the truth and philosophising. The exhibition entitled 'The home – the path of being' shows that solitude, alienation and escapism are still part of quite a few programmes of the artist’s studio, with considerable space taken up by paintings featuring the motif of the atelier. The Vast Studio by Jerzy Mierzejewski, suffused with light and silence, seems to indicate the supernatural source of creative inspiration. Only such conditions can give rise to a vision and then witness the miracle of its embodiment into a work. After all, it was believed that the creative act consists of a transcendence, a transition from the sphere of the profanum to that of the sacrum, an opinion of a different perspective, a change in the manner of perception. This is a great mystery. Although today such an approach is rare, upon certain occasions the studio is still treated as an exceptional and magical site, marked with sanctity. 'We lived in a house that resembled a Buddhist or Hindu monastery' – the painter Jerzy Ćwiertnia recently spoke about the home-studio shared with his daughter, also a painter. 'When Nowosielski came to visit' – recalled Jerzy Tchórzewski – 'I received him in the flat. At a certain moment Jurek said: <<It’s very pleasant here, but let’s move to the studio. You know, there is always something holy in a studio >>. True – I thought, since one enters the studio just as any other place that offers contact with another sphere, in a normal fashion, but leaves it in a special manner – via the paintings'. Tadeusz Boruta The Home – a Source of Identity Analysing the symbolic and structure of Robert Campin’s Merode Triptych the author notices that the ostensible non-cohesion of the objects and the interior in the scene of the Annunciation comprises an introduction, intended by the author, of three parallel axes, in which the lines of the perspective meet. Each is ascribed to one of the Three Divine Persons. In this case, they are present as a principle introducing order into the whole depicted world and thus legitimise the religious interpretation of the portrayed objects derived from daily life, as symbols referring to supernatural reality. In this work, due to the broached theme associated with daily narration and the symbolic of the work, the artist rendered conception, nativity, and the perspective of death and resurrection; he also expressed the intimate space of loneliness as well as dialogical, social and professional relations. In this fashion, the home shown by Robert Campin conveys the identity of man who, by setting up a home in a concrete place and at a given time, seeks the reasons for existence in a supernatural order. By gaining a point of support and an anchor, he discovers an order that exceeds the dimension of individual existence. In this way, the home, which is both an idea and the experience of settling down, becomes a source of identity that constitutes the correct perspective of the world in which we live. Aldona Mickiewicz Christ in the House of Mary and Martha – or on the Meaning of Daily Life The topic of the visit paid by Jesus at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus in Bethany had been broached in art by the greatest masters (including Vermeer, Tintoretto and Jordaens). The author, however, had been always fascinated with the curious depictions of this theme by Peter (Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, 1552 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), his student Joachim Beuckelaer (Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, 1568, Prado Museum, Madrid) and the young Velazquez (Christ in the House of Mary and Martha 1618-20, National Gallery, London), in which we observe the scene of Jesus’ appearance at the home of the siblings from Bethany as if from the vantage point of the kitchen. It has been proposed that the religious scene was a mere pretext for depicting still life, which at the time had not as yet assumed the form of an independent genre. The author undermines this view, and upon the basis of an analysis of the still life present in the works by Aertsen and Beuckelaer he formulates the thesis that we are dealing with an opinion expressed in a religious discourse conducted during the turbulent Reformation era. Master Aertsen, who upon numerous occasions during the iconoclastic troubles witnessed the destruction of his best religious compositions, executed this particular painting at the time of the Council Trent, and appears to have presented his personal credo or 'illustrated' the decree on the Most Holy Sacrament, issued at the time and confirming the transubstantiation of wine and bread, the manner of storing the Sacrament of the Eucharist and carrying it to the sick, and the two ways of receiving the Eucharist – spiritual and actual. In the discussed Flemish paintings Christ is present dually – as a physical person and in Eucharistic symbols, embodied as concrete objects. More than half a century later, the 19-years old Diego Velazquez painted the same scene of Jesus at the house of Mary and Martha, up to this day providing historians of art with a theme for debates whether the Biblical scene shown in the upper right corner of the canvas is a painting, a window to the adjoining room, or a mirror or even two mirrors reflecting the meeting. The author claims that we are dealing with a painting within a painting, a recollection, or even some sort of Loyolan 'spiritual exercise'. 'Imaginative meditation' engages all the senses so that, as Ignacio Loyola wrote, 'one could smell and relish with the sense of smell and taste the endless sweetness and mildness of the deity'. The older woman showing the younger one the image featured on a wall urges to follow the path leading from 'actio towards contemplatio'. Andrzej Pieńkos Museum-Mausoleum-Pantheon. The Ultimate Post-Romantic Sacralisation of the Artist’s Home When the cult of the artist reached its apogee during the Romantic era, the microcosmos of the home became a frequent part of archetypical associations: a castle with a turret, an armoury, a magnate’s palace with gardens full of sculptures and fountains, a chapel, etc. Such associations situate artists as the spiritual heirs of feudal lords, ruling over a given territory, knights battling for the faith and honour, or priests guarding over spiritual order. Domes, 'knightly' ceilings of 'armouries' and stained glass windows not only granted splendour to the seats of the artists, but brought to mind a sequence of associations with the olden days and the sphere of the sacrum. Some artists settled down in the direct proximity of a sacral building (L. Poliaghi’s 'Sacro Monte' in Varese) or directly on the site (A. Munthe on Capri, I. Zuloaga in Zumaya, M. Denis in Saint-Germain-en-Laye). Sacral descriptions of their residences were used outright by, i. a. W. Scott and G. D’Annunzio. Historical models best expressed the glorification of the artist when assisted by eschatological references. Special proof of a cult was the custom, increasingly universal in the nineteenth century, of displaying dead writers and artists in their studios, in the manner of the pompa funebris of the rulers of old (B. Thorvaldsen, A. Wiertz, H. Makart, F. von Stuck). The body of the sculptor V. Vela was on view amongst his masterpieces, comprising an exposition of his oeuvre featured in an octagonal hall at the artist’s home in Ligornetto. This installation of a post-Romantic cult of the artist in the central, domed hall of the 'Vela Pantheon', which brought to mind sacral (as well as ancient and Christian!) connotations, lasted for two days. The artist’s home and studio became his mausoleum, albeit ephemeral, while the catafalque was depicted on Vela’s tombstone in the Ligornetto cemetery. The house, erected on a hillock and surrounded with an Italian garden maintained in the Renaissance style, designed on the ideal ground plan of a square and with the an inscribed central domed hall, served both as a home-atelier and as Vela’s museum. Finally, it became his monument. In his home village of Possagno, A. Canova, the initiator of transforming the Roman Pantheon into a monument of great artists, built for himself a church-monument containing his grave. The return of the body (diminished, since certain 'relics' were buried separately in Venice and Rome as a symbol of the veneration of the artist) and the most private fragment of his oeuvre rendered the small locality of Possagno the centre of a cult. The Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, which brings forth numerous associations with temples, urns and sepulchres, is also the sculptor’s mausoleum. The sacralisation of museum space, reconstructing the home, life and works of the artist, was ultimately accentuated by placing an authentic sepulchre of Thorvaldsen within its 'heart', the building’s courtyard. Post-Romantic artists were often obsessed with imbuing their residences with maximum contents. This enhanced 'home quality' could assume highly unusual features, best exemplified by the London home-museum of J. Soane. Eschatological allusions appear here upon numerous occasions and upon different levels of literalness or mediation, attaining ironical relief in the concept of a 'crypt' with the tomb of a fictional Padre Giovanni, Soane’s alter ego. In this case, the artist’s home appears to be both a monastery and a sarcophagus albeit a rebours! It turns out that the architect had actually buried his favourite dog. A 'family' mausoleum, i. e. the tomb of both owners, is the crowning of an axis of the villa-garden premise of R. Wagner’s last residence in Bayreuth. Originally, Wagner wished to call his home 'Zum letzten Glück'. The Il Vittoriale complex belonging to D’Annunzio is the zenith of a longing for the sacralisation of the artist’s dwelling. The lavish mausoleum, built after the writer’s death, towers over the whole complex: the palace/museum/sacral premise is topped with a tomb of the owner and author. The G. Vigeland Museum in Oslo contains an urn with the artist’s ashes in a tower situated along the axis of a building that served the sculptor as a home and an atelier, and already during his lifetime was envisaged as a museum. It is worth recalling that the edifice in question is part of Frognerpark, featuring sculptures by Vigeland and comprising a sui generis materialised philosophical-religious treatise. The culmination of reflections on fundamental ideas, conducted by symbolic means, is found in the author’s soaring sepulchre. In Oslo E. Vigeland also created a temple of his own cult, known as Tomba Emmanuelle. This enormous sarcophagus, enclosed and devoid of windows, was no longer a home and a studio. On its walls the artist depicted the Way of Life and a syncretic apology of fire, to which he had entrusted his body, previously designing a central altar on which the urn was to rest. The death of the artist and the presence of the ashes of his body, devoured by divine fire, endow ultimate significance to this personal space of life and creation. In homes similar to the above described the functions of the studio and the dwelling seem to vanish under the symbolic burden of a museum, a monument and a mausoleum. They remain, however, an indispensable basis, since all functions are bound together by the sacralisation of the person of the artist. Katarzyna Barańska Home–Museum, Museum–Home The text commences by focusing on the ostensible contradiction of two concepts – the home and the museum, and goes on to discuss the domains in which these two conceits are connected. First, attention should be drawn to historical relations – collections constituting the beginnings of European museums were created at home and were to serve predominantly its residents. After all, private collections are established up to this day. At times, they comprise, similarly as in the initial period of setting them up, an expression of the interest of the author and an investment of capital, and convey the process of building the prestige and self-presentation of the owner or his family. They are also – or primarily – the carriers of private memory, storing objects of economic and sentimental value. The same holds true for local museums, where souvenirs of the past, of value for society as a whole, are deposited. Is it possible, therefore, to formulate a thesis claiming that a local museum could fulfill the function of a 'family home'? One could indicate an area where the concepts of the home and the museum meet, i. e. museums that feature residential interiors, either a part or a whole. There are several main types of such institutions. The text considers museums-preserved residences of concrete persons (e. g. the Zamoyski Palace in Kozłówka, the Tumidajski manor house in Dołęga), reconstructions of interiors ascribed to renowned representatives of the world of culture or science, whose memory is preserved by setting up a biographical museum. The examples of the Matejko Home in Cracow and the Manor in Czarnolas – the Jan Kochanowski Museum – serve to discuss the main exposition errors, which consist of creating spaces that are a projection of the imagination and knowledge of museum experts. A similar interpretation may be applied in the case of the third type of museums, depicting a 'typical interior' from a given epoch or region (the Hipolit town house in Cracow). The creation of museum reconstructions is deeply embedded in history and the topic of theoretical reflections. That which appears to be the most relevant is such a fulfillment of the expectations of the visitors, which would not violate historical truth and good taste and, first and foremost, would protect the original values contained in the displayed exhibits. Joanna Winnicka-Gburek If a Home then also a 'Play', a 'Symbol' and a 'Festival' – Inspired by The Relevance of the Beautiful by H. G. Gadamer An attempt at paraphrasing the theory of art expounded by Hans Georg Gadamer for the needs of an analysis of the category of the home. While discussing the book The Topicality of Beauty, in which the philosopher summarised his views about art and creativity, the author of the article wishes to show the connections between experiencing a work of art and a home. Anna Rogozińska Art at Home in the New Service – commercial Space The presented text demonstrates an unprecedented phenomenon that started to function on an increasing scale since the 1980s: corporations had rendered art a business venture, treating it as one of the most effective marketing instruments. The intentional pursuit of art has become a new form of financial investment, accompanied by a marketing strategy of creating a new image. The appearance of a private corporation sector in a domain that in Europe had been almost exclusively public has become a feature of a novel artistic awareness. Moreover, the widely delineated and effective application of marketing by the corporations has affected the approach towards marketing on the part of the temples of art – the museums. Corporation models of institutional activity and management became increasingly often models of functioning for museums. The article discusses factors that influence the transformation of traditional art museums into cultural malls as well as the increased number of renowned museums (so-called super stars) and their expansion across the world. The author analyses a process in which commercial organisations, on the one hand, develop their own forms and strategies of a cultural policy (e. g. by creating art collections) in order to retain and expand the sphere of influence while, on the other hand, art institutions adopt and modify corporation strategies so as guarantee public recognition and financial stabilisation. New forms of cultural promotion and mediation have developed as a result of those concurrent interests. Both the corporations and the art institutions seek legitimisation and acceptance, at the same time emphasising the benefits enjoyed by the public/ clients from establishing inter-institutional relations. By gradually taking over impact over the museums, the corporations significantly alter the functioning of those institutions and art itself, and by displaying art in their interiors they re-define the discourse, especially the one dealing with contemporary art. Wojciech Bałus 'We’re building a new home... ' A presentation of Polish socialist realistic painting, i. a. creative episodes in the oeuvre of such artists as Andrzej Wróblewski or Aleksander Kobzdej. Dorota Jędruch Is a Block a Home – the Idea of the Home and the Family in the Le Corbusier Theory This analysis of the meaning of the concept of the „home” in the works of Le Corbusier describes the role played by refection on the traditional, cultural comprehension of the home in the pioneering, avant-garde conceptions proposed b the French architect. It also considers the way in which the individual and the family are defined vis a vis a vision of communal life in functional residential units (the prototype „blocks”). Ultimately, theory is confirmed by means of praxis by attempting to answer the question: how do the inhabitants of the realised residential units perceive the designer’s visions, and do they identify themselves with them? Tomasz Szerszeń What is the Use of the Ruins of Modernism? From Wola to Hotel Palenque – and Back Again „While thinking about the space of Warsaw and the heritage of socialist realism – including the nonextant 10th-Anniversary Stadium and the soon to be demolished fountains in the Edward Szymanski Park in the Wola district – I simply cannot evade a particularly evocative phantom. I have in mind a vision of Hotel Palenque on the Yucatán Peninsula. A place that became famous (probably only virtually: has anyone actually seen Hotel Palenque?) thanks to Robert Smithson”. The presented text is an attempt at looking at modernistic architecture via the context of its disintegration – the processes of destruction and entropy. This motif seems to play an essential part in contemporary art: it emerges both in the works of the classics (Smithson, Gordon Mata-Clark) and the young artists (Cyprien Gaillard). The point of departure for these reflections is the local example of a „socialist realistic-modernistic” park in Warsaw, once extremely „modern” and today – decaying and sentenced to modernisation (tantamount to recomplete redesigning). Łukasz Zaremba Not-my-own Places (in the Works) of Witold Gombrowicz The text broaches the topic of the home in the oeuvre of WItold Gombrowicz not in its spatial aspect – as a microcosmos whose order corresponds to that of the world, while consecutive spaces possess symbolic properties and a hierarchic value – but the temporal aspect, in order show that the family home, the childhood home, is an impossible place, and that returning to it is doomed to fail. The author compares Gombrowicz’s drama Ślub (The Wedding) and autobiographical Dziennik (Diary) – both treated as literary texts; everything that we can learn from them about Gombrowicz pertains to the literary figure of „Witold Gombrowicz”. The instrument that is to assist our analysis is the Freudian category of das unheimliche, endowing identity and a specific structure to the return home and, simultaneously, the return to oneself. The „uncanny” is both alien, menacing and familiar, a return to that which is closest and disturbs the certitude of the subject’s power. An analogous structure is indicated in the texts by Gombrowicz: fragrances recognizable from Małoszyce and returning during a yearly sojourn in Germany indicate death. In the world of Gombrowicz, which, as M. P. Markowski recalled recently, begins with a „double association”, birth and youth must be paired with death, present, however, not at the end but from the beginning, and not according to the principle of Gombrowicz-style oppositions but the Freudian heimlich-unheimlich, contained in a single word. Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak „The House of Dead Animals” The titular description „The Home of Dead Animals” denotes a taxidermy laboratory in which dead animals are granted an ‘illusion of life'. The article is illustrated by literary and artistic examples of the mentioned motif. Artists made frequent use of dead animals, including stuffed ones, starting with the Dutch still life, especially of the vanitas variety. A taxidermist who conserves and renders immortal resembles a vanitas painter. The iconography of taxidermy, however, is not extensive (see, e. g. Henry Coeylas’ /1880-1920/ Reconstruction of the Dodo Bird in the Laboratory of Prof. Qustalet /1903/, a painting of value for the natural sciences). Artists much more frequently resorted to the motif of an abattoir and depicted skinned animals (Rembrandt, Goya, Soutine, Bacon et al.). While admiring their masterful qualities, the critics, as a rule, omitted the eschatic dimension of such works. A slightly different aspect of the problem is disclosed by the assemblages by Robert Rauschenberg: Odalisque and Monogram (1955-1959) and the performances by Beuys: Siberian Symphony (3 February 1963) and How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965). Compositions by Rauschenberg are autonomous objets d’art that ignore ultimate issues, in contrast to Beuys, whose oeuvre spans between life and the trauma of the threat and death. Alongside the 'Rauschenberg model' (a dead animal envisaged as a passive element of the world of art) and the 'Beuys model' (a dead animal as a physical 'participant' of the artist’s activity) there is Animal Pyramid (1993) by Katarzyna Kozyra, showing the daily proximity of death; by breaking a taboo Kozyra attained that which contemporary art finds particularly difficult – the sphere of the ultimate. Marek Maksymczak A Lamp with a Tin Shade. On Paintings by Jacek Waltoś The topic of this article are three oil canvases by Jacek Waltoś featuring the motif of the home: Great Improvisation – Small Stabilisation (1975), Awaiting, Ecstasy, Resignation (1977) and Threefold Pieta and the Fourth (1980). As a member of the 'Wprost' group the artist declared the realisation of painting involved in social issues, commenting on contemporary reality with the assistance of figurative depictions endowed with unambiguous contents. The works by Waltoś are, against the backdrop of the 'Wprost' oeuvre, distinguished by their distance towards speaking unambiguously and a direct portrayal of the world. Their characteristic features include a sui generis lyrical approach and a sublimation of the form and contents. The originality of these depictions consists of a presentation of interpersonal relations transpiring in the scenery of the home. Each of the discussed canvases displays a lamp with a tin shade; by possessing a concealed meaning it constitutes a symbol of the space of the Sacrum. The lamp and the portrayed figures share different relations. In Great Improvisation – Small Stabilisation the soaring male figure consistently realises his wish to come closer to the lamp, despite the fact that the bulb is not shining. Awaiting, Ecstasy, Resignation features a contrary situation, since it is the rendered figure of a person, or more precisely, a woman sitting in an armchair, which assumes a passive attitude, while the glowing lamp, hanging from the ceiling, is located in the direct proximity of the sitter. Both motifs are focused in Threefold Pieta and the Fourth, in which kneeling figures assume an active stance and the lamp, once against suspended from the ceiling, draws them forth from the semi-shade. This, in turn, suggests a reference to so-called vertical relations, which connect the figures with empirically inaccessible space that corresponds to the idea of the home conceived as axis mundi and identified with a site that renders possible a link with God. Anna Nasiłowska Stawisko – the Home of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz Stawisko – the residence of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz – is a special place in twentieth-century Polish culture. The author discusses in detail its history, the associated literary and milieu myth as well as the essence of the Stawisko topos and, more widely, the ’home' in the works of Iwaszkiewicz. Marzena Mróz The Photographic Description and the Literary Account – upon the Basis of Places Described in Novels by William Faulkner Can one take photographs of literature? Is it possible to see in the lens a literary description of a house, the protagonist of a novel, a landscape, a natural phenomenon? Mallarmé maintained that everything in the world exists to be photographed. According to Cartier-Bresson, taking photographs is tantamount to 'discovering the structure of the world' while Susan Sontag believed that a photograph can be also described as a quotation. This means that it may contain a cohesive literary communiqué. In order to compare a literary account with a photographic description I travelled to Szetejnie in Lithuania to document the world of Czesław Miłosz – his Valley of the Issa; to Hanseatic Lübeck, along whose narrows streets Thomas Mann chased as a child; to Rouen – where Flaubert’s home still stands; enthralled by the works of William Faulkner, I reached his legendary Rowan Oak farm... In each of these places I documented the world of the writer, his roots and sources of inspiration, at the same time comparing them with the literary works. Magdalena Barbaruk Being-at home. Jarmusch’s Phenomenology of habitation A phenomenological analysis of dwelling, being-at-home, based on Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control. The author maintains that this film also draws attention to the exceptional status of hotels in Spanish culture. Małgorzata Mostek The Letters and Journey of Antoni Rząsa The sketch pertains to the letters of Antoni Rząsa, a Polish sculptor, and his brother, Józef, whose vast correspondence lasted between the mid-1950s and Antony’s death at the beginning of 1980. Antoni Rząsa appears to have been an 'extremely human' person – the letters addressed to his sibling do not conceal anything. Hence, they often mention painful and difficult issues, at times probably much too frequently and intensely. The second part of the sketch deals with the journey made by Antoni Rząsa to Italy in the winter of 1962, a key experience in his artistic development. All these factors constitute testimony of the artist’s activity; despite the fact that he applied artistic means interpreted as purely folk, Rząsa dealt with all that is universal, regardless of the cultural competences of his recipients. The reason could lie in the fact that the artist strove towards recounting that which is the ultimate truth: he told about man. Antoni Rząsa The Italian Notebook The Italian notebook is a small address book with a rather sombre brown cover. The first pages are full of addresses of persons, the names of Italian institutions, vocabulary, useful expressions and hurriedly noted down sites, both those already seen and those to be toured, which Antoni Rząsa recorded during his journey across Italy in the winter of 1962. The following pages contain detailed descriptions and observations concerning people, art and the landscape. Antoni Rząsa Letters to a Brother The archive of the correspondence of Antoni and Józef Rząsa totals some 600 letters – the majority is also available in an electronic version (1.5 million characters on paper recorded for almost 25 years). The letters take up two small metal boxes full of already yellowed envelopes. The examples presented below are a modest selection made from the viewpoint of the recollections and consequences of a trip to Italy. Antoni Rząsa A Letter to Mr. Stanisław Morawski This letter, written by Antoni Rząsa in 1964 upon his return to Poland after a scholarship stay in Italy, is addressed to Stanisław Morawski, one of the first persons whose acquaintance Rząsa made during his Italian journey; it was Morawski who met the artist at the airport, took him to an hotel and was the first to show the Eternal City. Antoni Rząsa mentioned an interval in sculpting and 'renting a small house'… Joanna Benedyktowicz A Return to the Site. On the Space and Identity of the Novales Community The article deals with the relation between the space and identity of a group. The point of departure for an analysis of the Chronicles of the Novales monastery is the assumption that community identity is a construct that is subject to constant actualisation. By accepting the thesis that the place of the foundation and the space belonging to the abbey are extremely important factors of communal monastic identity, the article attempts to trace the narration strategies in the Chronicle, which make use of the categories of space and place, based on the authority of the past (including famous persons), the sacral status of the property and the widely understood practice of space. Anna Czajka Monika Bulaj’s Photographs of Divine Infancy Monika Bulaj – a Pole crossing frontiers, following the examples of Malinowski and Kapuściński and travelling simultaneously with Stasiuk, refers to the undertakings of such authors as Patrick L. Fermor, Nicolas Bouvier and Bruce Chatwin… The point of departure for her quest is the disturbing emptiness produced by the overlooked Other, the Unknown, the world of the Jews in the small Mazovian town of Warka, where she spent her childhood. By searching for the ignored Other, the author discovered numerous Others. She finds places where, as in Lithuania, Belarus and Bukovina, different religions co-exist, show mutual respect, and share prayers and rituals; in doing so, she toured communities based on religious-cultural syntheses, such as the Karaims in Troki (Lithuania), the Frankists and the Donmehs in Istambul. Monika Bulaj focused her attention on the intensity of contacts with the Essence, which she found in the peripheries of the contemporary world. Maciej Rożalski The Candomble Temple Home – Cultural Identity An examination of identity in contemporary anthropological theories. Analysing the example of temple homes in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé cult, the author considers the continuity and essential qualities of tradition in contemporary cultural reality, subject to changes. Krzysztof Konieczny The Forest – the Home The author – a naturalist and ornithologist – poses the question: 'What is a true forest? Whose home is it? ' and replies: „The forest is one of my homes, a place where I discover everything that I cannot find in city shop windows. The forest is the home of my thoughts about those aromas, flavours, imagery and people”. Rafal Bartkowicz Unnamed A reflection about a certain modern building that was supposed to be erected in the 1970s on the Mogilskie Rondo in Cracow. The sole outcome was a 70-meter high steel skeleton, which for years blended with the landscape of the city in the manner of the Eiffel tower. Today, it remains the tallest pillar used for displaying advertisements in Europe. Małgorzata Czapiga The Shadow Theatre in the Zone. On Graffiti on the Walls of Chernobyl and Pripyat The text concerns a paradoxical phenomenon, namely, graffiti on the walls of abandoned houses in the „ghost towns” of Chernobyl and Pripyat. The zone is empty and suspended communication makes it impossible to establish a concrete place. While penetrating its space, the arrival must perform an arduous task – discover and name the existing traces and restore meanings, both impossible and present only in those traces. What are we to do with drawings displayed in ghost towns without any people? How are we to deal with texts deprived of spectators-readers? Present-day urban graffiti possesses predominantly a certain aesthetic function – it was painted to be noticed in sheer cascades of visual impressions. Graffiti artists working on the walls of Chernobyl and Pripyat must take into account that no one will ever see their works. The communication model shall be abolished because communication characteristic for graffiti must be suspended – an author, codes and communication are present but there is no addressee… Dorota Majkowska-Szajer opuszczone.com An anthropological account of a journey to sites abandoned by God and people, a world of objects straight out of Kantor’s „lowest-rank reality”. A contribution to this expedition is a gallery of photographs available on www.opuszczone.com, set up by a group of persons declaring their manic attachment to dilapidated buildings, abandoned by owners and former residents. The outcome of this predilection is a collection of photographs shown on the Internet and registering homes, housing estates and even whole towns depopulated and left to their own fate. The essay urges not only to take a closer look at the photographs, but also to focus on the ways of seeing that we apply within the range of the depicted degraded spaces. This is an attempt at testing what is the object of a fascination with views of abandoned homes, and what is decisive for their aesthetic attractiveness and force of expression. We explore ruins by applying four consecutive perspectives and pose questions concerning the way in which the perception of the plight of a ruined house is tantamount to our view of the world, life, death and art. Dariusz Czaja, Michał Klinger, Roman Kurkiewicz, Tomasz Rosiński „Lekcje ciemności” – a Recorded Discussion about the Book by Dariusz Czaja Artur Madaliński No Easy Comfort A presentation of Dariusz Czaja’s book Lekcje ciemności.
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