Ostrzeżenie przed złudzeniem jasności absolutnej
Warning against the Illusion of Clarity

Summary/Abstract: Professor Maria Poprzęcka is one of the best-recognised and outstanding historians of art in Poland. An excellent teacher, she specialises in the history of art and its theories in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, at the same time expanding a highly acclaimed art critique. Prof. Poprzęcka is also an extremely rare example of a combination of immense erudition and familiarity with the art of the past epochs with an extraordinary and empathetic ability to discuss contemporary art. Her writings, with their characteristic diverse presentations, brilliant arguments, profound opinions, and apt selection of concepts, are both exceptional and wideranging. In her texts Prof. Poprzęcka not only brings the reader closer to the most complex art phenomena, which is she interprets in a truly masterful way, but she also discusses phenomena to which we are still incapable of granting suitable definitions; at the same time, she incessantly appeals for a democratization of our perception petrified by assorted schemes of the history of art and critical rhetoric, and warns against the traps of perception threatening both historians of art and their readers. Essays by Maria Poprzęcka, together with their accomplished form and adroit popularisation of difficult problems, make an unwavering appeal for developing the skill of perceiving and absorbing art phenomena while remaining aware of all the dangers associated with the domination of a superficially experienced visual culture and a sui generis pan-aestheticization of the world. Her essays are an unattainable model for emulating an aptitude for perception, an interpretation that always does justice to a work of art, and a translation of the image into the word; they also pose a genuine intellectual challenge.

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