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Ołtarz główny kościoła w Zirc jako przykład związków artystycznych klasztorów cysterskich na Śląsku i na Węgrzech w czasach baroku

Author(s): Danuta Chałat / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2011

The union between Cistercian abbeys in Henryków and Hungarian Zirc lasted continuously since 1699, when abbot Kahlert bought Cistercian abbey in Zirc destroyed by Turkish invasions, to 1810 when the Silesian abbey was secularised. During the period of 110 years the abbots from Henryków, as superiors of both monasteries, used to visit repeatedly their Hungarian properties, they also sent Silesian monks and builders there with the mission of bringing former excellence and splendour back to the medieval abbey.The huge distance between the abbeys, political instability of the Bakony Mountains region, where Zirc is situated, and afterwards many wars which in consequence put Henryków under the Prussian rule made impossible a free transfer of art works directly from Silesia but they could not stop transport of artistic ideas. As strong as possible links between the abbeys fulfilled the will of the following abbots. The system of monks’ education in Silesia, manifold abbots’ visits as well as transporting artistic ideas or, occasionally, complete works of art were subordinated to this aim.Placing actual copies of sculptures from the main altar of the abbey church in Henryków, in the retable of the main altar in the abbey church of Zirc, which was the biggest and the most spectacular in Hungary artistic foundation of the abbots from Henryków had a propaganda character. It was about to stress the unity of both the abbeys which were ruled by one and the same abbot. This intensification of Silesian-origin foundations, undoubtedly except for a fortunate fact of completion of the church in Zirc, should be related with the moment of the Prussian annexation of Silesia, which not only made visiting far more difficult but also opened the way to self-governing for the Hungarian abbey. This end was delayed due to efficient politics of the following abbots for sixty years after which a split along with secularisation of Silesian estates occurred to be inevitable.Despite the fact that the over-one-hundred-year union between the abbeys finished, state borders and political systems have changed, till today when we enter the Cistercian church in Hungarian Zirc, which again is possessed by the Cistercians, we are able to admire the main altar of Silesian origins which reminds the power of the Silesian Cistercians exceeding far beyond the region borders

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Dom Sadebecków w Dzierżoniowie, jego sala kongresowa i portal

Author(s): Romuald Kaczmarek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2011

The building described in the article was a seat of the merchant family of Sadebecks, exceptionally meritorious for Dzierżoniów (German Reichenbach im Eulengebirge). The proceedings of Prussian-Austrian peace congress in 1790 took place in the house interiors. The building was, however, demolished at the end of 1960s. Its owner and the initiator of its rebuilding at the turn of the 18th c. was Friedrich Sadebeck (1741–1819), a merchant and an entrepreneur, known widely beyond the city and even beyond the region of Silesia borders. He purchased a former late Renaissance house and made it modern. A rather conservative rebuilding in the spirit of Zopfstil was performed around 1781.The house can be seen in two F.B. Werner’s views of Dzierżoniów (of 1738 and 1765), as well as in the etchings following Friedrich’s son F.A. Sadebeck’s drawings. He is also the author of two representations of the building itself, its outside and inside view. They were created short after 1790 to commemorate the place of the congress proceedings. In view of the very house not being preserved and lack of documentation from the time before its demolition, the etchings together with descriptions originating from the end of the 19th c. and few photographs come as the only source to recreate representation of this historic building. The only fragment of the house preserved till today is its portal transferred, most surely in the 1920s, into the central block of the Market Square.The memorial congress hall, preserved by Friedrich Sadebeck’s descendents in an unchanged form until the end of the 20th c. and later on till the second World War, was a local place of interest. Its furnishing, outfit and family mementos, however, dispersed or were destroyed after 1945, and a cabinet from the second half of the 18th c., which originally equipped the house, did not survive the war in the museum in Wrocław.

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Herkules i potwory. O nowo odkrytym zabytku średniowiecznej ikonografii herosa

Author(s): Jacek Witkowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2011

The article deals with a set of Gothic stove tiles recently discovered during archeological research in the remains of Gromnik castle in Strzelin in Lower Silesia. Stylistic aspects and archeological context of the discovery allow us to date the stove in 1440s, when the castle was owned by the knight Opitz von Czirn, closely related to the court of the duke Louis II of Legnica-and-Brzeg. The tiles most certainly originated in the cultural circle of the duke’s court and in the area of his rule, most probably in Brzeg or Legnica, perhaps in Wrocław. They bear no traces of analogies with the known works of 15th-century Silesian tile craft. The figurative decoration of the stove is unprecedented as it depicts a struggle between good and evil with the aim of images deriving from both Christian and ancient tradition. Among the latter as particularly outstanding comes an image of Hercules struggling the Nemean Lion or Lernaean Hydra with his club (state of the tiles’ preservation allows no closer specification). The image has also no similarity as its antique character of iconography as well as its composition and form are concerned, hence it should be regarded as one of the oldest, or to be more precise, the unique ancient-like image of Hercules from the period of Gothic, not only in Silesia but also in all regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, the article discusses in details the iconography of Hercules in our part of Europe in Romanesque, Gothic and the earliest Renaissance times along with ways of reception of ancient Greek and Roman forms in this area. By doing this the importance of the discovery of Hercules’ image from Gromnik is being stressed.

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Nie tylko Muminki, czyli to i owo o skandynawskiej ilustracji dla dzieci

Author(s): Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2011

The article is a brief review of some of the best known illustrators of children’s books in Scandinavia (mostly Sweden, Denmark and Norway). The text begins with Elsa Beskow and her Peter in Blueberry Land, known in Poland since the beginning of the 20th century. John Bauer and Theodor Kittelsen – widely recognised for their artistic visions of old legends and trolls – are discussed as well as some of the famous illustrators of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy tales (Vilhelm Pedersen, Kay Nielsen – with his Beardsley-like graphic works, Svend Otto S.) and Astrid Lindgren’s stories (Ingrid Vang Nyman, Ilon Wikland, Björn Berg). Obviously, a part of the article is devoted to the creator of the title characters of Moomintrolls, namely Tove Jansson. The author describes as also her less known designs to Carroll and Tolkien’s classics. Moreover, the attention is also focused on contemporary illustration in Sweden (Pija Lindenbaum, Eva Eriksson, AnnaClara Tidholm, Sven Nordquist among others) and in Norway (Svein Nyhus, Stian Hole).

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Dlaczego artyści hodują rośliny?

Author(s): Anna Markowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2011

Why do artists raise plants? is an attempt to reconstruct main discourses in which plants have been inscribed in the most recent art history. As it comes to European art the basic change in approach to plants can be seen between Documenta 7, when Joseph Beuys commenced a great action of planting seven thousand of oak trees on a square in front of the Fredericianum Museum, and Documenta 12, when Sanja Ivekovič planted a vast Field of Poppies on a same square. Between planting oaks in 1982 and sowing poppies in 2007 a border is situated between idealisation of nature, the wish to come back to what once was a dream and nostalgia, and analysing nature as an element of culture (including drug business) deprived of innocence. On the other hand, across the Ocean, in New York MoMA, the year of 1936 comes as an important date, as well as the very exhibition of live plant hybrids delphiniums raised by Edward Steichen, what, for many researchers, make up the very beginning of bio-art. The next crucial date is the year of 2008 and a new exhibition at MoMA – Design and the Elastic Mind during which its curator, Paola Antonelli, was forced to... murder. The exhibited bio-art tissue cultures of a tiny living leather jacket by a duo Oron Catts&Ionat Zurr, designed to provoke to think over our clothing (so called victimless leather), grew unexpectedly and with no control. This way the former Steichen’s selection, designed to serve beauty, was deprived of its aesthetic alibi by the selection performed by Antonelli (which selection destroyed Oron Catts&Ionat Zurr’s work): the living tissue cultures were deleted not regarding their ugliness but in view of danger they had caused. Yet another border and taboo was taken over, giving way to discussion on hospitality, superstitions and an image of a man that appears when we give up an anthropocentric point of view. However, Polish art of the recent days most eagerly places plants in a discourse of legacy after modernism: from unpretentious flower beds by Julita Wójcik, to guerilla gardening from Opole and Warsaw, and a mockdocumentary film by Jarosław Kozakiewicz Nature of/for Living. Also a video Everything has already happened by Azorro group, in a humourous way relates to plant phobia of some of great masters of modernism. An escape from an orangery is a metaphor of modern art since Cubism. Today this escapism is analysed maliciously as something that eliminates otherness and discredits anything that has no right to speak up.

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„Architektura jako język”. Wystawa Daniela Libeskinda we wrocławskim Muzeum Architektury, 24 II - 16 V 2011

Author(s): Cezary Wąs / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2011

Libeskind’s exhibition presents his work from the Jewish Museum in Berlin (1999) to projects in progress, as for instance vast multifunctional Fiera Milano (scheduled completion time: 2014). The review of the exhibition poses a question: do Libeskind’s works that have been created in the recent ten years with the participation of tens of co-workers in numerous cities scattered all over the Globe, still bear traces of a theorist whom he was in 1980s and 1990s? To answer this question Libeskind’s works from the period of 1979–1987 (drawings from the series Micromegas and Chamberworks, machines presented at the Venice Biennale in 1985 and a project of multifunctional block in Berlin) have been introduced. Analyses of the works together with analyses of Libeskind’s essays, published as explanations to his works, have been combined in the review. Similar approach has been taken in the case of a few works performed after 1999. As a conclusion of the review comes the statement that his theoretical works used to refer to creating architectural ‘signs’ while his later works rather create ‘signs’ and impose ways of understanding them.

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„Welches der beiden stylistischen Uebel das Kleinere sei?” Spór o odbudowę hełmu północnej wieży kościoła św. Marii Magdaleny we Wrocławiu (1888-1891)

Author(s): Marta Ostrowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2011

During the night of March 22/23 1887 the fire devoured the northern tower spire of St. Mary Magdalene church – the most important Evangelical temple in Wrocław. The event initiated almost three-year-lasting dispute over form and style of the restoration of the burnt steeple. Both the dwellers of the Silesian capital and the local architectural milieu were divided in two opposite fractions who forced their ideas in local and all-German press. One of the groups, with Richard Plüddemann, a city builders councillor, claimed raising a neo-Gothic spire, suitable for a Medieval temple. Behind the barricade there were supporters of the restoration in the form from before the fire which meant a Renaissace one (Hans Lutsch among others). This was a good solution regarding conservation (though the very word was not mentioned in the dispute). The demand of restoring the city symbol, and the spires of St. Mary Magdalene church were regarded as such, was also mentioned. The conflict was not solved by a deliberately organised architectural competition with a winning Gothic-style design. Its results were questioned, and public opinion gave favour to a design prepared by the Brost&Grosser company from Wrocław, what even escalated the conflict. Eventually, in 1890, the city governors indicated the restoration in the form preceding the fire, and the work of designing it was appointed at the city builders council, directed by Plüddemann – a representative of Gothicists wing in the argument.

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Zagadnienie intymności a struktura średniowiecznych miast muzułmańskich

Author(s): Ida Maria Szatkowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2011

For a Muslim the border between private and public matters is an undisputable and commonly protected value. Therefore, in the religion of Islam questions of home and family have a superior imortance over public or social issues: they guarantee privacy and secretness of a family life. The concept of intimacy, one of the key questions in the world of Islam, comes as one of the most important elements organising physical space of Arab mud _ n. And this is because mud _ n, more than dwellers’ communities, operate and resemble believers’ communities, they have their own laws, norms and regulations, which are bases for the urbanistic organization of their towns. Hence we should regard to Islamic city planning rather than to city planning of the Arab-Muslim world, as its rules derives from the texts of Koran rather than from secular treaties. The rights to privacy, social equality and inheritance, based on Koran records, undoubtedly left their prints on Muslim city planning, on architecture of housing estates as well as on its semi-private character. The intimacy of a Muslim town was not about social segregation or isolation, it did not derive from fear or being afraid of what is ‘outside’. Secrecy of life in the cultures of Islam was and still is one of elements of the confessed belief, which defined strictly not only a life model of medina dwellers but also medina urbanistic structure.

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Architektura pisze nadal Balzakowskie powieści. Peter Eisenman a literatura

Author(s): Cezary Wąs / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2011

Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present at Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind.

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Dagobert Frey we Wrocławiu. Śląsk i Polska w dialogu historii sztuki i polityki

Author(s): Klara Kaczmarek-Löw / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2011

Dagobert Frey (1883-1962) from Vienna was a professor and the director of art history institute at the Frederick William University in Wrocław in the period of 1931-1945. The hitherto studies have allowed to define his role in Eastern studies and his collaboration with organisers of plunder of art works in occupied Poland. The documents held in the Wrocław University Archives let us make his engagement in the university structure more specific, especially within frames of the so-called Eastern programme. There are sources about his second trip to Poland (in 1938, together with Günther Grundmann and Eberhard Hempel) in Deutsches Kunstarchiv in Nuremberg. We can also find there a copy of a hitherto unknown report from a monument tour in Northern France in 1941, held by a unit of occupation military government for German art historians. The preliminary analysis of Frey’s texts from the 1930s and 1940s enables claiming that art of Silesia and Poland were focal point of his interest. Searching in the first place for German influence on Polish art, mainly in the periods of late Middle Ages and Baroque, he also appreciated contribution of art east from the Odra river to cultural development of Central and Eastern Europe. Frey’s postulate of Eastern studies should be interpreted in the context of political situation, to a higher degree than it has been until now, however, his share in research over medieval sculpture and architecture in this area ought to be appreciated.

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Stanisław Szukalski: projekt pomnika Krzysztofa Kolumba, sztuka prekolumbijska i poszukiwanie „nowych alfabetycznych wartości”

Author(s): Dorota Chudzicka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2011

The years following the World War I witnessed an intensified interest in the pre-Columbian art, resulting in its appreciation and appropriation, particularly among artists in search of new, revitalized forms. In the United States, the development of the anthropology accelerated by the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 was followed by a gradual elevation of pre-Columbian artifacts to the fine art category in the 1920s, the phenomenon that had its counterparts in Europe. Stanisław Szukalski (1893–1987), a Polish artist who led an émigré life on both sides of the Atlantic, may have come in contact with the pre-Columbian art during his stay in Chicago in years 1913–1923 through the anthropological collection at the Field Columbian Museum and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, particularly Midway Gardens (1914). In effect pre-Columbian art became an important component of Szukalski’s strife for a new visual language. The article discusses Szukalski’s design for Christopher Columbus Memorial Lighthouse in Santo Domingo (1928/29) as an example of the artist’s search for what he termed, ‘new alphabetic values’. Szukalski’s design was submitted to the first stage of the international competition organized by the Pan-American Union and directed by Albert Kelsey. It remained one of the artist’s unrealized “projects in design” and survived only in a partial documentation in a program for the second stage of the competition, published in 1930. Szukalski’s drawings for Columbus Memorial reveal the importance of pre-Columbian art as a source of the new esthetic and an embodiment of uncorrupted and orignal art envisoned by the artist.

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Ewa Morisson, Świat na opak. Renesansowy karnawał na malowanych stropach w kamienicy „Pod Złotym Słońcem” we Wrocławiu. Wrocław 2010, Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT, 246 ss., ISBN: 978-83-7432-649-0

Author(s): Ewelina Bożek-Leszczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2011

The book by Ewa Morisson Świat na opak. Renesansowy karnawał na malowanych stropach w kamienicy „Pod Złotym Słońcem” we Wrocławiu is devoted to late Renaissance paintings on the ceilings of ‘Under the Golden Sun’ tenement house in Wrocław (Rynek 6 [Market Square 6]). The uncovered in 1978 paintings depict a particular image of the city during a carnival, when a change in customs and traditions used to take place for a short period of time. The change which reversed the rules and values in force. The author selects main topic plots of the ceiling decoration and matches separate scenes and images with them. She focuses foremost on searching sources of artistic inspirations and on an attempt at iconographic interpretation of individual scenes. The book comes as the sixth volume in the series ‘Library of Old Wrocław’, and it has been based on master thesis written in The Art History Institute at The University of Wrocław under the guidance of Prof. Jan Harasimowicz.

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W poszukiwaniu „śląskiej duszy”

Author(s): Marcin Wisłocki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2011

Jan Harasimowicz, Schwärmergeist und Freiheitsdenken. Beiträge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte Schlesiens in der Frühen Neuzeit, [Spirit of dreaminess and thought of freedom. Studies on art and culture history of Silesia in Early Modern Times] Schwärmergeist und Freiheitsdenken – a book by Jan Harasimowicz published under the same title is a collection of 19 studies devoted to Early Modern art and culture of Silesia. The chapters ordered around five basic questions – “exceptionality” of confessional situation in Silesia, cult of saints and heroes, problems of ars moriendi and pompa funebris, selected aspects of architecture and art, and Silesian-Polish relations – present a wide spectrum of phenomena and tendencies characteristic for the times of their origins and shaping the confessions in the discussed region. The main objective of this volume is presentation of diversity and richness of Silesian culture heritage in Early Modern period, when confessions and forms of piety serving their expression in national languages not only co-existed but also intermingled and reacted. The texts that build this vast and complex vision exemplify subsequent development of iconographical and iconological methods, which is related to more than before stressed and fulfilled demand of using written sources of the period as a sine qua non condition of comprehending the essence of phenomena and changes taking place in Europe in the time of confessionalisation.The distinct specific of the discussed region has appeared in the view of the author’s studies and it cannot raise any doubts – it has its origins in particular confessional situation, meaning Lutheran Reformation victory in the lands under Catholic territorial rule, among others. The elements indicating these specifics are: not surrendering to Prague or Vienna’s reason of State with simultaneous drawing inspirations from them, strive for freedom of thought and freedom of practice religion, liability to irenicisism or, last but not least, to mystic spiritualism. Moreover, the “spirit of dreaminess” and “thought of freedom” mentioned in the title, as constitutive traits of Silesian culture during the reign of the Habsburgs, could be widely found regardless of confessional borders. This exactly was, according to the author, the expression of “a Silesian soul”.

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Nowo odkryte malowidła ścienne w kaplicy św. Anny przy kościele Franciszkanów w Opolu. Cz. II

Author(s): Jacek Witkowski,Romuald Kaczmarek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2012

In the previous part of the article a history of the chapel and its painterly decoration as well as heraldic contents were discussed. They refer to Margrave Georg Hohenzollern’s earliest efforts to succeed in the Opole Duchy. The analysis of historic data indicates that in early autumn of 1509 Georg and his wife Beatrice Frangipan, who was expecting a baby at that time, could have met with duke John II. The painterly works were most probably initiated soon afterwards.The paintings comprise three types of forms: heraldic shields, angel orchestra and plants. Considering their forms, as the most traditional part come the angels whose way of presentation is of Netherlandish origins dating back at the second quarter of the 15th century. Whereas the Italian type of representation of the heraldic shields is modern, considering Silesia and Central Europe around 1510. They are surrounded by garlands and plants depicted with a great care and in a detailed way that enables the species identification.Despite the heraldic contents, the chapel’s decoration (angels playing, symbolics of plants) refers to its patroness St. Anna, as well as to Mary. However, equivocalness of symbolics of the depicted plants allows us to assume that the included connotations related with plenitude, fertility and marriage refer to the situation of the young couple of potential successors awaiting descendants. In this context the patronage of St. Anna is also meaningful.The paintings’ author appears as a creative personage extended between Late Gothic and Early Renaissance stylistics and tradition. Similar characteristics is ascribed to an executor of the decoration in the so-called Schatzkammer in the Frenzel’s House in Görlitz. Its plant presentation is the closest analogy with the one in Opole. Both sets of frescoes may be included in the same group of works as the partially preserved paintings in the town hall of Wrocław. All of them were probably created in the period between ca. 1510 and 1520, still the frescoes in Opole are the oldest.

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Założony na skale. Szwedzki wzór ewangelickiego kościoła Łaski w Jeleniej Górze

Author(s): Ryszard Hołownia / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2012

The Baroque Cross of Christ Church is an artistic phenomenon in Central Europe. The Evangelicals in Jelenia Góra were not granted a permission to raise a church resulting from the Treaty of Altranstädt (1707), only due to the agreement in Wrocław (1709) and after a plenipotent of Swedish king Charles XII, Henning von Stralenheim, spoke a word for them. The edifice (1709–1718, architect Martin Frantz) was supposed to be a replica of the Catharina Church in Stockholm (1656–1695, architect Jean de La Vallée). In Silesia this choice was motivated by religion, art and politics, and its main goal was not a creation of “a monument of gratitude” for Swedish protection. The serfs of a Catholic emperor Joseph I Habsburg evoked a prestiguous model of a programme character. The church in Jelenia Góra referred in form and contents to a leading Lutheran sacral edifice in the capital of Protestant kingdom from the period of the strongest position of Sweden in Europe. Katarina kyrka on the ground of Baroque art used to demonstrate Lutheran confession identity of the society, and sovereignty of the country in the sphere of religion. Following the model was about to supply a specific equivalent of such ideological significance in Silesia in the times of Counter-Reformation. The church situated on the hill in Stockholm was a figure of “a true church” established on the rock (Acts 4, 11–12; 1 Cor 3,11; Ps 31,4; Ps 71, 3–6). The building was a sign of Christ Church built on an excellent fundament of a cross and a state upholding the religion. The meaning of this architecture was related to an integrating and dominant role of Evengelical doctrine of Augsburg Confession in the ideology of royal rule in Sweden. The idea of Christianae Reipublicae Corpus came as the point of reference for the contents of the edifice. Dualism of the architecture reflected dualism of the kingdom specific nature (regnum) – both secular and sacral. The building was an image of the right-believing “Church of Kingdom” – both on Earth and in Heaven. Catharina Church used to have a range of a symbol of the Lutheran monarchy. It was a monument of confessional absolutism. Rethorically expressing, it was “God’s castle in church”. A retrospective approach to style seen in architecture of this building evoked the continuity of power and belief after the Vazas and Charles X Gustav (1654–1660) of the new ruling dynasty took the throne.

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Architektura, która naśladuje niemą filozofię. Peter Eisenman a dekonstrukcja. Część III

Author(s): Cezary Wąs / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2012

The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985–1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words, any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaios. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but it is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays the repetitions are the attempts of a single being to return to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work.

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Joanna Macalik, „Tak oto stoję”. Dawny kościół imienia Marcina Lutra we Wrocławiu. Wrocław 2011, Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe, ss. 129, il. 20 na wkładce, ISBN 978-83-7432-791-6

Author(s): Wojciech Gruk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2012

Joanna Macalik’s book is the first monograph of the not preserved Martin Luther Church, which was situated till 1945 in Przedmieście Szczytnickie [Szczytnickie Suburb] in Wrocław. The discussed temple was a jubilee church erected in 1883 to celebrate the 400th birthday anniversary of the Father of the Reformation. The book presents possibly complete picture of the church, what has been achieved by the analysis of the temple placement in the city topography, the analysis of its architectural form, style and iconography of the building, also thanks to combining the subject of studies with a wide historical, social, political and religious background of Wrocław at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. The study makes a satisfactory use – occasionally for the first time – of the written records kept in Wrocław and Berlin archives. The author also made an attempt to move the considerations from the city context onto the wider, all-German background by characterising the selected jubilee churches from the area of Germany in one of the chapters. Therefore the discussed elaboration is an important study in terms of art history, but also for the history of Wrocław – especially 19th-century religious culture and its meaning in changes that the city underwent in this century. The reviewed book is the ninth volume in the series ‘Biblioteka Dawnego Wrocławia’ [‘Library of Old Wrocław’] edited by Prof. Jan Harasimowicz.

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Bruegel – socjolog

Author(s): Beata Lejman / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2012

Applying an interpretative mode of a paradox, used by Jürgen Müller (Das Paradox als Bildform. Studien zur Ikonologie Pieter Bruegels d.Ä., München 1999), I’m sketching a reflection on social life included in Bruegel’s 30 paintings. I’m looking at them mainly through the Bible and its lecture included in Erasmus of Rotterdam’s writings. Since the painter translated into the language of painting a form of depicting the New Testament based on a paradox. His early Landscape with Parable of the Sower (1557, Washington) seems to confirm the conscious choice of a communication method, coherent with Erasmus’ rule of accommodation, i.e. possibility of reading the Bible on different levels dependent on the knowledge of the whole of Holy Scripture. This was the way of understanding similar to St. Paul (1 Cor 9, 20–23), Origen, Augustine or Erasmus of Rotterdam’s. Therefore we can compare looking at Bruegel’s paintings with reading the Bible – the comprehension of the pictures appears parallel to deepening the knowledge of his whole œuvre, the explanation of the dark parts is provided only by comparison with the other parts which cast a light on them.

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„Chrystus i setnik z Kafarnaum”. Obraz z epitafium Balthasara Tilischa ponownie we Wrocławiu

Author(s): Marek Pierzchała / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2012

In 2012 a painting formerly belonged to Balthasar Tilisch’s (died in 1591) epitaph was purchased to enrich the collection of the National Museum in Wrocław. A small wooden epitaph from the Painters’ Chapel in St. Mary Magdalene church in Wrocław was recognised as lost after the war, similar to many other elements of the church interior decoration. The board was identified on antiquity market in Cracow thanks to the publication of an archival photo in the introductory article of the Museum collection catalogue Malarstwo śląskie 1520–1800 [Silesian Painting 1520–1800]. The painting of Christ and Centurion in Kafarnaum from the Tilisch’s epitaph is an undoubted work of the Wrocław author of a painting of Raising of Lazarus from Jeremias Behme’s (died in 1590) epitaph. The author of this article proves that the presentation of Christ meeting the Centurion is inspired by a woodcut composition elaborated in Wittenberg circle as an illustration for Lutheran postils. In Wrocław epitaphs it was applied earlier in a picture from Balthasar Mehl’s (died in 1545) epitaph. The author signals a phenomena of inspiring power of Lutheran woodcuts in Silesian painting of 16th century, hitherto not specially noticed.

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Od perwersji do dekonstrukcji. Architektura Bernarda Tschumiego. Część I

Author(s): Cezary Wąs / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2013

In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings, more inspired by philosophy of deconstruction.The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo-Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Lefebvre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Lefebvre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also as a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as “revolting analyses”, were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spread-ing away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture.In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschumi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not loosing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition, crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that results from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users on the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users on specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction.

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