Polishness of Polish Art. Essays -- Art, Żmijewski’s Art

In polish art after year 2000 there is a lot more interest in history, especially topics related to World War II, Holocaust , Polish-German and Polis-Jewish relations as well as modern history like PRL times and libertanian impulse . Interest about history in Polish Art is not a new phenomenon. The early postwar art was related to war time trauma. But in art after year 2000 new occurance can be observed: interest in concrete historical facts is less important than questioning about history, about how it is constructed, what is is used for, how it is used, as well as how history is mixed with fiction and how it functions in our vision. This creative idea about construction of historical facts and its use in todays reality can be specify as a dehistoricize (in analogy to term deconstructure) in Izabela Kowalczyk’s opinion (Kowalczyk, 2008). She argue that art of dehistoricize shows up as an alive discourse, which is taking place – paradocsycally – now. As Jacques Derrida indicated, prefix de- may mean an appeal to genesis and not destruction (Magliola, 1984 :89) as is the case of art of dehistoricizing and the process of constructing history itself. „Art of dehistoricizing makes history alive, recalling ghosts of the pastâ€Å" (Kowalczyk, 2008). The basis of it is what is happenning now (art piece, exhibition) and the result of what happened are historical facts. This act of dehistoricizing art is a contrast to what dominated polish art scene in early nineties. Critical art was focusing on the study of entanglement entity, the experience of corporal punishment, on the problems of another, or the ubiquity of power in Michel Foucault’s understanding (Foucault, 2000). He is inscribing nature of history between freedom and control, whic... ...ybrid, mutant, bound intimately with life and death, with time and eternity, enveloped in a Mobius strip of the collective and the individual,...â€Å" (Nora, 1989:20). So I understand through this, that process of lieux de memoire, the fragments of history are assigned into the postmemory of the author and the viewer. As Ewa DomaÅ„ska is pointing into individual memory in collective memory of symbols, icons, cultural and historical toposes, which were replicated and preserved in the social conciousness, through it;s constant reproduction in encyclopedias, handbooks, newspapers, films, etc. Exactly through those icons, our society sees past, they are becoming memory markers, and where they are recalled through our memory they straight away relate to solid events (DomaÅ„ska, 2006). Thus Spiegelman’s father personal memories are no longer personal, they become collective.