Methods of Resistance in the Polish Avant-Garde Under Post-War Communism
- Grace Miskovsky
- Dec 17, 2023
- 9 min read
Art emerging from Poland during the post-war period provides a unique look into an extensive and comparatively established avant-garde art scene, as Warsaw was home to one of the only avant-garde gallery institutions in the Eastern bloc. This also means that the work of many modern Polish artists is generally well documented and historicized as compared to other Soviet states. The Polish avant-garde was able to maintain artistic integrity and resist the traditional constraints of Socialist Realism by utilizing subtly subversive methods of representation and developing left-wing artistic ideologies. In this piece I want to examine their theories, practices, and methods of resistance and representation under the repressive dictatorial Communist rule beginning in the 1940s.
Soviet bloc countries transferred Hitler’s methodology of proliferation of art forms which uplifted his own ideologies (and demonized ones subversive to his own) to their own context through state-sanctioned Socialist Realism. And, because of the Soviet’s inseparable ties with the countries it occupied, Poland was no exception to this methodology. However, the relationship between the USSR and Poland on a political level was not void of resistance. Historically anti-Soviet, the Polish government by 1943 was in exile in London, and configured their own provisional government called the Polish Committee of National Liberation. Refusing to recognize their legitimacy at the Yalta Conference of 1945, the USSR bartered Polish land with the United States and England, eventually agreeing to the Declaration of Poland, in which the Soviets gained sovereignty over Polish territory but were only allowed to do so with restrictions against them, such as the installation of democratic processes and values. Upon the return of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, any agreement between the West and the USSR regarding the Declaration of Poland were swept to the wayside as the provisional government were arrested and tortured. Violence took hold of Poland as the Soviets arrested opposition leaders, created strict censorship laws regarding public gatherings and the dissemination of information, and established brutal police forces to carry out punishments and public humiliation. Any attempt at Western intervention was brushed off as an attempt to “infringe the sovereign rights of Poland,” a talking point that was redundant once the Communists sweeped the 1947 Polish elections through voter intimidation. The legacy of the Declaration of Poland at the Yalta conference is that of Western betrayal; and the Poles were, for the second time after the war, invaded and at the mercy of a power far stronger than they could fathom. Forced into the subjugation of modern artists, the Polish Communist government enacted strict policies of artistic regulation based on Soviet models, which were of course, originally based on Hitler’s.
To understand the concrete artistic differences between the Polish Socialist Realists and the Polish avant-garde, one might turn to a painting made by Aleksander Bobzdej in 1950, titled “Podaj cegłę (Pass Me a Brick)." The work has been described as a “quintessential Polish Socialist Realist painting,” in which three laborers are shown constructing a brick building. They are painted sensibly, and the subjects are discernable, engaging in common practices in line with the doctrine of Socialist Realism. Their faces, however, are slightly obscured as to both depersonalize and emblematize them as the foundation of the Socialist state. The men are dignified, dressed cleanly, and special attention should be paid to the middle figure’s right forearm, which is representative of his strength, and by extension, the strength of the state. One year before the creation of Bobzdej’s work, the Vice Minister of Culture in Poland, Włodzimierz Sokorski, set specific regulations for Polish Socialist Realism at the Związek Polskich Artystów Plastyków Conference and stated that Polish art under Socialism must be “first: realistic – offering a typical view of reality. Second: comprehensible – presenting reality which is compatible with common sense and the laws of physics. Third: creative – presenting a complete picture of life in keeping with the artist's creative vision, a vision which is based on society's labors; it thus cannot be [merely] a lifeless photograph of reality. Fourth: social – serving society, mobilizing its consciousness with regard to the struggle and to work.” Bobzdej’s painting then, can be seen as completely emblematic of the Socialist Realist doctrine, and engages with a specific view of reality which aligns with the messages of the state.
In contrast to this work, I present “Ponad-ruchy (Beyond Movement)” (shown below), made in 1948 by Polish avant-garde pioneer Taduesz Kantor. In this painting, the ideologies of modernism and abstractionism are seen clearly; instead of painting a clearly “realistic” portrait, Kantor utilizes strange forms and shapes which are “concrete enough to suggest a human being but too abstract to convey context, activity, or emotion.” The subject is anatomic, seemingly the building blocks of a human, and suggests a different, paralleled version of reality. Kantor’s method of artistic representation did not serve to idealize romantic scenes of sentimental Polish Socialist worker’s culture, nor was it a dissident and overtly political call to destroy the state which promoted neo-classicism in art; instead it “perturbed” the existing order of things and ruptured the “known and accepted representational… categories and structures.” He exposes the dominant representational narratives of Socialist Realism by undermining them, by subverting and twisting existing cultural methods of art-making and storytelling.
By creating this “rupture” within dominant representational culture in Poland, Taduesz Kantor and the rest of the Polish avant-garde were obvious targets under Communism - something they did not always evade, but rather resisted against by legitimizing abstract practices through theorizing and collectivizing the making of modern art. Beginning in 1945, Kantor led a group of young, avant-garde artists in Kraków which called themselves the Grupa Młodych, or “Group of Youngsters.” The collective’s theoretician, Mieczysław Porębski, began writing about the idea of “Heightened (Spotęgowany) Realism” within modern art as an alternative to Socialist Realism. The group’s ideology stated that, in art, there exists an alternative vision of reality and ways of seeing that are just as, if not more, realistic than the figurative painting embraced by the Socialist Realists. For example, the depth of Kantor’s abstract “Ponad-ruchy” connotes the physical and emotional processes within humanity without depicting a realistic picture of an actual human body. The emotion embedded within abstract paintings are themselves visions of reality that evade and deconstruct conservatism within traditional Realism. Kantor said that art was “reality’s equivalent, defined by the artists’ choice of living materials and method…Modern artists…allowed a new reality to emerge from within each painting.”
The Grupa Młodych was interested in showcasing new methods of communication and new ways of seeing reality in order to transcend the material conditions that Polish citizens lived under in post-war Communist rule. While the political proponents of Polish Socialist Realism set certain characteristics regarding what was to be portrayed in art, they lacked a clear ideology and an ability to interact, engage with, and reflect society. Laurie Koloski, author of ‘Realists of Another Kind: Krakow’s ‘Grupa Mlodych’ and ‘Modern’ Realism in Theory and Practice” commented in an essay published in The Polish Review that the “socialist realist approach itself had been presented in only the vaguest terms: art was to be ‘realistic,’ ‘comprehensible,’ ‘creative’ and ‘social’ – but what exactly did that mean? There was virtually no practice underlying socialist realist theory in Poland, and both artists and state officials were left to feel their way through a morass of ‘suggestions’ and models from the USSR with no clear instructions on how to adapt these to Polish realities or artists.” The Polish avant-garde, however, saw modern art as a reflexive tool to engage society. One school of thought, championed by Warsaw artist Zbigniew Dłubak, affiliated with the Marxist Club of Young Artists and Scholars, asserted that avant-garde artists could lead the way in unifying the working class through teaching them how to observe and interact with this type of art. He, another proponent of Heightened Realism, commented that “you don’t go back to a wooden plough simply because a peasant doesn’t know how to use anything else. You teach him how to use a tractor. That’s what socialism consists of. Modern art is a tractor, which must be used to plough in a positive, creative way.” While abstract paintings like “Ponad-ruchy” do not use overtly political language or cultural symbols of dissidence, they are emblematic of the work done by avant-garde theorists and communities to subtly resist and transcend the dominant, hyper-realist culture of Socialist Realism. Further, they transcend the constraints of dominant representational cultures through the development of left-wing artistic theories which aid the artists and their products to engage with society deeper.
Regardless of the crutch that theorization lent the Polish abstractionists in their quest for legitimization, the 1949 Nieborow Conference had hardened the state’s position on modern art: “tangible” realism, or Socialist Realism, would be the only acceptable public art form in Poland. By 1950, modern art ceased to be shown in public exhibitions, the display of abstractionism was forbidden, and the dissemination of modernist theory was put to an end. Many artists folded under the pressure of Socialist Realism, or withdrew from the public sphere altogether, as artists such as Kantor and his assistant Jerzy Nowosielski were dismissed from the Krakow Academy of Applied Arts. Until 1954 he retired from art-making temporarily in protest of the dominant art forms at the time, and Grupa Mlodych ceased to exhibit publicly until 1956 when they re-emerged as Grupa Krakowska. This was not the end of the Polish avant-garde, but emblematic of the changes within art-making that were necessary to avoid persecution. Art became about conveying secret meanings under increased censorship as to evade it. Janusz R. Kowalczyk, author of “Playing With Censorship: How Polish Artists Dealt with the Communist Regime” stated in his essay, “Every allusion in the arts had to be very skillfully hidden or presented in such an ambiguous form, that the censors could in all probability ‘not notice’ (or at least claim to, if necessary).” Because many art censors in Poland were “hardly educated,” subtle references, allusions, and word-play within modern art were relatively well-protected. In this way, the Polish avant-garde’s emphasis on theorization and the intellectualization of art became highly valuable, as their method of resistance went over the heads of the officials judging it.
There was another alternative to showing and making abstract art in post-war Poland under Communism: the Foksal Gallery. Alongside the Václav Špála in Prague, Foksal was the only avant-garde gallery in the Eastern bloc. The gallery showed artists such as Henryk Stażewski, Maria Stangret (painting shown below), Edward Krasiński and Roman Owdzki, and was associated with Polish art critics such as Wiesław Borowski, Anka Ptaszkowska and Mariusz Tchorek. The idea of Poland’s police state in the 60’s was to culturally depart from the model of the “depraved West,” and the Foksal did just the opposite. They showed, critiqued, and reflected upon works made in the East that were reminiscent of the liberty in abstraction so prominent in places as close as West Berlin. Ironically, the Foksal Gallery was situated on the same street as the Państwowe Przedsiębiorstwo Pracownie Sztuk Plastycznych, or the PSP: Fine Arts Studios State Enterprise, the “institution charged with creating the visual representation of the regime’s propaganda.” Protection was granted to the Foksal because of connections they had made with the Communist director of the PSP, so they carried out their regular, subversive activities without the full force of the Polish police weighing them down. One show was particularly emblematic of the strange relationship between Foksal and the authorities: 1969’s Kapelusz Czteroosobowy, “The Four-Person Hat.” A performance art piece directed and enacted by students of Taduesz Kantor’s, Kapelusz Czteroosobowy followed a group of students wearing cardboard boxes over their heads and walking through the streets of Warsaw together, trailing toilet paper, a valuable and scarce good, behind them as they trudged. On their march, they could be heard “weeping and wailing” throughout the street. As they performed, the public joined into their performance of despair and hopelessness by shouting obscene anti-government sentiments. Under any other circumstances, the artists and the public would have been arrested, but with the Foksal’s direct connection to the Communist officials within the culture sector, they were granted much greater leniency, and in the case of Kapelusz Czteroosobowy, even a police escort for the artists. The piece in itself was also abstract enough in form for it to be quite easily misunderstood by even the strictest of censors. The year before, in response to heavy government repressions in Poland in March of 1968, such as mass arrests and the prohibition of more than three people congregating, the Foksal Gallery organized the “Farewell to Spring" ball. The ball was as much of a party as it was a protest as it was a piece of performance art, given the restrictions the social gathering took place under. The director of the gallery stated that the “Ball was sheer impertinence. Not only toward the authorities, either, but also, in parallel, toward the patriotic and anti-regime moods of ‘half of Polish society.’ Holding a ball when the best of us were incarcerated in prisons could, at the very least, be acknowledged as tasteless. It suited our opposition toward the world, our individualistic and anarchistic attitude, which wished to identify neither with politics nor with any system of values imposed from on high. Our weapons were humor and fun as undervalued antagonists to any authority and as the most difficult to control."
As artists, theorists, changemakers, troublemakers, and pioneers, the avant-garde of Poland’s post-war Communist landscape resisted the very essence of authoritarianism. The Polish Communist Party, as well as the whole of the Soviet bloc, relied on a linear and collectivized version of Socialist reality to enforce and maintain a positive image of the USSR. They exploited the conception of reality by twisting objective truth for political gain, as the Polish Vice Minister alluded to in 1949 when he stated, “The material power of our Party’s idea is its objective truth.” This “objective truth” was of course, not objective at all, but rather emblematic of the Party’s idealized visions of totalitarian society. Art and abstractionism, as tools for the expression of individuality and free thought, were threatened under Communism’s dictatorial system because of the threat it posed to the system itself. If citizens, led by socially engaged artists, were able to explore an alternative reality through modern art, the Party’s basis for power would be obsolete. Art as an immensely powerful cultural entity was censored in Poland to weed out modernists, abstractionists, and anti-Soviet theorists, but the avant-garde resisted by continuing to exist; by evading censorship through subtle messaging, by proliferating ideologies relating to alternative realisms, and by daring to believe that modern art could be a tool for positive change.
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