Edward Krasiński's "Overhead Sculptures": A Manifestation of Modernity

Abstract

artworks to be exhibited publicly (Piotrowski, Znaczenia Modernizmu, 70–79). Polish artists who sought to protect their creative freedom from politicization and censorship were thus forced to present their works obliquely. Since their art, seemingly of autotelic character, lent itself to multiple interpretations, the artists played a subtle game with both authorities and an audience accustomed to looking for revisionist subtexts everywhere. Krasiński himself, however, maintained distance from official authorities. He expressed his attitude towards reality by “living in art.” He also used irony and humor to undermine subtly traditional forms of artistic sensibility. His friendship with the painter Henryk Sta. zewski (1894–1988) undoubtedly influenced Krasiński’s lifestyle. Since 1970, Sta . zewski and Krasiński shared a studio apartment on the eleventh floor in a block of flats on Solidarności Avenue (formerly Świerczewskiego Street) in Warsaw. Sta. zewski, a leftist during the interwar period, cofounded the international avant-garde group of artists known as Blok, Praesens, and a. r., was a member of Cercle et Carré, Abstraction-Création, and was closely connected with Kobro and Strzemiński. After World War II and the imposition of socialist realism, Sta. zewski lost interest in actively participating in social and political reality. Absorbed in his art, he took such an ironic stance toward the political situation that he turned the absurd into a joke. The atelier that Sta . zewski shared with Krasiński for nearly twenty years became a kind of artistic laboratory, filled with creative interventions after Sta . zewski’s death.11 Central to this atmosphere was the writer Julian Przyboś, who, together with Sta . zewski, transmitted the ideas of the interwar avant-garde tradition and became a catalyst of change for new art. His press commentaries, which aroused contemporary readers from the lethargy of political correctness, inspired me as a reference point for analyzing the artist’s work as a manifestation of modernity in the context of kineticism—in particular perceptual artwork in relation to its surrounding space, and the artist’s interest in the achievements of science and technology (Przyboś, “Rzeźba napowietrzna,” 75–81).12 Thus this study not only examines Spears, as presented during the summer Koszalin Plein-air events, but also an artwork from the same series which, though never presented there, circulated as part of a series of photographs taken in Zalesie (near Warsaw) by Eustachy Kossakowski, and is now available in the digital collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.13 Researchers to date have shown little interest in Krasiński’s participation in Koszalin Plein-air events, and we thus lack a detailed analysis of the artworks he presented there. This raises several issues. The first concerns the assumed participation of Krasiński in the Second Plein-air (1964). His name is not on the official participant list. Most likely it was Ptaszkowska, an invited art theoretician, who facilitated Krasiński’s entry. This suggests that Krasiński arrived in Osieki unofficially, as confirmed by the film documentation of artworks presented at the Plein-air, where his composition Wielka Dzida (Great Spear), can be spotted (Pawłowski et al., Kolekcja Osiecka, 471–72). In an almost twenty-second-long section of the archival film, an artist may be seen mounting his work.14 We may thus assume that an artwork commented on by Julian Przyboś in his press review of the Second Koszalin Plein-air cited below was, in fact, the Great Spear: M O D E R N I S M / m o d e r n i t y 656 Krasiński’s creation had somehow the best interaction with the surrounding space . . . . A dynamic composition splashed on the ground with its red forms suddenly leapt up, strung on the wires in between two tree trunks, aiming with a red spike at the greenery. (“Plener,” 6)15 It seems appropriate that this quote from 1964 is related to the aforementioned section of the article “Overhead sculptures,” published two years later (Przyboś, “Rzeźba napowietrzna,” 75). It is challenging, however, to associate this description with the realization of a specific artwork. At the Third Koszalin Plein-air (1965), in which Krasiński formally participated, he realized several versions of the Spears, as shown in the color photographs held from the collection of the Museum of Koszalin (fig. 1), as well as the surviving film record.16 Regrettably, not all the activities at the Plein-air events were documented (Ziarkiewicz, Awangarda w plenerze, 182–83; “Osieki ‘64”; “Osieki ‘65”). Moreover, interpretations of the press commentaries by Przyboś are constrained by the fact that he was not only a critic, but above all a poet, rendering it pointless to try to interpret his texts literally. These questions would constitute good starting points for potential biographers of Krasiński.