Czy kolekcja sztuki musi być artystyczna?

The paper comprises short reflections on the situation of art collections in the modern reality. While the work of art has always been present in collection, the collection itself, as a specific form is a historic phenomenon closely bound with the early modern idea of art as an autonomic symbolic sphere referring to intellectual and spiritual values. This is where the paradigm of such collection comes from – the collection as an assembly of men-made artefacts of a special masterpiece   status, attributed to them due to their originality, uniqueness and virtuosity (in a sense of personal making) determined by the artist’s talent. Since the early 20th century, and especially in the years 1950–1980, a significant part of art openly rejected that paradigm through works, that were neither original, unique nor masterly, and finally, by rejecting their material aspect in favour of the creative act or action. In effect the traditional art collection could no longer meet its needs. The works of modern art often as such can not pretend to the special status of the masterpiece. The creative act or artistic situation entirely escape the collector, leaving him/her with nothing but props, accessories and leftovers, or with data carriers with recorded work – such as film tape, video cassette, compact disc or carriers of the memory of the creative act and testimonies about it, as a visual documentation, legal acts, instructions, certificates, reports and affidavits, and in extreme cases – just the viewer’s memory. This should however not be perceived as the end, the death of traditional art collection, which has been proved by the reality (the flourish of museums and private collections). However it is true, that it has lost the monopole, the exclusiveness of the model of art collecting, that now has to coexists with other modes. If in past it was an amateurs’ collection or a gallery exhibiting masterpieces (original, unique and of personal making), today next to them appears what usually did not or has not been granted the artistic character: an archive, a library, a property-room, storage-room or even a scrap-heap, or a film- or record library, database and finally the Internet, as an entirely separate reality, seemingly non-collection- like at all. In the face of increasing phenomenon of the art melting into the aesthetics of commonplaceness, what fills them is more the testimony of spiritual and visual culture then the masterpiece and is being collected for documentary rather then purely aesthetic purpose.

Kolekcja artystyczna – geneza, rozkwit, kryzys

Artistic Collection – Genesis, Bloom, Crisis In contemporary humanities a collection is no longer regarded as an erudite addition to the history of art, element of a merely supportive character, thus at most a testimony of an individual taste of the collector, but most often as a reservoir for preserving the works of art. It is being interpreted as an important cultural phenomenon situated in the borderland of art and history, but also of religion, politics, economy, social relations and reflction over the civilisation, science, nature. It is in the same time one of the places of art, places of exhibiting and meeting: exhibiting the artefacts and artefacts meeting artefacts, artefacts meeting people and people meeting people. After all, the relations between the art and the collection as a semantic, spatial and social structure are complex. Artistic collection, over several hundreds years of its history, has developed into the most eventful and culturally fertile kind of collecting. It can be defied as an assemblage of human products of a particular status of ARTWORKS resulting from their authenticity, uniqueness and virtuosity (in a sense of a personal production) conditioned by the artists’ talent. It is however neither parallel in time, nor synonymous with collecting in a broad understanding, although the artefacts have always occupied an import ant position in this area – it is a historical phenomenon, the result of a long-lasting process of transformations leading to the development of a separate symbolic sphere for art, distinct from the sphere of cult, power, tradition or ideology. In a kunstkammer, an early modern form of colleting, art gave witness to history and illustrated, or substituted for what was inaccessible in a form of drawings, prints, paintings. It mad one of the elements of universum, much more corresponding with the Medieval artes than with the weighty Romantic phenomenon with a capital “A”. The artistic collection in a full sense that emerged from that assemblage of artworks has been developing over the 17th and 18th centuries, flurished in 19th century and reached its apogee in the era of Avant-garde in early 20th century, when the idea of art adopted by artists was the closest to its character and allocation. The process of formation of such a collection has been initiated by the Renaissance “cult of the Antiquity” in the South of Europe and the Reformation iconoclasm in the North, that in a way have liberated art from the supremacy of religion. Highly important role have played here the transformations in perception of art, that led to the development of aesthetics as an autonomous science, and later – the Romantic idea of art and artist. The apogee of development of that form of collection came in the era of Modernism and Avant-garde, a particular, ephemeral form of it being the 20th century exhibition concept of the white cube presupposing a special kind of reception of an artwork: its undisturbed, unbiased and aesthetic contemplation. The crisis came in the 20th century, when modern art adopted “inartistic” materials and objects, of mass production, often entirely devoid of any aesthetic and decorative features, when it replaced a material artwork with the creative process or its idea, which forced employment of procedures form other filds of creativity (music, fim, theatre) or application of advanced technology. Collectable objects produced by artists more and more often could not but also would not be either authentic, or unique or virtuosic, so they were not ARTWORKS any more. This has forced new forms of collecting to emerge, depriving artistic collection of its signifiant monopole of the most noble way to appropriate art

O książce Beaty Długajczyk i Leszka Machnika na temat muzeum Lubomirskich we Lwowie

The paper is a presentation and evaluation of a book by Beata Długajczyk and Leszek Machnik on the Lubomirski museum in Lviv (Muzeum Lubomirskich 1823–1940. Zbiórmalarstwa [„The Lubomirski Museum in Lviv 1823–1940. The Collection of Painting”], Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, 2019).Artykuł jest prezentacją i oceną książki Beaty Długajczyk i Leszka Machnika na temat muzeum Lubomirskich we Lwowie (Muzeum Lubomirskich 1823–1940. Zbiór malarstwa, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, 2019)

Nowoczesny Museion Jerzego Ludwińskiego

This paper is devoted to never fulfilled museum projects by Jerzy Ludwiński, one of the most outstanding Polish art critics of the 20th century. Although his idea of “Museum of Contemporary Art”(1966) and a bit later “Centre of Artistic Research”(1971) appeared on the other side of the Iron Curtain, they were at that time an innovative equivalent to discussions conducted in the west countries on the role of a museum as a traditional institution towards contemporary artistic activity. The traditional character and museum narrative were becoming more and more inadequate for changing art going beyond old barriers of different artistic genres and putting more and more pressure on a creative process at the expense of its result. Instead of a museum strictly subjected to historically arranged and exhibited collections, Ludwiński suggested a fully open attitude to the latest artistic tendencies, action and development of relations between an artist and his audience. The author compares these ideas to the one of the ancient Museion in Alexandria, the etymological ancestor of a modern museum. Such institution, which would change itself from the one of a static collection of works of art presented for individual and passive contemplation of an audience into a place where art is created, some kind of a laboratory or atelier, he interprets as an “Alexandria model of a museum”. He is against the more traditional one (called “Luxembourg” after Musee du Luxembourg in Paris established in 1819, the first museum of modern art), where works of contemporary art are shown only provisionally or are just kept in storerooms waiting for the prestige of passing time to prove their value.

THE COLLECTION OF FELIKS JASIEŃSKI’S DONATION – THE FIRST TWO VOLUMES

These are the first two volumes out of the ten planned by the National Museum in Cracow, which together will constitute the publication of the body of work donated to the museum by Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński. One volume presents the collector’s creative biography and the history of his various collections. There are also attempts to interpret the nature of the content of his collections, mainly woodcuts and other Japanese objects, as well as modern Polish art, paintings, engravings (together with a set of European engravings) and decorative arts. The second volume is the first part of a monumental catalogue of the collection which covers drawings, watercolours and pastels by Polish artists. The subsequent eight volumes are envisaged to cover particular parts of this extensive collection (of Polish, European and Eastern paintings, drawings, sculpture, engravings and decorative arts). This enormous undertaking marks the 100th anniversary of Jasieński’s donation (1920–2020), and, as Zofia Gułubiew put it, is intended to visualise and fix the extent and variety of the collection in the public’s awareness. The publishing project by the National Museum in Cracow is extremely valuable, and it should be hoped that it will succeed as intended

Mieczysław Treter, muzea współczesne

W 2019 r. wydana została przez Narodowy Instytut Muzealnictwa i Ochrony Zbiorów wespół z Państwowym Instytutem Wydawniczym – jako pierwszy tom serii Pomniki muzealnictwa polskiego – książka Mieczysława Tretera z 1917 r. zatytułowana Muzea współczesne. Studium to składa się z dwu części opublikowanych pierwotnie w wydawanym przez niego w Kijowie „Muzeum Polskim”, efemerycznym czasopiśmie związanym z Towarzystwem Opieki nad Zabytkami Przeszłości, działającym głównie w Królestwie Polskim, ale mającym swoje liczne oddziały w polskich skupiskach na terenie całej Rosji. Część pierwszą o charakterze teoretycznym otwiera autor syntetyczną prezentacją genezy instytucji muzeum (także na ziemiach Rzeczypospolitej), następnie dokonuje próby jej analizy pod względem charakteru i zakresu jej działalności kolekcjonerskiej i ekspozycyjnej, kategoryzacji wedle typowych dla niej obszarów merytorycznych, chronologicznych i terytorialnych (muzea ogólnoprzyrodnicze i ogólnohistoryczne, a także technologiczne, etnograficzne, historyczno-społeczne i historyczno-artystyczne), zastanawia się również nad problematyką: muzealnej wystawy, zarządzania, muzealnego budynku. Misją muzeów nie jest wedle Tretera dostarczanie prostej rozrywki, ani też tworzenie autonomicznego piękna (przestrzeń sztuki), ma ona natomiast charakter ściśle naukowy, służący nauce i jej popularyzacji, poprzez to jednak muzea stają się elitarne – służąc głównie nauce, nie mogą każdego laika bawić i upajać, nie są też wcale, jako takie, dziełami sztuki, do których można by stosować czysto estetyczne kryteria. Drugą część studium Tretera stanowi obszerny szkic sytuacji polskich muzeów w przededniu I wojny światowej, niejako w cieniu pierwszego zjazdu muzeologów polskich i w perspektywie „świata muzealnego” II Rzeczpospolitej. Jest to zarys monografii polskich muzeów, swego rodzaju raport o ich stanie na rok 1914, z pewnymi odniesieniami do lat późniejszych. Poprzez to natomiast staje się niejako zamknięciem pierwszego okresu ich dziejów – co autor pisząc swoje studium, mógł oczywiście jedynie przeczuwać.In 2019, the National Institute for Museums and Public Collections in cooperation with the Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy published the 1917 book by Mieczysław Treter titled Contemporary Museums as the first volume in the Monuments of Polish Museology Series. The study consists of two parts originally released in ‘Muzeum Polskie’ published by Treter in Kiev; it was an ephemeral periodical associated with the Society for the Protection of Monuments of the Past, active predominantly in the Kingdom of Poland, but also boasting numerous branches in Polish communities throughout Russia. The Author opens the first part of a theoretical format with a synthesized presentation of the genesis of the museum institution (also on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), to later follow to its analysis in view of its collecting and displaying character, classification according to the typical factual areas it covers, chronology, and territory (general natural history museums, general history ones, technological ones, ethnographic ones, historical-social ones, historical-artistic ones); moreover, he tackles questions like a museum exhibition, management, a museum building. In Treter’s view the museum’s mission is not to provide simple entertainment, neither is it to create autonomous beauty (realm of art), but it is of a strictly scientific character, meant to serve science and its promotion, though through this museums become elitist: by serving mainly science, they cannot provide entertainment and excitement to every amateur, neither are they, as such, works of art to which purely aesthetical criteria could be applied. The second part of Treter’s study is an extensive outline of the situation of Polish museums on the eve of WWI, in a way overshadowed by the first congress of Polish museologists, and in the perspective of the ‘museum world’ of the Second Polish Republic. It is an outline for the monograph on Polish museums, a kind of a report on their condition as in 1914 with some references to later years. Through this it becomes as if a closure of the first period of their history, which the Author, when involved in writing his study, could obviously only instinctively anticipate

Loose Reflections on the History of Arts in the Sphere of Museology

Historia sztuki w muzeum nie tworzy teorii, ale odpowiada na szczegółowe kwestie. W ten sposób w każdej sytuacji pozostaje w bezpośrednich relacjach z samym rdzeniem struktury „sensu muzealniczego”. Po pierwsze towarzyszy wszystkim etapom gromadzenia zbiorów, bo wiąże się z tym już wstępna analiza i ekspertyza dla dokonania nabytku oraz późniejsze jego opracowanie (inwentaryzacja i katalogowanie). Są to oczywiste dla muzealnika pytania o atrybucję, datowanie, ikonografię, technikę i technologię wykonania, cechy stylowe. Wnioski z tych badań stanowią następnie podstawę muzealnych ekspozycji. To najistotniejszy aspekt działania historii sztuki w muzealnictwie. Podobnie można też przedstawić cele edukacji w zakresie historii sztuki dla potrzeb muzealnictwa. Dyscyplina ta wytycza ramy intelektualne, kulturalne, artystyczne działalności muzealnej, ale potem musi przekształcić się w to coś, co nazwiemy znawstwem. Edukacja w muzealnictwie ma wszak dwa oblicza, bo to nie tylko formacja pracowników (jej kształtowanie i wzbogacanie), ale także działalność edukacyjna muzeum kierowana na zewnątrz – ku odbiorcy. Historia sztuki dostarcza modelu operacyjnego, przede wszystkim swojej własnej klasyfikacji wedle reguł chronologiczno-stylowych wraz ze swoistym uniwersalizmem, dążeniem do ujęcia całości. Muzeum jest miejscem sztuki, ale rzecz biorąc historycznie jest ono jednym z wielu miejsc sztuki, bo jest nim tak jak w różnych momentach dziejów były prehistoryczne groty, antyczne świątynie, chrześcijańskie kościoły, feudalne zamki, arystokratyczne pałace, mieszczańskie kamienice, domy aukcyjne, magazyny, galerie, atelier artystów; obecnie zaś – właśnie muzea, ale też uniwersytety, miasta w ogóle jako układy urbanistyczno-architektoniczne, fabryki, a nawet pojedyncze budynki, pracownie konserwatorskie i laboratoria je wspierające, no i wreszcie last but not least miejsce, gdzie pracuje współczesny twórca (tradycyjne atelier, biuro, sala informatyczna, squat, czy cokolwiek innego). Każde z nich tworzy osobny – chociaż przeplatający się z innymi – obszar, który ma własną historię sztuki i na swój sposób jest ona różna od innych.The history of arts in a museum does not create a theory, but responds to detailed questions. In that way it always remains in direct relations with the core of the structure of the ‘museological sense’. First of all, it accompanies all the stages of creating collections, which include a preliminary analysis to assess acquisitions and a later evaluation of those acquisitions to catalogue them. The questions evident for a museologist are the ones concerning attribution, dating, iconography, technique and technology, stylistic features. The conclusions resulting from such examinations are the basis for the museum expositions. It is the essential aspect of the history of arts in museums. The aims of education in the sphere of the history of arts for the needs of museology might be presented in a similar way. This discipline marks the intellectual, cultural and artistic framework for museums, but it has to be transformed into what is called expertness. Education in museology is twofold, as it is not only the formation of workers (shaping and enriching them), but also the educational activity of the museum directed outwards, towards the audience. The history of arts offers an operational model – first of all – of its own classification according to the chronological and stylistic rules together with a specific universalism, aspiration for a holistic approach. The museum is a place of arts, but from a historical point of view it is one of many places of arts, because throughout the history places of arts were caves, ancient temples, Christian churches, feudal castles, aristocratic palaces, urban tenement houses of the bourgeoisie, auction houses, stores, galleries, artists’ ateliers; and now – just museums, but also universities, whole towns as urbanistic layouts, factories, even individual buildings, conservation workshops, and last but not least the places where the contemporary creator works (a traditional atelier, an office, a computer room, a squat, or whatever else). Each one of them creates a separate – although entwined with others – area, which has its own history of arts and in a way is different from all the others