Art History

Although Maria Pinińska-Bereś (1931–1999) is well known in Poland, the first period of her career continues to remain marginalized by both art historians and curators. The main reason for this is the fact that the works she created before 1968 do not fit in with the well-preserved image of Pinińska-Bereś's oeuvre, which is defined as ‘soft, pink forms […], openly linked with female sexuality’. In the 1960s, Pinińska-Bereś experimented with materials and forms. At that time she claimed that this was her reaction to what was happening in the sculptural environment in Poland. Later the artist admitted that she had attempted to find the best way to address her experience of being brought up in a milieu where an ultra-Catholic mentality was dominant. Her Rotundas and Corsets evoke feelings of enslavement, oppression and even physical violence. In them one can find a combination of religion and female sexuality as two elements joined in exercising control over young women. At her first solo exhibition (1970), Corsets appeared alongside new works in which the mood had changed from somber to a more playful one. The erotic female body was presented as if liberated, yet at the cost of its objectification. From that point on Pinińska-Bereś began developing qualities of her art that let critics label them as ‘feminine’, and which brought her recognition and appreciation. With this process her earlier works, which were more gloomy and introspective, started disappearing from the artistic discourse.

This text proposes the juxtaposition of the works from two sculptors-Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973) and Maria Pinińska-Bereś (1931-1999) – that can be considered as different takes on pop art. Both artists function as Polish women artists, which is my starting point in an attempt to challenge the practice of country/region oriented analysis dominating in discourses and practices that aim at globalizing art. I compare Szapocznikow's and Pinińska-Bereś's art created in the 1960s and 1970s and the way they addressed the popular culture, taking into account numerous aspects of social, economic and political life that determined conditions of their art production and reception. Simultaneously, I point out to personal experiences that influenced both career tracks and content of their art works, often in a way surprisingly different from what would be expected. This text adds to the studies that apprehend the global through the local, proposing to understand the latter also as the personal.

The article is an analysis of the reception of "Consumer Art" by Natalia LL. The work is a series of photographs and films made in the years 1972-1975 featuring women consuming bananas, sausages, custard and starch jelly.The work was created in the neo-avant-garde circles and was in those circles perceived as "an exploration of morphological potential of the sign and the capacity of the medium" (Andrzej Lachowicz). Simultaneously it functioned in the sphere of feminist art, into which it was included in the 1970's by feminist researchers from the Western Europe. In the present article the author conducts an analysis of the ambivalence resulting from the inclusion, which is caused by, among other factors, the incompatibility of Western discourse to Polish situation. It is also pointed out that it is only in the second half of the 1990's that the feminist discourse re-appears in the declarations of the artist herself and of some critics, which is related to...

Recent years have brought enormous growth in the number of women-only art exhibitions. These exhibitions are accompanied by discussions that concentrate on curatorial feminist activism. In this text, I propose a different perspective by taking into consideration all exhibitions where the participants were determined by social category (i.e. women) and which were organized in one country during one year (i.e. in Poland in 2017). This perspective not only allows us to remark on and analyse activities that otherwise remain unnoticed but also encourages us to extend our understanding of politics behind women-only initiatives. These exhibitions are generally intended to increase the capital of women artists, and to shift forces within the art and social fields in favour of women. However, as my analysis demonstrates, the organizers of different exhibitions occupy different places both in the art field and in the social field, and it is their position that determines, to a large extent, what changes they envision, what objectives they – in consequence – have and how they formulate their politics. This text also offers a reflection on whether the objectives behind organizing women-only shows has been constant or if they are a result of the current situation of women (artists).

In February of 1978 the exhibition Trzy kobiety. Ania Bednarczuk, Iza Gustowska, Krynia Piotrowska opened at the Bureau of Art Exhibitions in Poznań. It became a starting point for two cycles of exhibitions that have been organised practically until today: Odbicia (Gustowska’s and Piotrowska’s joint exhibitions) and Spotkania. The essay focuses on Spotkania, i.e. exhibitions at which Gustowska (initially with Piotrowska) presented the works of invited women artists. These exhibitions were Trzy kobiety (1978, Poznań), Sztuka kobiet (1980, Poznań), Spotkania – Obecność I (1987, Poznań), Spotkania – Obecność III (1992, Poznań), Presence IV – 6 Women (1994, Galeria La Coupole, Rennes) and Osiem dni tygodnia (2011, Szczecin). To consider them a cycle and to analyse them under the joint title of Spotkania is the author’s own interpretative approach based on the observation that, in their case, Izabella Gustowska’s actions comprise a consistent project based mainly on the recurrent gesture...

This essay elaborates on women-only shows organized in post-war Europe by the associations of (women) artists that – as initial research has shown – were major initiators of this type of exhibitions during the period. It proposes a comparative analysis of operations of this type of association in three countries whose situations during and after the war differed considerably: Austria, France and Poland. The geopolitical positions of these countries and the gender politics they implemented influenced the operation of (women) artists’ associations and the organization of their annual exhibitions, but also the place they occupy in the art historical narratives. Agata Jakubowska* Adam Mickiewicz University * Agata Jakubowska is Associated Professor and Deputy Director at the Department of Art History, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. She is the author of On Margins of the Mirror. Female Body in the Polish Women Artists’ Works (in Polish, Poznań 2004), Multiple Portrait of the Alina...

This article is an analysis of one area of Piotr Piotrowski’s (1952–2015) activity in the 1990s – his writings on the art of Zofia Kulik and, more specifically, on its feminist dimension. I argue that although Piotrowski was never interested in women’s art in particular, not only did he practise feminist criticism during this period, but he was also a catalyst for the development of a specific form of feminist reflection that was then new in Polish art history. It focused on power relations and did not accept distancing oneself from social and political problems. I analyse it from the perspective of contemporary revisions of the development of feminist discourse after 1989 in Eastern Europe, which critically examines its embeddedness in Western ideas.