Academic literature on the topic 'Art, Themerson, polish women artists'

Sylwia Witkowska Polish Feminism – Paradigms The issue of feminist art struggles with a great problem. In my study I focus solely on Polish artists, and thus on the genealogy of feminist art in Poland. Although all the presented activities brought up the feminist thread, in many cases a dissonance occurs on the level of the artists’ own reflections. There is a genuine reluctance of many Polish artists to use the term “feminist” about their art. They dissent from such categorization as if afraid that the very name will bring about a negative reception of their art. And here, in my opinion, a paradox appears, because despite such statements, their creativity itself is in fact undoubtedly feminist. I think that Polish artists express themselves through their art in an unambiguous way – they show their feminine „I”. The woman is displayed in their statement about themselves, about the experiences, their body, their sexuality. Feminism defined the concept of art in a new way. The state- ment that art has no gender is a myth. The activities of women-artists are broader and broader, also in Poland women become more and more noticed and appreciated. Feminist art does not feature a separate artistic language, it rather features a tendency towards realism, lent by photogra- phy or video, which reflects the autonomy of the female reception of the world. It should be stated that feminism is a socially needed phenomenon, and its critique drives successive generations of women-artists.

The issue of feminist art struggles with a great problem. In my study I focus solely on Polish artists, and thus on the genealogy of feminist art in Poland. Although all the presented activities brought up the feminist thread, in many cases a dissonance occurs on the level of the artists’ own reflections. There is a genuine reluctance of many Polish artists to use the term “feminist” about their art. They dissent from such categorization as if afraid that the very name will bring about a negative reception of their art. And here, in my opinion, a paradox appears, because despite such statements, their creativity itself is in fact undoubtedly feminist. I think that Polish artists express themselves through their art in an unambiguous way – they show their feminine „I”. The woman is displayed in their statement about themselves, about the experiences, their body, their sexuality. Feminism defined the concept of art in a new way. The statement that art has no gender is a myth. The activities of women-artists are broader and broader, also in Poland women become more and more noticed and appreciated. Feminist art does not feature a separate artistic language, it rather features a tendency towards realism, lent by photography or video, which reflects the autonomy of the female reception of the world. It should be stated that feminism is a socially needed phenomenon, and its critique drives successive generations of women-artists.

The world feminism started in the USA with the women’s struggle for a better pay and working conditions. Transplanted to Europe, and subsequently to the Soviet Union by the communist Clara Zetkin, it promptly died out there, since Soviet women had been made equal with men as for their duties. From then on for numerous decades the aspirations of women, including female artists in Western societies, proved incompatible with the expectations of women within the ‘Eastern Bloc’. This gap was visible already during the role-assigning in WW II, as well as in the means of paying tribute to women’s heroism and their symbolic, or maybe allegoric functioning in social awareness, the latter shaped both by the propaganda and the media and art that came from men’s ateliers. In the post-WW II decades, until the late 1980s, the differences in the approach to goals and means between the conventionally-conceived West and East were still visible. This can be traced on the example of the oeuvre of Polish women artists and their activity in the decades following WW II. It was only after the transformation that Polish women artists-feminists joined in the international discourse, yet maintaining references to their domestic social and political realities, again different from the West, at the same time overcoming subsequent cultural taboos rooted in the collective hypocrisies.

The ballet environment is very specific – hermetic and small. Analysing the history and literature of ballet as well as looking at the contemporary repertoire of leading ballet companies, it is easy to notice the numerous domination of women, which does not determine their dominance in the creative (choreography) and management sphere. In Poland, in the season 2019/2020, 6 out of 9 largest, primer ballet companies are headed by men. As research has shown, it is the male gender that has been dominating in choreography for years, constituting the spectacles shown on the stages and, as a result, the ballet heritage. The article Women tothe placards! The socio-economic situation of female choreographers in the male world of ballet art shed light on the labour market of Polish choreographers working in leading ballet companies, pointing out the prevailing inequalities between men and women who are involved in ballet choreography. In this study, I apply the methods of social sciences (documentary evidence analysis – repertoire and labour force of 9 primer Polish ballet companies in the season 2019/2020), I analyse the data collected during the study Estimation of the number of artists, creators and performers in Poland (Ilczuk et al. 2018), whilst cultural economics is the theoretical framework of my study. This theoretical-methodical base allowed me to expose the inequalities, potential causes and dependencies that exist on the labour market of artists creating ballet choreographies. An immanent feature of this market is the deficit of women.

The poet Josef Brodski once wrote: ‘I’m talking to you but it isn’t my fault if you can’t hear me.’ However, Brodski and other Russian writers, thinkers and artists, continue to be heard across gulfs of language, space and time. Indeed, the above line from Brodski forms the epigraph of ‘Travel Poem’, originally written in Polish by Anna Czeckanowicz. And just as Czeckanowicz picks up on Brodski’s ‘high talk’ (as Yeats might call it), so too do Irish writers (past and present) listen in, and dialogue with, Russian counterparts and exemplars. Some Irish writers go further and actually claim to identify with Russian writers, and/or to identify conditions of life in Ireland with their perception of life in Russia. Paul Durcan, for example, entitled a whole collection of poems Going Home to Russia. Russia feels like ‘home’ to Durcan partly because he is one example of the many Irish writers who have listened in very closely to Russian writing, and who have identified with aspects of what they find in Russian culture. Another example is the poet Medbh McGuckian who has looked to earlier Russian literature for examples of women artists who ‘dedicated their lives to their craft’, who ‘never disgraced the art’, who created timeless works in the face of conflict and suffering: she refers particularly to Anna Akhmatova and, especially, Marina Tsvetaeva. Contemplating and dialoguing with her international sisters in art, McGuckian finds a means of communicating matters and feelings that are ‘closer to home’, culturally and politically (including the politics of gender). Ireland’s most famous poet Seamus Heaney has repeatedly engaged with Russian writings: especially those of Anton Chekhov and Osip Mandelstam. The former is recalled in the poem ‘Chekhov on Sakhalin’, a work taut with tension between an artist’s ‘right to the luxury of practising his art’, and the residual ‘guilt’ which an artist may feel and only possibly discharge by giving ‘witness’, at least, to the chains and flogging of the downtrodden. On the other hand, Mandelstam, for Heaney, is a model of artistic integrity, freedom and courage, a bearer of the sacred, singing word, compared by the Irish poet to an on-the-run priest in Penal days. In this conference paper, I will outline some of the impact and influence that Russian writers have had on Irish writers (who write either in English or in Irish). I will point to some of the lessons and tactics that Irish writers have learnt and adopted from their Russian counterparts: including Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s debt to Yevgenii Yevtushenko, Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s to Maxim Gorki, Máirtín Ó Direáin’s to Aleksandr Blok, and Padraic Ó Conaire’s to Lev Tolstoi, etc.