Discussion. Curators and art merchants. From sacrum to art market

Discussion

Waldemar Baraniewski: In the paper by Łukasz Gorczyca I picked up on a statement that it was a mission to create a new market. Was this indeed a mission to create a new market?

Andrzej Bonarski: It is extremely difficult for me to say anything because I have a feeling that the snow of the past has melted to water which is neither too bitter nor too sweet. We are talking about things which are long gone. … It so happened that a book was written – not of my doing, frankly speaking – called What’s Up. I have a single copy of it and I think that it is the best source of information about the things discussed here. At least, some of the things, as it definitely does not touch on what Ms. Jarecka is talking about here. It does not describe the different attempts undertaken by Mr. Piotr Nowcki, Mr. – if the memory serves me right – Rudomino. But these were developments of lesser magnitude. The book would not have been possible if it hadn’t been for the people who are not here today. First of all, I would like to mention my wife, Joasia Stańko, as well as the authors who – as I learned yesterday – were paid by Maryla out of her own pocket. […] Everything was done helter-skelter, pure madness. Though there was a method in all that craziness. […] Marta Tarabuła was personally a great support for me – and not only intellectually; many of the conversations I had with her were an encouragement. […] Ryszard Ziarkiewicz was also such a man, his contributions were absolutely priceless. Ziarkiewicz is not an easy man to work with, but that does not matter at all. Ziarkiewicz was no doubt a man who’d shaken the world in its foundations. Naturally, some of these efforts were quite ridiculous as when one artist tried to take away from me, not entirely legally, a painting, claiming that I had no moral right to possess it for reason of my friendship with Mr. Rakowski - a somewhat problematic line of thought. I was able to get the picture back with the help of a lawyer.

Let me come back to your question. It so fortunately happened that in the States I was neither the victim of communism, nor was I washing dishes in some diner. Indeed, there were times when I was broke, so I made a living by driving a cab in New York in the middle of the night – not exactly a nice job. Though generally speaking, when in the States I had money, and thanks to the contacts and work with Grotowski, I had access to the intellectual circles of New York. […] I thought I would make money, which I did. […] Due to the fact that I lived in Manhattan, I had the opportunity to visit great museums. I also traveled across the States. […] I found out what the situation with the art market was like in the States. I went to Texas, I saw the great collections. […] And then I thought to myself – somewhat naively perhaps, particularly from the perspective of today – that if communism was in any case going to hell then. […] You may criticize me here, but communism was not so much overthrown by the workers and Solidarity as by the fact that the power of Zeitgeist came to exhaustion. It simply lost its metaphysics. I would like to recommend here the work by the art historian, Groys, “Stalin as a Total Work of Art”, in which the author warns against the dangers of the avant garde. I would actually want to say a few words about avant garde later on.

It was mainly scum who came to the exhibitions because whiskey was served. And whiskey was cheap because I had made money in the States and you could get a bottle of Johnny Walker for a dollar twenty in Peweks. Masses of people would come when whiskey was served. The crowds attracted more crowds, then snobs, actresses, followed by some guys, etc. It was at the second or third exhibition that this socialite circle was formed. It was quite funny, actually. People would call and ask why they were not invited. I was hoping that since these people had money they would start buying the art. In my entire career I have sold maybe three paintings. In the case of one, it could have as well been thrown into the river. Then Maryla Rodowicz bought one, and a second was bought by Skolimowski. […] And I was like this foolish primrose, sticking my head out from beneath the snow too soon. So, in response to your question: yes, of course I wanted to create an art market, though there were no conditions for that at the time. […] I failed, though in a sense this failure was very inspiring.

There is a certain topic I would like to bring up, one I feel is very important. Especially in this strange museum which is a virtual museum, a museum which has its roots in Galeria Foksal. Please do not feel offended, but I do have some experience with the so called safe avant garde. I was not in the opposition, but after my disenchantment with ZMP [Association of Polish Youth], as I happened to be a very red activist, I was rather an opponent of the system. […] But I have this concept, namely that communism, especially Polish communism, loved exported goods. That we were not all that bad. […] I have always felt that this avant garde for showing off abroad, and which originated from Galeria Foksal, was a bit castrated. It was an academic trend, a kind of a ditto of the experiences from the 1930’s and 1940’s, which completely disregarded the existence of the huge and phenomenal body of American painting. It was because I knew what this body of American painting looked like that I felt regretful about the exhibition at the Arsenal. I understand that people were afraid, I can relate to that. But when I read the title of the conference “legacy regained” – regained how? Had anybody appropriated it? It’s nonsense. Nobody had appropriated it. Woźniak, who is sitting here, was a professor at the Academy; his paintings sell very well. There is no Sobczyk, no Modzelewski. Pawlak, unfortunately, is not in the best of form,, neither is Urbański. Kowalewski is in excellent form, but his paintings go for tens of thousands of zloty. Nobody has appropriated anything. […] When I was doing my thing, together with Maryla Sitkowska and a whole group of people, the communist system was almost dying, almost no venom left. […] When the censor came to the What’s Up? exhibition and wanted to take down Urbański’s painting, Station Solidarity [Stacja Solidarność], I said to him: “Come on, for fuck’s sake, let’s go have something to drink". Indeed, I was a bit afraid about Libera’s film, The Mystic Perversion [Perwersja mistyczna] as the film remains scandalous to this day. And if that film had a public screening anywhere then all hell would break loose, just like in the case of Nieznalska. Because the film is a very drastic one, touching on very difficult and painful issues. […] But today, all of these people are the masters in our domestic Polish scene. Mr. Modzelewski, Mr. Sobczyk, Mr. Woźniak – these are all outstanding painters.

Dorota Jarecka: But it was not about appropriation here but about forgetting.

Andrzej Bonarski: But who is forgetting? Dorota, put a good painting of Pawlak up for auction, and you’ll see how quickly it goes. There are many young collectors who live in Ursynów, work in banks or the advertising business, earn 40-50K a month, and buy this or that. There is a whole number of very decent collections – Łukasz Gorczyca could say a lot more about it than I because I don’t really deal in paintings.

Waldemar Baraniewski: Thank you very much. It was not our intention to act against anybody who was supposed to appropriate since there was no appropriation. It was more about a space of oblivion. It’s one thing, of course, the position of painters, the prices for their paintings, and it is another whether there is a memory about historical processes, about what was actually happening. Also because this memory was not exactly recorded, actually it was sometimes destroyed. A point in case here is the fate of the archives of Janusz Bogucki, which were transferred to the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, from where they were taken to Konstancin, to the paper factory, and destroyed. It shows that the memory question is difficult. Your activities happen to be very well described, though many of the things that Łukasz presented in his paper are new – especially to the younger generation.

Luiza Nader: I would very much like to thank Dorota for her presentation. Her text was actually such a recuperation of memory. I have a question regarding the seminars organized by Andrzej Matuszewski in the 1970’s in Dłusk, Pawłowice and other places where – if I remember correctly – Mr. Janusz Bogucki was also present. Was it there that the text “Pop-ezo-sacrum” was delivered for the first time? Did these actions, being, after all, some kind of small communities – bear any influence on your later activities? My other question is related to the sacred and transgression. I am interested in your relation to the Church, to the sacrum and profanum. How did that look?

Dorota Jarecka: Indeed, the text “Pop-ezo-sacrum. The Three Magnetisms” comes from 1978. However the concept was gaining shape throughout the 1970’s. Certain things were repeated, others were developed, etc. The word sacrum already came up before that. However in 1978 it was formulated strongly and without shame. It was a notion which, to an effect, was a bit embarrassing, particularly in the circles of Bogucki, in the circles of the neoavant garde […]

Nina Smolarz: First of all, I would like to thank Dorota for the text, which I found shocking and very interesting. The Sign of the Cross at the beginning and the cross by Nieznalska at the end – it reminded me of a text by Marx which, to my surprise, you quoted in reference to the activities of Janusz, namely that a repetition from history is its parody. This is how I see the coda you have made. In terms of the text “Pop-ezo-sacrum”, it is a booklet, a small and very modest publication, in which Janusz presented his basic thoughts. He wrote these texts in the 1970’s, from 1975 to 1985. He delivered them at meetings with artists, the avant garde, or critics. I attended only one such meeting in 1984, in Wrocław. A fragment of that discussion is even recorded in his book. As to Matuszewski, that was his great friend. They wrote extraordinary letters to each other. The letters, in which Andrzej Matuszewski would write, “fuck this, again whatever...”, and then again, this or that random word, contained very interesting observations about art. Janusz would write back in a highly sophisticated, baroque style, describing how lady bugs appeared in great numbers at the seaside and how they had to be carried to a different location, or about a colony of spiders. These letters, so very different in style, make up an extraordinary compilation.

When it comes to sacrum, indeed it was the basic idea Janusz promoted. From what I understand, Dorota focused more on the visual side and the certain political and ideological contexts. In terms of ideas, Janusz’s take on the sacred would actually call for a separate paper and separate studies. […] Wanting to get the readers familiarized with his ideas presented in “Pop-exo-sacrum”, he writes on the first page: „These opinions are based on the conviction that faith and art sprout from the same trunk of our spiritual existence. That the purest act of faith and the purest acts of creation are born in the same spring of primal energy. This energy is divine love which has brought the world out of nothingness, and whose spark hidden in each and every human being, makes him or her a person created in the image and likeness of the Creator. It is due to this common origin, the common source of faith and creation, that in the ancient, pre-modern cultures, which had been established on the basis of the undivided entirety of spiritual life, there was not a difference between that which was sacred for the artist and that which was sacred for the ordinary man. In most of the ancient cultures, the old religious sacrum and the sacrum seem to be one and the same thing or perhaps two sides of the same phenomenon".

When asked in an interview: “When was your concept of the formation of the sacrum in art coined?”, Janusz does not talk about Kassel but simply says: “For a long time now I have been intrigued with the thought that art and sacrum are internally interlocked. The thought became suddenly concrete only in 1958, in Chartres, during my stay in France. I came to the conclusion then that I needed a different syntax. When in Chartres, one experiences all that is changing and all that is permanent in every single minute thanks to the light living in the stained glass windows”. Chartres was the biggest spiritual experience for Janusz, and he often repeated that. “It comes from the external shifts in seasons of the year, times of the day, whimsical weather, travelling clouds in the sky, even the movement of trees swaying in the wind. One isits there as if in a huge cosmic cave and looks at the stained glass windows which are no longer glass, decorations, symbols, or iconography, but become the pillars of human spirit, made up of colored light, something to the effect of a materialized and pulsating prayer which has been happening there for centuries.” Let this be a supplement to this interesting picture that Dorota so beautifully presented when writing about The Labyrinth as an ark or river of memory which, however, should have a guard standing by.

Karol Sienkiewicz: Dorota recalled an anecdote by Grzegorz Kowalski. I would be interested in the moment that the artists who called themselves libertines came in contact with the concept of Janusz Bogucki’s sacrum. At The Labyrinth exhibition this concept met with the artists of the New Expression who distanced themselves from the Church, and whose initial presentations at church exhibitions usually ended with censorship, screwing out light bulbs and things like that. In any case, they decided to participate in the exhibition by Janusz Bogucki. The Labyrinth showed Sobczyk, Filonik, Kijewski, […]

Dorota Jarecka: But it was Janusz Bogucki who, in comparison to the church curators, was seen as somebody different from that group. It was remembered that he participated in the neoavant-garde meetings, in the plain-air workshops which were not really religious but more ecological. There was talk about opening to nature. Kostołowski wrote a very interesting text in which he touched on “points of contact with reality”. It was sort of an impulse. Or there was talk about an “ethical impulse”. These are all very interesting things which begin to appear in the 1970’s. They have nothing to do with the Church, or any church institution for that matter. I have asked Grzegorz Klaman to tell me how it was. He had his reservations, of course. He was independent, wanted to be autonomous. But he was interested in it, even in the encounter with a certain project which is imposed and which is actually a compromise since certain things have been imposed – The Labyrinth was not his idea but the curator’s. He nevertheless found it interesting to surrender and see whether they were able to realize the kind of thing he had to offer. He still says that it was the biggest work of art in his life. And he does not exclude the possibility that The Labyrith had an impact on his later art.

Nina Smolarz: Grzegorz Klaman was given an additional handicap: he was supposed to make a huge sculpture, but also photographs were to be hung on it. […] Initially, it was to be a regular old-fashioned labyrinth, no idea what it was to be made from, maybe old bricks […] But at the What’s Up? exhibition at the Norblin factory, we saw this extraordinary sculpture by Klaman. We both knew it would be Klaman who would make the labyrinth.

Grzegorz Kowalski: Janusz Bogucki was a very elegant man with a great power of persuasion. He knew how to approach an artist, so one just could not refuse him. Simple as that. We saw here the Luxus collective at an exhibition from 1991. How does that refer to the common stereotype of the sacrum? It doesn’t. And still Bogucki had the ability to combine these things. And they fit together. These exhibitions created a narrative which was thoroughly thought out and which had a specific message. Bogucki was lucky to find himself in an extraordinary period of time. First of all, it was a time of awakening and joy due to the newly regained freedom and regained voice – as was the case with most artists. It was a time when people did not refuse. People did not decline invitations to such undertakings. If anybody wanted to stand on the side, as some artists did – they consciously stood on the side and did not want to have anything to do with all that – then they excluded themselves from this absolutely unique experience of being together with other people, with all those who felt the awakening and inflow of the energy which was born in 1980 and then was kept aflame or cultivated during martial law. Janusz Bogucki was a mystic. He would speak with such faith in his voice that one felt it was worth joining in. He said that he saw a map of the city which indicated the routes of spiritual experience, and that these paths led to churches and galleries, that these were places of spiritual concentration. It was like a schism. He was completely beyond any of the Church canons. The best example of his power of influence was that after his death Marek Edelman decided to file a petition for Bogucki’s beatification.

Nina Smolarz: Yes, indeed, Marek Edelman wrote a letter to the pope asking for the beatification of Janusz. He also published it in his book. Janusz was indeed a mystic, a person of extraordinary energy and vision. He was deeply convinced that the developments of that time were blazing a trail to the future, towards the salvation of the world. He said that it was necessary to found monasteries of spiritual renewal because people will not be able to stand the pressure of the new civilization. The exhibition The Epitaph and the Seven Spaces was not the last one. There was one more – The Boiler Room [Kotłownia] in Mokotów, the expansion of the imagination, a joining of the divided [powiększanie wyobraźni, łączenie podzielonego], and a few other exhibitions. However, the biggest one we prepared was with Marek Rostworowski, which was to take place in Emaus, an old Benedictine monastery in the district of Praga in Warsaw. We had discovered an extraordinary edifice and wanted to enter it with The Hole Mountain [Święta góra], an eternal feast of many nations. The works were already in full swing but, unfortunately, it called for collaboration with artists from all the countries liberated from communism, and money which we did not have. […] Then Czechoslovakia broke apart, and the rend was more towards the West and not towards the area of changes happening here. Janusz felt that the suffering we went through – the two totalitarian regimes – releases an energy that can build the future for many people.

Dorota Jarecka: I would like to add, however, that there were artists who went against the flow. Bogucki did have his opposition. […]

Jan Michalski: Did Janusz Bogucki use any genre term for a project like The Labyrinth? Because we are talking about an “exhibition” here. It is a very general term.

Dorota Jarecka: The alternative terms was “undertaking” , however at the moment of the book’s publication, the term was “exhibition”. I was wondering what to do with these categories. Sometimes Bogucki writes “exhibition”, then on other occasions, “undertaking”. At one point there appears the term “meeting”, which was also a very apt description of some of the events. For example, “ecumenical meeting”, when it was the presence of people which was more important than what was being shown. It was rather revolutionary for the church in 1987 to introduce, for example, a Buddhist prayer room and a Jewish chamber to a Catholic church.

Grzegorz Kowalski: Maybe we should mention the name of that parish priest.

Nina Smolarz: Father Wojciech Czarnowski. We only used the term “undertaking„”. I don’t know if Janusz ever wrote “exhibition” anywhere.

Dorota Jarecka: He used the term in the book.

Nina Smolarz: In his texts he wrote that art had to return home and to the temple, not to the gallery. Home and the temple. Because other zones will be governed on the basis of the economy, covertly.

Waldemar Baraniewski: If we looked at it more calmly and professionally from the perspective of what is called curatorial practices then I think we should mention the name of Marek Rostworowski because it was his activities, the exhibitions Romantism and Romaticism, Self-portrait of Poles, which opened up the space for such curatorial practices which were also a point of departure for Janusz Bogucki. He took a different path but we must still remember that, especially since Rostworowski also ends up on Żytnia street. New Earth, New Heaven is an exhibition which sums up his endavours. Bonarski’s last exhibition, The Polish Chic, also falls into the category of a similar attitude towards the artist and towards the matter with which the curator was dealing.

Dorota Jarecka: Roman Woźniak offers the term “pre-curator”.

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Waldemar Baraniewski, an art historian, professor at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw. Published, among others, “Kazimierz Skórewicz. An architect, conservator, architecture scholar” (2000). Co-curator of exhibitions at the National Museum and the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, including Sorcerers and mystics (1991). Deals in the art history of the 20th century, particular attention paying to spatial arts (architecture and sculpture), art in totalitarian systems, and art criticism.

Andrzej Bonarski, writer, art dealer and collector, businessman; intending to develop the art market in Poland in the 1980’s, he organised a number of solo and group exhibitions of new art, including What’s Up (1987), The New Russians (1988), In the Image, After the Likeness (1989), A Pole, a German, a Russian (1989), The Polish Chic (1991), Andrzej Bonarski Publishing House has issued, among other items, catalogues to the exhibitions organized by Ryszard Ziarkiewicz.

Dorota Jarecka, an art historian and critic, writes reviews, longer texts and interviews for “Gazeta Wyborcza”. In 2011 she co-curated the exhibition Erna Rosenstein. I can repeat only unconsciously at the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw. A laureate of the Jerzy Stajuda Art Criticism Award (2012).

Luiza Nader, born in 1976, art. historian, lectures at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw. In 2005 she received a Fulbright scholarship. Published book “The Conceptual Art in the Polish Peoples’ Republic” (2009). Her main focus is on avant-garde and neo-avant-garde art, particularly in Central Europe, as well as on relations of memory and archives, theories of trauma and affect.

Nina Smolarz, photographer, partner and a long time associate of Janusz Bogucki (from 1982), who has collaborated with him on exhibitions and undertakings, including: Sign of the Cross (1983), The Apocalypse – a Light in the Darkness (1984), The Labyrinth (1989), The Epitaph and the Seven Spaces (1991), Midsummer Night or Midsummer Night’s Dream (1992), The Grand Duchy (1993), The Expansion of Imagination – Unification of the Divided, Fire Freezes, Splendour Darkens (1994), In the Door and Behind the Door. On This and That Side (1995).

Karol Sienkiewicz, born in 1980, art historian and critic, editor of books, e.g. collection of texts on the art of the eighties, “Draft” by Anda Rottenberg (with Kasia Redzisz). As a critic he writes to dwutygodnik.com. A laureate of the Jerzy Stajuda Art Criticism Award (2012).

Grzegorz Kowalski, artist and pedagogue, assistant of Oskar Hansen (1965-1968) andJanuszkiewicz (1968-1980), lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In the 1970’s, co-founder of Warsaw’s Repassage gallery; developed individual forms of artistic expression based on including the expression of others into one’s own work (actions-questions, collections, tableaux). In the 1980’s creator of his own syllabus titled “Shared Space, Own Space”. Artists including Paweł Althamer, known as Kowalnia (smithy – from his surname, Kowalski, Polish equivalent of Smith – from the translator).

Jan Michalski, art critic, together with Marta Tarabuła manager the Zderzak gallery in Krakow. Laureate of the Stajuda Award. His publications include “A Boy on a Yellow Background. On Andrzej Wróblewski” [Chłopiec na żółtym tle. Teksty o Andrzeju Wróblewskim] (2009), and recently “Four Essays on Wildness” [Cztery eseje o dzikości] (2011, together with Martą Tarabuła).

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