Published:

“The Color of Wood:” On the Criteria of Assessment and Interpretation of the Output of Zakopane Sculptors in Polish Art Criticism and Exhibitions from the End of World War II until the Folk Art at the 30th Anniversary of the Polish People's Republic Exhib

Katarzyna Chrudzimska-Uhera , Katarzyna Chrudzimska-Uhera
Saeculum Christianum. Historical Writings
Section: Rozprawy i Artykuły
https://doi.org/10.21697/sc.2021.28.spec.10

Abstract

The article concerns the reception and interpretation of contemporary Zakopane’s sculpture between the 1940s and 1970s.  Analyses of art critics’ texts and curator’s strategies of that period reveal that wooden sculptures were easily and stereotypically interpreted as related to folk art. The material (wood) and the artist’s place of birth and living were identified as the key criteria applied by researchers and art critics. The author contends that this point of view—based on modernistic myths qualifying Zakopane’s sculptures as relying on primitive art, was a misinterpretation. The article concludes that the main problem in understanding and adequately interpreting Zakopane’s sculpture derives from using the traditional canon of art based on the opposition between nature and culture. Therefore, the anthropological theories of Timothy Ingold are recalled as a new and prospective methodology.

Keywords:

sculpture, wood, wood curving, 20th century art in Poland, Zakopane

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Citation rules

Chrudzimska-Uhera, K., & Chrudzimska-Uhera, K. (2021). “The Color of Wood:” On the Criteria of Assessment and Interpretation of the Output of Zakopane Sculptors in Polish Art Criticism and Exhibitions from the End of World War II until the Folk Art at the 30th Anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic Exhib. Saeculum Christianum. Historical Writings, (28), 122–142. https://doi.org/10.21697/sc.2021.28.spec.10

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