<p>Balloon takeoff from the courtyard in front of the Kazimierzowski palace, August 25th, 1872. Photograph by Konrad Brandel / National Museum in Warsaw</p>
<p>Balloon takeoff from the courtyard in front of the Kazimierzowski palace, August 25th, 1872. Photograph by Konrad Brandel / National Museum in Warsaw</p>

No. 10: The Visual Complex of the Polish Nineteenth Century

Managing editor: Iwona Kurz

Balloon takeoff from the courtyard in front of the Kazimierzowski palace, August 25th, 1872. Photograph by Konrad Brandel / National Museum in Warsaw

This issue was supported by the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education, from the funds of the program for the popularization of scholarship in 2015.

Table of Contents

Introduction

  1. The Polish 19th Century. A Visual Complex

    , ”The Polish 19th Century. A Visual Complex”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1026

    An introduction to issue 10 of View.

    keywords: modernity; exhibition; visual complex; 19th century; 20th century; practices of seeing

Close-up

  1. Exhibitionary Complex

    Tony Bennett
    Tony Bennett, ”Exhibitionary Complex”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.942

    Translation of the chapter The Exhibitionary Complex from The Birth of the Museum. History, Theory, Politics by Tony Bennett (Routledge 1995).

    The author argues that 19th century museums, dioramas and panoramas, national and international exhibitions, arcades and department stores, shared a common representational structure – the cumulative work of these institutions amounts in an “exhibitionary complex.” The exhibition is here presented as a mode of communication, leading to common education. Critically referencing Michel Foucault’s  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975), Bennett describes how museums became open to the general public and the crowd became visible to itself.

    keywords: institutions; museum; exhibitions; exhibitionary complex; Michel Foucault

  2. Little Transparency, Many Obstructions. The 19th Century, Exhibitions, Viewing Tools

    Małgorzata Litwinowcz-Droździel
    Małgorzata Litwinowcz-Droździel, ”Little Transparency, Many Obstructions. ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1027

    The article examines various threads of the 19th-century history of culture, which deal with the topic of vision. The author analyses 19th-century exhibitions as tools for looking, large scale and accessible optical instruments. Following archival records, the author sets forward a thesis according to which popular exhibitions fulfilled the role of stabilizing visual experience in an age of radical sensual transformation and the rising ambiguity of cognitive categories. In light of the anxieties caused by numerous new inventions, which produced illusive static and moving images, the Crystal Palace (and its local cousins) could seem to provide tools for visually controlling reality. The author also analyzes tropes of melancholia and disappointment, caused by this 19th-century project of visual utopia.

    keywords: stabilizing visual experience; exhibitions; senses; viewing tools

  3. Light and Sensitivity: Love in the Time of the Daguerreotype

    Katarzyna Czeczot
    Katarzyna Czeczot, ”Light and Sensitivity: Love in the Time of the Daguerreotype”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1030

    The article deals with the love of Zygmunt Krasiński to Delfina Potocka. The point of departure is the poet's definition of love as looking and reads Krasiński's relationship with his beloved in the context of two phenomena that fascinated him at the time: daguerreotype and magnetism. The invention of the daguerreotype in which the history of photography and spiritism comes together becomes a pretext for the formulation of a new concept of love and the loving subject. In the era of painting the woman was treated as a passive object of the male gaze; photography reverses this scheme of power. Love ceases to be a static relationship of the subject in love and the passive object – the beloved. The philosophy of developing photographs (and invoking phantoms) allows Krasiński - the writing subject to become like a light-sensitive material that reveals the image of the beloved.

    keywords: Zygmunt Krasiński; Delfina Potocka; photography; love; daguerreotype; magnetism

  4. “The Five Fallen” as a Meta-image of Polish Culture in the Mid-19th Century

    Iwona Kurz
    Iwona Kurz, ”“The Five Fallen” as a Meta-image of Polish Culture in the Mid-19th”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1031

    The article is devoted to the national manifestations of 1861 and its consequences. Photography played an important role in warming up the atmosphere of Warsaw street, especially the photos of "The Fallen Five" taken by Karol Beyer (1818–1877), a famous Warsaw photographer. The author analyses the ways of using the photos in the context of contemporary visual and performative practices. The tableau representing the fallen becomes a cultural meta-image – a representation linking current emotions and a durable symbolic matrix, documentary features of photography and persistent religious-national patterns.

    keywords: national manifestations; Karol Beyer; tableau; photograpy

  5. Communal Luxury

    Kristin Ross
    Kristin Ross, ”Communal Luxury”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.952

    Polish translation of the second chapter of the book entitled Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune, devoted to the idea of the communal luxury, the educational reform and the concept of overcoming of the division of the beaux-arts and the decorative arts under the short lived revolution of 1871 in France.

    keywords: communal luxury; Paris Commune; education; France

  6. Geschichtsbilder. View(s) at Theatre Theory

    Dorota Sajewska
    Dorota Sajewska, ”Geschichtsbilder. View(s) at Theatre Theory”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1034

    The article is an attempt to read Stanislaw Wyspianski's plays as an epistemic activity. The author sees a historiosophical potential of his work in the consequent use of reconstruction strategies, referring both to the very popular 19th century practice of "living images" and the contemporary practice and theory of "reenactments". The analysis of the relation between the body and the image plays a crucial role in the attempt to show Wyspański also as a precursor of modern theatrical historiography.

    keywords: Stanisław Wyspiański; theatre; living images; reenactments

Panorama

  1. Enter Ghost. Two Visions of Theatre as a Medium of Memory

    Weronika Szczawińska
    Weronika Szczawińska, ”Enter Ghost. Two Visions of Theatre as a Medium of Memory”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.988

    The article critically analyses the convergence of the nature of the theatrical medium with memory stuctures. By referring to theories of American theatrologist Marvin Carlson, the author claims that theatrical mechanisms of memory are not dictated by some objective principles but undergo transformations and fluctuations echoing changing currents of cultural memory. She further underscores deformations of theatrical patterns caused by the evolution of cultural memory. She is interested above all in the critical moments in which old and new shape of the theatrical "machine" meet and create a vibrant tension.

  2. Displaced Gaze. On Jonas Mekas' Autobiography

    Paweł Mościcki
    Paweł Mościcki, ”Displaced Gaze. On Jonas Mekas' Autobiography”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.989

    The text is an attempt to look at the biography and the beginnings of Jonas Mekas' cinematographic practice in the light of the relation between the experience of expatriation and visual sensibility.

Perspectives

  1. On Somebody's Borderlands. Memory, Nostalgia and Resentment in Central and Eastern Europe

    Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez, Jan Sowa, Andrzej Leder
    Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska, Claudia Snochowska-Gonzalez et al., ”On Somebody's Borderlands. Memory, Nostalgia and Resentment in...”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.990

    It is the record of the debate concentrating on questions related to the problematic history of eastern and western borderlands, national identity, collective memory, questions of nostalgia, resentment, and retribution. The debate accompanied an exhibition entitled "Majątek" [The Estate] organised by the Division of Sculpture of the National Museum in Warsaw.

Viewpoint

  1. Naughty Nasals

    Slavs and Tatars
    Slavs and Tatars, ”Naughty Nasals”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.2008

    Presentation of the project Naughty Nasals.

  2. Ą Ę

    Justyna Chmielewska
    Justyna Chmielewska, ”Ą Ę”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1035

    The essay accompanies the presentation of Slavs and Tatars art practice.

  3. Graduation Tower

    Robert Kuśmirowski
    Robert Kuśmirowski, ”Graduation Tower”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.2006

    Presentation of “Graduation Tower” by Robert Kuśmirowski

  4. In Search of Lost (Rest) Time

    Paula Kaniewska
    Paula Kaniewska, ”In Search of Lost (Rest) Time”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1036

    Essay devoted to the work of Robert Kuśmirowski Graduation Tower (2014).

  5. 19th Century Poland in Six Maps: A Reconnaissance

    Igor Piotrowski
    Igor Piotrowski, ”19th Century Poland in Six Maps: A Reconnaissance”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.2009

    The presentation of six maps – cases that provide an insight into the history of Poland in the 19th century, and its cartography. Five of them are maps from that era: from one of the earlier urban plans for the city of Lodz to maps of Polish lands, Atlas Królestwa Polskiego [The Atlas of Polish Kingdom] by Juliusz Colberg, emigrant Karta dawnej Polski [Card of Former Poland] by Wojciech Chrzanowski, depicting the territory of Poland from 1772, Lindley's plans of Warsaw), to Polski atlas kongresowy [Polsih Congress Atlas] by Eugeniusz Romer, summing up the cartographic works during the Versaille conference. The last case study deals with the longue durée of the Polish 19th century and its image on contemporary thematic cartograms.

  6. Album of the Aleksandrowski Bridge on the Vistula River outside of Warsaw

    Karol Beyer
    Karol Beyer, ”Album of the Aleksandrowski Bridge on the Vistula River ”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.2007

    Presentation of an album produced in the atelier of Karol Beyer - a record of the construction of the Aleksandrowski Bridge (1860-1864)

  7. Snapshots from the Construction of the Alexander Bridge on the Vistula River

    Iwona Kurz
    Iwona Kurz, ”Snapshots from the Construction of the Alexander Bridge on the Vistula”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1038

    The text tells the story of the circumstances of the construction of the first bridge on the Vistula River in Warsaw – Alexandrian Bridge (1859–1864) – and its photographic documentation made in the studio of Karol Beyer.

Snapshots

  1. A Swishy Death

    Justyna Jaworska
    Justyna Jaworska, ”A Swishy Death”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1006

    A review of Ewa Toniak's book titled Śmierć bohatera. Motyw śmierci heroicznej w polskiej sztuce i literaturze od powstania kościuszkowskiego do manifestacji 1861 [słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk 2015].

  2. Male Hallucinations

    Jan Borowicz
    Jan Borowicz, ”Male Hallucinations”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1007

    Critical review of recently published Polish translations of Klaus Theweleit's Male Fantasies (2015).

  3. Weavers of Sisterhood

    Monika Borys
    Monika Borys, ”Weavers of Sisterhood”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1008

    Review of the exhibition "Wszyscy ludzie będą siostrami” [All People Will Be Sisters] curated by Joanna Sokołowska at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.

  4. Dust. The Stories

    Tomasz Szerszeń
    Tomasz Szerszeń, ”Dust. The Stories”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1009

    An essay about the exhibition Dust / Histoires de poussière d’après Man Ray et Marcel Duchamp in Le Bal in Paris.

  5. Do wglądu

    , ”Do wglądu”, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 10 (2015), https://doi.org/10.36854/widok/2015.10.1010

    Propozycje lektur