CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Gawkowski, Jakub Jacek |
|---|---|
| Title | Remembrance, Reconstruction, Restitution: Exhibiting Rescued Works of Polish and Polish-Jewish Artists (1945-1949) |
| Summary | This thesis explores how, in the aftermath of World War II in Poland, artworks were personified as victims and displayed to signify the destruction of national culture. The thesis focuses on two exhibitions: Warsaw Accuses in the National Museum in Warsaw in 1945, and on the traveling exhibition Rescued Works of Jewish Artists, organized by the Jewish Society for Encouragement of Fine Arts in 1949. Examining two cases, I explore the themes of remembrance, cultural reconstruction and art restitution in regard to Polish and Polish-Jewish culture in the immediate post-war period. The analysis of exhibitions has two main layers. Firstly, I analyze their social and political context. Secondly, I focus on the social biographies of displayed artworks to reveal how different meanings were ascribed to them after the war, and the ways in which they were reinterpreted. I identify two methods of art restitution—one carried out “from above” by the state institutions, and one “from below” by the Jewish organization—to argue that after the war the urge to preserve the past became a crucial issue not only in relation to lost human beings, but also material heritage. My object-oriented approach reveals ways in which the Polish and Polish-Jewish culture was reconstructed and perpetuated between 1945 and 1949. I show how the discussed displays of “rescued” artworks, which I consider the prototypes of restitution exhibitions, were expressions of the post-war construction of collective victimhood. My analysis shows the important place of national culture in post-war Poland and traces the attempts to reconstruct Jewish culture and to create a new Jewish identity in the ethnically homogeneous communist state. |
| Supervisor | Siefert, Marsha |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/gawkowski_jakub.pdf |
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