TY - JOUR AU - Juszkiewicz, Piotr PY - 2018/09/19 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Biuro, natura, wyobraźnia, wiejska chata, fabryczna hala. Wizerunki artystycznej pracowni w dokumentalnym filmie o sztuce czasów PRL-u JF - Artium Quaestiones JA - 10.14746/aq VL - IS - 26 SE - ROZPRAWY DO - 10.14746/aq.2015.26.7 UR - https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/aq/article/view/14591 SP - 149-169 AB - <p>Artists’ studios turned into museums are always specific representations of the</p><p>past – spatial images reflecting some idea of art and the artist, as well as his or her</p><p>works, and even the position of the spectator imagined as a visitor, admirer, insider,</p><p>outsider or pilgrim.</p><p>When a studio is shown through a film, its status of representation comes to the</p><p>foreground very distinctly just because of the properties of the medium. A filmic representation</p><p>of the studio is a result of combining images into a sequence, while individual</p><p>images attract the spectator’s attention to particular places, areas or aspects</p><p>of the space of creation, thus making him or her follow a certain trajectory of meaning.</p><p>What is more, such a sequence does not have to be limited to the studio’s interior</p><p>since the cinematic montage allows the director to expand it freely by adding some</p><p>historicizing or contextualizing frames. Finally, film allows one to meet the artist in</p><p>his or her space through an interview, representation of the creative process or an</p><p>actor-impersonator.</p><p>In the first I discuss briefly three issues: the general idea of the present paper</p><p>and its historical and theoretical contexts.</p><p>First, my objective is to provide information on my research on Polish documentary</p><p>film on art in 1948–1989, which was financially supported by the Ministry of</p><p>Science and Higher Education. I was doing this research with help of a small team of</p><p>young scholars – phd students and a younger collegue from Institute of Art History at</p><p>Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. In this article I will not address general</p><p>problems related to the filmic representation of artists’ studios, but discuss several</p><p>individual cases.</p><p>Second, the historical context is connected with the hopes of totalitarian states</p><p>to use mass culture, and particularly film, to manipulate the masses. Even though in</p><p>particular decades of the 20<span>th </span>century, and in different countries, those hopes were</p><p>put into practice in different ways, their ideological and practical implementation had</p><p>a common basis. That basis can perhaps be best described by Walter Benjamin’s idea</p><p>that a modern wish to regenerate the world requires the destruction of the auratic art</p><p>and influencing the masses with some other kind of artistic creation that could organize</p><p>them according to a fixed political purpose. Benjamin believed that the most useful</p><p>in that respect would be film, which in his opinion was both technical and massoriented.</p><p>The masses could receive film with little effort so that it would imperceptibly</p><p>form their mental and imaginative habits, and therefore also a political bias.</p><p>My point is that the filmic representations of artists’ studios must be approached</p><p>in the general context of the role assigned to film in the communist Poland, even</p><p>though one should also remember that artists had various attitudes and censors kept</p><p>changing their criteria of appropriateness. Still, the research focused on the representation</p><p>of the artist, his or her studio, and the ideas of art will reveal an officially accepted</p><p>picture to be transmitted into the public space. One the other hand, one</p><p>should remember that within precisely defined political limits Polish documentary</p><p>(and other) filmmakers could ignore commercial aspects and refer to the acknowledged</p><p>high position of art, experimenting in different ways with a relationship between</p><p>film and the visual arts.</p><p>Third, my theoretical context is related to the status of the documentary or, that</p><p>of reality represented in documentary films. In my view, shared also by a number of</p><p>scholars, documentaries have an element of creation and their reality is always</p><p>processed in one way or another. My examples will include studio as office, nature,</p><p>space of imagination, village hut or cottage, and engine room.</p> ER -