The romanticism in the context of contemporary Polish art on the
Holocaust
Some contemporary artists from Poland have shown a keen interest in issues related
to recent history, especially the Second World War era, Nazi crimes, the Holocaust
and anti-Semitism. Artists have been questioning the realm of collective memory,
history, identity and their meaning for the present. Some of them as Mirosław Bałka,
Elżbieta Janicka, Karolina Freino, Rafał Jakubowicz ask about the »scars of history
« and the »ghosts of the past«.
Their works can be interpreted in the context of
the Dominick LaCapra’s task of critical history. He suggested employing art in the
process of mourning and preparation for a symbolic burial, treating it as inherent acts
of working trough traumatic past. However some artistic interpretations of Shoah
can be read as romantic. It is especially seen in works evoking memory of places and
focusing on nature. They are characterized by special aura and beauty – mourning,
sad, melancholic, gloomy and uncanny. These works appear as ambivalent, because
they reveal kind of fascination by the Holocaust.
On the other hand such art can be
seen as fulfilling a symbolic burial.
Prof. Izabela Kowalczyk (Ph.D.) – an art and cultural historian, art critique and
curator, a professor at The School of Humanities and Journalism in Poznań, Poland.