Sztuka epoki lotów kosmicznych

Available for download as pdf here. (In Polish only.)

ABSTRACT:

The article addresses the topic of “art of the era of space flights”, as introduced in the last, eleventh issue of “Struktury” – an art magazine published in Lublin, Poland at the end of the 1950s / beginning of the 1960s. It focuses on the relations between art, technology and cybernetics, as reflected in both artistic production and art criticism, and with reference to the highly ideologized public discourse of the time. The author analyses the articles published in “Struktury” to show how the slogans of mutual connections of art, technology and science were used already in 1961 as a way of redirecting the interests of modernist artists active in the “cultural thaw” period (circa 1956) back to the social reality – the paradigm previously imposed onto the polish cultural scene by the totalitarian state. The article includes analyses of artworks by Włodzimierz Borowski and Jan Ziemski, artistic criticism by Jerzy Ludwiński and Anka Ptaszkowska, as well as a 1957 novel by Stanisław Lem. These are used to present how the artists’ fascinations with technological progress evolved with time, and how they oscillated between the utopian dream of total rationalization and the more existentially embedded understanding of the autonomy of art.