Essays
From 2011 to 2020, the quarterly "Artysta i Sztuka" was published, for which I regularly contributed columns about art and reviews of exhibitions of old art. I also published travel sketches in the monthly "Poznaj Świat" and occasional articles in other magazines ("Bliza" and "ArtTak"). I invite you to read some of these columns.
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Corona-Bear and Corona-Bull
The virus, which began to spread at the turn of 2019 and 2020, has ripped through everything—from the economy to culture. However, the latter hasn't responded uniformly. High culture has reacted differently to "everyday" culture. Music has reacted differently, and painting differently.
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CIA-Art
How is it possible that in museums of modern art, viewers experience near-religious ecstasy before Jackson Pollock's paintings, barely distinguishable from a tangled ball of thread, or intensely contemplate Franz Kline's works, strikingly similar to those of the Congo monkey? Is this genuine emotion or succumbing to suggestion? Refined artistic sensitivity or collective stupefaction? Facts recently revealed in the American and European press, which shed new light on the sources of modern art's popularity, may help answer this question.
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A Cultural Tremor
The newly constructed building of the Silesian Museum in Katowice, built on the grounds of a former coal mine, opened in June 2015 and immediately began to crack and leak. One could say it was fit for renovation before it was even finished. Consequently, the museum management sued the contractor. The latter shifted the blame onto the designer, claiming that "the leaks are not the result of construction defects, but rather flaws in the design." As it turns out, we are witnessing another judicial "never-ending story"—or, since we are in Silesia, an "unendliche Geschichte".
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Fantastic realism and the realization of fantasies
295 In recent years, there has been a remarkable surge in interest in so-called magical realism. Apparently, the atmosphere of our era, its fears, frustrations, and obsessions, foster a mass escape from reality and encourage a flight toward alternative worlds.