A Cultural Tremor

THE GALLERY ON LEVEL MINUS TWO

The designer flatly denies responsibility for the leaks and cracks, but even if he is right in that regard, he is certainly responsible for the absurd arrangement of the museum space. From the outside, the building is a typical "glass trap" (a Die Hard scenario); from the inside, it is a functional misunderstanding. The majority of the exhibition space is located underground. The deepest levels house a worthwhile display of Polish scenography and a narrative exhibition on the history of Upper Silesia—which is as fascinating as it is cramped.

One might think that in a museum, the exhibits are paramount, and the entire concept should serve to present them in the best possible way. That was the old way of thinking. According to the modernist approach, to which the designer evidently succumbed, the priority is given to "circulation routes": halls, foyers, stairs, ramps, and ticket counters. These occupy more than half of Level Minus Two, where the painting gallery is located, and—unlike the gallery itself—they are spacious and brightly lit.

The gallery is divided into three sections. The central and largest (implicitly: the most important) is the Gallery of Polish Art after 1945, flanked by two smaller ones: the Gallery of Polish Art 1800–1945 and the Gallery of Non-Professional Art. This layout alone reflects two flagship principles of Neo-Marxism: the inversion of hierarchy and the introduction of confusion. To the New Marxists, hierarchy and valuation are manifestations of patriarchy and oppression that must be fought. Thus, masterpieces by 19th-century masters are exhibited on equal footing with paintings by contemporary hacks and the works of Naive artists. Confusion and chaos are modern virtues; the museum is meant to represent a joyful multi-kulti, color, diversity, and tolerance. Consequently, one can expect a "cultural meatloaf" not only in the museum restaurant but throughout the entire Silesian Museum offering: we have sacred painting, hip-hop, Matejko, graffiti, a playground, a historical exhibition, stickers, and beekeeping all in one (this is no joke; the museum actually operates an "urban apiary"!).

The architect likely thought he was designing a shopping mall rather than a museum. Thus, he designed spacious and perfectly lit corridors, while the exhibition area was pushed into a corner. Paintings that require space and light have been crowded into a cramped labyrinth of dark gray partitions, over which rachitic mini-spotlights flicker.

I SEE DARKNESS

The association with a shopping mall is furthered by devices built into the walls, resembling price scanners in a supermarket, labeled "Scan Ticket." I had hoped that scanning the ticket would trigger a light above the paintings—much like in Italian churches, where tourists can pay 1 euro to illuminate a Caravaggio or Bernini in a dark chapel. No such luck. An attendant explained that if I scanned my ticket at each partition, I could retrace my route at home and view the paintings of interest on the website. I timidly suggested that I would prefer to see the paintings now, to which the person helplessly shrugged. (Upon returning home, I tried to view what I had seen on a monitor: after a long struggle with the system and the need to type in a sixteen-digit barcode from the ticket, I managed to log in to a dysfunctional menu that failed to show artist names or thumbnails, offering instead an illegible numbering of "wall-points").

The pride of the museum—masterpieces of 19th-century Polish painting—has been squeezed into winding, dark alleys. Siemiradzki, Brandt, Fałat, and Matejko hang as if in a narrow mine shaft. Paintings requiring a distance to be appreciated can only be viewed from point-blank range, unless one wishes to press one's back into the painting hanging on the opposite wall.

The most valuable part of the collection is also the darkest. The paintings are either under-lit or not lit at all. Anyone wishing to see details must use their smartphone as a flashlight. Many excellent paintings are placed one above the other in horizontal rows, and Stanisławski—due to a lack of space—hangs in three rows, like kitschy landscapes at St. Florian's Gate. Meanwhile, the titles of all the paintings are at a height suited for dwarves—I suspect this isn't meant to make the viewer bow before each work, but is rather a case of simple malice. The names of the historical periods are written on the floor—the viewer ostensibly admires the art while symbolically trampling on Classicism, Romanticism, or Young Poland.

Next to some paintings are small, glass, relief copies. They are intended to help the blind perceive the art, but in reality, they serve all visitors—if you can't see it, you can at least feel it.

BETWEEN POOR ART AND "VANITATIVE" ART

From this claustrophobic labyrinth, we enter the Gallery of Polish Art after 1945. It is significantly brighter here, thanks to a skylight in the ceiling. On its matte panes, one can spot suspicious stains that evoke visions of a flooded collection—a thought all the more disturbing since it remains unclear who would be responsible for such a disaster: the designer or the contractor?

In the middle of what is undoubtedly the best wall in the entire gallery, they decided to exhibit Kantor's "daubs" and Kantor-esque abstractions. These are the only paintings with any decent viewing distance. So, a sense of valuation was applied after all! The status of Kantor’s painting is further emphasized by its framing: black polished frames with a groove lined in burgundy velvet. This is how one might display royal regalia or holy relics. Kneel, viewer, keep silent, and admire! Hilariously, such framing would likely have provoked a violent protest from Kantor himself, as it is the exact antithesis of the "poor art" (Arte Povera) aesthetic he championed.

Marx, of course, had to be present. Modern Marxists have a bit of a problem with him, though: the constitution prohibits the promotion of totalitarian systems, so a "serious" Marx won't pass. Fortunately, the school of dialectics has not gone to waste. In the central part of the gallery sits Krzysztof Michał Bednarski's sculpture Rożdienie krasnoj zwiezdy (The Birth of the Red Star), showing a bust of the Trier philosopher in a mocking, ironic context. But never mind the context—what matters is that the curators' ideological patron is in the exhibition, if not as an object of worship, then at least as a point of reference.

In the contemporary art section, the lion's share consists of a bleak catalog of the "greatness" of Communist-era painting—a testament to an imitative passion and an "ambition to catch up," of which the aforementioned Kantor was the flagship representative. As the critic Andrzej Osęka mockingly noted, Kantor would regularly travel to Paris to peek at the latest trends and, upon his return, announce on the train platform what was "being worn" this season. Amidst the inflated greatness of post-war painting, the works of Henryk Waniek, Zbylut Grzywacz, and Zdzisław Beksiński stand out—the latter, incidentally, is described in the brochure as a "vanitative creator." This word is used with full Neo-Marxist subversiveness—it comes from the Latin vanitas (vanity/emptiness) and is actually quite fitting for the rest of the contemporary paintings (which are truly "vain" or poor), with the exception of Beksiński’s own work.

With all due respect to hobbyist miners—does no one see that the paintings of Sunday painters do not deserve to be treated on par with the masterpieces of 19th-century brush masters? This symmetry in presenting masterful and inept works is a slap in the face to proper painting. It’s a bit like a philharmonic hall alternating a symphony orchestra's performance with a local fire brigade band.

AN INSTALLATION IS NOT MEANT TO SHINE

The museum's main attraction, however, is a temporary exhibition on Level Minus Three. As I approached it, a young woman with an ID badge pointed toward a pitch-black corridor: "Please, enter the exhibition." "I’ll crack my head open in there," I countered, staring into impenetrable darkness. However, she assured me it would get brighter further in. I stepped into the gloom, feeling along a corrugated metal wall just in case. Indeed, around the corner, a faint "forty-watt" bulb slightly illuminated the darkness, allowing me to reach the exit—where I found myself standing before the same girl once again. "And where is the exhibition?" I asked naively. "That was the exhibition," she replied resolutely. "It's an installation." "But this installation isn't working! It’s not lit!" "Because it's not meant to be lit."

She then gave me a brief lecture: the corridor is built on the floor plan of lungs, while the darkness symbolizes environmental pollution and the fragility of the human condition. In 1925, the Soviet satirists Ilf and Petrov wrote the novel The Twelve Chairs. In one chapter, they mock avant-garde art by describing a play performed in total darkness. When the audience demands the lights be turned on, a voice from the stage cries: "That is the director's concept!" What was mocked in Soviet Russia nearly a century ago has become an artistic revelation in Poland anno Domini 2018.

THE BLACK HOLE

Before the entrance to the installation stands a plaque listing three names: the installer, the curator, and the coordinator. This "success" simply has "Parents A, B, and C." Parent B built the metal corridor, Parent A curated him, but what did Coordinator C coordinate? The cooperation between the artist and the curator? Between them and the museum? In any case, the installation feels perfectly coordinated, and in some places even corroded (as mentioned, the museum leaks).

Most surprising was the absence of a "PhD" title before the curator’s name. Such modesty! After all, this talented woman recently defended her doctoral thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. So what if the title was immediately revoked because the proceedings were initiated in the wrong discipline, and the commission called it one of the most drastic cases of breaking academic rules? Mere dull formalism! The curator should simply ignore the decision and fast-track a habilitation based on the Katowice "black hole."

For those unable to visit the Silesian Museum, I recommend going into your own basement, turning off the light, and groping along the wall. In this way, you will experience "the action of successive stimuli triggering the senses" and interiorize "the problem of air pollution," approaching the "fragile boundary between life and death"—as the scholarly note explaining the installation so eloquently puts it.

The Katowice "Black Square" reminded me of the film The Square (Palme d'Or 2017), which is one giant satire of modern art curators. The "Square" in the film was meant to be a "zone of love and trust," but it symbolized only the spiritual vacuum and sterility of modern art. It seems that in the case of the Silesian Museum installation, life has surpassed satire.