14th June 2012 (Thursday), 6 p.m.

Benjamin Cope, Ph.D.

Meeting in English devoted to the role of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the shaping of Modernist culture

meet in the entrance hall
free entrance

Paradoxically, the Art Everywhere exhibition is one that is spatially and temporally very locally rooted: in the work of the Warsaw Academy of Arts from its founding in 1904 up until the Second World War. Being embedded in a specific local historical context makes the exhibition both a difficult and an exciting proposition for foreign visitors. During this meeting, therefore, we will explore what fresh perspectives might appear by looking at the exhibition from a ‘foreigner’s’ perspective.

Founded prior to the re-emergence of Poland as a nation state, the Warsaw Academy of Arts drew significantly from Art Nouveau, promoting functionality and the stylistic unity between different fields, as well as re-promoting craftsmanship to the status of art. The Academy managed to balance being socially progressive, with a policy of equality among socially and culturally diverse students and the forming of many important new artistic bodies among lecturers and students, with having an important role in shaping public opinion in the newly founded republic.

In our meeting we will explore the questions that the exhibition raises about the relations between teaching, art, design, production, society, class, gender and the nation, through a here and there, and now and then perspective. In so doing, we shall attempt to understand what was special about the work of the Warsaw Academy of Arts at this time, and what wider questions the exhibition raises about the relations between art, production and society in the contemporary world.