Minimal, Conceptual and Material – the Phenomenon of Wanda Czełkowska's Sculptures – International Conference of Experts
Minimal, Conceptual and Material - the Phenomenon of Wanda Czełkowska's Sculptures
International Conference of Experts
10‒11 February 2017
Featuring: Wanda Czełkowska, prof. Richard Demarco, prof. Maria Hussakowska, Anke Kempkes, Anna Kłosowska, prof. Jerzy Malinowski, Ewa Opałka, Agnieszka Tarasiuk, Ewa Tatar, dr hab. Ewa Toniak
The conference will take place at the end of the exhibition Wanda Czełkowska. Retrospection, on view from 6th November 2016 to 12th February 2017 in the Museum of Sculpture at the Królikarnia Palace. Retrospection presents the silhouette of an artist who, in spite of her 60 years long continuous practice, has not been well explored in Polish art history. The conference will open with a summary conversation between Wanda Czełkowska, Ewa Opałka and Agnieszka Tarasiuk. During the meeting a catalogue will also be launched.
The first part of the conference will be dedicated to the local context of Czełkowska's practice ‒ in Cracow and Poland-wide. During the second part, her art will be analysed in the global context. One of the topics that serve as the point of departure both for the exhibition and the conference is the mechanism of including or not including a given artistic personality within the field of art history. An academic perspective permitting to observe one of the constituents of this mechanism will be presented by dr hab. Ewa Toniak. The researcher will give a lecture reminding female artists active between 1950–1970, such as Alina Ślesińska or Alina Szapocznikow, already described in her publications such as Polish Women Artists (Artystki polskie) and She-Giants (Olbrzymki). In this context, she will also attempt to reconstruct the career of Wanda Czełkowska.
Wanda Czełkowska started to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in 1949, in the sculpture studio of Jerzy Bandura. Xawery Dunikowski was definitely a guardian spirit and a figure of authority for her. The author of The Table (Stół, 1968–1971) and The Absolute Elimination of the Sculpture as a Notion of Shape (Bezwzględne wyeliminowanie rzeźby jako pojęcia kształtu, 1975–1995) spent 50 years of her life in Cracow, where she stayed after graduating. Living at Karmelicka street together with a group of artist friends that she referred to as an "art kolkhoz" [kolkhoz stands for a collective farm in the Soviet Union], she had a love-hate relationship with the city. She also slightly distanced herself from her most immediate artistic context ‒ the circle of Cracow Group II. Although her relations with the group are not well documented, one can feel that Czełkowska - in spite of declaring her connection to the figure and theatre of Tadeusz Kantor and participating in cyclical exhibitions ‒ remained only loosely connected to the group itself. Prof. Maria Hussakowska will speak about the context of the artist's activities in the art world of Cracow, while prof. Jerzy Malinowski will further develop this topic in view of the topographic and interpersonal aspect of those activities. Ewa Tatar's talk will also be situated in the area of impact of Cracow Group II.
Anna Kłosowska ‒ contemporary art restorer at the National Museum in Cracow ‒ will close the first part with her talk on the challenges entailed by the conservation of such installations as The Table (Stół, 1968–1971) and The Wall (Ściana, 1975–1976). Both works form part of the collection of the National Museum in Cracow.
Prof. Richard Demarco ‒ experienced curator and gallery director from Edinburgh ‒ will focus on the artist's experiences with the global art world. Demarco, as the person responsible for visual arts at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1972, organised a show of Polish avant-garde entitled "Atelier '72", featuring, among others: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Tadeusz Kantor, Roman Opałka and Zbigniew Warpechowski. After getting acquainted with the concept of The Table (Stół), he invited Czełkowska to make a work in Edinburgh. During his talk, Demarco will reconstruct the history of the negotiations that led to the presentation of Conceptual Information about The Table (Informacja pojęciowa o "Stole") at that festival.
Anke Kempkes ‒ curator and owner of the Broadway 1602 gallery in New York ‒ will speak about the global perception of Czełkowska's works in the contemporary context. Kempkes, who curated the show of Alina Szapocznikow "Flesh at War With Enigma" in 2004 at Kunsthalle Basel, will collate Czełkowska's artistic silhouette with the figure of Rosemarie Castoro ‒ minimalist from New York, whose exhibition "Loft Show" took place in New York in 2015.
The conference will end with the speech of Ewa Opałka ‒ the exhibition's curator ‒ who will present the concept of the Retrospection show at the Museum of Sculpture in Królikarnia, in relation to the philosophical tradition of phenomenology and corporal feminism, the aspect of materiality of Czełkowska's sculptures and the issue of specificity of an embodied (female) subject.
Conference Agenda:
10th February 2017 (Friday)
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Conference opening: Conversation with Wanda Czełkowska, Ewa Opałka and Agnieszka Tarasiuk
11th February 2017 (Saturday)
10.00 – 10.30
Opening: Agnieszka Tarasiuk, Chief Curator of the Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture
10.35 – 11.05
dr hab Ewa Toniak,
The figure of disappearance: remarks on Wanda Czełkowska's work
11.10 – 11.40
prof. Maria Hussakowska, The Ellipsis
11.45 – 12.15
prof. Jerzy Malinowski, Wanda Czełkowska and the Cracow artistic community of the 60's and 70's
12.20 – 12.50
Ewa Tatar, This. On the practices of the Cracow Group artists
12.55 – 13.25
Anna Kłosowska, The fifth leg of the table or the conservator's dilemmas. A few thoughts on Wanda Czełkowska's composition from the collection of the National Museum in Cracow.
15.15 – 15.45
prof. Richard Demarco, Introducing the post-war European Avant-garde to the Edinburgh International Festival, focused on a Polish dimension
15.50 – 16.20
Anke Kempkes, The third gender. Wanda Czełkowska and Rosemarie Castoro - living in an artist's studio.
16.25 – 16.55
dr Dorota Grubba-Thiede, Wanda Czełkowska: structures beyond gravity and other non-paintings
17.00 – 17.30
Ewa Opałka, 'There is no body!' Corporeality and the embodied subject in Wanda Czełkowska's works
Speakers' Bios and Abstracts
Ewa Toniak is a historian of art. She holds a PhD in humanities and works as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Theatre Studies in the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. She is interested in the relations between art, space and autobiographism, cultural memory and contemporary narratives of communist Poland. She wrote the following books: She-Giants. Women and Social Realism (2008, 2009), Death of a Hero (2015), and Profitable works. Polish Artists between Economy and Art during the Thaw (2015). She is the academic editor of Woman and Art around 1960 (2010), Fine Arts Diary. Volume 9, Polish Art 1944‒1970 (Nicolas Copernicus University, ISnSŚ, Warsaw, 2015) and the publication Natalia LL. Secretum et Tremor (2015). Author and curator of exhibitions such as: "Alina Ślesińska" (1926‒1984) (2007), "Three women: Maria Pinińska-Bereś, Natalia Lach-Lachowicz, Ewa Partum" (2011), "Freelancer" (2013) in the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, "Moore and Auschwitz" in Tate Britain (2010) and "Natalia LL. Secretum et Tremor" in the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (2015). She received grants from the French government and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. She is a Member of the International Association of Art Critics, AICA, and lives in Warsaw.
The figure of disappearance: remarks on Wanda Czełkowska's work.
The speech will discuss the reception (or lack thereof) of Wanda Czełkowska's work over a few decades. It will be a kind of a reconnaissance and an outline of some theories about the presence/absence of this extraordinary avant-garde artist in the works of twentieth-century art historians. Why does the perception of Czełkowska still seem incomplete? Can the artist's posture tell us something about a strategy or an anti-strategy of functioning in the world of art? How does her career compare to the life of such sculptors as Alina Szapocznikow or Alina Ślesińska?
Maria Hussakowska is an art historian and critic. She holds a PhD. From 1971 to 2015 she worked as a lecturer in the Institute of Art History at the Jagiellonian University, in the Department of Contemporary Art. Since 2015 she has been involved with the Institute of Art History and Culture at the Pontifical University of John Paul II. Member of the Polish AICA (International Association of Art Critics) Section. She wrote the following books: Minimalism in Visual Arts. Demythologizing the notion of avant-garde in the American bohemian community of the 60's, Art History Institute, Jagiellonian Univeristy, Cracow, 2003; Heirs of Duchamp? The denial of art in the American Bohemia, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Cracow 1984.
The Ellipsis
Wanda Czełkowska often stresses the importance of space in her works. One might say that every sculptor thinks the same. Thanks to the Retrospection exhibition in Królikarnia, and the photos from her other exhibitions found at that occasion, it became possible to crystallize the "experience of space" the artist was referring to. The architectural framework of Królikarnia ‒ visually robust and meaningful ‒ which served as a common background for works from various periods, draws attention to the interaction with space in Czełkowska's works. The situations arranged by the artist and the curator in this historical setting have a very distinctive spatial aspect which makes them stand out from other sculptors' works. This might give Czełkowska a chance to fit into the current discourse on visual arts which for over a decade has been thoroughly exploring the notion of space.
Jerzy Malinowski is a professor of liberal arts, lecturer in the Department of Contemporary Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Toruń. Formerly he was a researcher in the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Science, the Cracow National Museum and the Warsaw National Museum. Author of numerous works, including books such as: The "Jung Idysz" Group and the Jewish community of "the new art" in Poland 1918‒1923, Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw 1987, Art and the new community. The "Rebellion" Artistic Community 1917‒1922, Wiedza o Kulturze, published by Wroclaw University, Wrocław 1991.
Wanda Czełkowska and the Cracow artistic community of the 60's and 70's
The speech aims to define Wanda Czełkowska's place on the map of the Cracow artistic community. It will focus on her relations with the members of the Second Cracow Group, the Cricot Theatre, the Piwnica Pod Baranami Cabaret and other less known circles, and look into a specific artistic community, "the kolkhoz" as Czełkowska herself used to call it, made up of artists sharing a flat at Karmelicka 27 in Cracow.
Ewa Tatar is a researcher and popularizer of art, curator of exhibitions centred around such problems as entropy ‒ "Of the sky only the moon was left" (Tatra Museum, 2015), or the transition of the society from cyclical to historical time in Communist Poland ‒ "The worker-farmer and the boa-rattlesnake (Museum of Modern Art, 2016). She is currently writing her PhD dissertation on the ways of defining the subject of art in the works of Polish female artists of the 70's.
This. On the practices of the Cracow Group artists.
From 1969 to 1981 Wanda Czełkowska belonged to the Second Cracow Group, the most important artistic group of the 20th century in post-war Cracow. The speech will discuss her activity in the context of the work of other artists from the group, such as Maria Jarema, Teresa Rudowicz or Zbigniew Warpechowski. THIS in the title refers to the way in which they treated matter.
Anna Kłosowska is a conservator of art objects. Head of the Sculpture and Contemporary Art Works Conservation Studio in the National Museum in Cracow.
The fifth leg of the table or the conservator's dilemmas. A few thoughts on Wanda Czełkowska's composition from the collection of the National Museum in Cracow.
The National Museum in Cracow houses about a dozen sculptures by Wanda Czełkowska, some of them being her most significant works: The Table and The Wall. A conservator of art objects, especially of contemporary art objects, is responsible not only for the material part of a work but also for its conceptual side. Hence, interviewing the artist becomes an important element of the conservation process. Before the Królikarnia exhibition the works underwent conservation treatment. Its scope was defined together with the Artist. A preventive protection programme was also defined, as well as the scope of the future conservation treatments.
Richard Demarco
Introducing the post-war European Avant-garde to the Edinburgh International Festival, focused on a Polish dimension
The lecture is focused on the Ediburgh experience of both Wanda Czełkowska, the artist, and Richard Demarco as a fellow artist who, together with Ryszard Stanislawski, was given the responsibility of curating the entire exhibition entitled “Atelier 72”. All the artists, except for Tadeusz Kantor and Cricot 2 Theatre, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Wanda Czelkowska, were presented in the Demarco Gallery in Melville Crescent with paintings, drawings, sculptures and, in many cases, sculptural installations. However, Tadeusz Kantor was presented in the Demarco Gallery’s building in the Old Town of Edinburgh. Magdalena Abakanowicz was presented both in the Gallery and on the exterior structure of St. Mary’s Cathedral. Wanda Czelkowska was honoured by having her sculptural installation exhibited in the garden adjoining the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, housed in the 18th century mansion of Inverleith House, situated in the heart of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In this way, Richard Demarco decided that Wanda Czelkowska should be exhibited as part of the ‘Atelier 72’ exhibition which, in the mind of Richard Demarco, was a Polish version of the Demarco Gallery’s German exhibition entitled "Strategy: Get Arts" for the 1970 Edinburgh International Festival.
Anke Kempkes curator and art critic, founder of the gallery Broadway 1602, New York. Her work is centrally dedicated to the re-introduction of female avant-garde artists from the 1960s and 1970s, such as: Babette Mangolte, Evelyne Axell, Rosemarie Castoro, Idelle Weber, Lenora de Barros, Lydia Okumura, Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Teresa Murak and Ewa Partum. In 2004 she was a Curator at Kunsthalle Basel, CH, whereshe curated the show "Flesh at War with Enigma", presenting the oeuvre of Alina Szapocznikow in the context of international contemporary art. In 2016 she presented Wanda Czełkowska’s work in the Broadway 1602 exhibitions "121 Street" and "Around the Edge".
The third gender. Wanda Czełkowska and Rosemarie Castoro ‒ living in an artist's studio.
Both Wanda Czełkowska and Rosemarie Castoro spent most of their artistic careers, which spanned over five decades, leading a secluded life in an artist's studio. The former was more of an ascetic type, the latter was active in the New York bohemian community. Even from a social point of view, such a productive seclusion from the conventional context of a family or a relationship, together with uncompromising avant-garde artistic work, let them both experience an existential and conceptual unity with the space and at the same time create an alternative gender dimension of both this space and work. It is thanks to this extraordinary constellation that their studios filled with an amazing aura of intense aesthetic activity and experience.
Dorota Grubba-Thiede holds a PhD in humanities from the Nicolas Copernicus University in Toruń. She has got a MA degree in fine arts. She works as a lecturer in the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk and in the Polish Institute of World Art Studies. She curated such exhibitions as: "Stanisław Horno-Popławski" (1902–1997), "the Road of Art Road Art" (National Gallery of Art in Sopot and 16 editions in 2002‒2006), "Dido's State - chosen problems of contemporary Polish sculpture and Resistance - contemporary art exhibition" (both between 2010‒2011, National Gallery of Art in Sopot, New Media Gallery in Warsaw), "Krzysztof Malec (1965–2002) – sculpture documenting the work" (National Gallery of Art in Sopot and Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko 2003–2004), "Magdalena Abakanowicz – Potnia Theron" (National Gallery of Art in Sopot 2012; together with Agnieszka Zgirska).
Wanda Czełkowska: structures beyond gravity and other non-paintings
The speech recalls a project Wanda Czełkowska never carried out. She worked on the idea between 1959‒1960 experimenting with the notion of large architectural spaces, gravity and anti-gravity. She was working on preliminary drawings and a design of a large geometrical room made of a sphere and a cube in order to defy gravity. The dimensions of the room were to enable a person ‒ a spectator ‒ to move freely over certain distances. In 1960 Wanda Czełkowska talked with physicists from research centres in Cracow about the possibility to carry out the project. The studies of Rosalind Krauss described in Sculpture in the Expanded Field (1979), brought up again from a different angle in the collective work Retracing the Expanded Field (2014) [R. Krauss, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, „October” 8 (1979), Spring, s. 30-44; Retracing the Expanded Field. Encounters between Art and Architecture, eds. S. Papapetros, J. Rose, Cambrigde Mass., The MIT Press 2014.], or The Hidden Dimension, (1966); Gabriela Świtek's monograph Art Playing with Architecture (2013) or Robert Morris's theories published in the 21st century remained a classical theoretical context. Subtle parallels with such notions as performance, action architecture, architecture active, abstract sublime, new alchemist, anarchitecture, architecture autre, architecture-mobile, anti-illusion will be discussed.
Ewa Opałka is a curator, visual arts and film researcher and critic. She is preparing her PhD dissertation on the specifics of female authorship at the Jagiellonian University. As she is interested in women's art, she organized such exhibitions as “If You Shoot One of Them” in MOCAK in Cracow about a project by Marta Deskur, and "Partytury" (Musical Scores) in Aleksander Bruno's Gallery in Warsaw showing Ewa Partum's works. She took part in the prestigious Residency Unlimited programme in New York (2015). Thanks to a grant programme from the Ministry of Culture and National Centre for Culture “Młoda Polska” (Young Poland), she wrote the book Eliminations. Talking to Wanda Czełkowska (2016).
"There is no body! Corporeality and the embodied subject in Wanda Czełkowska's works.
The speech will discuss material and corporeal aspects of Wanda Czełkowska's works and focus on the paradox of her work in which the material aspect of her sculptures, almost organically corporeal, is both highlighted and at the same time denied, under threat of elimination. Therefore, the speech will discuss the links between the phenomenological corporeality of Czełkowska's works and the aspects of conceptual dematerialization. It will also touch upon corporeal feminism in order to analyse whether there is a specific female, embodied subject emerging from Czełkowska works.
Conference curator: Ewa Opałka
Free admission.
Simultaneous interpretation will be provided into Polish and English.
Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture
division of the National Museum in Warsaw
ul. Puławska 113a, 02-707 Warsaw
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