The Estate. Sculptures from the collection of von Rose family with films and photographs from the archives of Zofia Chomętowska
In the 20th c., Central and Eastern Europe was so much a terrifying as it was a fascinating melting pot of history, with all its wars, revolutions, property expropriated and privatized, people resettled or having to flee. The constant transformations and market changes shaped and reshaped its social, cultural and economic spheres. All these dramatic events have left ineffaceable traces – destroyed and plundered manor houses of the nobility, art collections which have either been completely lost or dispersed, palaces turned into schools or museums, entire social classes destroyed, with new ones to take their place, and a void left after groups of people who have either vanished forever, or have been reduced to just the remaining few.
“The Estate” is an exhibition of two collections of museum objects very much linked to the times of those historical changes. The films and photographs of Zofia Chometowska, one of the most significant figures of Polish photography, are juxtaposed with the remains of the destroyed sculpture collection once owned by a Juncker von Rose family, whose estate was located in former East Prussia in Döhlau (known as Dylewo today), in the vicinity of Allenstein (today’s Olsztyn). The turmoil of history and the alchemy of coincidence have brought Chomętowska’s photographs and the remains of the von Rose collection together to Królikarnia in Warsaw, once an aristocratic residence and a branch of the National Museum today. The photos and films shot at Królikarnia in 1929 call for special attention. After so many years, they return. In the years before the war, Chomętowska also documented the surroundings of her family estate in Polesie (her family belonged to the prominent line of the Drucki-Lubeckis). Presently, the land is in its most part located in the territories of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. In Poland, such lost estates are inevitably associated with the notion of the former Polish Eastern Borderland with all the nostalgia that it evokes. The von Rose family estate as also located in what once use to be the Eastern Borderland – the German Eastern Borderland. Both borderlands are associated with the feeling of longing which, in the social and political domain, is often distorted into resentment and a desire to revise history. A similar problem of “correcting history” is posed by the proprietary transformations and their contemporary consequences, such as those encumbered today by Warsaw as a result of the so called Bierut’s decree. (Bierut Decree was a law pursuant to which all land within the limits of pre-war Warsaw was appropriated by the municipality. The decree was issued on 26 October 1945 by the State National Council headed by Bolesław Bierut, with the intention to facilitate the reconstruction of the destroyed city).
The remains of the von Rose collection, salvaged from the ruins of the palace in Dylewo several years ago by a team of archeologists headed by the late Prof. Tomasz Mikocki, have been deposited at the National Museum in Warsaw. History has reduced these once magnificent works of art – the collection included pieces by, for example, the renowned Italian sculptor Adolf Wildt – to burnt rubble. The breakup of the crystalline structure of the marble caused by the heat and high pressure of the fire is, to an effect, a representation of the destruction of the old social order, whose very logic once led to the practice of art collection. By presenting the objects, now calcified and falling apart, an attempt is made to grapple with the consequences of fundamental changes in the social structure, economic order and the abrupt reforms of the property relations. The background is filled with Michał Libera’s “Bildung”, in which the “music of the stone” comes to meet the voice of Sybille Friedberg, a descendant of the von Rose family, still remembering the palace in Dylewo in all its pre-war grandeur. This “sound essay” metaphorically complements the image of time and history which can shatter to pieces even the strongest stone or the most powerful social classes.
The publication by Jan Sowa which accompanies the exhibition is a selection of theoretical texts on the historical interlinks between art and the social and economic order, the notion of nostalgia and resentment, as well as the attitude of societies towards testimonies of the past. The history of the collections presented are also described in detail in two articles: the story of the Dylewo collection has been written by Katarzyna Kucharska-Hornung, an art historian affiliated with the Sculpture Museum, and a biographical text about Zofia Chomętowska, written by a researcher of the photographer, Karolina Puchała-Rojek. The visual dimension of the book is created by means of a suggestive photographic essay by Krzysztof Pijarski.
The concept of the exhibition has been developed by a team of curators headed by Agnieszka Tarasiuk: Katarzyna Kucharska-Hornung, Michał Libera, Krzysztof Pijarski, Karolina Puchała-Rojek and Jan Sowa.
Exhibition’s architecture: Agnieszka Tarasiuk
Editing of the film footage: Piotr Wysocki
Graphic project: Full Metal Jacket
Sound essay: Michał Libera
Video documentation available here
