The Circulation of Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland

8 The Circulation of Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland1 Agata Jakubowska In 1980, Ewa Partum’s exhibition Self-identification was organized at the Mała ZPAF Gallery in Warsaw. It consisted of a series of photo-montages in which the artist’s nude figure was pasted into photos depicting everyday life in Warsaw. She appeared to be crossing a street, waiting at a tram stop, waiting in line in front of a shop, etc. During a vernissage, the artist also appeared naked. She presented a manifesto declaring her interest in feminist art, which, according to her, “reveals to a woman her new role, the possibility of self-realisation” (Stepken 2013, 140). Grzegorz Dziamski, a critic writing about Partum’s art, admitted several years later that the audience was surprised and disoriented by her decision to appear naked, which was Figure 8.1 Ewa Partum, performance documentation from the opening of Samoidentyfikacja/ Self-identification, Galeria Mala ZPAF, Warszawa 1980 Photo by Marek Grygiel. © Artum Foundation, Ewa Partum 136 Agata Jakubowska not only provocative but also difficult to interpret. He explained this by claiming that, at that time: the feminist discourse was not really present in Poland, and therefore the artist’s ‘nudity’ could not be ‘clothed’ with any theoretical comments. [. . .] Polish critics had as much to say about Ewa Partum’s performance as an elderly lady walking down the street or a female traffic officer from the exhibited photo-montages would have had, if they only had the chance to meet the naked Ewa Partum in reality. (Dziamski 2001, 156) My chapter aims to challenge Dziamski’s notion regarding the absence of a feminist discourse in Poland. The single fact that feminist art texts were not unknown to Partum may alone undermine Dziamski’s claim that Polish art critics had no theoretical tools with which to “cover her nudity.” My aim is not to provide a counter argument and attempt to prove that a feminist discourse flourished, or was even well developed. Yet, feminist ideas did circulate in Europe and were also known to some in communist Poland. Both the Polish critic and “the elderly lady walking down the street” could have familiarized themselves with them at least partially. Feminist ideas did not originate in Eastern Europe, nor did they simply “come from the West,” as has been presented in analyses favouring the center–periphery paradigm. As Marsha Meskimmon observed, usually “the chronological delimitation of 1970s feminist art implies a cartography focused upon the United States and emanating outward from it,” first toward the United Kingdom, then through Europe, “and, when venturing very boldly, touching upon the wider context of the Americas, Africa, and Asia”. Meskimmon proposes—and my text is indebted to this approach—to rethink such a chronologically-defined history of feminist art through a spatialized frame, a global cartography. Thinking spatially, [. . .] we can admit the coexistence in time of locationally distinct narratives and connect disjointed temporalities, thus asking vital questions concerning networks of relation, processes of exchange, and affinities of meaning. (Meskimmon 2007, 324) The focus of this text will be precisely these networks of relations and processes of exchange that made feminist ideas circulate in Poland as well. The editors of the volume Circulations in the Global History of Art emphasize that understanding culture as a result of the circulation, rather than the diffusion, of different ideas may help us consider “other” cultural landscapes (in this case, that of a country behind the Iron Curtain) without “shutting them inside the prison of the notion of alterity or dismissing them as peripheral” (Kaufmann, Dossin, and Joyeux-Prunel 2015, 2). This method might make it possible to challenge a vertical kind of history of feminist art and introduce a horizontal perspective. Yet, as Piotr Piotrowski, the author of the concept of horizontal art history, underlined, “although the meanings of art in East-Central Europe were different from those in the West, art in East-Central Europe kept developing within the orbit of Western culture” (Piotrowski 2009, 54). It would be historically incorrect to claim that Polish art historians and women artists contributed to the same extent to the development of Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland 137 feminist ideas in the arts as their colleagues working in the West. Nor have they passively received them. The examination of the circulation of people, texts, and artworks, as well as the circumstances of their encounters and exchanges, and the study of the reception of traveling ideas, would all aim at demonstrating how complex and dynamic a relationship the Polish art world had to feminist concepts—concepts that supposedly “just” came from the West. Susan Gal, in her text devoted to the circulation of discourses about women in East-Central Europe, claims that, because of limited possibilities of travel and scarce knowledge of foreign languages, it was the translations of texts that played a crucial role in the transfer of ideas (Gal 2003, 93–120). To my knowledge, no text from the field of feminist art was translated into Polish during the communist period. Yet, if we understand “translation” widely, as a text being not only “simply” translated but also cited, summarized, and discussed, then we also can take into consideration the catalogs, magazines, and books in the original languages that were brought back to Poland by those who traveled and made them available to colleagues or to a more general public by referencing them in local magazines. In a limited number of cases, publications were also bought by Fine Art School libraries. They served as one of two main sources of knowledge about feminist tendencies, the second being the people themselves, both coming to Poland from abroad and Polish artists and critics who actually travelled to different places and shared their experience, contacts, and knowledge. In October 1975, Natalia LL visited Innsbruck where the exhibition Frauen— Kunst—Neue Tendenzen was organized at Galerie Krinzinger. Many years later, she recalled having been surprised that her work, Consumer Art, was visible “everywhere.”2 It was reproduced—recalls Natalia LL—on posters and invitations for the exhibition as a “symbol of feminism” (Natalia LL 2004, 242). Although this quote may partially reveal wishful thinking on the part of the artist, participants of this event confirm the importance of the work (Nabakowski 2012, 128–144; Abramović in Radziszewski 2012). At that moment, a little-known neo-avant-garde woman artist from Poland, from behind the Iron Curtain, took center stage within the European feminist art movement.3 In the vast majority of texts devoted to Natalia LL, her relationship to feminist art-making is referred to superficially, and the reference is usually limited to a list of exhibitions in which she has participated since 1975. Sometimes a letter sent to Natalia LL by Lucy Lippard is mentioned and it functions as a kind of cornerstone of feminist art tendencies in Poland. The letter itself is lost, and for that reason art historians have to rely on Natalia LL’s testimony. The artist claims that she received the letter in December of 1971 and that it included a prompting address to the artist to become the representative of a feminist vanguard in Poland and in Eastern Europe (Natalia LL 2004, 242). Lippard, when recently asked about this correspondence and her contact with Natalia LL, replied that she did not remember this and emphasized having had established contacts with hundreds of “wonderful feminists.”4 Some people doubt the existence of the letter, which was supposedly destroyed during the huge flood in Wrocław in 1997, yet here it is more important to note that it seems not to have played an important role in helping Natalia LL to establish contacts with feminist art circles. To my knowledge, the letter remains unanswered. In the 1970s, several critics and curators interested in the art of Eastern Europe visited Poland, including Wrocław where Natalia LL lived (and still lives), met artists 138 Agata Jakubowska and then exhibited, discussed, and reproduced their works. As Klara Kemp-Welch and Cristina Freire pointed out in their introduction to a special issue of ARTMargins devoted to artists’ networks in Latin America and Eastern Europe, there were several networkers who traveled to Eastern Europe and developed significant contacts, which resulted in the international presentation of artists met there (Freire and Kemp-Welch 2012, 8–10). They mention, for example, Klaus Groh, a German artist and author based in Oldenburg, who published volumes on the work of Eastern European experimental artists, Aktuelle Kunst in Osteuropa (1972) among them. They underline the most significant role of Jorge Glusberg, Argentinean curator, known as a global networker, who had the means and possibilities to establish contacts among artists and critics from different parts of the world. He could have been responsible for informing Lucy Lippard about Natalia LL, as he probably told her about another Polish woman artist, Zofia Kulik, as the artist herself presumes. Among Lippard’s archival materials there is a piece of paper with names of women artists whom she took into consideration when choosing participants for the c. 7500 exhibition in 1973.5 On the list, the name “Kulik” appeared twice. Zofia Kulik claims that Lippard did not contact her but she and partner Przemysław Kwiek were in touch with Glusberg.6 Some photos from Natalia LL’s archive depict both Groh and Glusberg during their visits to Poland as companions of Natalia LL. It seems, however, that it was another person who played a crucial role as far as her presence in the feminist context is concerned—Giancarlo Politi. Politi is an Italian critic living at that time in Milan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Flash Art, which devoted some attention to the art of Eastern Europe. In the photos documenting his visit to the apartment belonging to Natalia LL and her husband Andrzej Lachowicz, we see them standing above Natalia LL’s Consumer Art spread out on the floor. It was Politi who presented this piece and its author to the German art critic Gislind Nabakowski, then his partner in life and at work. Nabakowski was responsible for the German edition of Flash Art—Heute Kunst—in which she devoted an entire issue to feminist art.7 She included material devoted to Natalia LL, such as her text on Consumer Art and the artist’s statement on visual language (it made no references to feminism or gender). In addition, two fragments from Consumer Art were featured on the cover. It is interesting that Nabakowski’s Editorial was written before she met Natalia LL, and was based on the photos and description delivered by Politi. Nabakowski and Natalia LL got to know each other later that same year in Belgrade, during the fourth Young Art Meeting, at which a discussion entitled Women in Art and some presentations of feminist art were organized; this was one of few occasions for Natalia LL to meet an international group of feminist artists and critics and exchange thoughts in person. After that event, the artist was invited to take part in the above-mentioned exhibition in Innsbruck. In the following years, she participated in the following exhibitions: Magma: Rassegna internazionale di donna artist, Castello Oldofredi, Brescia (touring to Florence, Ferrara, Verona, 1976), Frauen Machen Kunst, Galerie Magers, Bonn (1976), and Feministische Kunst International in Haags Gemeentemuseum (1979, later travelling to other Dutch cities). Another Polish woman artist also took part in the latter exhibition: Maria PinińskaBereś. Her situation was completely different—first, because this was her first contact with the women’s art movement. Feministische Kunst International, in which Natalia LL and Pinińska-Bereś participated, was the second edition of the exhibition organized Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland 139 by SVBK (Stichting Vrouwen in de Beeidende Kunst). The first took place in 1978 in the Gallery de Appel, whose founder, Wies Smals, was a member of SVBK (Wentrack 2012, 76–110). The show was met with great interest but also criticism, among which was the argument that the exhibition should have had a more international character. During the second edition, works by artists from thirteen countries were presented, among them two Polish artists. Natalia LL was already known in the feminist circles, which cannot be said for Pinińska-Bereś. The latter did not make contact with these circles through Natalia LL. In an invitation letter that was sent to Pinińska-Bereś in the spring of 1979 (dated April 11, 1979), Aggy Smeets from de Appel gallery is mentioned as the person from whom the exhibition organizers learned about her works. He showed them slides of her work, and their choice was made on that basis. Maria Pinińska-Bereś often complained that she was not treated seriously by art critics, who always visited her husband, Jerzy Bereś, not her. His international career started to develop earlier than hers and it was he who attracted attention of most critics.8 In this case, he was a go-between. Aggie Smeets visited Jerzy Bereś, as the de Appel gallery, which concentrated on new media, including performance, was interested in collaborating with him.9 As is clear from the above-mentioned facts, it was usually not feminist artists who established contacts. Yet, contacts having been established, they could profit from them to transmit feminist ideas to Poland. Polish women artists taking part in feminist exhibitions outside Poland seem to have had the best opportunities to do this, yet most of them were not good mediators of feminist concerns. It is necessary to remember that they did not always participate personally in the exhibitions where their works were shown. For example, Maria Pinińska-Bereś did not go to Holland to see the show in which she took part. Gislind Nabakowski recalls that “Natalia LL travelled and promoted herself as best as she could. I met her in 1975 three times: in Innsbruck, Belgrade and Paris” (Nabakowski 2012, 129). Yet, it is worth noting that Nabakowski met Natalia LL only these three times. After that, they saw each other in 2012, on the occasion of the Where is Permafo exhibition in the Wrocław Contemporary Museum. Natalia LL exhibited her work at subsequent feminist exhibitions, but sometimes she did not get a passport or money and thus could not participate personally in all of them. An artist from Poland could not physically cross borders whenever she wanted. Her freedom of travel, and thus of being personally present at these feminist events, was limited by the government. The consent of the authorities was necessary to receive a passport (for a short, precisely defined period of time and specific destination) and permission to purchase a small (very small) amount of foreign currency. One more element from Nabakowski’s recollections is symptomatic. She wrote that when they had first met, Natalia LL “was verbally very cautious, as if embarrassed, restrained and often gave the impression of being a diva.” And later about herself: “when I met Politi, I was 25 and spoke four languages fluently. When I left him and Italy (1977), I was fluent in the next, fifth—Italian” (Nabakowski 2012, 133). Although there were polyglots in Poland, poor knowledge of languages was common at that time in communist countries, which made it harder for many artists to communicate freely with their foreign colleagues. Although her possibilities were limited, Natalia LL made some effort to disseminate feminist thinking in Poland. In 1977, she wrote a text (dated March 1, 1977) devoted to Feminist tendencies in the arts that she has presented twice in galleries in Lublin and Katowice. 140 Agata Jakubowska Figure 8.2 Natalia LL and VALIE EXPORT, Art and Feminism, Labirynt Gallery, Lublin 1977 Photo by Andrzej Polakowski. Courtesy of Andrzej Polakowski In that essay, she mentions several feminist curators, critics, and artists, summarizing their opinions, and clearly states that for her the most important element of feminism was the attention paid to increasing opportunities for women who are marginalized in the art world. In 1978, Natalia LL organized a small exhibition of women’s art in Wrocław, where she lived, in the Jatki PSP Gallery. She showed works by Carolee Schneemann, Naomi Meidan, Suzy Lake, and herself (one by each artist). Schneemann and Lake are the artists she had met during her three-month study visit to the U.S., funded by the Kościuszko Foundation. This exhibition can also be considered a “text” that has an important role to play in transferring ideas. As Jenni Sorkin observed, this was often the main objective of such events. Making reference to the concept of nomadology, as elaborated by Deleuze and Guattari, she characterizes the all-woman exhibition format as “inherently local while still being a multinational phenomenon [. . .] transient, quickly assembled, and short-lived, they were statements”—she continues—“without fixed meanings particular to the milieux from which they sprung,” but with a significant role in the dissemination of feminist thought and culture (Sorkin 2007, 460–461). The show organized by Natalia LL was an occasion to present works by some important feminist artists and feminist issues they were working on.10 The fact that Natalia LL, who had connections with the women’s art movement, was prepared to propagate its tenets in Poland does obviously not indicate that this was typical behavior. Participation (or not) in feminist exhibitions or direct contact with feminist artists does not necessarily result in the dissemination of feminist ideas. A comparison of Magdalena Abakanowicz’s and Ewa Partum’s attitude can illustrate this discrepancy. Magdalena Abakanowicz had the opportunity to engage with the feminist art movement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. In 1971, the University of California Art Gallery hosted a renowned group exhibition titled Deliberate Entanglements: Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland 141 An Exhibition of Fabric Forms, in which Abakanowicz was included. She also had a solo show at the Pasadena Art Museum at that time, and both exhibitions were important steps in her flourishing international career. Joanna Inglot, in her analysis of the exhibition’s reception, remarked that a number of viewers and critics, also from the feminist milieu, “were indeed captivated, [. . .] especially by her evocative sexual imagery, seen as referring to wombs or earth goddesses” (Inglot 2004, 66). Many of these viewers were members of the women’s art movement that was burgeoning in California at that time, and were captivated by her work and saw them “as an explicit manifestation of women’s art and female sexual identity” (Inglot 2004, 66). Although Abakanowicz did not respond positively to this interest expressed by feminist circles (contrary to Natalia LL), and never considered herself or her works to be part of the women’s art movement, she participated occasionally in all-women shows. (Jakubowska 2011, 253–265). The most significant was her inclusion (as the only Polish artist) in Künstlerinnen International 1877–1977, organized in Berlin in 1977.11 This was the first exhibition of that type in Europe, an exhibition that presented a historical overview of the most important women artists from the previous century. Abakanowicz’s presence there did not result in any activity on her part that would lead to the presentation of feminist ideas in Poland. Ewa Partum however, the artist mentioned at the beginning of this text, is an example of a radically different attitude, as she actively promoted feminist ideas in her art. She was a member of the mail art movement, participating extensively in an international exchange of works and ideas. In her case, this did not result in any feminist contacts that would lead to her taking part in feminist exhibitions, even though she produced works with clear feminist overtones, such as one of her Poem by Ewa with the slogan “My touch is a touch of a woman,” which literally pointed to the gender perspective inscribed in that series of works. In the second half of the 1970s, Partum intensified her feminist artistic activities. In 1979, at the Gallery Art Forum in Łódź, she organized a performance entitled Change. This was an extension of an earlier action under the same title (1974), during which she underwent the process of aging half her face. In this instance, the same procedure was repeated, but on half of her entire body. During the performance, the artist read her manifesto with a clearly articulated feminist message. She spoke mainly about the fact that “a woman lives in a social structure that is alien to her,” where she can function only “if she masters the discipline of camouflage and leaves out her own personality” (Partum in Stepken 2013, 136). Partum also read fragments of texts by VALIE EXPORT and Lucy Lippard. These texts were taken from the catalog of the abovementioned exhibition Künstlerinnen International 1877–1977 (Nabakowski 2001, 21). Partum neither participated in the event, nor visited Berlin to see the show. As the example of Ewa Partum indicates, exhibition catalogs were an element of great importance in bringing knowledge about art across the Iron Curtain. Polish artists and art critics referred to them in search of information, inspiration, and sometimes confirmation of their ideas. In 1977, when Natalia LL wrote and presented her text devoted to feminist tendencies in art to a limited audience during two gallery meetings, the first article on the same subject appeared in a Polish art magazine. It was an essay entitled Neofeminism in Art, written by Stefan Morawski, a philosopher dealing with the aesthetics, and published in the bi-monthly journal, Sztuka [Art] (Morawski 1977, 57–63). This turned out to be the main presentation of feminist 142 Agata Jakubowska ideas in art that appeared in the Polish media before the collapse of communism. This lengthy article includes numerous references to feminist texts from different disciplines, such as philosophy, sociology, or psychology, but as far as visual art is concerned, his comments are based solely on the catalog of Künstlerinnen International 1877–1977. Morawski admits openly to his readers that he did not see the show, and did not purchase the catalog himself but obtained it from the Austrian feminist artist, herself a curator of feminist shows, VALIE EXPORT, who gave it to him during her visit to Poland. It is significant that Morawski did not receive that catalog from Abakanowicz, who took part in this exhibition, and he also does not mention her in his article. He makes no reference to the Polish context nor to Polish women artists. In the final part of the text, he clearly states that his article was intended simply to be informative for Polish readers. It seems that ideas concerning feminist art were introduced to Polish readers in the 1970s mainly through Morawski’s text and Natalia LL’s activities (Ewa Partums’ actions did not have such a resonance), but Morawski presented the feminist art movement differently than Natalia LL. While she concentrated on the fact that women are in a worse position in the art world and that their working together is a strategic move to change it, for Morawski, feminist art is part of the liberating social movement of feminism, which corresponds with what VALIE EXPORT had been claiming from the beginning of her feminist artistic practice.12 He compares a feminist artist with “a proletarian or Negro artist who is convinced that his view of the world should entirely define his artistic practice” (Morawski 1977, 59). One starts to understand the importance of Morawski’s presentation of feminism when one reads reviews of the first Polish feminist art exhibitions, especially the above-mentioned Women’s Art organized by Natalia LL. In his review, the young critic Andrzej Sapija, in response to a very negative critique that had appeared in the local weekly, Wiadomości [News], recalls Morawski’s article as one that can provide an explanation to those who lack information and an understanding of feminist ideas. Instead of explaining the main ideas of feminist art himself, he offers a summary of Morawski’s text (Sapija 1978, 13). As Morawski’s text appeared in an art magazine with national distribution while Sapija’s text appeared in a local weekly, we can perceive this as a diffusion of the feminist ideas presented in the Berlin catalog, through the Polish art world, to “ordinary” people. Surprisingly, although some Polish critics were interested in feminist art in general, they seldom paid attention to activities related to feminist art that were undertaken in Poland at that time. Usually they noticed just one of them and ignored others, which resulted in the impression that feminist ideas did not circulate among Polish art centers. In 1978, another feminist exhibition was organized in Poland—Three Women—in Poznań at the BWA Gallery. It was a show of three colleagues associated with the Poznań Fine Art School—Anna Bednarczuk, Izabella Gustowska, Krystyna Piotrowska—who were all engaged with the artistic problem of the self-portrait and what we would call nowadays the female identity, which was the basis for exhibiting the three artists together. None of the texts written in relation to either of the exhibitions—Three Women in Poznań and Women’s Art in Wrocław, both organized in 1978—connected the two shows. It seems as if nobody knew about events taking place in other cities, which was obviously not the case. In 1980, Krystyna Piotrowska and Izabella Gustowska organized the festival of women’s art that was the first attempt to bring Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland 143 together several Polish women artists interested in women’s issues from different art circles. Unfortunately, it did not result in the creation of a community understood as a group of female artists cooperating with one another and undertaking joint initiatives. Also, those artists that either appeared on the international feminist art scene, or promoted feminist ideas in Poland, had no interest in working together with other artists. In this text, I am not concerned with the artists’ motivations to engage in feminist activities, yet it is worth mentioning that, with very few exceptions (of Piotrowska and Gustowska), these activities had an individualistic character, which was, as a matter of fact, incongruous with the ideals of many feminist communities (Jakubowska 2016). One important element to note, regarding the reception of feminist ideas in the Polish art world, is that, even if feminism was introduced as a frame for analysis of particular shows, this framing was not brought into bear in discussions of works by Polish women artists who took part in these shows. Critics writing about the Women’s Figure 8.3 Three Women, BWA Gallery, Poznań, 1978 Cover of the catalog. Courtesy of Izabella Gustowska 144 Agata Jakubowska Art exhibition underscored that it had been an exhibition of feminist art and they defined feminist art as encompassing “all women’s artistic accomplishments that express their social situation” (Baworowska 1978, 70). The exact same sentence appears in the above-mentioned text by Sapija and in another review written by Barbara Baworowska. Additionally, when writing about the exhibition of Natalia LL’s Artificial Photography, they say nothing about the feminist content of her work and interpret it without making any reference to the social situation of women. This corresponds with how Natalia LL saw her art—she took part in feminist exhibitions, mentioned above, but did not present her art as a feminist. Today, when asked whether she was a feminist or not, she answers: “I was chosen by a group of feminists who invited me to the exhibitions. They thought that my art fits . . . I was happy to be there” (Radziszewski 2012). In the 1970s, when her art was presented in the context of feminist art for the first time, in Heute Kunst, it was Gislind Nabakowski who explained its feminist dimension. Her text was accompanied by Natalia LL’s artistic statement that made no reference to feminism. The artist herself, as well as the authors writing about her, were those who disseminated feminist ideas in Poland, yet, strangely, their knowledge of feminist art and its strategies did not inform their interpretations of Polish women artist’s works. This was also the case of the art works exhibited in the Three Women exhibition in Poznań. In two reviews that appeared after the show, feminism is referred to directly.13 At the beginning of one of them, its author, Sławomir Magala, recalls the catalog of another important feminist exhibition—Women Artists, 1550– 1950 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—which confirms the importance of catalogs as sources of knowledge (Magala 1979, 34). Nevertheless, his interpretation of the works presented in Poznań is solely focused on their formal attributes, such as seriality or usage of photography, which allow him to perceive them as examples of new tendencies in art, yet no reference to any feminist content of the works is present. The 1980s was a decade when the political situation in Poland did not encourage the flourishing of feminist ideas. The development of the Solidarity movement, the introduction of martial law in December 1981, and the disastrous economic situation all favored political discourse that focused on freedom and independence and marginalized the women question.14 This constellation correlates with the kind of hostility or resistance that the backlash against that the second wave of Western feminism carried with it, and it hindered the expansion of a feminist discourse also in the domain of art. Yet, in the second half of the 1980s, one can observe a revival of interest in feminist art discourse in Poland. In that period, it was Izabella Gustowska who played an important role in the dissemination of feminist thought. Her allwomen exhibitions, organized together with Krystyna Piotrowska in 1978 and 1980, were limited to a presentation of Polish artists, as she did not have contact with the international women’s art movement. This changed in 1985 when she took part in the exhibition Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn. Aktuelle Kunst von Frauen, organized at the Museum Moderner Kunst/Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts in Vienna.15 The curators’ (Silvia Eiblmayr and VALIE EXPORT) choice of Polish women artists was a surprise to Gustowska, as they did not include artists who in Poland had been linked to some degree with feminist cultural practice (for example, Natalia LL, Maria PinińskaBereś, Ewa Partum). The show was an opportunity for her to meet other feminist artists from whom she profited in creating her gallery program. From 1979 to 1984, Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland 145 she ran (together with Krystyna Piotrowska) the Gallery ON, which functioned under the umbrella of the Socialist Union of Polish Students.16 After the exhibition Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn, she started to invite women artists she had met in Vienna—for example, Eva Maria Schön and Adriena Šimotová—whose shows presented works of art and performances by Polish women artists dealing with the theme, widely understood, of feminine identity, such as Teresa Murak, or Anna and Irena Nawrot. In 1987, these artists all took part in an all-woman show organized by Gustowska under the title Presence.17 This was one of the few, if not the only, international meetings organized in Poland that focused on women’s art.18 It did not, however, result in the development of discussion about feminist issues. The Vienna show curators stressed that, for women’s art of that day, it was self-realization, not protest, that mattered most. (EXPORT and Eiblmayr 1985, 7–9). They underscored the interconnection between individualism and freedom, and considered the development of women’s individuality a prerequisite of a free society; Gustowska shared that opinion. In an interview she claimed that Presence was, for her, interesting as a situation where several individualities had the chance to meet (Dziamski 1991, 51). In 1980, she organized an event (together with Krystyna Piotrowska) that was more a set of individual presentations than a group show, and the 1987 event was similar. This clearly indicates that Gustowska’s opinion, with regard to what women’s art and art events should be, did not develop under the influence of the ideas from behind the Iron Curtain. Rather, in the mid-1980s, the way she had always thought about women’s art—distancing herself from guerrilla and collaborative practices and concentrating on individual artistic proposals—became common in the feminist art movement in Europe. Thus, one can reasonably argue that Gustowska did not follow the curators of the Vienna show, but developed her way of thinking independently and concurrently with them. Grzegorz Dziamski, whose interview with Gustowska has just been mentioned, was the critic who often commented on her art and activities at that time. He wrote a review of the Presence exhibition for an unidentified foreign journal. He also published a long text devoted to feminist art and is the second (of two) presentations of that movement in Polish cultural magazines that appeared during communism (Dziamksi 1988a, b). In a two-part article, he presents feminist art as part of the women’s movement, describes the development of both, and proposes a short overview of the most important characteristics of feminist art. His article is up-todate and includes a presentation of the above-mentioned Vienna show. What differentiates it from the Morawiński text from 1977 is that Dziamski also wrote about Polish women artists and their relationships with feminism. He proposed a graduation of their attitude in relation to feminism, from Ewa Partum (“representative of guerrilla feminism”), through Natalia LL and Maria Pinińska-Bereś (both, according to him, representing feminism that was “less noisy and less declarative”), Teresa Murak and Ewa Kulryluk (“whose art bears some similarities to the works of American and West-European feminist artists”), and Izabella Gustowska and Krystyna Piotrowska (“similarities that were more than accidental”) (Dziamski 1988b, 88–90). In conclusion, he states that there is no feminist art in Poland but it “left some traces in the art of several women artists and these are traces worth attention” (Dziamski 1988b, 90). This text written by Dziamski clearly indicates that the critics’ lack of knowledge about feminism—about which he himself wrote in reference to Partum’s 1980 146 Agata Jakubowska performance, as quoted at the beginning of this text—was no longer a problem several years later. As I have tried to show in this text, some art writers and artists were quite well-informed as far as feminist ideas are concerned, in relation to both social issues and the arts. Yet, the nature of the circulation of feminist ideas in Poland was paradoxical. These concepts were definitely present and there was a group of people that found them meaningful, which resulted in a number of texts and exhibitions with feminist overtones. Yet, feminism—as a political idea, as an interpretive framework, and as an ideological base—remained alien. By Polish artists and art critics, it was perceived as ideology and hard to accept as something that makes art subject to politics. After the trauma of mandatory socialist realism accompanied by political terror, they strongly supported autonomous high art that they perceived as a guarantee of artistic freedom. Even if some Polish artists’ works really resonated with feminist ideas and they were recognized as feminist outside of Poland, they (with the exception of Ewa Partum) and their critics did not identify with feminism. The emergence of these initiatives was related, obviously, to developments within the women’s movement, yet artists and critics involved assumed a pronounced distance, if not hostility, toward political activism. They also did not create feminist groups, nor develop collaborative art practices, which are often considered typical for feminism at that time. Comparative research on women-only art initiatives organized in several European countries in the 1970s demonstrated that feminist initiatives in particular countries developed differently, in terms of dates, projects, and dynamics, but also in terms of the impact the travelling views of feminism had on art (Deepwell and Jakubowska 2017). The insight gained is that diffusional narratives seem inappropriate and that feminist initiatives have to be considered in their diversity. The character that they acquired in Poland is thus no deviation from a supposed feminist “norm,” but one of the multiple versions of feminism that were to a high degree dependent on the prevailing political situation in particular countries. Notes 1 Parts of this text were presented during a symposium organized by Anna Markowska in Wrocław in February 2013 on the occasion of a show she curated—Where is Permafo (Wrocław Contemporary Museum)—and also during the CAA 102nd Annual Conference in Chicago in February 2014 as part of a panel on transnational feminism organized by Kalliopi Minioudaki. New elements of the paper are based on research funded by the National Science Center (NCN 2013/09/B/HS2/02065). 2 Consumer Art is a series of boards consisting of regularly-arranged photos depicting—in the most popular version of the work—a young naked woman eating bananas. Natalia LL also made photos and films with other variations of women eating different products. 3 For a reception of Natalia LL’s Consumer Art at this time see Jakubowska 2007, 241–248. 4 Cf. the artist Karol Radiszewski’s project America is not Ready for This (2012). 5 This document was exhibited in the exhibition Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art at the Brooklyn Museum in 2012. 6 Email from the artists, January 2013. 7 “Feminismus und Kunst.” Heute Kunst, 9 (1975). 8 A visit of the Italian gallerist and collector Arturo Schwarz in the early 1970s, and the subsequent purchase of her work, was an exception. 9 It was also Jerzy Bereś who took one of her works, entitled The Fallen Woman, to Amsterdam. Feminist Ideas in Communist Poland 147 10 Naomi Meidan disappeared from the history of feminist art, but Carolee Schneeman and Suzy Lake occupy an important position in it. 11 Künstlerinnen International 1877–1977. Gemälde, Grafik, Skulpturen, Objekte, Aktionen, March 8, 1977–April 10, 1977, Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. 12 VALIE EXPORT, in her manifesto “Women’s Art,” written in 1972, claimed that feminist art is part of the feminist social movement. 13 One of the critics called them “our feminists”; cf. Juszczyk 1978, 3. 14 Cf. e.g. Kondratowicz 2013. 15 Izabella Gustowska discussed the importance of Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn. Aktuelle Kunst von Frauen for her practice in a film that comprises an element of Anka Leśniak’s project entitled “Fading Traces. Polish Women Artists in the 1970s” (2010). 16 The umbrella of the government-controlled student organizations was one of the few possibilities in communist Poland to run a relatively independent, although censored, gallery space. 17 Among the artists taking part in the exhibition were Izabella Gustowska, Aleksandra Hołownia, Danuta Ma˛czak, Anna Płotnicka, Krystyna Piotrowska, Anna M. Potocka, Joanna Przybyła, Eva-Maria Schön, Adriena Simotova, and Lidia Zielińska. 18 In 1978, Natalia LL showed works by artists from abroad who were not themselves present. What Izabela Gustowska organized was more of a festival with the artists present, than an exhibition. References Baworowska, Barbara. 1978. “Sztuka kobiet.” Sztuka, 4/5: 70. 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