Paris from behind the Iron Curtain

Royal Academy of Arts

Sarah Wilson

Eric de ChasseyGladys FabreSimonelta FraquelliNicholas HewiltKatarzyna Murawska-MuthesiusKenneth Silver

Capital ofthe Arts1900-1968

President's Foreword

Sponsor's Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction Sarah Wilson

Montmartre Montmartre: Artistic Revolution Nicholas Hewitt

1 Paris: The Arts and the 'Internationale de I'esprit' Gladys Fabre

Catalogue plates

Montparnasse

2Montparnasse and the Right Bank: Myth and Reality Simonetta Fraquelli

At One Remove: Parisian Modernists on the Cote d'Azur Kenneth Silver

Catalogue plates

Saint-Gerrnain-des-Pres

3Saint-Gerrnain-des-Pres: Antifascism,Occupation and Postwar Paris

Sarah Wilson 236

Paris from Behind the Iron Curtain Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius 250

Catalogue plates

The Latin Quarter

4Paris in the 1960s: Towards the Barricadesofthe Latin Quarter

Sarah Wilson 330

Eric de Chassey 344

352

406

422

431

436

439

440

442

Paris-New York: Rivalry and Denial

Catalogue plates

Timeline

Bibliography

Artists' Bibliography

list of Works

list of Lenders

Photographic Acknowledgements

Index

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106

118

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the Parisian image. Extending eastwards, itlooks at the 'other' Paris, at the Paris refocusedand magnified through the Iron Curtain lens,investigating the changeable reflection of theParisian myth on the imaginary screen of theIron Curtain, and looking at the ways in whichParis presented itself, as well as the ways inwhich it was viewed from behind this newEast-West boundary.

Despite the supposed impenetrability ofthe Iron Curtain, a steady exchange betweenParis and Eastern Europe took place from 1946onwards. A plethora of ex hi bitions travelledin both directions; periodicals and catalogueswere privately circulated; artists and critics,sponsored by cultural and political bodies,travelled both West and East. Relations werenever broken off completely, even during the'darkest nights of Stalinism' ,although theywere closely monitored by the authorities.The Iron Curtain might be compared to a two-way mirror, able to hide and reveal severalParises: the dreamt-of 'fount of modernity';the 'communist' Paris of Daumier and socialistrealism; and finally the 'forbidden' Paris ofexistentialist anxiety and of the liberatinggestures of Taeh ism. These diverse ways oflooking at Paris from the position of an EasternEuropean observer might be alignedchronologically to form a tentative sequencewhich would unfold from the brief episodeof the return to modern Paris in the perioddirectly after the war (1945-48), throughthe rise of the 'Iron Curtain Paris' constructedby Stalinism (1949/50-55), to the Paris'regained' with the post-Stalirust 'Thaw'(from 1956).

Two main problems should beemphasised, however, when attempting tomap out a shared topography of those mutabledreams of Paris coming from behind theCurtain. The first is an astonishing lack ofinvestigation of both the decline and theendurance of French artistic hegemonyduring the period ofpostwar reconstructionand the redefinition of modernism. Althoughin the' other Europe' - Eastern Europe - theauthority of French modernity was still takenfor granted well into the 1960s, the socio-political conditions of that paradigm remainto be examined. Research is needed, too, onthe formative role of institutions, such as theAssociation Francaise d' Action Artistiq ueand the Instituts Francais, as well as on theactivities of the Musee National d' ArtModerne under the leadership of JeanCassou." Patterns of official promotion and

Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius

Paris from Behindthe Iron Curtain

.. Eastern Europe functions for the West asits Ego-Ideal: the point from which the Westsees itself in a likeable, idealised form, asworthy of Love. 'rhe real object offascinationfor the West is thus the gaze, namely thesupposedly naive gaze by which EasternEurope stares back atthe West. . ."Slavoj Zizek, 1992

The post-1945 split between Western andEastern Europe, symbolised by the IronCurtain, reproduced a much older divisionof the continent, one which had beenconstructed by Paris during the siecle deslumieres. The polarity of the enlightened Westversus the backward East had displaced theearlier, classical juxtaposition of culturedSouth against barbarian North. Andsymmetrically, the creation of l' orient del'Europe= the 'East' of Europe- had beeninseparably bound up with the constructionof Western Europe, with Paris as its capital.'In the aftermath of the Second World War,'Eastern Europe', hitherto spatially andlinguistically underdetermined, was framedand defined by a newly acquired boundary:the Iron Curtain. This compelling metaphor ofpostwar division entered everyday discoursethrough Churchill's aggressive Fulton speechof March 1946.3 The joint project of Americanand Soviet expansionism went far beyond theold prejudices of the Enlightenment, investingthe idea of East/West with a new politicalsignificance and spreading it over the wholeglobe.' Crucially, the 'West' was extendedmuch further westwards, and, as a corollary,the contest for the West's new capital waswidened.

Crudely, the story might be read asfollows: when the Anglo-American spectre ofthe Soviet Iron Curtain was conjured up, Paris,manoeuvring too closely to its shadow andassociating too overtly with communism anddiscredited socialist realism, lost to New Yorkthe battle for cultural hegemony in thereordered world. According to the sweepingaccount proposed by Serge Guilbaut, it wasprecisely at the moment when AbstractExpressionism dressed up as the Cold Warriorthat a suspiciously red Paris misread the scriptof the 'postwar painting games' and 'could nolonger be trusted in this crucial battle for thesoul of the Western world'.'

The purpose of this essay is to take anotherlook at the arena of 'postwar painting games',moving beyond the well-trodden Pans-NewYork axis which decentred and diminished

2501 Paris from Behind the Iron Curtain

81 Jadwiga Maziarska, Col/age, 1948Mixed media, dimensions unknownPrivate collection, ParisExhibited in the 'First Exhibition of Modem Art'in Krak6w in 1948

251 IParis from Behind the Iron Curtain

cultural integration differed from the agendasof private bodies, for instance of the GalerieDenise Rene, as well as from individual .contacts developed by critics, such as MichelSeuphor and Pierre Restany. Closer attention,too, needs to be given to the strategies adoptedby the numerous French-oriented curatorsand critics operating within the ideologicalstate apparatuses of Eastern Europe (ministrydepartments, museums and editorial offices),such as Jindi'ich Chalupecky in postwarPrague, or the late Ryszard Stanislawski inLodz.' Finally, the complexity of the Parisiandream might be studied in relation toreputations (albeit shifting ones) conferred intheir home countries upon those artists whosettled successfully in Paris after 1945, such asthe Czech Surrealists Toyen (Maria Cerminova)and Jifi Kolaf; the Bulgarian-born Christo(who lived in Paris from 1958 to 1964); theHungarian-born Simon Hantai; the Polishsculptress Alina Szapocznikow; and later thePolish artist Roman Opalka, whose careerbreakthrough coincided with his move toFrance in 1977.

The second major problem is the dangerof subscribing to the Orientalist view ofWestern modernity, which extols the binaryrelation between centre and periphery, andjuxtaposes the Parisian canon with its belatedand inferior reproduction in the totalitarianEast." A corollary is the perceived drearyhomogenisation of the Iron Curtain countries,often represented in Western historiographyeither as components of a monolithiccommunist bloc, or as passive satellites of theSoviet Union." Even though the Iron Curtainhas been torn down, art history still groupstogether the visual arts of 'Eastern Europe'as a tangible whole, a unified organism,approachable in its entirety. And yet thepostwar transitional period, the Stalinisttakeover, and most of all the process ofDestalinisation known as the Thaw wereexperienced at guite different stages and inguite different ways throughout the wholebloc. Any attempt to superimpose onto theentire area an overarching master-script of theParisian dream, built on the fairy-tale offrostand thaw, might result in hopeless confusion.This essay focuses mainly on Poland, wheretrust in Paris as a signifier of both artistic andpolitical freedom was greatest, where thepattern of ,having' through 'losing' to'regaining' Paris was strongest, and wherethis pattern, furthermore, was turned intothe master narrati ve of Polish art history.

drawings at the Galerie Denise Rene,presented by Andre Breton.'? JindfichChalupeck Y'ssocialist periodical Listy(Letters), published in Prague in 1947-48,was a forum for the discussion of the socialresponsibilities of Surrealism andexistentialism, while Jean Cassou's textspopularising modern art were published inthe pro-Communist Tvorba (Creativity). 16

Despite its historically strong ties withVienna and Munich, Budapest leaned heavilytowards France as well. The group named theEuropean School (1945-48) promotedFauvism, Cubism, Expressionism andSurrealism in Hungary and maintained closecontact with Andre Breton. Its more radicaloffshoot. the Hungarian Society of AbstractArtists, established in 1946, took part in theexhibition of the Parisian Salon des RealitesNouvelles in 1948.17Jean Cassou lectured atthe Institut Prancais in Budapest in 1948, andstaged an exhibition of modern Hungarian artin his own Musee National d' Art Moderne in

82Mieczyslaw Porebski lectures at the 'First Exhibitionof Modern Art' in Krak6w, 1948

Figure 82

" Stalinism (figs 81 and 82).12In I998 the fiftiethanniversary of the exhibition was celebratedwith a reconstruction in the Galeria Starmachin Krak6w; memoirs and photographsassembled in the impressive cataloguetestify to the belief in Paris's transformativepower held by both the epigones of post-Impressionism and by the avant-garde."

Directly after the Second World War andup until the Stalinist coup of February 1948,however, the Eastern European city moststrongly connected to Paris was Prague. Homeof significant strands of Art Nouveau, Cubism,Artificialisrn, Poetism and Surrealism, it hadremained in continuous touch with Parisianart movements since I900. The postwarexhibition of Surrealism at the Galerie Maeghtin Paris in I947 was shown also in Prague, andits Czech catalogue contained texts by AndreBreton and Karel Teige. 14 Toyen, who helpedto organise the show in Paris, moved to theFrench capital in I947. Her arrival was markedby an individual show of her paintings and

The fount of modernityWhat are artists doing in Paris? This was themost burning aesthetic question of theimmediate postwar period in Europe, virtuallythe same question, in fact, that had been askedbefore the war.i'' Such curiosity was amplysatisfied by French-government travelbursaries distributed by the network ofInstituts Francais and ministerial departmentsin Central Burope.!' Tadeusz Kantor,later oneof the most internationally visiblepersonalities of the Polish avant-garde, wasthe first to win a scholarship to Paris in 1947.Kantor's visit is still viewed as a ritual voyagewhich not only transformed his art byexposing him to the work of Matta and Artaudbut even supposedly changed the course ofPolish postwar culture. The 'First Exhi bitionof Modern Art', organised in Krak6w in I948,was a spirited attempt to redefine modernity;contextualised as one of the immediate effects'ofKantor's visit, it was heroised as the last cryof the Polish avant-garde before the advent of


Francastel's display of the art of the 'YoungPainters of the French Tradition', includingnineteen works by Gischia, Fougeron, Pig nonand Tal-Coat, were deeply divided. For manythe exhibition served as a 'compass', 27butothers saw in it a regression to figurativepainting. Kantor, at the time briefly fascinatedwith Fougeron,28 assessed the exhibition asa 'first contact with Europe' and admitted its'powerful impact'. However, Maria Jarema,a militant communist before the war and aclose colleague ofKantor- she would latercollaborate with him on the avant-gardetheatre Cricot 2 - was alarmingly negativeabout the exhi bition, despite her strong leftistleanings, recording in her diaries in 1946:' ... Who do the French think we are, Asia orwhat, to throw dust in people's eyes byshowing this trash? Perhaps our officialcritics ... will understand that the rain they tryso hard to squeeze out of socialist realism towater the barren soil of Polish art is very farfrom any relevant problems of current orfuture art ... ,29

Maria Jarema's puzzlingly 'prophetic'insight appears, indeed, difficult tocomprehend. In the hybrid identity ofthe Young Painters of the French Traditionwhich embraced both abstraction andfigurative work, looking back, as it did, toboth Romanesque murals and French socialradicalism, Jarema recognised the portentoussigns of the advent of socialist realism. Herown bursary to Paris in 1947, atthe time ofthe

83 Maria Jarema, Rhythm IV, 1958Monotype, 106 x 75cmMuzeum Narodowe, Krak6w

Paris, in March 1949.18Stalin's vilificationof Tito, a hero of anti-Nazi resistance, andYugoslavia's expulsion from the Cominforrnin 1948 prompted Cassou's departure from thehard-line Stalinist course promoted at the timeby the French Communist Party. 19The art ofYugoslavia, isolated, as it now was, from bothEast and West, is an intriguing case of politicalunbelonging.20 And significantly, Paris, whichwas relatively accessible to Yugoslavians, lostits magic sooner for them than for those stillliving behind the Curtain.

While the ideal of Paris as a centre ofmodernity was maintained in the majorityof European countries during the immediatepostwar years, Stalinist Russia stood apart.Vivid Parisian memories ofthe interwarperiod" and the personal links or maritalconnections of prominent figures therecould not prevent Moscow - increasinglyentrenched within anti-bourgeois discourseand the obsessive anti-Impressionistcampaign of 1948-49 - from restricting theimage of Parisian culture to that of realismesocialiste.r It was only in '949, however,that the extraordinary collection of Frenchmodernist works in the Pushkin Museum wasremoved from the public gaze to make roomfor a display of Stalin's seventieth-birthdaygifts which were flooding in from all over theworld, one of them being, significantly, AndreFougeron's socialist-realist master workHomage to Andre Houllier/"

In Poland, the appetite for Frenchness,upheld by a lobby ofcolourists' whomonopolised art journals, and by formermembers of Abstraction-Creation, wasencouraged by the activity of PierreFrancastel, an eminent French art historianwho served as the director of the InstitutFrancais in Warsaw both before and after thewar.2' His return to Poland in '946, now alsoto the position of a cultural adviser to theFrench embassy, 25was marked by twoexhibitions of contemporary French drawingsand paintings.26 Both opened in Warsaw inthe year in which the Muzeum Narodowe,the only exhibition space in that devastatedcapital, became a battleground between thehegemonic aspirations of France, Italy,England and the USSR, which were allstriving to project their cultures onto the

-ruined landscape of Central and EasternEurope. The excitement provoked by theFrench stood in stark contrast to the lukewarmreception accorded to the other threecountries' shows. And yet, responses to


84Pablo Picasso, WatSaw Mermaid with Hammer, 1948Charcoal on plaster,c. 180 x 170cmCouncil housing apartment, KoIo, Warsaw(now destroyed)

exhibition of Surrealism at the Galerie Maeghtand the 'Tendances de I'art absrrait' at theGalerie Denise Rene, reaffirmed her beliefin metaphorical abstraction, in which sheworked until her early death in 1958 (fig. 8)).

The 'recommended' ParisJarema's diary entry articulated the fear thatStalinism might be grafted onto the emaciatedbody of Polish postwar art through theauthority of Paris. Indeed, a peculiar ifhardlyever admitted fact about Polish socialistrealism was that it came from Moscow viaParis. Many of those who accepted socialistrealism did so largely because of its Frenchcredentials. In other words, the advent ofStalinism in Poland was justified by itsendorsement within the field of the Stalinistdevelopment of an erstwhile Surrealist gaze,exemplified by Louis Aragon and Picasso,which, itself, was so adoringly turnedtowards Moscow. Mieczyslaw Porebski,one of Poland's most eminent art critics andone of the last stipendiaries of the French


Government before the Stalinist clamp-down,confessed that Surrealism led him to socialistrealism, as it had Eluard and Aragon beforehim.30 Ryszard Stanislawski, a student of JeanCassou in Paris in 1948, voiced the belief thatthe authority of Par is's Left Bank had lentattraction to a socialist utopia; after his returnto Poland he curated an exhibition of worksby French Communist artists in Warsaw(1952). JI He later became the director of themuseum in Lodz, where he turned his backon socialist realism and devoted himself tothe task of reinstating Polish and EasternEuropean abstract avant-gardes into limitedWestern accounts of modernity, curaung. atthe latter end of his career, the exhibitions'Presences polonaises' in Paris in 198) and'Europa-Europa' in Bonn in 1994. J2

The turning point, when the trope ofmodernist Paris was displaced by that of the'recommended' communist Paris, came in thelast days of August 1948, during the WorldCongress ofIntellectuals for Peace. TheCongress took place in Wroclaw, the capital

85 Pablo Picasso,AJ/ish Woman, 1948Inkonpaper,25 x 17.5cmMuzeum Narodowe, Warsaw

86 Tadeusz Cwik, a member of the Polish delegation forthe first Peace Congress in Paris in 1949,helps Picasso totry on Polish folk dress from the lowicz region in 1949

Figure 85

city of the ex-German territories newly joinedto Poland, and, ironically, was endorsed byPicasso, who was to become an untiringsupporter of the Soviet-sponsored WorldPeace Movement and the designer ofits mostfamous symbol, the Dove of Peace. H

Organised by Poland and France, yet believedto have been steered from Moscow, theWroclaw Congress initiated a movementwhich united the 'partisans of peace' aroundthe globe in their struggle against the'imperialist warmongers'. Paradoxically, whileattempting to prevent the division of theworld into East and West, the Congresspetrified the schism between the two sides,which were mapped out by the rhetoric of the'containment' and the 'two camps' policieslaunched by Truman and Zhdanov"

The French delegation includedluminaries of the intellectual and scientificleft, such as the physicist Irene Joliot-Curie,the poet Paul Eluard, the writer and publisherVercors and the sculptor Emanuel Auricoste.but its most prominent members were Picassoand Leger. Uger left the Congress early,disheartened by the limelight focused onPicasso, but the latter's presence in Wroclawand his subsequent two-week-Iongtriumphal tour through war-struck Polandwere invested with quasi-ritualistic meaning.He was shown the ruined cities and the sitesof Nazi atrocities, including Auschwitz andthe Warsaw Ghetto, as well as the housing


Figure 86

settlements being constructed by the newPoland. His gift of his own ceramics totheMuzeum Narodowe in Warsaw and hisperformance of painting emblems of peaceand communism onto the freshly plasteredwalls of communal apartments (fig. 84),were readily presented as a blessing on thecountry's cultural politics conferred by theworld's highest artistic authority. J5 A pivotalsignificance was attached to Picasso's interestin Polish folk art and folk dress, prompting theauthorities to present him with a sheepskincoat made by Tatra mountaineers and otheritems of Polish peasant dress. 36 His voluntary'entering of the Polish skin' provided asplendid photo opportunity, serving tolegitimise the hardening course of culturalpolicy which juxtaposed the sanity offolkculture with the decadence of bourgeois art(fig. 86). Picasso's 'sketch ofa new Poland' ascommunist, anti-American and folklorised(fig. 85) won him one of the highest honoursof the Polish State, which he received fromthe President, Boleslaw Bierut."

Picasso's vision of the new Poland ran inparallel with the image of the enforced 'IronCurtain Paris'. The exhibition of seventeen'Contemporary French Painters' shown inWroclaw during the Congress and later atthe Muzeum Narodowe in Warsaw wasa complex manifestation of these changes(fig. 87). Visually 'modernist', although notprovocatively so, it included Picasso's Seated

87The exhibition 01'Contemporary French Painters' atthe Muzeurn Narodowe, Warsaw, in November 1948, withTaslitzky's The Delegates (see cat. 181) on the larright

88Wojciech Fangor,Film posterior ReneClement'sThe Walls orMaiapaga (1950), 1952Muzeum Plakatu, Wilan6w, Warsaw

Woman in a Hat ('939), 3B a couple of Picassodrawings, and the set of his ceramic plates.The upholders of post-Impressionism, such.as Bonnard and the later Ecole de Paris withGromaire, were featured, while the socialist-realist tendency in Paris was re-emphasised bya vast canvas, Delegation, by Boris Taslitzky.However, it was Jean Marcenac's originalintroduction to the catalogue, reprinted inthe literary magazine Odrodzenie(Rebirth),which, more forcefully than the display itself,established Paris as a multinational capital ofsocial radicalism. It ended with a hotdeclaration of the political function of art:'The era in which painting was a test of skillis over. Today, it is the test of conscience.Painting is not satisfied by illusory truths,but wants to trespass and go beyond them,to reach reality; aiming towards artificialbeauty is no longer considered art. .. Picasso'swoman and Boris Taslitzky's workers speakthe same language, and express what theyessentially are. The woman is what she hasbeen made by the world; the workers arethe ones who want to [re[build this world:J9

A simulacrum of communist and anti-American Paris - the Paris of the unemployedand the clochards- dominated the Polishmedia of the time. Cinema magnified theheroism of the Front National de Resistance(fig.88) and the press dwelt upon the miseriesof life in 'Marshallised' Prance. Culturalmagazines were keen to report the

1561Paris from Behind the Iron Curtain

'martyrdom' of French realism, focusingon events such as the scandal of the Salond' Automne of, 95' from which sevenpaintings by communist artists were removedby police as 'unpatriotic'. Aragon's riposte,his manifesto 'Peindre a cesse d'etre un jeu',was reprinted in the widely read Christmasissue of Nowa Kultura where it wasaccompanied by reproductions of theexpelled works and a Polish poemcommemorating the 'Seven DangerousCompositions' .40 Four of them weresubsequently shown in Warsaw, at the'952 exhibition of Fren eh art."

And yet, if Paris supported socialistrealism in Poland, it also helped to dismantleit. Fangor's The Figures (fig. 89) is comparableto the works of Andre Pougeron. Althoughflagrantly propagandistic, it lacks academicfinish, and through its flatness and the use ofprimary colours reveals a modernist awarenessof the medium.Y The '952 Warsaw exhibition,prefaced in a truly inspired manner by PaulEluard, was intended as evidence of thevictory of progressi ve realism over the self-annihilating abstraction of Fren eh postwar art.However, some blatantly 'formalist' paintings,such as Bernard Lorjou's Conference,43 wereincluded as were Leger's Constructors andPicasso's notoriously anti-American Massacrein Korea. The presence of these workscorroborated the use ofinterventionist artin the service of the Party, but at the same time

Figure 88

89Wojciech Fangor, The Figures, 1950Oiloncanvas,100x124cmMuzeum Sztuki,l6dt

90 Reproduction of Picasso's Massacre in Koreaon the streets of Warsaw, October 1956

undermined the very essence of socialistrealism: the transparency of the medium.The mainstream of Polish critical discoursewould soon assert the need for a 'new realism'in Polish art which would derive its strengthnot from 'dispirited repetitions' but from'creative experiments', pointing to the·'lessons' of Courbet, Cezanne and Picasso, andwould thereby stretch the definition of realismto such lengths that it could incorporate even Paris regainedwhat was termed 'engaged' abstraction." ''', That same Warsaw viewer had alreadyThe latent image of the 'forbidden' Paris was witnessed the sudden consignment of socialistbeginning to emerge-through that of the realism to the 'dustbin of history'. According'recommended' Paris, giving Poland a much to the narrative of the Thaw, the 'awakeningearlier foretaste of the aesthetic Thaw than from the nightmare of socialist realism'other countries of the bloc. brought an 'explosion of modernism', the

The political Thaw, triggered by 'restitution of art to the artists' and theStalin's death in 1953 and named after Ilya revindication of art's holy autonomy, whichEhrenburg's novel of 1954, " only really itself. as argued by Piotr Piotrowski, turnedcame about with the denunciation ofStalinist into a dogma."'errors and distortions' at the Twentieth Soviet An essential factor of the Thaw inParty Congress in Moscow in 1956. Ironically, Poland was that it reopened the road toat precisely the same time, Picasso's Massacre the 'forbidden' Paris. In other words, thein Korea was displayed again to significant revindication of the 'artness' of art meanteffect in Poland. In October, with Picasso's a return to the 'real' Paris, a regaining of75th-birthday exhibition opening in Moscow 'paradise lost'. On the one hand, it opened

while Soviet tanks were invading Hungary,a large reproduction of the work was displayedin a busy Warsaw street(fig. 90)4bIn the actof redeeming the interventionist potentialof Picasso's art, the partisan Polish viewerdenounced the artist's political stance,pointing to the proximity between subversionand submission in all politically involved art.


91 AndrzejWr6blewski, Woman in Chair', 1956Oiloncanvas,155 x 125cmMuzeum Narodowe, Krakow

92TadeuSI Kantor,Amarapura, 1957Oil on canvas, 100 x 120cmMuzeum Narodowe, Poznan

the floodgates of existentialist despair, anact which was eagerly awaited after years ofcompulsory socialist optimism, even if theexistentialism was still framed by figurativeidioms (fig. 91).48On the other hand, it looseda euphoric delight in non-representationalpainting, in Tachism and the Inforrnel,as exemplified by a series of abstractcompositions by Kantor, which, made afterhis second visit to Paris in 1955, share closelythe elfervescenceofthe painterly gesture withthe euphonic quality of their otherworldlytitles, structured as neologisms (fig. 92). Notonly was Kantor practising Tachism himselfat that time, but he also embarked on a touraround Poland giving slide lectures on theFrench Informel and arguing that this newstrand of abstraction - emphasising gestureand 'matter' as well as the process of creation-was the only adequate expression ofcontemporary art.'9In the early 1960s hemerged the experience of Surrealism andpeinture de matiere with his intenselytheatrical vocabulary of degraded bodies andthe degraded reality of objets trouves andembal/ages. This fusion was to become thebasis of both his art and his avant-garde

•. theatre, Cricot 2. From the late 1950S he wouldreturn to France regularly, exhibiting his workand staging theatrical performances (fig. 93).'"

The degraded matter of objets trouves, as wellas the experiences of Surrealism and NouveauRealisrne, formed also the boldly experimentalart ofWladyslaw Hasior (fig. 94), who, afterhis visit to France in '959, cast his sculpturesin earth moulds and produced his firstassemblages, becoming a member of the lateSurrealist Phases Group in 1961.51

Although by the late '950S the ideas ofFrench Tachism and the In forme! had beenabsorbed by Hungarian and Czechoslovakianartists, it was only in Poland that modernismwas given a porte-parole by the party and'became an element of official culturalstrategy'. 52Some would argue that it servedas a token of an illusory political freedom. 53The most spectacular demonstration of thisnew policy came during the giganticexhibition 'The Art of Socialist Countries',which opened at the end of 1958 in Moscow.The inclusion of abstraction in the Polishsection set it apart from all other nationalrepresentations and caused a scandal whichresulted in the placing of protective ropesaround the abstract paintings of AdamMarczynski. While Soviet viewers' responseswere a mixture of enthusiasm and hostility,the authorities condemned the Polish displayunequivocally as a 'treacherous denial ofsocialist ideology and aesthetics'. Defending

Figure 91


in Germany, but also in the Netherlands,Scandinavia, Italy, Switzerland and America,which were now eager to 'discover' art frombehind the Iron Curtain. At the tlme of'thebalanced show ofDouze peintres polonaisesmodernes', organised under the auspicesof the Polish Ministry of Art and Culture inthe Musee National d' Art Moderne in Parisin 196 1,60another exhibition of Polishcontemporary painting emphasising its morefashionable non-figurative directions openedat MOMA in New York as a private initiativeof the American critic PeterSelz61 In '974,Eva Cockroft, a revisionist Cold War historian,read the exhibition through a simplifiednarrative of postwar Polish modernism,reducing Paris to the site where Kantorencountered Pollock: 'Especially importantwas the attempt to influence intellectuals andartists behind the "iron curtain". During thepost-Stalin era in I956, when the Polishgovernment under Gomulka became moreliberal. Tadeusz Kantor, an artist from Krakow,impressed by the work ofPollock and otherabstractionists which he had seen during anearlier trip to Paris, began to lead themovement away from socialist realism inPoland ... This kind of development wasseen as a triumph for "our side". In '96"Kantor and 140ther non-objective Polishpainters were given an exhibition at MOMA.Examples like this reflect the success of thepolitical aims of the international programsofMOMA:62

This passage, illustrating a larger narrativeof the decline of Paris and the ascendancy ofNew York, might serve as evidence that the

93 A performance of The Dead Class by Cricot 2 in theTheatre de Chaillot, Paris, 1977


94 Wtadystaw Hasior, Grandmother, 1960Castironandwire,39 x 23 x 28cmMUleum Sztuki, l6di

Figure 93

his decision, the curator of the Polishdelegation, Juliusz Starzynski, pleadedagainst the uniformity of socialist art and forthe right to pursue national traditions, aswell as for the wider understanding of'realism'; he also admitted,'unapologetically', the influence of Frenchart. 54 While the '952 exhibition of FrenchCommunist art in Warsaw might havesupported the redefinition of socialist art inPoland, the Polish display in Moscow, asargued by Susan Reid, helped in turn to'admit a range of modern styles as legitimateforms of socialist artistic expression' to theSoviet Union. 55

During the 1960s, however, the absol u tehegemony of the Parisian dream wasbeginning to turn into a nostalgic memory,even in Poland'6The freedom to look atParisian art mattered increasingly, but so didthe chance to be seen there. 57 Throughout the'950sand the 1960s, Paris was undeniablythe city in which artists from Eastern Europewere exhibited by both state museums andprivate galleries. At the helm was DeniseRene, with her successi ve displays of thepioneering Polish Unism (1928) andgeometrical abstraction in 1957, of abstractYugoslavian art in 1959, and of work by theHungarian Constructivist Lazlo Kassak in'960and 1967'8 A young Polish artist, JanLebenstein, received the Grand Prix at thePremiere Biennale de Paris in 1959.59 Andyet, although not losing its supremacy asthe most prestigious stage for artists, Pariswas being outflanked, quantitatively, bythe sheer number of other cities, mainly

95AlinaSzapocznikow,Headless Torso, 1968Polyester and polyurethane, 46 x 64 x 73 cmGaleria Sztuki Wsp6lczesnej Zacheta, Warsaw

constitutive Eastern European gaze was nowin much greater demand by the decentredWestern self.

Beliefin the transformative Parisiandream, in the 'internationale de l' esprit',might have been declining behind the IronCurtain, but it would not be discarded. Whilean increasing number of artists, especially thepractitioners of the fabulously successfulSoviet Sots art, would be heading towardsNew York from the late 1970s, Poles weremore likely to remain loyal to Paris. AlinaSzapocznikow, who studied at the Ecole desBeaux-Arts during 1948 (meeting her firsthusband, Ryszard Stanislawski) and returnedto Paris permanently in 1963 (with the graphiCdesigner Roman Cieslewicz], was a successboth in Poland and in Paris. Outgoing andwell-assimilated in 'le monde Parisien', shebefriended Cesar, Annette Messager, JeanCassou, Pierre Restany and many others. Shewas also noticed by Marcel Duchamp, whoawarded her the Copley Foundation prize atthe XXISalon de Mai of 1965 for her gildedready made, Goldfillger. However, the body-

260 I Paris from Behind the Iron Curtain

96Alina Szapocznikow in her Malakoff studio,near Paris, 1967, with hersculptureit'sRunningRed

focused art of her Parisian period, before herearly death from cancer in 1973, transcendedthe boundaries of the 'French influence'.Her casts of her own body narrate a poignant'herstory' (figs 95 and 96): the spectacle ofan untamed sensuality, of voyeurism,tempting with the glamour of her physicalbeauty; a sensuality which turns later intoan introspective consideration of hercancerous tumours, exploring the gapbetween the polished exteriority and themonstrous otherness of the body, long beforeCindy Sherrnan's late photographs." At theother end of the spectrum lies Roman Opalka'smonochrome art, which records the passageof time both in numbers and in sound.Initiated in 1965 in Warsaw and continuedsince 1977 in France, it combines the rigidintellectualism of 'Eastern' Constructivismwith the transnational and hybrid landscapeof contemporary art media."

Ttappears then, that long before the fallof the Berlin Wall, Paris lost its geographicalspecificity, spreading the paradise of Parisian-ness both East and West.

Figure 96

For a comparison of tile visibility of French Nouvcau Realisrnein the Soviet Union and Poland. see Baudin 1997. Progressiveart from capitalist countries was also presented, usually .•nfixed sets of approved Images. in other Eastern Europeancountries; set!xara 1950. 'Algeria 1952', a travelling exhibitionof works byTaslitzky and Mireille Miailhe. went to Bucharestand Prague in 1954. See wtlson tgc}6B.p. 248.

42 Often mtstdentified as an emblem of Polish socialist realism,the painting was first exhibited in public only after itsacquisition by the Muzeum Sztukl. LOdz. in 1975.

43 The work was subsequently acquired from the exhibition.with the paintings by Fougeron and Taslitzky. by the MuzeumNarodowe in Warsaw.

44 Starzynskt 1954·45 tlya Ehrenburg. Oltcpt'l': povest', Moscow, 1954. The English

translation by Manya Harari appeared as The Thaw. London,1955·

46 See Desanti 1975. p. 341; the photograph, first shown byPenrose I g80 (ills 313 and 314). has recently been reproducedin Utley 2000, p. 152.

47 Piotrowski 11)96;Piotrowski I999B. pp. 4Q-90;and Plotrowskt20008. pp. T 43-45.

48 On existentialism in Polish art. see Kasprzak 191)6.49 Piorrowski 2000B. p. 144·50 Bablct 1990; Miklaszewski '992. pp. 54-59; and Krak6w

2000B.51 Stockholm 1968; Goreborg 1976; and Mlclnska 1993.52 See Sev~ik and Sev~ikova 1999: Pataki 1999;and Piotrowski

aoooc.53 Piotrowski 1996, p. 255; and Piotrowski 2000B. p. 144·54 Reid 2000. P: 116.SS Reid 2000. See also Plotrowskl 2000B. pp. 134-37.56 Henry Mocre's exhtbiuon. organised by the British Council

and touring Poland between 1959-60. unbalanced thehitherto steady equation of Paris with mo:dfrnity. Set:Murawska-Muthesius forthcoming.

57 See Hughes 1999·58 Paris 19578; Paris 1959; Paris 1960: and Paris 1967D.See

also L6dz 1997. "mong other major exhibitions of Polish artin France, see Paris 1961; Paris 1969;and Lyons 19928.ExhibitionsofFrenchart in Poland inc\udeWarsaw 1956;Warsaw 1959(organised by Jean Cassou);Warsaw 11)86;and recently Warsaw 2001.

59 Paris 1959C.60 Paris 1961.61 New York 196t.62 Cockroft 11)85.p. 131-P·63 On Szapocznlkow, see Paris 1967C; Parts 1973;and Warsaw

1998, particularly the essays by Urszula Czartoryska andAnna Krol and the texts by French authors: Annette Messeger.

Oltvier O. Ollvler and Pierre Restany.64 On Opatke. sec Tours 1986; Opalka 1992; Savtnel. Roubaud

and N~11996; Balon 1998; Desprats-Pequignot 1998;andSosnowski and Piasecki 11)98.

I would like to (hank Sarah WilsOTl, Peter Sawbridgeand Maryvonne

Gilles /0" their assistance with my text.

1 iizek 1992, p. 193.2 Set:Wolff 1994; the invention of Eastern Europe forms part of the

larger orientalist discourse. See also Todorova 1997.3 On the Iron Curtain metaphor, set! Hindsand Otto-WindtJr 1991,

pp. 89-127; and Murawska-Muthesius 2000B.4 While American rhetoric had the world divided between

'freedom' and 'totalitarianism', Soviet terminology saw thestruggle as between the 'imperialistic and anti-democratic' andthe 'democratic and anti-imperialistic' camps; for crucial speechesbyTruman and Zhdanov, see Stokes 1996, pp. 33-42.

5 Guilbaut 1990, pp. jj and 74·6 Guenard 1994; for a study of the activity oftbe Institut Prancais in

postwar Vienna, a city which remained in a somewhat ambiguousEastfWest position until 1955, set! OankI1996.

7 An exhibition devoted to the activity oftheGalerie DemseRene was recently staged in Lodz: see LOdz 1997. A posthumouscelebration ofthe lifelong activity ofRyszard Stanislawski isbeing prepared by the Gallery of Contemporary Art zachetain Warsaw. For Jean Cassou's links with Eastern Europe. see hismemoirs: Cassou 1981. pp. 245-74·

8 On the problemarlsatlon of East-West relationships in studies ofEastern Central European art, see Piotrowski 1999 and Piotrowski2000. as well as Piotrowski's forthcoming book on the art ofEastern Central Europe; see also Blkins zooo. a review ofMansbach '999.

9 Among authors who have addressed this problem, seeStanislawski 1988. P·204: Carneci 1993; Hegyi 1999; Piotrowski1999; Piotrowski 2000; and Piotrowski 2000B. Among exhibitionsexamining the identity and difference of Eastern European art,see Berlin 1994; Chicago 1995:Schwerin 11)96;Ljubljana 19<}8;Stockholm 1999; and Vienna 1999. Eastern Europe is a flourishingtopic in the field of politics. human geography and internationalrelations; see Zizek 1992; Simmons 1993; and Hupchick and Cox1996.

10 See Teresa Tyszkiewicz's diary of 1945-49. written largely inFrench. and reprinted in Krak6w 1998. pp. 58-74: 'Today, weteach students the rules of Impressionism, that is, the perceptionof colours. Sensitivity to colour shapes form and the image ...J very much wonder how the Academy in Paris teaches itsstudents today. No doubt. they also copy nature there. butthrough another truth. Which? .. How impossible is this distance:See also Folga-Januszewska 1995: and Piotrowski 1999.

11 See Krak6w 1998, pp. IS-53, 144andpassim; Pejic '999, p. 118;and Swfca 1999.

12 Markowska 1996: Nowaczyk 1996. p. 26,; and Krak6w 19<}8.pp. 144-45 and passim. Interestingly, this same artist who readilyabsorbed Parisian novelties was the one who attempted to decentrethe Parisian hegemony during the crucial discussion betweenartists preceding the imposition of socialist realism, trying toconvince his audience that 'we cannot constantly depend onFrance'. See Krak6w 2000. vol. 2. p. 33.

13 A snapshot of'a Parisian street or cafe becomes a fetish whichcertifies passage to the other side, an anointment by immersionin the purity of art, like the Parisian Metro ticket clutched byYVC$Montand in the closing scene of The Wagt'sofFMr(1953).See Krak6w 1998, pp. 15-39· 144and passim.

14 Prague 1947.15 'royen remained an active participant in postwar Surrealism,

and had numerous individual exhibitions in Paris until her deathin 1980. On Toyen. see Paris 1982C; and Prague 2000. On CzechSurrealism, see Prague 1996; and London aoo r. pp . .:;1:38-39.On Czech art after 1945. see Prague 1994.

16 Cassou 1947B.Por Chalupecky's writing, see his complete works:Chalupecky 1999.

17 Forthe European School and Franco-Hungarian links to 1968,see Lancz 1975; Gyorgy and Pataki 1990; Budapest 1993: Patakt1999; and Pataki 2000.

18 Cassou 1981, p. 264.19 Cassou 1981. pp. 245-S9. See also 'M. Jean Cassou prend parti

pour le regtme de Ttto', interview in Le Monde, no. 1417. 16August 1949; Cassou 1949;andJudlI992, chapter 5, 'Show Trials.Political Terror in the Eastern European Mirror, 1947-1953' andchapter 6. 'The Blind Force of History'

20 On Yugoslavian art. see Blafevlc 1999.21 See Gladys Pabre's essay in this catalogue. pp. 40-53.22 The novelist llya Ehrenburg was a close friend of Louis Aragon

and Picasso. EisaTriolet was married to Aragon, and NadiaKhodcssievitch-Leger to Leger. On Moscow's view of Parisianart, see Baudin t997. pp. 227-32, who stresses the rigorous visualcensorship of'negative' images.

23 Cf. Wilson 1981•and Sarah WUson'sessay in this catalogue,pp. '36-49,

261 I Paris from Behind the Iron Curtain

24 Before the war Francastel organised a blcckbuster exhtbtnon'French Painting from Manet Until the Present', which wasstaged in the newly built Muzeum Narodowe in Warsaw in1937.SeeWarsaw 1937; and Jarccki 1981. pp. 162-63. See alsoFrancaste11996.

25 It is worth mentioning that the same function was given toMichel Foucault in 1958. Although his name is listed amongthe organisers of the 195gexhibition of French painting inWarsaw (catalogue: Warsaw 1959},Foucault. according toan oral communication from eo-curator Janina Michalkowa.was not actively involved in this event: he stayed in Polandfrom October 1958tothesummerof 1959· See Macey 1993.pp. 85-87·

26 Warsaw 1946and Warsaw 1946B. Prancastel also broughtrheexhtbnion of Prench ctncma to Poland: Warsaw 1947.

27 Seethe memoirs and interviews with Boguslaw Szwacz, JaninaKraupeand Teresa 'ryszkiewtcz in Krak6w 1998. and p. 142.

28 See Kantor 1947; and Markowska 191)6·29 MariaJarema's controversial assessment of the French 1946

exhibition which, after Warsaw, was shown in Krak6 w, in thePalacSztuki (Palace of Art), comes from her unpublished diarywhich is kept by her-family. Iquote here from the catalogue ofa large retrospective exhibition of her work. curated recentlyby Barbara tlkosatwrodaw 1998, p. 67).

30 Czerni 1991. pp. 58-59. The French leanings of Polish socialistrealism have not been admitted in the major discussions of thismovement in Poland, such as wlodarczyk's Socrealism, whichwas published in IC)B6under the aegis ofthe tnstltut Litterairein Paris. culturally the most important centre for Polishemigres. It is significant that at the time when the anti-modernist/anti-formalist dogma of Soviet socialist realismwas being seriously questioned by the strong lobby of Polishpost-Impressionists, Aragons praise of the movement ina series of articles in us Ullt'r'$ rraTlfaises, publishedthroughout 1952. was printed in its defence. abbreviatedas a single text. by a popular literary magazine: see Aragon1952. On Polish socialist realism. see Warsaw 1987; Ilkosz1988; Murawska-Muthesius 1999; and Krak6w 2000.

31 Stanislawski 1988.J2 The popularity ofStanislawski's 'Presences polonaises'.

shown when Poland was in the grip of martial law, and thedazzling Warsaw success of its 1986 sequel' 4 x Paris' havenot so far been eclipsed. Both exhibitions were invested withthe persevering beliefin the redemptory force ofthe Polish-French alliance. empowered to preserve and to 're-present'Pollshness.

33 ForlYlOI'Cinformation on Picasso's role as the 'Party artist'.see Utley 2000. particularly pp. 101-33.

34 See 'TheTruman Doctrine and thcTwo-Camp Policy'. inStokes 1996, pp. 33-42. Iam grateful to Stanley Mitchell forsending me his unpublished paper 'The Wroclaw Congress',given at the conference 'Cold War Culture' at UniversityCollege, London, t994; see also Taylor I948;Congres Mondial1949;andTopolski 1988.

35 On Picasso in Poland. see Bibrowski 1979: Wilson 1992;Wilson 19968, pp. 246-47; Bernatowicz 2000; and tnley 2000,pp. 106-<>8.

36 A particularly splendid sheepskin coat was presented toPicasso by Caziel (KazimierzZielenkiewicz). a Polish painteractive before and after the Second World War in Paris and laterin England (Pery 1997, p. 37). On his visit to Picasso's studio.in a letter to Bibrowski, Caziel reported on Picasso's 'Polishperiod'. a term which was to be adopted by Picasso himself:'Picasso was then-as he used tosay-in the "Polish period";there were lots of toys, paper-cut-outs. saints. textiles.earthenware pots. which he brought from Poland ... He likedour folk art very much. While looking at a figure of'a saint[carved by Oil mountatneer, in Sztuka Ludou-a (Folk A,·t), heremarked: "You should cast it in gold." Bibrowski 1979, p. 48.

37 The same order was given to Paul Eluard; two years laterPicasso won the Warsaw Peace Prize for the design of the Doveof'Peace at the Second World Congress for Peace in Warsaw inNovember 1950. See Bibrowski 1979. p. 21 and passim; andUtley 2000, pp. 113-15.

38 Zervos 1959, no. 158.39 Marcenac 1948. The Wroelaw exhibition was later shown •

in Warsaw. Augmented there, it included paintings andwatercolours by Chagall. Desnoyer. Dufy, Oromatre. Leger.Lhote. Lorjou. Matlsse, Picasso, Pignon. Planson, Rouault.Singer. Taslitzky, de Waroquierand others. See Warsaw 1948.

40 Aragon 1951.41 Among the works displayed were: I May Parade by Anne

Mane Lansiaux; Gerard Singer's 10 tebruavy at Nice; Les

Dockrrs by Georges Bauquier: and Jean Milhau's Maurict'Tnorez Is Getling Better. Set:Warsaw 1952, nos 3, 20, 26and 40.

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Paris from behind the Iron Curtain