Which Polish? What Neue? What Wilde? Provincialisation of the centre – centralisation of the province on the example of the Düsseldorf “Papers” by Marek Sobczyk and Jarosław Modzelewski

Abstrakt

The starting point of the article are four paintings created jointly by Marek Sobczyk and Jaroslaw Modzelewski during their trip to Dusseldorf in autumn 1984 on a Solidarnosc scholarship, the so-called Papers. Both painters belonged to the Warsaw “Gruppa”, whose work was compared in Poland with German Neo-Expressionism. Their stay in Germany enabled them to make their own reconnaissance in the German artistic community and become familiar with the western conditions of art production and distribution, but in the same way it made their painting, which grew out of the local cultural and socio-political context, subject to a test of authenticity. Also not without significance for the cultural capital brought back to Poland was the destination itself – West Germany: a country with which relations, due to the historical past and the arrangement of political forces after the War, were multifold and complicated during the communist period. Inspired by the trip, the works both highlighted the consequences of the Cold War divisions and initiated in Polish art the process of transferring cultural content from West Germany, which was a brave step towards a way out of the space dominated by the politicized discourse of German-Polish relations after the War. Thus, Papers can serve to prompt a deepen reflection on the complexity of multiple relations: Poland–Germany, centre–periphery, East–West, while at the same time making it possible to problematize the issue of “originality” of phenomena in art that arise outside the main centres.