Con temp orar y folklore in the Ethnographic Museum, Torun

Aleksander Blachowski

24 MUZEUM ETNOGRAFICSNE, Torufi. The museum encourages contemporary folk artists. The sculptor Szcezepan Mucha, of Szale (province of Sieradz) is seen here with one of his works.

208 Aleksander Blachowski

Traditional, primitive and folk cultures of all countries are in the co,urse of transformation. As a result of civilization processes and the development of professional fine arts, primitive art 1 has been gradually turning into folk art. Obviously this change is not automatic, and its progress differs from one country to another. At the same time, folk art 2 has degenerated as education has developed and econonic and social changes have taken place as a result of industrialisation, urbanization and the increasing influence of cosmopolitan culture. The folk traditions that still sumive have changed their functions and are used for entertainment, while traditional art no longer sewes its magic and ritualistic purpose and is treated only as merchandise. Its consumers, whose tastes are foreign to regional cultures, have a corrupting influence on tradition and demoraEae folk artists. Confronted with money, folk art often becomes the loser, deprived of its most essential values: spontaneity, sincerity, inventiveness, naturalness and a close relation to man's life and the inner need for artistic expression which he satisfies in creative work.

Many people interested in traditional folk culture consider that it is doomed. It is obvious that any restraints on primitive cultures would eventually turn against men, but the idea of stopping technical progress and urbanisation would be equally inhuman. Does this mean that we are helpless in the face of this problem? Is there nothing we can do to presewe the essential values of traditional folk culture, to prevent it from becoming mummified in museums and to integrate the living forms of this culture into contemporary cultural

These questions, considered in many countries, have also been asked in Poland. Appreciation of the universal values of traditional forms of folk art and the desire to support natura! creativity have found expression in Poland in various kinds of sponsorship for over a century. During the hofitical sup- pression of the country in the nineteenth century t h i s interest took the form of social work, and since I 9 I 8 the State ahinistration has actively protected the heritage of folk culture and has found new functions for it. Polish museums have played an essential part in this work. Many examples of their activities might be quoted, but I shall limit myself h a e to some theoretical and practical work accomplished by the Ethnographic Museum in T~rusb .~

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processes?

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In general, there are four main groups of activities which we try to carry out concurrently.

The first traditional group consists of the following activities: collecting ancient objects and analysing them, so as to reconstruct the development of art forms in a particular ethnographic region; systematic cataloguing of col- lections; preserving the collections; arranging exhibitions and popularization activities.

The second group consists of research activities aimed at discovering the laws and rules governing particular sections of folklore considered as human activity in a specific economic, social, cultural or political situation. This involves investigation into: the role and functions of h e arts in the life of particular regions; folk aesthetics as well as external and internal factors determining the course of development of art forms ; the origin and signifi- cance of ornaments and other artistic symbols; the function of a work of art-i.e. analysis of its interrelationships of form and content, its utilitarian functions satisfying the material needs of people, and its spiritual functions satisfying their higher needs.

The third group of activities concerns the artist as a creator, It consists of research work on: the folk artist's situation in different periods, taking into account the social and economic context; the roles played by an artist in a given ethnic community ; artistic equipment (methods of learning handicrafts,

2/(a), (b ) Two prize-winning works in the competition organized by the museum in 1973, on the theme of Nicolaus Copernicus: (a) sculpture by Jan Centkowski, of Nieszawa (Wroclaw province); (b) Copemicm Stoppitg the Sm, bas-relief in wood, 84 cm high, carved by Stanislas Korpa, of Ruda (province of Sieradz).

I. The term ‘primitive art’ has been satisfactorily dehned by such scholars as L. Adam, Prinlitiue Ar t , London, 1954; F. Boas, Prit,titiue Art, New York, 1955; D. Fraser, Pri?~iitiue Ar t , New York, 1962.

2. The notion of folk art has been discussed by, among others, A. Hauser in the introduction to his Social History of A r t arid Literature, 195 I. I use this term to designate artistic production in countries with well-developed social strata, characterized in particular by a specific art culture. ‘Folk culture’ is used to define the culture of the social group which was formerly called ‘a nation’.

3 . I do not take into consideration the production of amateurs called ‘ Sunday artists’, or ‘naive’, or the art defined by Jean Dubuffet as ‘L’Ar t Britt’. See Piiblicatioru de la Conipagtiie de [’Art Britt, edited in Paris by Jean Dubuffet since 1964. 4. The Ethnographic Museum in T o r d was

established by Professor Maria Znamierowska- Prüfferova in 1946. I t is now the third largest museum of its kind in Poland. I t contains some zo,ooo exhibits (about 2,000 are acquired every year), employs 16 qualified workers and organizes permanent and temporary exhibitions concerning all fields of old and contemporary folk art. The museum bas a park. containing an open-air exhibition of folk architecture and farming equipment. It also has conservation, phonographic, photographic and film laboratories.

210 Aleksander Bhchowski

26 Mother’s Caresses, sculpture in wood, 30 cm high, by Edward Kolacz, of Znczecin, which was submitted to the 1975 competition on the theme The Child irz Folk A r t .

knowledge of technology, principles of choosing raw material, etc.) ; forms of ‘aesthetic supemision’ exercised by particular consumers ; the psychic pre- dispositions of an artist-the range of his talent and individual creative

The fourth group of activities covers the active participation of the museum in constructing culturd models of the future: i.e. co-operation with folk artists in order to stimulate their creativity and direct its development in keeping with the characteristic features of the artistic culture of a given ethnic unit; search for methods of educating new cconsumers9 of folklore.

This article deals with one form of co-operation between museums and folk artists practised in Poland, as a result of which folklore enters into the main stream of contemporary culture.

impulses.

Both primitive and folk arts fulfil material and spiritual functions in a particular ethnic group and also express individual talents. The strength of traditional art lies in man’s immanent desire, independent of the stage of development of civilization, to create and experience art. This desire, however, does not function in isolation. Every man lives in a specific c o m u ~ i v ; he is controUed by its standards, constrained by various circumstances and exposed to &fferent impulses. That is why traditional art production has never become passive but has developed and changed as changes occurred in the ethnic group to which it belonged. The work of each artist used to be judged by his community, which exercised a kind 06 ‘aesthetic supervision’. This close relationship between the artist and his audience provided the basis for n@xlal varieties of art forms that satisfied the tastes and needs of particular comunities. Nowadays a f ~ l k artist’s works can be owned by anybody who can buy them, and thus the art products of a given comunity become the property of all those who, for various qeasons, are interested in them. The traditional aesthetic supervision is no longer exercised by ethnic groups, and taboo restrictions are not respected. As a result, traditional aesthetic canons and rules as weU as artistic symbols have lost their meaning. The folk artist is ‘free’, which also means disoriented. The tastes of ~LII -ZI~~QUS casual and different customers (usually tourists) have a destructive idluence on the artist’s established notions of artistic values. These are the mechanics of the process mentioned at the beginning of this article.

In Poland, this process has been increasing for a long t h e and has now reached the stage where many people have come to the pessimistic conclusion that folk art has ceased to exist. This conclusion is based on an evaluation of the social and economic situation of the rural population in Poland. Up to the nineteenth century the country people had to satisfy their needs by means of handicrafts and artistic production. This is no longer necessary. Industry fully satisfies the demand for housing and farming equipment, clothes, etc., in rural areas. The acquisition of objects fashionable in the towns has become the countryman’s ambition and the outward sign of progress. Tks natural tendency produces a feedback reaction. Townspeople, motivated by patriotic, cultural 08: even snobbish aspirations as well as by the desire to possess unique hand- made objects, are turning to traditional folk art as the natural protection against the mechanical standardization of their environment. Polk-art products, which have been disappearing from the rural setting since the nineteenth century, at present find protection in the towns. Their ‘low9 social origin is ennobled. No longer symbols of backwardness, they even acquire the status of works of art. All this has led to the revival of traditional crafts such as pottery, weaving, embroidery and metalwork and, above ala, the exceptional development of statuary art. Today the country people, following urban fashions, have begun to accept their folk art at home, though they change its

Contemporary folklore in the Ethnographic Museum. Tom6

function from utilitarian to ornamental. In this way the process of cultural emancipation of the country (the result of democratization and the destruction of class barriers) has come full circle. This on the whole positive and socio- logically interesting phenomenon has some negative aspects, as mentioned above; the great demand results in the destruction of traditional forms.

In trying to improve the situation we do not encourage any petrifications of old forms but are more interested in their creative renewal. It is at this point that museums should play an important role: first, in exercising aesthetic and ethnographic supervision, replacing to some degree the traditional control by the rural community. I believe that an appropriate control of cultural pro- cesses may lead to a new demand by the rural population for their own art and give it a new meaning, and that at present, when folk artists are exposed to various factors which are completely foreign to regional traditions, museums may help to tide folk art over a period of confusion and preserve its essential values.

Products considered in Poland as folk art can be divided into three groups: first, unique art. works produced by talented artists; 5 second, utilitarian. and ornamental objects connected with traditional folk handicrafts, such as ceramics, wood-carving, weaving, lace-making, etc.; and third, small objects representing

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27 (a)

27(a)t (b ) For the competition Folk A r t for Children, organized in 1975, the museum received 1,830 works: (a) some of the works submitted; (b) a small horse, toy 19 cm high, ,created by Czeslawa Lach, of Pawel Wielk (province of Bielsko Biala).

5. The criteria for dehning contemporary folk artists in Poland (the only such criteria existing in Polish ethnographic literature) have been enumerated by the author of the present article in Treurwe ir2 a Painfed Cbest, or Folk. Art with .a Differeme, p. mo--~, Warsaw, 1974. and in the catalogue of the exhibition Great Poles: Their L$e aiid Fork in Folk Sct@ture, p. 7-10, Toruli, 1975.

212 Aleksander Bhchowski

regional souvenirs-more or less free transformations (miniatures and orna- ments) of traditional forms.

We are interested in the first two groups, since they are more important and are closely linked with the essence of traditional art.

ur conclusion is that efforts should be made to eliminate negative influencis and to put to the test the quality of contemporary folk-art production. As a . ~

result of the existing confusion in attitudes, definitions, standards and tastes, creative, talented and exceptional artists are often treated in the same way as imitators producing ‘traditional forms’ or mere amateurs posing as folk artists. To avoid this confusion, two essential criteria should be applied: the artistic quality of an object, and its pr~ducer’s afliliation with folk culture. The test is possible only when works of the greatest possible number of artists dealing with the same subjects are compared. In order to save talented artists from the lure of a quick profit they should be given incentives that release their artistic aspirations, encourage their inventiveness and crystallize their artistic iden- tities. These ideas can be put into practice by means of competitions and other methods.

When choosing the theme for a competition of this kind I took into con- sideration the psychological predisposition of folk artists and the equipment at their disposal. The personalities of self-taught artists differ widely, as is natural in people of rich imagination, exceptional sensitivity and aesthetic interests, who experience profoundly-and in isolation from the consumer commmity-their intimate relation with art and form their own artistic ideology and their own system of evaluating the reality around them. Never- theless, they also have some features in common.

The first such feature is their particular commitment to social matters, resulting from a conviction that they have a special quality and a special artistic mission. Many folk artists formdate their own programmes for the improvement of society; they feel duty-bound to educate society, ennoble it and to propound moral rules. This is a natural outcome of their simple under- standing of art as an instrument for spreading beauty, truth and noble ideas, lifting man above the world of a nature deprived of intelligence.

The second feature folk artists have in common, and which is common to all people but more developed in artists, is a desire to gain fame and immortal- ity through their works. In Poland, and probably in other countries too, folk artists form the most patriotic section of the community. They are highly sensitive to the problems of their own country. At the same time they feel spiritually linked with other nations. Spontaneity and honesty free from any chauvinistic tendencies inspire works in which universal human truths find a major form of expression. This exceptional sensitivity, a kind of inborn ‘cosmopolitan consciousness’, is a remarkable feature of folk artists.

Taking the above ideas into account, we organized in 1973 for all Polish folk sculptors a competition concerning Nicolaus Copernicus. The great astronomer became especially familiar to everybody in that year because of the celebra- tions of bis j 00th anniversary, and 220 folk artists entered the competition and submitted j 72 sculptures (Figs. 2,r(u), (6)).

In this way we formed a unique collection of more than zoo works which are remarkably interesting in their form and content. The collection has already been seen by about 400,ooo people in various Polish towns, and since Sep- tember 1976 it has been exhibited in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, German Democratic ReDublic.

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6. Examples of the expression of universal values in folk art are the themes of motherhood and of mother l n I 974 we organized a competition entitled Æanzozls Podes: Their Lqe and and child, whi* are found in the art of all nations.

good and evil.

IVork in FoJk Sczi@zlre. It was a selective competition in which only folk sculptors who had already gained recognition were invited to participate;

Another universal theme is the struggle between

Contemporary folklore in the Ethnographic Museum, Toruri 213

143 artists submitted 656 works. Two hundred of the best works were pur- chased by the museum to form a new and interesting collection.

In 1975, we organized a competition covering not only sculpture but also painting and tapestry: its theme was The Child in Folk Art. At the same time we held another competition on products for children, since we felt that this form of folk art, particularly the manufacture of toys, had been underestimated. Most traditional folk toys correspond perfectly to the needs of human nature, encourage psychophysical development and awaken children’s aesthetic senses. Children enjoy colours and like to play and to possess objects that appeal to their imagination but are simple in structure. Folk toys made of natural raw materials, according to rules tested through generations, fulfil these conditions. We decided therefore to draw public attention to toys and to inspire the tra- ditional centres of toy production. This time the results of the two competitions were even better: for the first competition, on The Child in Folk Ar t , 272 artists submitted 1,103 works (Fig. 26); for the second, on Folk A r t for Children, 214 artists sent in 1,830 works (Fig. z7(a) , (b)). From these works we selected for our collection about zoo sculptures, paintings and tapestries, as well as about 800 wooden and ceramic toys and honey-cakes. The collection was enthusiastically received in the main Polish towns and has been shown abroad since early 1977.

Our competitions have proved that contemporary folk art, which continues traditional technologies and specific artistic forms of expression, has succeeded in preserving its great vitality and functions on many levels as an important element of culture. It should be recognized that folk art has its place in cultural processes as a living tradition participating in the transformation of reality. Through our activities we try to convey this truth to the public and the folk artists with whom we are in constant contact.

[ Tramlated from Polish]

28 INDUSTRIAL SAFETY TECHNICAL MUSEUM, Tokyo. Department of the working environment, with exhibition on slipping on floorboards. Panels explain the causes of slipping and the tests carried out. Several sorts of floorboards were constructed using different non-slip materials. The visitor

can experiment with ways of slipping and how to prevent them.