Warsaw has been enriched with a new sculpture of John Paul II. It is not a monument, but a temporary installation intended to honor the centennial of John Paul II's birth. However, like many statues commemorating the Polish pope, it too has divided public opinion.
Visitors to the National Museum in Warsaw have been greeted by an unusual sight since Tuesday. In a pond lined with red tarp stands a figure of John Paul II, submerged up to his ankles, made of light-colored stone, holding a black boulder above his head. It's the work of sculptor Jerzy Kalina, whose name was recently mentioned on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument to the victims of the Smolensk catastrophe in Warsaw's Pilsudski Square. According to the National Museum in Warsaw, the sculpture is a temporary installation related to the centennial celebration of the Pope's birth. It is not a memorial of a commemorative nature, but a site-specific ephemeral activity.
man with a boulder
A National Museum memo quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza reads:
The title itself, the depicted figure of a saint holding a large boulder and the red water in the fountain basin allude to Polish myths and symbols. They pose questions about the role of art, tradition and memory.
In turn, Łukasz Gaweł, who is currently acting director of the MNW, emphasizes in a statement to Newsweek that:
Jerzy Kalina has shown an installation project that enters into a discourse with contemporary realizations dedicated to John Paul II.
However, the interpretative paths of this work are very different. On Twitter and Facebook, there have been comments in the tradition of giving ironic nicknames to the papal monument, describing the Warsaw sculpture as "John Paul hunting frogs" or a "truffle lifter"
not the first controversial
It's hard to avoid association with another work dedicated to John Paul, the iconic "La nona ora" work by Maurizio Catellana. It depicts the Pope crushed by a black meteorite. In 1999, the work was presented in an exhibition at the Zachęta Gallery. At the time, it became the target of attacks by Christian-National Union deputies, who decided to "save" the Pope. MP Witold Tomczak damaged the sculpture by taking off a meteorite from the Pope, damaging the work in the process. The case of the destruction of this sculpture is still used today as an argument in discussions about contemporary art, by both sides of the argument. Catholic conservatives cite it as an example of the shallowness of modern art, which is based on insulting religious feelings and easy controversy. The art community, on the other hand, sees the case as evidence of their opponents' mixing of artistic and real orders and lack of understanding of critical art.
Installation by Jerzy Kalina
© AiB Archives
dialogue with italian
Jerzy Kalina reverses the situation and places a boulder over the Pope's head, so that he gives the impression of hurling the stone in front of him. The quoted note issued by the MNW reads:
In Kalina's depiction, John Paul II is not a helpless old man crushed by a meteorite, but a titan with superhuman strength. The proposed portrayal of the figure allows multiple threads of interpretation to be taken up. The artist himself sees the Pope as a man who played a decisive role in the recent history of Poland and Europe, started the process of historical, social and spiritual changes.
Maurizio Cattelan, La nona ora, 1999
© zenozotti
The question remains: is this a successful dialogue with Cattellan's work?
Art historian Marcin Zglinski of the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences comments on the installation on the De Arte Facebook group:
The work itself, however, is undoubtedly a weakling. The idea is banal, the execution is clumsy, and everything is "spiced" with a title that combines Young Poland exaltation (Malczewski and his "Poisoned Well") with Socialist Realist literalism, leaving no room for any discretion.
Zglinski also questions the validity of the reference to Cattelan's sculpture:
There is a sclerotic seasoning to this reflection in the relation to Cattelan's work, from more than two decades ago. If Kalina felt so deeply, so deeply offended by Cattelan's work, then why - as an artist - does he react only now, and from the position of the "fat cat" of Polish official art, in the comfortable space of the courtyard of a national cultural institution?
Piotr Rypson, former deputy director of the Museum, also spoke in the discussion:
Jerzy Kalina's composition is simply unsuccessful. Instead of pathos, the artist achieved a grotesque effect. The symbols used, singularly legible to any moderately educated Christian or graduate of some humanities department (thus, rock, water, fish, blood and "red sea") in Kalina's arrangement are tangled in a highly obscure way.
consistent artist
We can meet Jerzy Kalina's works in many cities in Poland. He is the author of, among others, the Wroclaw monument to an anonymous passerby "Passage" at the intersection of Świdnicka and Piłsudskiego streets, the cross commemorating Jerzy Popiełuszko in Włocławek, or the Katyn monument in Podkowa Leśna. In the 1970s and 1980s, he organized many art actions and installations and exhibited at Warsaw's Repassage gallery. He is also known as a stage designer, and was responsible, among other things, for the visual setting of John Paul II's visits to Poland. In recent years, he has made a name for himself as the creator of the Smolensk monument at Pilsudski Square in Warsaw and the "Barrier" installation at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. In 2016, he received the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage's annual award for lifetime achievement from Minister Piotr Gliński.
© andibrauni
museum in crisis
Gaweł explains Kalina's presence at the MNW this way:
In this case I was looking for someone who would take the subject of John Paul II seriously, I was looking for a significant artist, and Kalina is such a person. I understand that he is politically embedded today, but please show me a world-neutral contemporary artist. I am open to different views, after all, this is how it should be at the National Museum. Let me remind you that at the ball organized by the Association of Friends of the MNW in February this year, Katarzyna Kozyra presented her performance.
But will the controversial installation serve to build the museum's brand? The Warsaw institution has recently undergone a major image crisis due to the actions of its previous director Jerzy Miziołek, who was appointed to the post without competition. Lukasz Gaweł, a former deputy director at the National Museum in Cracow, brought in from Krakow, is expected to repair the damage done by his predecessor. Last week he opened the first exhibition prepared during his tenure, "Poland. The Power of Image."
