Historia sztuki II Rzeczypospolitej – perspektywy badawcze

The relatively recent increase in the interest in the arts and architecture of the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939) invites us to ask questions about its future perspectives. This includes the need to search for new methods to read historical sources and to appreciate the period as a pretext to rewrite the history of modern Polish art. Three research postulates are being proposed here. The first one refers to postcolonial studies and indicates that paradoxically postcolonial categories allow us to question the supposedly imitative nature of Polish modernisation. As a negative example, they let us see its unique and original character and demonstrate that comparisons with the accomplishments of ‘centres’ not always produce a valid academic result. The second postulate refers to the appreciation of a different research geography of the arts of the interwar period, both in terms of Poland and the international context. Research on provincial modernisation projects should be continued, by showing the scale of the program of reforms undertaken, but also by emphasizing the importance of the context of the Central and Eastern Europe, where many countries formed after the First World War, from Estonia to Yugoslavia, were in a similar situation to Poland. Points of reference should be sought in other peripheral locations where similar regional modernisation processes took place. Research should also be continued on the polycentric modernism, in which there is no single centre imitated by the provinces, but where various centres of modernity co-exist, implementing modernisation projects resulting from local conditions. The third of the research postulates stems from the significant expansion of source databases as well as the phenomena observed on the borderline of history of art, cultural studies, and anthropology, which are also becoming subjects of study within our discipline. The synthetic and syncretic approach to the past allows us to perceive the evidence of modernisation processes in the research areas previously unexploited by history of art, such as the activities of educational institutions, social organisations, cooperatives, but also public institutions such as political parties and associations. These examples can be multiplied, and paying attention to them serves to emphasize the universal impact of modernisation slogans and their acceptance by a wide spectrum of recipients. It is important to note that not only the avant-garde artists identified themselves with the project of changes, and one should not see in them the only promoters of change that opened Polish culture to the 20th century. Such a broad field of research shows the complementarity of the artistic phenomena on the scene of the Second Polish Republic and their parallel activities to implement the postulates of the ‘modernist reversal’ after 1918.