The book deals with the relations between Polish and European culture from the 14th to the 20th century in the domains of fine arts, sculpture, architecture, music, drama and theatre. It features ten studies by Polish authors and provides a perfect factual introduction into history of art and culture in Europe.

This monograph serves as an introduction to the art, architecture and literary culture of the Eastern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th and 17th centuries. The geographical area under discussion comprises the regions of contemporary Lithuania, western Belarus and western Ukraine. The introduction of the Renaissance and Baroque classical revival into these lands is considered here within the political context of nationalistic and religious loyalties, as well as economic status and class. The central discussion focuses on the issue of national identity and religious loyalty in the inter-relation between the Byzantine inheritance of the Lithuanian and Ruthenian populace and the Polonizing Catholic influences entering from the west. A close study is made of the royal, noble and urban patronage of the richly-diverse visual and literary modes developed in these two centuries, as well as examining the cultural achievements of the many national groups in the Eastern Commonwealth, including Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Poles, Armenians, Jews, Karaite and Islamic Tatars. A major issue explored here is the problem of restoring and conserving the vast amount of devastated material culture in these regions, particularly in Belarus.

This book presents and analyzes artistic interactions both within the Soviet bloc and with the West between 1945 and 1989. During the Cold War the exchange of artistic ideas and products united Europe?s avant-garde in a most remarkable way. Despite the Iron Curtain and national and political borders there existed a constant flow of artists, artworks, artistic ideas and practices. The geographic borders of these exchanges have yet to be clearly defined. How were networks, centers, peripheries (local, national and international), scales, and distances constructed? How did (neo)avant-garde tendencies relate with officially sanctioned socialist realism? The literature on the art of Eastern Europe provides a great deal of factual knowledge about a vast cultural space, but mostly through the prism of stereotypes and national preoccupations. By discussing artworks, studying the writings on art, observing artistic evolution and artists? strategies, as well as the influence of political authorities, art dealers and art critics, the essays in Art beyond Borders compose a transnational history of arts in the Soviet satellite countries in the post war period. ÿ

In the golden years of the baroque era, Poland expressed creative ties to East and West in extraordinary works of fine and decorative art. This illustrated book displays more than 150 pieces that celebrate the cross-cultural richness of Poland's creative output during this period. From the dramatic uniform of the winged hussar complete with feathered wings and leopard skin to traditional portraits of royalty to a Turkish-style beverage service, these splendid objects represent Poland's diversity and breadth at a time when it was the largest land empire in Europe, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. This book is the catalogue for a major exhibition at The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. The Art Institute of Chicago, Huntsville Museum of Art. The San Diego Museum of Art. The Philbrook Museum of Art, and the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

During the most recent conference of the Renaissance Society of America, two sessions were devoted entirely to the Renaissance in Poland. In fifty-nine editions of what is considered the most prestigious international appointment for experts of Renaissance culture, this is the first time that characteristic features of sixteenth-century Poland were the subject of analysis and debate. The interest generated at the conference and the academic value of the contributions convinced the organisers of the panels to ask the speakers to develop and revise their contributions to conform with the conventions of the academic article. The result is a selection of essays that pursue specific pathways in exploring the cultural factors that affected the Renaissance in Poland: influences and originality in Polish literary and artistic production, orthodoxy and dissidence, the circulation of thought and reflection on the Res Publica in the spheres of both politics and philosophy. Adopting a distinctly interdisciplinary approach, the aim of this publication is to focus certain aspects of the Polish Renaissance and the cultural identity of sixteenth-century Poland in relation to the European context.

When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, Eastern Europe saw a new era begin, and the widespread changes that followed extended into the world of art. Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe examines the art created in light of the profound political, social, economic, and cultural transformations that occurred in the former Eastern Bloc after the Cold War ended. Assessing the function of art in post-communist Europe, Piotr Piotrowski describes the changing nature of art as it went from being molded by the cultural imperatives of the communist state and a tool of political propaganda to autonomous work protesting against the ruling powers. Piotrowski discusses communist memory, the critique of nationalism, issues of gender, and the representation of historic trauma in contemporary museology, particularly in the recent founding of contemporary art museums in Bucharest, Tallinn, and Warsaw. He reveals the anarchistic motifs that had a rich tradition in Eastern European art and the recent emergence of a utopian vision and provides close readings of many artists—including Ilya Kavakov and Krzysztof Wodiczko—as well as Marina Abramovic’s work that responded to the atrocities of the Balkans. A cogent investigation of the artistic reorientation of Eastern Europe, this book fills a major gap in contemporary artistic and political discourse.

This groundbreaking work examines four avant-garde groups that emerged in Poland towards the end of World War I; the Poznan Expressionists, the Young Yiddish, the Formists, and the Futurists. It is the first extensive study to bring the four groups together, and in doing so it establishes interconnections between them, and discusses their work in light of socio-political and cultural currents in Poland and wider Europe in the interwar period.

The collection of scientific articles and papers in art, culture, and cultural hetitage of Lebanon, Bulgarian, Romanian and Russian scientists.

Drawing on thousands of historical documents from Polish and Dutch archives, this book explores Cold War cultural exchange between so-called ‘smaller powers’ of this global conflict, which thus far has been predominately explored from the perspective of the two superpowers or more pivotal countries. By looking at how cultural, artistic and scholarly relations were developed between Poland and the Netherlands, Michał Wenderski sheds new light on the history of the Cultural Cold War that was not always orchestrated solely by its main players. Less pivotal states – for example, Poland and the Netherlands – likewise intentionally created their international cultural policies and shaped their cultural exchange with countries from the other side of the Iron Curtain. This study reconstructs these policies and identifies the varying factors that influenced them – both official and less formal. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of the Cold War, post-war European history, international cultural relations, Dutch studies and Polish studies.

Teresa Pac provides a much-needed contribution to the discussion on shared culture as foundational to societal survival. Through the examination of common culture as a process in medieval Kraków, Poznań, and Lublin, Pac challenges the ideology of difference—institutional, religious, ethnic, and nationalistic. Similarly, Pac maintains, twenty-first century Polish leaders utilize anachronistic approaches in the invention of Polish Catholic identity to counteract the country’s increasing ethnic and religious diversity. As in the medieval period, contemporary Polish political and social elites subscribe to the European Union’s ideology of difference, legitimized by a European Christian heritage, and its intended basis for discrimination against non-Christians and non-white individuals under the auspices of democratic values and minority rights, among which Muslims are a significant target.