Tożsamość narodowa i sztuka: koncepcje "kulturalistyczne" a realia II Rzeczypospolitej

ENThe article is devoted to the presentation of relations between the national identity and art according to the “culturalist concepts of the nation”, as well as to the attempt of juxtaposing these theoretical findings with the reality of the Second Republic of Poland. The “culturalist” approach, popular in Polish sociology, is often presented as resulting from the specificity of experiences of Central and Eastern European nations and it characterises this phenomenon well. The interest in the question of national culture, artistic culture in particular, is clearly present here, which results in the fact that culturalist concepts seem interesting from the point of view of Polish art historians. The author begins the discussion with introductory theoretical findings aiming at determining the scope and the usefulness of the notion of “national identity” in relation to the society of the Second Republic of Poland, to particular artists, and to art. Then, she explains the concept of cultural nations, presents Florian Znaniecki’s views (the father and founder of Polish culturalism) on the nation-forming processes and the participation of artists in those processes, relating the findings to the history of Polish art of the 19th and 20th centuries.The subsequent section of the article is devoted to the presentation of the national identity conception, both in the collective and individual sense, based on the universe of national culture, and the cultural canon proposed by Antonina Kloskowska in particular. It is accompanied by deliberations on the presence of artworks in the Polish canon of national culture and the general knowledge of the canon in the society of the Second Republic of Poland. In the final part, the author presents critical remarks of sociologists on Kloskowska’s conception, who accused her of marginalisation of the sphere of politics, excessive focus on the specificity of the participation of intelligentsia in the high culture. The author draws attention to the fact that such criticism, despite being accurate, has no significance for art historians dealing with the interwar period as, due to their speciality, their studies are limited to the problems of artistic culture and the narrow circle of its creators and audience, which is formed mainly by the intelligentsia.