Were they really “rebels”? The Munich exhibition “Silent Rebels. Polish Symbolism around 1900”

In the “Hidden Powers” section, the exhibition returns to a particular path taken by Poland and discusses the recourse to “myths” regarding Polish history, according to the exhibition room text, and the conscious mythologisation of Polish culture, historical facts and individual people through painting.[45] In a similar way to the Polish homeland landscape, traditional farming life was a recurring topos for national awareness of a nation that did not have its own state. A childlike satyr playing to a farm girl on the panpipes (“Art on the Farm”, 1896) and a goddess from the realm of the dead in a suit of armour and with a scythe, who closes the eyes of a praying farmer (“Death”, 1902, Fig. 17 . ), both by Malczewski, raise Polish farm life to the sphere of a myth that idealises that which is primeval and of eternal validity. Wojciech Weiss created a visionary image, which was augmented into a dynamic scene, in which “Scarecrows” (1905), also a symbol of primitive farm life, are chasing a barefooted shepherdess. 

The feminine allegory of Polonia, the personification of Poland, also became the subject of mythologisation. In the painting by Malczewski, “In the Dust Storm” (1893–1895, Fig. 18 . ), she is shown in an open field, with bound hands, lifted up from the ground in a rapid swirl, leaving her children behind her. The artist also painted numerous works showing mythological scenes and individual figures who were well known from Polish literature of the Romantic period, and whose origins lay in local legends, fairy tales and religious texts. The tragedy “Lilla Weneda” (1839/40) by Juliusz Słowacki, as well as studies by contemporary historians, who identified the Celts as being one of the original ethnic groups in Poland, inspired him to create a portrait of the Wenendan king “Derwid” (1902, Fig. 19 . ), who was blinded by his enemies and who listens to the sounds of the magical harp that has been taken away from him. This mythology was also a subject of interest for Wyczółkowski, who painted a “Petrified Druid” (1894), who was thought to be situated in another mythological place, on a mountain in the Tatras. His painting, “Sarcophagus” (1895), brought the royal relief portraits of Kasimir the Great and Jadwiga of Anjou in Wawel Cathedral so much to life that they appeared to be on the brink of returning. Unlike the historicist painters, who depicted mythological themes through generally static everyday scenes, such subjects were now furnished with so many contextual, emotional and creative levels that they were able to generate a new wave of enthusiasm for folkloristic and nationalist sentiment. 

Even aside from all forms of mythologisation, rural people, their colourful traditions and their deep religious beliefs were regarded as the main pillars of Polish national consciousness. For the leading philosopher and literary critic Stanisław Brzozowski, Catholicism served to provide a sense of order, both for the individual and for the life of the cultural community. Religion was a “supernatural, superhuman fact [...] a living thing”, as is reflected in the title of the sixth section of the exhibition (room text: “Tradition and Religion”).[46] For numerous artists, both Catholic and Jewish, the “religiousness of the people was an example of the living force of tradition”.[47] Their preferred pictorial subjects included scenes from places of worship (Wyczółkowski: “Christ on the Mount of Olives”, 1896), people praying and rapt in devotion (Aleksander Grodzicki: “The Praying Jew”, 1893), as well as Aleksander Gierymski’s silent scene showing two grief-stricken parents sitting in front of their peasant hut next to the lid of a child’s coffin decorated with a cross (“Peasant Coffin”, 1894, Fig. 20 . ). As well as being a pupil of Malczewski, Hofman also studied at the Ècole des beaux-arts in Paris at the turn of the century under the late classicist and orientalist Jean-Léon Gérôme, who by then was already a very old man. Hofman aimed to do nothing less than generate a renewal of religious art; one painting shows a kneeling peasant confessing in an open field before a weather-worn figure of Christ (“Confession”, 1906).[48]