Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter One: Rytm’s Exhibitions: The ‘Exhibitions Narrative’ Revisited
First Exhibition (1922): Setting up the Key Lines
The First Exhibition: the Foundation? • Novelty and Positive Anticipation • Discussing Stylistic Profile: Compositional Unity • Classicism between Historicism and Formalism • Domesticating the Myth • Rhythmism • Rytm and Pani (1922–1925): Art and Consumption • A New Political Voice • International and ‘Representative’ Ambitions
Second Exhibition (1923): a Disappointment in Kraków
Rytm: a Warsaw Group from Kraków • Rytm between Formism and Sztuka
Third Exhibition (1923): an Alliance with WTAP and Południe
A Pact against Zachęta • A Pact against Impressionism
Fourth Exhibition (1924): Crystallisation of Aesthetic and Political Positions
Formalist Classicism against Impressionism • Turbulent Outcome: Break with Zachęta • The Alliance with the Liberal Literary World: Wiadomości Literackie and Skamander
Fifth Exhibition (1925): Terza Biennale Romana. Rytm Abroad
Organisational Controversy • The 1925 Paris Exhibition
Sixth Exhibition (1926): Farewell to Zak, Rytm’s Founder and its Member from Paris
Seventh to Ninth Exhibitions (1926–1929): Interim
Loss of Stylistic Unity • Back to Painterliness • New State Patronage and the General National Exhibition (PWK) of 1929
Tenth and Eleventh Exhibitions (1930–1932): Back to the Salon
Chapter Two: Rytm and Politics at Home and Abroad
Rytm and the ‘Regime’
‘National’ Art without Pathos. Rytm and Poland’s New
‘National Style’ • Rytm and Sanacja • From Rytm to ‘State-forming Artists’ • The ‘Propaganda’ Argument. Poland’s New Foreign Exhibitions Policy as the Game Changer for Rytm
Rytm and the Dream of Modern Art Patronage
Rytm and Institutions. The Impact of Skoczylas and Pruszkowski • Rytm and the Community Spirit • State Education and Democracy • ‘Widening participation’. Between State Support and Market Currents
Chapter Three: Interwar Classicisms and the Modernist Idiom
The Subject of Classicismand the Problem with Traditionalism • Historical Pastiche of Roman Kramsztyk and Tadeusz Pruszkowski • Traditionalism via St Petersburg. Ludomir Sleńdziński
The ‘New Classicism’ between Innovation and Reaction
‘New Classicism’: the Regress or the Progress of the Parisian Avant-garde? • Political Classicism and Interwar Classicism’s Post-War Framing
Tracing a Reaction Further Back: Modernist Classicism against Impressionism
‘Rhythm – Composition – Classicality’: the Programme of Rytm • The ‘Formal’ Classicism. Classicism as a Category of Form • The ‘Symbolic Classicism’. Museion and the Influence of French Literary Symbolism • Focus on Maurice Denis
Chapter Four: Rytm and the Classicism of Maurice Denis: Structure and Synthesis
Classicism as Formalism of Subordination. The Method of Synthesis • Anti-Academic Classicism of Denis and its Modern Lineage • Rytm and Denis. Identifying the Links • Antoine Bourdelle’s ‘Return to Form’ • Standing with Denis. Rytm and the Persistence of Symbolic Formalism
Chapter Five: ‘Rhythmism’. Rytm and Bergsonism
Between Classicism and Primitivism. Bergsonian Myth inRytm’s Images of Idyll and Dance
The Bergsonian Myth of a Primal Unity. ‘Rhythm’ as la Durée • The Case of Bolesław Leśmian’s Poetry • Rytm’s Idylls • Images of Dance • The Dynamic Dionysian Classicism: Youth and Joyfulness
Between Classicism and Expressionism. ‘Rhythm’ and Bergsonism in Early Formalism
Bergsonism and the Synthetist Symbolic System. Images of Rhythmic Harmony • The Rhythmist Method(s). Between Classicism and Abstract Formal Expression
Bergson Against Manifesto
‘Rhythm’: the ‘Non-Descriptive Label’ and a Marker of Modernity • Against Manifesto, or Bergsonian Anti-Programme
Chapter Six: ‘Moderate’ Modernism or Modernist ‘Totality’? Rytm’s Search for Style
The ‘Style of Rytm’ • The Case ofEugeniusz Zak’s Applied Decoration • Between the Modernist Decorative and Art Deco. Two Legacies of the 1925 Paris Exhibition • Rytm, Monumentality, and the ‘Style of the Epoch’ • Rytm and the Avant-garde in Poland: Two Modernisms
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index of Names
Index of Topics
Appendices
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