Kamień, bluszcz i zmysły: Ogród jako performans i rzecz (spojrzenie fenomenologiczne)

Marta Leśniakowska

doi:10.36744/k.3391

Tone, Ivy and the Senses

The Garden as a Performance and a Thing (Phenomenological View)

Artykuł recenzowany

Marta Leśniakowska

marta.lesniakowska@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9847-6765

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36744/k.3391

Abstract

The text is the first phenomenological analysis of one of the leading park developments of the 20th century: the park in Żelazowa Wola, the birthplace of Frederic Chopin. Starting from current methodological strategies that analyze the garden from the position of ecological engagement and ecocriticism, the author focuses on a materialist approach, derived from the axiological theory of Alois Riegl. She asks what role artifacts and their materiality have in the garden. The key question here is how the garden is as a thing. That is, how it emotionally engages viewers. Żelazowa Wola (1932–1939 design by arch. Franciszek Krzywda-Polkowski) is a model exemplum of this as a fictionalized staging whose formal, that is, sensual but also semantic solutions compile modernist discourse with the neo-romantic New Regionalism and academicism of the 1930s, and embed it in the political backdrop of state ideology. The punctum that organizes this semantically complex creation, with Masonic symbols encoded in it, is the so-called “Chopin Mansion”. The building was programmed according to the assumptions of the Manor House style – the basic, next to the Zakopane style, “Polish” national style, which reworked identity myths and superstitions during the period of fascist Sanation and the new management of tradition with its nationalist cult. Żelazowa Wola is a Gesamtkunstwerk creation, where the atmosphere of a “national idyll”, a “Polish” arcadia was programmed in an exemplary way, sublimely producing the desired reactions of the viewer. The form of the architecture, colors, smell, sound (Chopin’s music + nature’s voices), touch – the small space of the park has been arranged in such a way that it has a strong affective impact on the senses, the viewer’s body and his emotions, which in performance theory is defined as an involved and engaging action.

Keywords:

garden, Żelazowa Wola, Fryderyk Chopin

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Published

2025-02-05

Cited by

Leśniakowska, M. (2025) “Tone, Ivy and the Senses: The Garden as a Performance and a Thing (Phenomenological View)”, Konteksty, 347(4), pp. 141–147. doi: 10.36744/k.3391.

Authors

Marta Leśniakowska
marta.lesniakowska@ispan.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9847-6765

Art historian and critic, Professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, university lecturer, visiting professor. She conducts research from a transdisciplinary and anthropological-cultural perspective in the fields of theory and history of architecture, visual culture of the 19^th and 21^st centuries, methodology of art history, and new art history in the perspective of the new humanities. Author of ten books and numerous scientific texts, as well as articles in the field of art criticism and dissemination of visual culture. Promoter of ten doctorates in the discipline of Art Sciences and more than a hundred master’s students. She teaches at 1^st and 2^nd level studies, doctoral studies, and postgraduate studies. Member of expert and review teams of, among others, the Ministry of Education and Science/Ministry of Science and Higher Education (in the programmes Diamond Grant, Pearls of Science, Juventus, National Programme for the Development of the Humanities), Foundation for Polish Science, advisory teams to the President of the City of Warsaw for the Cultural Heritage of Warsaw and Historical Art Workshops; member of programme boards of many cultural institutions (including, until 2017, the Zachęta National Gallery of Art) and foundations related to artistic culture. Curator of ten art exhibitions, especially of photography. Juror of exhibitions and competitions, i.a., at the Theatre Institute and the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning. She held scholarships from the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Awarded the Bene Merenti medal for outstanding teaching achievements (2021) and the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (2014). In addition to her academic work, she practises photography art; her works are in private collections at home and abroad, and in the National Museum in Wrocław, and the Museum in Bydgoszcz.