Last year, much attention was paid in Europe to events before the 1950s. However, in Poland this anniversary remained almost unnoticed. possibly due to the fact that the past of South European dictatorships seems rather distant to Poland. With 2 derogations.
On July 24, 1974, Konstandinos Karamanlis was Prime Minister. This day is considered the date of the return of democracy in Greece, after years of military rule. Only a fewer months earlier, in April of the same year, the carnation revolution overturned the dictatorship in Portugal. In neighboring Spain, after the death of Gen. Franco, the process of transitioning to the democratic strategy began. In 18 months, the political scenery of Europe has radically changed.
In each of these countries, dictatorship was introduced in a different way and another face was received. In Portugal, it came in 1933 with the announcement of the beginning of Estado Novo and lasted over 4 decades. In Spain, she was initiated by a revolt of troops under General Francisco Franco in 1936, which led to a bloody civilian war. In Greece, the military junta ruled from 1967 to 1974, so compared to the countries of the Iberian Peninsula, their governments could only seem a short episode in the past of the country. However, she made a strong impression on the face of this country and stopped its improvement for a long time.
Events from 1974 to 1975 in European countries were the beginning of another wave of planet democratisation. It besides included changes in Latin American countries that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. And it's this wave, along with the decolonization processes preceding it in years. The 50th and 60th and the dissolution of the USSR and the fall of the east bloc formed a democratic order which until late seemed something apparent and undeniable.
Last year, much attention was paid in Europe to events before the 1950s. However, in Poland this anniversary remained almost unnoticed. possibly due to the fact that the past of South European dictatorships seems rather distant to Poland. With 2 derogations. The first was that in any right-wing and conventional Franco environments, as well as Salazar as anti-communists, they enjoyed and inactive enjoyed the estimity and even admiration. The second was the evolutionary process of transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain, in which both the representatives of the regime's elites and the anti-Frankist opposition played an crucial role. Building the prosperity of its democratisation on dialog with the erstwhile regime, on forgetting the crimes of civilian war and years of dictatorship and on common forgiveness. In Poland, much was said and written about the Spanish transformation, and the book Víctor Pérez-Díaz Return of civilian society in Spainand appeared even in the prestigious, issued by the Foundation to them. Stefan Batorego and the "Democracy: doctrine and Practice" series, introducing the most crucial ideas and issues for discussion. The Spanish model was to be a confirmation of the legitimacy of the Polish political transformation based on circular table arrangements. Paradoxically, an example of the same Spain has shown that it is impossible to erase the past.
One can realize the absence of memory of South European dictatorships in Poland. We have our own experience with 2 bloody totalitarianisms. However, the deficiency of this memory has certain consequences: the difficulty of knowing how the democracies there perceive, for example, capitalism, colonialism, or United States politics. Just as we have a problem knowing the global South, which inactive has a very complicated relation with Spain. We find it hard to realize the political choices made by these countries, their attitude towards Moscow, Beijing and Washington, etc. And as crucial as it is, she showed the war in Ukraine. Kiev, too, rapidly began looking for contacts with countries of the global South and presented the Ukrainian point of view. But not only for these reasons, it is worth remembering dictatorships that fell half a century ago.
On the anniversary of these events, the National Gallery in Athens prepared the exhibition “Democracy”. It was the first specified large exhibition, showing the reactions of artists and artists to authoritarian governments in the 1960s and 1970s in Greece, Spain and Portugal. It featured as many as 140 works by 55 artists, and the exhibition was created in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Barcelona's Museu d’Art Contemporaryi de Barcelona (MACBA) and the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon. These are the most crucial institutions dedicated to contemporary art in the Iberian Peninsula. However, it was not the number of works or organization partners that made a very crucial exhibition. In Athens, for the first time, it was possible to compare the experiences of creators and creators surviving at the same time in authoritarian systems, their strategies of action, artistic choices.
The exhibition besides showed very different aspects of the work that came out of the comfort and safety region guaranteed by artistic institutions and entered into the political and social reality of their country. The titles of the various parts of the exhibition are already said: “Fighting the enemy”, “Resistance”, “Insurrection” or “Arouting”.
The authors of the exhibition recalled the function played by abstract art at the time, as well as social realism referring to the 19th century tradition. The emergence of artistic collectives, the art of body and action in public space, highly hard in authoritarian countries. Finally, the exhibition featured the art of protest on posters and prints. Artists and artists, considered to be key to the improvement of the art of this time, specified as Vlassis Caniaris, Equipo Crunica, Èulàlia Grau and Paula Rego, were shown. However, the choices made by the creators of the exhibition went far beyond the artistic canon of the second half of the 20th century, where emphasis was placed on works referring to avant-garde tradition and included another works valid in the 1960s and 1970s, and present frequently remaining on the side of interest, specified as social realism. The diversity of presented attitudes and artistic choices was the strength of this exhibition. She forced questions about how to talk about the art created in a collision with authoritarian systems and – above all – about the importance of this experience today.
One of the works beginning the exhibition was a image of Gen. Franco by Colombian artist Fernando Botero. It was created in 1986, over a decade after garbage Generalissimos. In the work of the Colombian artist, the body of the dictator grew excessively. It barely fits into a soldier's uniform. The general became grotesque, ridiculous. As if the artist wanted to exposure Franco, repel him from the seriousness and greatness he was surrounded during his life in an authoritative message, but besides in the eyes of supporters. The Athens exhibition recalls the importance of naming the strategy by name and revealing the actual face of authoritarian power. Like uncovering bearable symbols of resistance, like celebrated red carnations, which were not only ubiquitous on graffiti and protest banners in Portugal in 1974 – it is from them that the name "Carnation Revolution" comes from, but they were besides the main motif in the 1969 work of the Greek artist Vlassis Caniaris.
One of the most fascinating topics in the exhibition was the similarities or affinity between artists from Greece, Spain and Portugal, despite the differences in which they had to create. In Athens, among others, there was a sculpture "Espectador et espectadores" from 1972 depicting 1 of Franco's inconspicuous secret police officers made by the Spanish collective Equipo Cronica. It sits with the work of Yannis Gaitis, created at the same time by 5 or Six, who presented nameless informants of the Greek police state. Both are grey, identical, mummified. At the same time, as the exhibition reminds us, cultural change, moral liberalisation, carnalism are no little political. Her evidence is, for example, pop-art, erotic images of Greek artist Nikias Skapinakis "Cleopatra an de Finger of Coastar" (1970) or "Daunghter and Lovers" (1970). And it was in these changes that dictatorships besides saw their threat.
She besides recalled that art can bear witness to what happened. Be a retention medium, like Ana Hatherly's 1975 movie collage “Revolução” in which the artist captured the temper prevailing in Lisbon during the carnation revolution. She walked the streets with a Super 8 camera in her hand and recorded what she saw: chanting crowds, singing, shouting, but besides graffiti and posters. A fascinating image of the city was created during the time of social rebellion. However, Ana Hatherly's movie is more than just a coverage of those events. He creates – like many another works shown in Athens – a valid image of that era.
Watching the exhibition in the National Gallery, the question was whether we could tell about Polish experience of creating art in contra-dicta. First of all, from the 1980s, erstwhile after the martial law was declared an independent second (and then even third) circulation of culture was created, in which artists and artists belonging to very different generations and connected with very different artistic traditions. After 1989, respective exhibitions were held, respective publications were published, but in fact it has not been possible to describe this experience convincingly, The last specified effort was the unsuccessful exhibition “No censorship. Polish independent art of the 1980s" organized in 2022 in the Warsaw Ujazdowski Castle. It proved to be unsuccessful not only due to the boycott of any of the creators and creators who did not agree with the presentation of their works in an institution which at the time was able to present artists and artists rightly accused of anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia. Nor due to the inept arrangement of the exhibition itself. First of all, it was not possible to show at this exhibition why the creation then created is worth reminding today. The key question is: why return to the times erstwhile artists and artists had to face authoritative systems?
The creators of the Athens exhibition emphasize that it was not their aim simply to remind the heroic past and commemorate the historical anniversary. We request to talk about this experience, due to the fact that now, as Syrago Tsiar's curator writes in the text accompanying the exhibition, we live in a time of increasingly crucial extremist voices, falling election turnout and increasing distrust of the institution. It was to remind of the request to defend democracy. And he stressed that present museums and art play an crucial role, "allowing deep commitment to images, ideas and critical questions that form our social interactions and coexistence."
Therefore, we must return to past events and ask questions about their meaning today. What lessons can be drawn from them and what artistic practices can be appealed to. In Poland we besides have another, so far unspoken experience: 2015-2023. Then, besides through artists and artists, images and words defined or redefined reality. Black umbrellas, white roses, candles, a chain of light – for 15,000 people in Poznań creating the inscription “veto” or a poster by Luka Rayski with the inscription “Constitution” – not only did they happen well in public space, but they influenced social attitudes. The creators and creators documented what was happening then. Established in 2019, the Public Protests Archive collected unique visual documentation of Polish demonstrations held after 2015. Artists and artists, including Karolina Jabłońska, Joanna Rajkowska, Jadwiga Sawicka and Wilhelm Sasnal, worked on the situation on our east border. Anna Grzymała and Adam Kozicki created images of state force against its citizens. A Consortium of Posterist Practices on May 6, 2020, a fewer days before the government's planned presidential election (finally cancelled), they organized the transfer of a immense banner/envelope with the slogan: "LIVE NO, DIEREĆ" (reminiscent of the danger of life during the pandemic). Their "Letter" was a repetition of Tadeusz Kantor's 1967 happenings, and the unobvious usage of 1 of the loudest events in Polish art past was a very innovative action. And these are just a fewer examples of creativity created in consequence to the authoritarian temptations of the power of that time.
Polish experience of 2015-2023 reminds that democracy is not given forever. There is besides another paradox, well captured by Philip Oltermann in the text about the Athens exhibition published in "Guardian". Under authoritarian rule, artists and artists proclaimed praise for parliamentary democracy. But after their fall, they rapidly forgot these praises. “The revolutions make better images than institutions,” Oltermann bitterly concludes. We may yet request to learn to talk as interestingly about democracy as about the fight for its introduction. And get a small loyalty at least to liberal institutions that make her bone.
* Democracy, National Gallery Alexandros Sooutsos Museum, Athens, 11.07.2024-2.02.2025, curator: Syrago Tsiara
