text:
CENSORSHIP
IN POLISH ART
AFTER 1989
CENSORSHIP
IN POLISH ART
AFTER 1989 :

Art, Law, Politics

JAKUB DĄBROWSKI &
ANNA DEMENKO

Translation by Łukasz Mojsak and Aleksandra Sobczak

**Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication**

Title: Censorship in Polish art after 1989 : art, law, politics / Jakub Dąbrowski, Anna Demenko ; Łukasz Mojsak, Aleksandra Sobczak, translators.

Other titles: Cenzura w sztuce polskiej po 1989 roku. English

Names: Dąbrowski, Jakub, 1977- author. | Demenko, Anna, author. | Mojsak, Łukasz, translator. | Sobczak, Aleksandra, translator.

Description: Translation of: Cenzura w sztuce polskiej po 1989 roku. | Original Polish published in two volumes. English translation is one volume. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190057106 | Canadiana (ebook) 2019005719X | ISBN 9781771614641 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771614658 (HTML) | ISBN 9781771614665 (Kindle)

Subjects: LCSH: Arts—Censorship—Poland—History—20th century. | LCSH: Arts—Censorship—Poland—History— 21st century. | LCSH: Art, Polish—20th century. | LCSH: Art, Polish—21st century. | LCSH: Censorship—Poland—History—20th century. | LCSH: Censorship—Poland—History—21st century.

Classification: LCC NX180.C44 D3313 2019 | DDC 700.1/03—dc23

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a review who may quote brief passage in a review.

Published by Mosaic Press, Oakville, Ontario, Canada, 2019.

MOSAIC PRESS, Publishers

Copyright © Jakub Dąbrowski, Anna Demenko and Fundacja Kultura Miejsca, 2014

Translation Copyright © Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie), 2019

We acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council
for their support of our publishing program

MOSAIC PRESS
1252 Speers Road, Units 1 & 2
Oakville, Ontario L6L 5N9
phone: (905) 825-2130

info@mosaic-press.com
The publication of this book was funded with the generous support of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education' National Programme for the Development of Humanities for the program years 2016 - 2018

**TABLE OF CONTENTS**

**Introduction – Everything is Censorship**

**I The Immunity of the Artist and of Art – A Critical Analysis**

1.1 Sources of the Problem

The Venetian Precedent

From Craftsman to Genius

Towards the Autonomy of Art

Autonomy under the Attack of the Avant-garde

The Law and Changes in Art

1.2 Types of Defence

Estrangement Tactic

Formalist Defence

The Canonic Tactic

Other Defence Tactics

1.3 Defence Tactics in Court Practice

Cincinnati v. CAC

The Case of Grosz and Herzfeld

1.4. Summary

**II Legal Aspects of the Freedom of Art in Poland (with Anna Demenko)**

2.1 Terminological comments

2.2 The Concept of Art in the Polish Legal System

The Institutional Approach

2.3 Constitutional Guarantees for the Freedom of Art

2.4 Freedom of Art and Polish Criminal Law

Preface

Art as a Feature of a Prohibited Act

Art from the Perspective of the Objective Side of the Prohibited Act

The Sense of a Work of Art

The Artistic Aim as an Element of the Subjective Side of the Prohibited Act

Art as a Circumstance Excluding the Criminality of an Act

Preface

Art as a Circumstance Excluding Unlawfulness

Art as a Circumstance Excluding Culpability

Art and the Social Harmfulness of an Act

Art in the Context of Chosen Criminal Offences

Insult to Religious Feelings

\- The Case of Dorota Nieznalska

\- The Case of Adam Darski

Pornography

\- The Case of Krzysztof Kuszej

Safeguarding Honour and Dignity

\- Defamation and Insult

\- Safeguarding the Honour of State Officials

\- Hate Speech

2.5 Summary

**III From the History of Censorship in Polish Art after 1989**

3.1 Preface

Censorship in the Polish People's Republic (1945–1989) – A Censorship Linkage

Dissolution of the GUKPPiW

3.2 Transition Period (1989–1992)

Characteristics

Summary

3.3 Formative Period (1993 – 1998)

Pyramid of Animals

Gazeta Wyborcza on Art

Anti-Antibodies

From Spontaneous Reaction to Cold Calculation

The Morphology of a Scandal. Scandal as a "stimulacrum"

"Of all the arts the most important for us is the cinema"

Circle the Wagons, Start Acting

Councilors Strike

Corporations Strike

Institutional Context

Summary

3.4 Qualitative Escalation Period – Heroic (1999–2002)

The "pyramidal" misunderstanding continues

AWS v. AMS

How To Train Curators

The Ninth Hour of The Daring

From Empathy to Iconoclasm

The Case of Nieznalska

Defence of the Artist

Interpretations of Passion

Accompanying Events

Offensive on Other Frontlines

"Dickart" – or the Press on Contemporary Art

The Field of Art – the Battlefield

Recapitulation Time

3.5 Times of Quantitative Escalation (2003–2007)

"Operation Arsenał"

A League of Their Own

A Definite NO! to Homosexuals

National Symbols – History-oriented Politics – History

Critique of Those in Government

New Left Wing, New Censorship

In Lieu of a Summary

Culture Wars

Moral Panic

3.6 Period of Stabilization (2007–2010)

Insult to Religious Feelings

We Keep Saying NO to Homosexuals

History-oriented Politics Continued

It Is Not the End Yet...

**IV A list of censorship cases**

**List of Abbreviations**

**Bibliography**

**Author Biographies**

**Index**
**INTRODUCTION – EVERYTHING IS CENSORSHIP!**

by Jakub Dąbrowski

Everything is censorship! In a commercial aired on Polish TV of a drug "that supports proper functioning of the liver and its detoxification", the serious voice of a popular actress declares that if you "censored of all the items on the menu that's bad for our liver, life would lose its flavour". Simultaneously, we can see on the screen how "Polish culinary specialties" magically disappear from the table laden with food ("because they are too heavy"), and white plates with the red inscription "censorship" appear over the emptied plates. Of course, not for long, as the wonderful remedy advertised obliterates the liver ban.

How did the specialist term for preventive control of information dissemination at the state level become associated with almost every "no" of our life? The answer to this question is not obvious. It is possible that the most important thing here is the feeling that we are not allowed to do something, to express ourselves in a certain way. We focus on the experience of the ban and then identify it with the concept of censorship. We do not ponder on the sources, justifications and nature of the phenomenon, our identification is made automatically on the principle of simple homeopathy. But why is this happening? Maybe because various forms of expression are an indispensable part of human nature. Subconsciously, we feel resistance to any attempt to limit something that is not only a cultural need, but as in the case of food, even a physiological need that permeates every moment of our lives on different planes. Are we not our own permanent interlocutors? At the same time, dwelling on the justification and legitimacy of a ban is a difficult task - it engages deeply held, irreducible beliefs and emotions associated with them, and despite intellectual effort, it usually ends up getting tangled up in aporias. When someone commits a burglary or a murder, the case seems simple – the act can be proved with relative ease, and the personal injury done is obvious; whereas, when someone expresses something in a symbolic manner, we fall into a net of doubt arising from linguistic ambiguity, individual sensitivity, our cherished values, the relations between good taste and real damage, etc. These problems escalate when the statement is of an artistic nature, especially when it comes to weighing the interests, where on the scale we have freedom of artistic expression and freedom to enjoy the products of culture on the one side, and protection of values violated by the work on the other side. In Western tradition, art is a sacralised sphere that enjoys special privileges. Should anyone interfere in this uncanny world? In a "conversation" with a work of art, something more is often perceived - something that the artist was not aware of when creating the work, and that which the recipient cannot fully grasp. Thus, it is difficult to say what values were violated, to what extent, and if at all. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the reception of art is historically changeable - how many works considered today as the indisputable canon and top achievements of our civilization were threatened with censorship yesterday? How can we pass judgments _beyond reasonable doubt_ in such circumstances?

The phenomenon of broadening the meaning of the word censorship is observed not only in popular culture; but also in non-legal scholarly discourse, all limitations of the freedom of expression, or their attempts, even those that result from legal limiting clauses characteristic of liberal democracies, are usually associated with censorship.1 But associating the concept of censorship with any prohibitions imposed by substantially perceived power, which in this way interferes with the continuum of our life – free by assumption – is only one aspect of the phenomenon. The other is the question of whether the discursive sphere is shaped only through an official ban? What if life, our identity and communication possibilities (and therefore the whole sense of the continuum) are not free at all, if they immanently and unconditionally depend on the rules of the game (censorship), which have no substantial source and exist everywhere and always?

In democratic states, there is not such a harsh and formalized control of the information flow as in totalitarian or authoritarian states, but in both cases there are countless clusters of interests and power relations that are part of complex economic, political, ideological, cultural systems or social consensus. Of course, in the art world their existence is also ubiquitous. We will not get financing for our project if we do not meet the ideological expectations of a public sector sponsor or the commercial criteria of a private one; we will not be invited to participate in an exhibition if we criticize the activity of the manager of the institution that organizes it, or if we do not follow the ideologies, trends, fashions, styles, communication codes, etc. that dominate in the art world. We will not distribute an unmasking work if we are threatened with a lawsuit by a powerful corporation - examples can be given ad infinitum. All this makes our messages a resultant of conscious calculations, unconscious fears and desires, and technical editing processes rather than pure products of the Cartesian "Self". Self-censorship is undoubtedly the most common and the most difficult phenomenon to recognize, it concerns not only artistic creation, but our entire life.2 The introduction of such a context means blunting the traditionally sharp division that occurs in the discourse on censorship into the "good" ones who are the protectors of freedom and diversity and the "bad" ones who want to limit this freedom and diversity, and transferring deliberations to a different plane, or planes - to be more exact.

The American literary critic Richard Burt, in referring to the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu, emphasizes that censorship does not operate only in one direction along the axis between the repressed and the free, but rather more fundamentally, by determining what can be legitimately debated. Discourse involves two types of restrictions; first of all, an open, official division into heterodoxy (discourses that would circulate freely if there was no traditional censorship) and orthodoxy (that which falls within the controlled, official legal and social framework); secondly, a hidden, unconscious, structural division into the realm of the disputed (orthodoxy + heterodoxy) and the undisputed, which is taken for granted (doxa), so that heterodoxy stands in opposition not only to orthodoxy, but also to doxa, which, I would say, censors at the "pre-preventive" level. The main political struggle concerns what may belong to the debated area, the doxa: the subordinate classes try to push back the limits of the obvious and expose its arbitrariness, while the dominant classes have an interest in defending the integrity of doxa or ultimately establishing, on their terms, an imperfect substitute of doxa – orthodoxy.3 Heterodoxy aims both to expand the scope of the disputable and to reduce the orthodox control and delegitimate it as much as possible; simultaneously, heterodoxy attempts to legitimate itself.4 What is more, according to Burt, opposing censorship does not guarantee diversity free from interference, but refers to diversity as a criterion of exclusion and inclusion. Paradoxically, calling someone a censor means excluding them from the dialogue. Therefore, diversity or freedom of expression cannot be completely opposed to censorship, as diversity will always be regulated (exclusions are essentially built-in), whoever is opposed to this diversity will be excluded. Burt stresses that such delegitimation is not synonymous with traditionally understood censorship as it is a distortion and displacement rather than a form of direct destruction. But it is also not something else. As a negative exercise of authority, delegitimation cannot be completely separated from more direct means of control such as a ban on the dissemination of certain materials.5

In Burt's considerations, the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu (who together with Michel Foucault should be regarded as the fathers of critical revisions of traditional approaches to censorship) are a reference point. Bourdieu's understanding of the censorship structuring the functioning of the "journalistic field" (especially television)6, by applying cautious analogies, can help analyze the mechanisms affecting artistic creation within the field of art. Bourdieu does not define censorship synthetically, but his deliberations concern all the factors that influence the communication capabilities of a given subject, both in the negative sense (what is not allowed) and the positive sense (what is expected). These factors are both external and internalized (unconscious) and result from the specificity of the structure of a given field of symbolic production. Therefore, journalists choose only what can fit into their conceptual categories and world view, which is in line with the logic of their field. However, the autonomy of this field is subject to enormous pressure - the journalistic field is much more dependent on external forces than other fields of cultural production, especially on the rules governing the economic field: market judgments resulting from audience ratings, but also strongly dependent on the ownership structure, which through economic interests and unofficial relations with the political field translate into the quality of information (the loss of autonomy through subjection to external forces is called heteronomy). At the same time, the stronger the media are subjected to economic pressure, the more they affect other fields in a similar way, which is dangerous because they, especially television, have enormous power to produce the so-called reality effect. In my considerations, the concept of field autonomy developed by Bourdieu is also important, i.e. the situation in which the recipients of the producers of a given field are solely their competitors, who themselves are able to produce on similar terms. At the same time, according to Zhdanov law formulated by Bourdieu, "the more a cultural producer is autonomous, rich in specific capital from a given field and exclusively integrated into the restricted market in which the only audience is competitors, the greater the inclination to resist. Conversely, the more producers aim for the mass market the more they have to collaborate with the powers that be – State, Church, or Party, and, today, journalism and television..."7 The autonomy of the field of art is related to the concept of the autonomy of art (i.e. the emergence of art for art's sake, the primacy of form – pictorial / literary quality, etc.), but it is not equivalent to it. The latter, according to Bourdieu, is rather a part of the historical process, it plays the role of the _abstractor of quintessence_ , enabling full emancipation of the field.8

The different ways of using the concept of censorship is a great methodological problem. Looking for its solution, I was aided by the context – the circumstances determining the place of the subject from which they analyze the problem. First of all, this book deals with the cultural phenomena that in Poland are either "talked about" in columns, news, petitions, etc., or have been scarcely elaborated on: there are no basic studies, detailed and in-depth analyses of individual phenomena, as well as comprehensive approaches both uni- and multidisciplinary. Therefore, in my research, I had to start from the basics. Secondly, the narrative was supposed to concern two areas: the law and art history. The inclusion of legal issues calls for addressing censorship in a rather traditional way, i.e. as a legal, preventive or repressive prohibition of the dissemination of a particular or certain type of message. However, such an approach would not offer a substantial amount on the freedom of art in Poland. Therefore, I decided to complicate the concept of censorship and treat it eclectically, as any intentional action that can lead directly or indirectly9, in a preventive or repressive (consequent) way, to limiting the freedom to create or distribute a work or a certain type of work. Such an approach includes both activities based on legal regulations, as well as actual activities that are both lawful and illegal. Since I simultaneously verify the reasons, the context, the scope and the consequences of restrictions, I sometimes refer to more complex approaches to censorship in which the productive aspects of bans are taken into account, and the struggle of ortho- and heterodoxy is extended by the pre-preventive function of doxa. Of course, most of the considerations could be vertically expanded, but this is a task to be fulfilled in another book. Thirdly, the situation in Poland is so peculiar that it requires a specific approach to the problem. In Poland, the Enlightenment and liberal tradition is superficial; whereas, religious imperatives and prohibitions have strongly influenced us for generations. Our mentality is entangled in historical traumas and the legacy left behind by the totalitarian regime. The Kantian metaphysics of the transcendental subject and the revolutionary-bourgeois transformations of the 18th and 19th centuries had to "give way to the metaphysics of insurrections and struggles for the restitution of independent state" in Poland and in the field of culture - to the dominance of the irrational romantic tradition, the paradigm which determines our national and state identity to the present day10. Currently, we live in a country that is ethnically homogeneous on the one hand and immersed in extremely severe cultural conflicts on the other hand. A country that is modernizing its economy gradually11, but remains ideologically conservative, in which the left never had a significant political representation, and the Catholic Church constantly maintains its influence. The parties that declare themselves left-wing or liberal (in the European and not in the American sense of this word) remain, in principle, crypto-conservative. They resign from modernization-oriented social and cultural projects which support the secularization of the state and the law, granting of rights to sexual minorities, emancipation of women, liberalization of the discursive sphere, and openness to ethnic and national minorities. These circumstances affect the way the agon operates and its legal framework, which in a way compels me to stand up for something that is lacking - post-Enlightenment diversity and a liberal tradition.

The latter rejects the position according to which people have the right to say in public only what the majority approves of, and possible limitations on freedom of expression should be determined not only according to the so-called harm principle (any freedom is to be limited by the state in a situation in which its use violates the reasonable interests of other subjects), but also according to the values which this freedom is to serve. Today, it is emphasized that an increased level of protection of freedom of expression is a necessary condition for the proper functioning of democracy and self-government - citizens in a democratic state should have unrestricted opportunity to obtain the information that could affect the choices made in the process of collective decision-making (the so-called idea of democratic self-government). In democratic societies, the level of protection of freedom of expression in relation to public matters should be increased (and the harm principle "suspended"), in comparison, for example, with the level of protection of speech leading to "private" defamation. Statements on private matters (irrelevant to public life) of course also deserve to be protected by law, but if there is a reasonable suspicion that they violate the reasonable interests of other subjects (e.g. "private" defamation), then they can be subject to restrictions according to the basic harm principle. In other words, the protection of freedom of expression going beyond the harm principle becomes justified if "the statement is sufficiently 'central' from the point of view of the values that determine the raison d'être of the principle of freedom of speech."12 At the same time, it is worth emphasizing that there are no premises for broadening the limits of freedom of expression only in the case of artists. The focus of this work on the freedom of art results from the objective nature of the medium of communication, and not from the subjective differentiation of the rights and duties of artists and the rest of the society. Although the liberal doctrine of freedom of expression attempts to set the limits of this freedom as wide as possible, it does not make it an absolute value, nor does it assign any special prerogatives to art as a _sui generis_ expression. The problem of the protection of freedom of expression is related not so much to the type or form of expression, but to the issues of democracy, public affairs and self-government that are external to these concepts. Thus, art could deserve special protection (higher than other types of expression) not because it is art, but because it would raise important public issues.

Of course, I am aware that my declarations are of a political nature, but I reject the possibility of writing "from the outside" of the discourse, from some immaculate, apolitical position of the propagators of the equally immaculate idea of freedom of expression. I am also aware that I am somewhat in an ambiguous situation, because by calling some activity "censorship" and advocating diversity and dispute, I place myself, as Burt stresses, in a specific continuum along with the ban which is being criticized. However, I believe that democratic processes, self-government and social diversity should be supported in Poland because they remain in short supply in this country. At the same time, I would like to emphasize that I am not fighting for uncensored, pure expressions of culture. I analyze the mechanisms that - as Helen Freshwater13 rightly notes - are considered by the authors themselves and part of the general public to be a reprehensible pressure blocking the form or content of communication desired at a given moment. The reduction of legal prohibitions that I am postulating, of course, will not lead to complete freedom in the discursive sphere - it will only be a modification of some official barriers limiting something that is always formed in a pre-preventive, more elusive manner. But does the fact that there is no uncensored text mean that we do not have to fight something that we recognize as an attempt to influence what we want to express? It is also worth noting that supervision manifested in excessive legal regulations makes it difficult to critically analyze the discursive sphere - for example, the need to fight prosecutors or oppressive officials obscures the problem of pre-preventive censorship and keeps it in the sphere of doxa (this was the case in Poland during the Communist times). During cultural wars, the emotions evoked by official prohibitions and the aura of media sensation distract the attention of authors and recipients from many important issues, such as institutional critique, the precarious working conditions of artists, or class inequalities. In many situations, it is thanks to the liberal guarantees of freedom of expression that a critical analysis of social relations is at all possible — one can imagine such regulations that will make it difficult to demystify doxa. This happens when the breaking of social taboos or unmasking of hidden power relationships lead to triggering legal disciplinary systems.

***

The book is divided into four parts - the first is dedicated to the analysis of the notion of immunity of art; the second is devoted to its functioning in the Polish criminal law and criminal provisions limiting the freedom of art; the third discusses the historical aspects of the phenomenon of censorship of art in Poland after 1989, and the fourth is a list of censorship cases. All the parts are relatively autonomous, but it does not mean that they were created separately. They are rather interrelated and permeate one another on various levels. The starting point for the analysis was drawing up a list of art censorship cases in Poland. It should be emphasized that it is not a completely original list as I referred to the work of Jaros _ł_ aw Mina _ł_ to14 when creating it, which then became the basis for the list published by the Indeks 73 initiative, a grassroots social project that for several years had provided invaluable support for the protection of artistic freedom of expression in Poland. Unfortunately, the website of Indeks 73 has not been updated for many years15. Both lists - Mina _ł_ to's and the one that used to be updated by Indeks 73 – have been supplemented. Their items were reviewed, expanded and enriched by sources and several dozen new entries were added. The new list includes various activities aimed at limiting the freedom of art (its creation, dissemination and access to it). Although the list of censorship cases is the most comprehensive list of this type existing in Poland, it will always be fragmentary: it is difficult to disclose or even name all the cases in which for "some" reasons a work was not created, was not shown or its shape was changed. Nevertheless, the attempt to include the collected evidence in the form of qualitative and quantitative breakdowns has been made and various dependencies and dynamics of the studied phenomenon have been investigated on their basis (see pg 448)16.

With regard to the law, my considerations relate primarily to criminal and constitutional law. Civil and administrative law have been omitted. I also omit the conflicts between the protection of property and artistic freedom in the context of street art and the issues related to intellectual property - these problems are so specific that they deserve a separate study and would immensely complicate the structure of the work that is already very complex17. I focus on visual arts, but in the quantitative breakdowns and some discussions, different areas of activity have been taken into account. There were three reasons for this: first of all, the law does not distinguish between the genres of artistic creation and assigns the same scope of restrictions or protection to all of them; secondly, the boundaries between various artistic forms undergo constant erosion; thirdly, visual arts do not function in a cultural vacuum. When I consider this to be significant for the essence of this book, I also reach for examples bordering visual arts and visual culture. I define art by referring to the institutional context of the functioning of a given product and intention of the author. The term "critical art" often appearing on the pages of this book is defined as artistic work whose purpose is not, as in the case of classical avant-garde, to change social reality in the name of some utopia, but only to reveal the hidden power relations functioning in the society18. Critical art rejects the idea of autonomy and universality and engages in the "here and now" instead, using heterogeneous formal means. At the same time, the term refers to two phenomena: the artistic trend which gained a strong position in the Polish art world in the 1990s and began to fade at the beginning of the 21st century and a specific creative attitude occurring regardless of time and place. The concept of engaged art includes both the critical approach and other manifestations of art aspiring to influence the "here and now" or comment on it directly. The concept of avant-garde, depending on the context, refers to the historical avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, replaced after WW2 by the neo-avant-garde, or is understood ahistorically as a field of artistic experimental production, contesting the dominant and broadly recognized tendencies in art and mass culture.

In the opening chapter of the book I analyzed the development of immunity of the artist and art throughout history. In other words, an attempt was made to answer the question about the historical origins and contemporary implications of the conviction prevalent in Western tradition that "more is permitted in art".

The subsequent section is specific because in the Polish version of the book (published as Volume 1 _Aspekty prawne –_ [ _Legal aspects_ ]) it was created in collaboration with Anna Demenko - advocate and Doctor of Criminal Law at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. I emphasize the co-authorship with an appropriate annotation in the title of the chapter and the change of first person singular narration into first person plural. In this chapter, we discuss how the concept of "art" functions or should function under the Polish criminal law, bearing in mind the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of art. We focus on two issues: first of all, on determining the content of the work of art as an important element of objective features of the prohibited act. Secondly, on the so-called countertype of art, i.e. the issue of excluding the unlawfulness of behaviour that is deemed as artistic. Taking into consideration the findings made in this respect, in the further part of the chapter we discuss selected areas of the conflict between art and criminal law related to the protection of religious feelings, pornography, protection of honour and dignity and hate speech.

While the legal part, for understandable reasons, takes into account the current legal status (mid-2017) and the latest case law, for the time frame of the third part, its relation to the list of censorship cases included at the end of the book is important. It can be said that the list took on the form of a chronicle, which is traditionally regarded by historians as an intermediate link between the non-narrative form of the annals and the contemporary form of historiographical narrative (proper history). The annals is a chronologically arranged record of dates and a list of corresponding events, which lacks a social centre authorizing the selection of events and the telling of a story. The chronicle, which originates from the annals, gains such a centre, but is still regarded as an imperfect form of historiographical writing as it does not end with a moralizing conclusion. In the chronicle of censorship cases such a centre, a metaphysical point of reference that transforms the difference into similarity, is, of course, the dialectic of what can and what cannot be expressed. The chronicle ends in 2010, so at this point the third part (historical and analytical) must also end. The adoption of such a scope enabled a minimal analytical distance (the Polish texts were written in the years 2010 - 2014), but as a matter of fact nothing has happened since then which in traditional historical works could be deemed as a point concluding the narration: no peace deal was signed, none of the regimes fell, no breakthrough law was passed. After Hayden White, it can be said then that the study breaks off as if _in media res_. This is due to the fact that censorship (not only pre-preventive, but also ordinary prohibitions) exists as long as there is communication and you will never run out of events worth noting. It can be said that the struggle with censorship will not end - just as with the moving Annals of St. Gall described by White - until the biblical Second Coming. Therefore, even though the story was concluded with a moralizing narrative, it did not really close anything, the moment of interrupting the narration was a random point in a continuously fluctuating, endless struggle against prohibitions19.

The third part of the book begins with a brief description of censorship during the time of the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939) and the Polish People's Republic (1944-1989). In the latter case, the activity of the Main Office of Control of Press, Publications and Shows (GUKPPiW) was only broadly outlined (there is no research on this subject in Polish art history), and the sources of the phenomena which have been actively shaping the freedom of art in Poland till the present day are discussed in more detail instead. Thereafter, on the basis of the collected factual material, an attempt is made to capture the characteristic, qualitative and quantitative features of the issue of censorship in art after 1989. Five periods were thus determined: transition, formative, qualitative escalation, quantitative escalation and stabilization. In the characteristics of these periods, a broader artistic, social, and particularly political and media context was taken into account, the sequences or correlations of events, their complexity, significance, legal and factual implications were pointed out. The third part also includes an extensive analysis of an unprecedented criminal case in contemporary Poland against the artist Dorota Nieznalska.

***

The English version of the book is an abridged and adapted to the needs of non-Polish readers version of a two volume monograph _Cenzura w sztuce polskiej po 1989 roku_ , t. 1 _Aspekty prawne_ [ _Censorship in Polish Art after 1989, vol. 1 Legal Aspects_ ], co-authored by Anna Demenko, and _Cenzura w sztuce polskiej po 1989 roku_ , t. 2 _Artyści, sztuka i polityka_ [ _Censorship in Polish Art after 1989, vol. 2 Artists, Art and Politics_ ] (Warszawa 2014). The starting point for the work on the Polish book was my doctoral dissertation _Swoboda wypowiedzi artystycznej w Polsce po 1989 roku_ [ _The freedom of artistic expression in Poland after 1989_ ] defended in 2013 in the Institute of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań under the supervision of Prof. Piotr Piotrowski.

Only a few years have passed between work on the Polish book and its English version. During that time, many valuable studies were published that shed new light on the problems discussed, and both Poland and the world have changed considerably. Events such as the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Brexit, the immigration crisis, a startling reshuffle on the world and Polish political scene, the emergence of new concepts (i.e. post-truth, fake news, trolling, alt-right, hybrid war), which, although not directly related to art, would force a different approach to many issues regarding freedom of expression. However, I remained faithful to the main assumptions of the Polish original.

Last but not least, I would like to thank a few persons without whom this book would never have been written: the late Prof. Piotr Piotrowski and Dr. Anna Demenko for substantive support; Dr. Pawe _ł_ Drabarczyk vel Grabarczyk from the Side of Image Foundation for initiating and coordinating the project; the Deputy Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw Prof. Wiktor Jędrzejec and the Dean of the Faculty of Visual Culture, Prof. Wojciech W _ł_ odarczyk for funding the project at a moment of crisis, when it seemed that several months of hard work would have been wasted.

1 Limiting clauses indicate when and under what conditions it is possible in liberal democracies to limit the rights and freedoms of the individual, cf. e.g. Art 10 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; Art 11, 13 and 52 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights; Art 19 of the German Constitution, or Art 31(3) of the Polish Constitution.

2 On self-censorship see S. Mintcheva, "Censor within," in: _Contemporary Threats to Free Expression_ , eds. R. Atkins, S. Mintcheva (New York – London: The New Press 2006), 299-303, see also pp. xv-xxiv.

3 It can be said that in the case of doxa, the functioning of a prohibition itself should be prohibited - a prohibition should always remain unconscious. The dialectic of ortho- and heterodoxy, i.e. that which is disputable, should effectively obscure the fact that there is still something repressed, other, different. Once realised, the difference gains a phantom reality and is included in what is disputable, thus initiating a debate at the level of hetero- and orthodoxy.

4 R. Burt, "Introduction. The 'New' Censorship," in _Administration of Aesthetics_ , ed. R. Burt (Minneapolis – London: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1994), s. xvi-xvii; Burt refers to: P. Bourdieu, _Outline of a Theory of Practice_ , trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016); for other critical approaches to censorship see e.g.: S. C. Jansen, _Censorship. The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge_ (New York - Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), J. Butler, _Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative_ (New York – London: Routledge 1997).

5 Burt, _Introduction_ , xviii-xxi.

6 See P. Bourdieu, _On Television_ (New York: New Press, 1998).

7 Bourdieu, _On Television_ , 62.

8 P. Bourdieu, _Rules of Art:_ _Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field_ , trans. S. Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996), 138.

9 Examples of indirect actions, hanging like the sword of Damocles, would include such activities as threats of politicians directed to art galleries, who say that they would cut off funding, liquidate the institution or dismiss the curatorial team; social protests attempting to force repressive actions by politicians; submission of notification of an alleged crime to the PPO, but also the withdrawal of private entities from the support of artistic undertakings considered controversial, or media rhetoric aimed at delegitimising specific types of contemporary art.

10 J. Kochan, _Życie codzienne w matriksie_. _Filozofia społeczna w ponowoczesności_ (Scholar: Warszawa, 2007), 78.

11 The course and effects of this modernisation, however, raise many doubts. Partial changes in the economic system which were commenced by the Communists in the mid-1980s made it possible for the party's nomenclature to acquire title to previously state-owned property. At the same time, the thorough reforms started in 1989, accurately called "shock therapy", were associated with high social costs - unemployment, pauperisation and regression in numerous areas of life. The state assets were taken over by foreign corporations, and the structure of foreign investments observed since 1989 preserves the development model based on low labour costs and low value added in production, and maintains the peripheral role of the Polish economy, which currently exhibits the features of the sub-supplier's economy model.

12 W. Sadurski, "Prawo do wolności s _ł_ owa w pan´stwie demokratycznym (zagadnienia teoretyczne)," _Pan´stwo i Prawo_ , vol. 10 (1992); 8, 13.

13 H. Freshwater, "Towards a Redefinition of Censorship," in _Censorship & Cultural Regulation in the Modern Age_, ed. Beate Müller (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004): 225–45.

14 J. Mina _ł_ to, "Kronika wypadków cenzorskich," _Notatnik Teatralny_ , no. 39-40 (2006) and _Notatnik Teatralny_ no. 45-46 (2007).

15 <http://www.indeks73.pl/pl_,aktualnosci.php>, accessed on November 9, 2014.

16 The diagrams showing the quantitative and generic breakdowns of cases of restricting the freedom of artistic expression are of course purely illustrative. It follows, for example, from the fact that there are works that mix the religious sphere with the profane of nudity. Rationalisation of censorship may then be of either moral or religious nature, or both of a moral and religious nature. In such situations, the latter option was adopted for the sake of simplification, as it was virtually impossible to determine the right reasons. The issue of homosexuality was separated from the general category of moral censorship.

17 On the legal aspects of unauthorised street art see: J. Dąbrowski, " _The Medium is The Message_ – Graffiti Writing as McLuhan's Medium," in _Street Art: Between Freedom and Anarchy_ , eds. M. Duchowski, E. A. Seku _ł_ a (Warszawa: ASP w Warszawie, 2011), 201-224. (the book is also available online: <http://ibpp.mrrau.net/i/file/streetart_miedzy_wolnoscia_a_anarchia.pdf>)

18 I. Kowalczyk, _Ciało i władza. Polska sztuka krytyczna lat 90._ (Warszawa: Sic!, 2002), 9-14..

19 On the forms of historical narration see H. White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," _Critical Inquiry_ , vol. 7, no. 1 (Autumn, 1980); 5-27.
**I. THE IMMUNITY OF THE ARTIST AND OF ART – A CRITICAL ANALYSIS**

**1.1 Sources of the Problem**

The Venetian Precedent

On 18 July 1573, Paolo Veronese stood before the Inquisition Tribunal in Venice in order to defend his artwork entitled _The Last Supper_. The gigantic canvass (515 x 1310 cm), meant to be housed in the refectory of the Monastery of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, had only been completed three months prior. The source of conflict for the Holy Office, was the crowd of figures surrounding Jesus Christ and the Apostles – after all, in the Holy Scriptures there had been no mention of other guests at what was to become known as The Last Supper. The demeanour of this group was also considered questionable, and the Tribunal first inquired of Veronese as to whether he had suspected the reason for him being summoned:

V.: From that which was said to me by the Holy Fathers, that is, the Prior of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, whose name I don't know, who told me that he had been here, and that Your Illustrious Lordships had given instructions that he should have had made the Magdalene in the place of a dog, and I responded that, I would have freely done that and other things for my honour and that of the painting; But that I did not feel that such a figure of the Magdalene could appear as if it were right, for many reasons, which I will give at any time, if I am given a chance to say them....

T.: In this Supper, which you made at SS. Giovanni e Paolo, what is the meaning of the depiction of the who has blood coming out of his nose?

V.: I made him for a servant, who due to some accident had a bloody nose.

T.: What is the meaning of those armed men dressed as Germans each with a halberd in hand?

V.: It is necessary that I say twenty words.

T.: Say them.

V.: We painters take the license, which poets and madmen take, and I made those two Halberdiers, one who drinks and the other who eats, near a blind staircase. They are placed there, that they may do some service, it seeming to me fitting that the owner of the House, who was great and rich according to what I have heard, should have such servants.

T.: That man dressed as a Buffoon with the parrot in his fist, for what purpose did you paint this in that Canvas?

V.: For ornament, as is customary....

T.: Who do you believe was really to be found at that Supper?

V.: I believe that Christ with his apostles were to be found; but if in a picture space is provided I adorn it with figures according to the stories.

T.: Were you instructed by any person that you should paint in that picture Germans and buffoons and similar things?

V.: No, sir: But the commission was to embellish the picture as I saw fit, which picture is large and capable of holding many figures, as it seemed to me.

T.: Are not the ornaments which you the painter are accustomed to place around paintings and pictures supposed to be fitting and proper to the subject and principal figures or are they to be truly [crossed out: by chance] at your pleasure according to what comes to your imagination without any discretion or judgment?

V.: I make paintings with that consideration of what is fitting, that my intellect can grasp. Asked if it seemed to him fitting that at the last supper of the lord it was fitting to paint buffoons, drunkards, Germans, dwarfs and similar scurrilities. Answered: No, sir.

T.: Why then have you painted this?

V.: I did it because I supposed these people were outside the place where the supper was to be held...

T.: Do you not know that in Germany and other places infected by heresy they are accustomed, with various paintings full of scurrilities and similar inventions, to spread [lies?], vituperate and pour scorn on the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach bad doctrine to idiotic and ignorant people?

V.: Sir, yes, this is bad: but I return again to what I have said, that I am obliged to follow what those greater than me have done.

T.: What have those greater than you done, have they perhaps done something similar?

V.: Michelangelo in Rome in the Pontifical Chapel painted our Lord Jesus Christ, his mother and Saint John, Saint Peter and the Celestial Court, all made nude from the Virgin Mary on down in different poses with little reverence.

T.: Do you not know that in painting _The last judgment_ , in which no clothing or similar things are presumed, it was not necessary to paint clothing, and in those figures there is nothing which is not spiritual, nor are there buffoons, nor dogs, nor weapons, nor similar buffooneries? And does it seem to you because of this or any other example that you did right in having painted this picture in that way which it is, and do you want to argue that the picture is right and decent?

V.: Illustrious Lord[s?] no, I do not want to defend it; but I thought I was doing right. And I did not consider so many things, thinking even so much not to make disorder, that those figures of buffoons are outside the place where Our Lord is....20

Paolo Veronese, _Feast in the House of Levy_ [ _Uczta w domu Lewiego_ ], 1573, oil on canvas, 555×1280 cm

In the end, the initial wording of the Tribunal's decision, stipulating the introduction of changes to the painting so as to make it more in line with the motif of _The Last Supper_ , was crossed out. Instead, Veronese was required to "correct and perfect" the image within a period of three months following the issuance of the verdict. He was to do so at his own cost, under the threat of sanctions to be imposed on him by the Holy Tribunal. However, Veronese took advantage of a loophole offered, and instead of repainting the work in its entirety, he changed the title to _Feast in the House of Levy_. Thus, it was no longer subjected to such grave doctrinal scrutiny by the Church as _The LastSupper_ had been, and was then deemed more in line with the reality of the image it projected, hence the Inquisitors acquiesced to the changes.21

The reason I have quoted here parts of the _interrogatio_ lies not only in the unprecedented nature of the event (a prominent artist who was for the first time interrogated by a court about his work), but also on account of the surprisingly contemporary character of the many problems that arose in that trial held over half a thousand years ago, and which today again give us pause to think of censorship in contemporary art. The interrogation of Veronese confirmed the existence of emancipatory ambitions in artists, which were triggered in this case in reaction to the narrowly framed 'discourse on creation', understood here as a complex arrangement of social, political, economic and cultural elements being equivalent to the modern notion of the artist and his art. It was in the 15th and 16th centuries that when a craftsman decided to circumvent (some of) the confines of his guild, he started seeing his work in the categories of freedom, resulting in certain licentiae poeticae which were initially limited to formal aspects. Once these aspects started gaining an increasing autonomy, they would at times overshadow the subject matter and thus result in transgressions (not just in the aesthetic sense). Since transgressions undermine different power relations, they are met with censorship, legal sanctions, and finally iconoclasm. This is paralleled with a growing trend to justify their occurrence, as they are the product of the allegedly incredible talents of their creators, who are thus granted a very special position – an artistic immunity is born (the conviction that more must be allowed in art). Once the myth of the divine creator is not sufficient to grant artistic immunity, it is augmented by diverse ways of explicating the transgressions – a range of defence tactics. Having their source in the Renaissance, these processes came to their full fruition in the 19th century, and despite the numerous revaluations that followed, they constantly influence the art discourse of the present era, particularly the question of freedom of artistic expression.

From Craftsman to Genius

The epoch of the Renaissance brought with it a loosening of the harnessing standards hitherto practiced by the guilds, and in so doing raised the position of the creator-craftsman on the social ladder. The increasing number of high value commissions and the admiration for how they were delivered, made it easier for their creators to free themselves of certain restrictions. On entering the orbit of high-class court communities, the artists began acting as their own agents and promoting an aura of uniqueness in their work. A new concept of genius was born in the Renaissance, coupled with the conviction that a work of art was not a mere commodity. Furthermore, it was not just the artwork that was being paid for, but also the talent and the reputation of the artist. It should be noted that Veronese's position at the time of the trial was relatively strong, the verdict of the Tribunal was rather mild, and the hearing was held behind closed doors. It is quite probable that the Inquisitors wished to avoid a scandal that no doubt would have transpired had they imposed sanctions on an artist so highly appreciated in Venice. The painter appeared before the Tribunal, not as some anonymous labourer from a craft guild, but as an individual who was certain of the value of his artistic decisions and confident in his exceptional skills.

The final disintegration of guild monopolies took place in the 18th c., very much under the influence of the royal Art Academies. A gradual development of the autonomous canon of skills and quality of production started taking place in academic milieus. Indeed, the academic system was a method of professionalizing the artistic vocation which was different from the guild-based system. A process of advancing intellectualization was happening in parallel; new treaties were being written and – due to the 18th c. flourishing of the Salon as an institution – so were critical writings. In the mid-18th c., the term "fine arts" came into use, popularized by Charles Batteux. This was the final separation of arts from crafts, and the term "artist" appeared in the modern understanding of the word. Hence, the immanent fusion of the concept of talent and calling (which was not the norm in the guild-based systems) with the appropriate prestige that went along with it. As a result, the following century saw a sudden rise in the number of creators, most of whom, however, were forced to function outside of the hermetic and petrified system of the Academies. This was one of the reasons why art was slowly but surely liberating itself from fossilized conventions and limitations (this time academic). Initially, the process was connected with romantic individualism and irrationalism, but from the mid-19th c. onwards, the focus was placed on the "here and now". It was particularly true in the theory and practice of realism, which openly postulated the rejection of ready formulae of imaging, and aimed at a more objective description of the current reality. The pluralization of the artistic life meant the emergence of more or less formal exhibition initiatives, competing with the Salon. Just as crucially important was the recognition of individuals who were involved in art outside of the Academy: non-academic artists, critics, merchants and collectors. It all happened at the cost of the wider public, whose opinion lost in significance after the impressionist "revolution" and the fall of the Salon. The public was no longer in a position to present its views without the fear of being discredited by someone more competent. The situation that was taking place was, in the words of Pierre Bourdieu, about the autonomisation of the field of art, which was gaining independence from external (heteronymic) assessments of profanes, i.e. people who had no artistic competences, and who were not producers in the given field. One important trait of this process was that of liberation from the heteronomy of the economic field. Art was no longer made by means of commissioned work ordered by aristocratic sponsors in order to fulfil certain specific objectives (religious, ceremonial, political, etc.). A new, anonymous market was now opened to artists, with a bourgeois clientele and an increasingly professional art trade. In the latter part of the 19th c., as Bourdieu notes, the idea of art for art's sake took precedence over practical objectives and the immediate satisfaction from profit. It was commonly believed that the recognition of innovative art came over time, hence immediate economic profits diminished art's prestige, and a financial failure was, in effect, a symbolic victory of sorts.22

The Renaissance discourse on art also reveals the beginnings of the artist's mythology. Thanks to unique assets such as talent, power of imagination, knowledge and skills, the artist was like God in creating something from nothing. This was written about by Marsilio Ficino, Albrecht Dürer or even Leonardo da Vinci, who thus legitimized a certain syllogism: the creative act makes the artist an exceptional genius, someone almost "divine". And just as divine creation knows no limits, so is the artist free of any bounds. If so, then both the artist and all his creations – even those which go beyond all assumed norms – are above the rest of the society and should, therefore, be subject to separate criteria of moral or legal assessment. It was exactly the 15th c. that marked the beginning of an increasing number of written texts glorifying the talent and skill of different creators. The authors were often artists themselves, as was the case with Alberti, Ghilberti or Benvenuto Cellini in the following century. It was apparently Cellini to whom Oscar Wilde referred when saying: "...crucified a living man to study the play of muscles in his death agony, a pope was right to grant him absolution. What is the death of a vague individual if it enables an immortal word to blossom and to create, in Keats' words, an eternal source of ecstasy?"23 At the same time, the artists – or at least the most prominent ones such as Michelangelo or Caravaggio – could lead different lifestyles, be eccentric or even socially alienated, and still enjoy the patronage of popes, monarchs, and the mighty. It is suspected that it was the artistic recognition and respect of King Ferdinand VII (1813-1833) that saved Francisco Goya from sanctions by the Inquisition24.

In the 19th c. further changes took place as far as the perception of artists and their role. This was probably due to the romantic shift and the emergence of bohemia, its lifestyle and mentality.25 The romantic idea of a creative individual meant that "the artist is an individuality capable of realizing all the potential talents and predispositions of a person to a degree which has not been granted to any other individual. Romanticism gave the artist and art the autonomy which separated it from all other forms of human social activity – thus separating the artist from a social background".26 It was also during this period that most of the myths about artists crystallized, such as the idea of the freedom to create. They all served to justify cases of violating whatever limitations existed. Theophile Gautier – who popularized the term _l'art pour l'art_ – recalled that "in those times, in the Romantic school one had to have a pale complexion, with a grey, slightly greenish or – better yet – a cadaverous shade... the word 'artist' clarified everything and justified any whim, excess or eccentricity".27

The popularity of bohemia peaked in the latter half of the 19th c. Its Romantic heritage lay in the conviction about the hieratic, quasi-magical role of the artist who was to dominate the society. Members of bohemia (who did not necessarily all have to be artists) shared the common belief in the supremacy of art, its autotelic, non-utilitarian character. They were also opposed to the bourgeois, though it was actually this social class that was the prime recipient of their art and, at the same time, the key source of their livelihood. This antagonist attitude manifested itself in, for example, shocking dress style or behaviour, and disrespect for convenance or other rules of social cohabitation, which resulted in a reputation of artists as a group which violated social norms. Marian Golka, art sociologist, writes: "For almost a hundred years, bohemia exerted a significant impact on the entire artistic culture of Europe. It popularized the model of an artist as an outsider and a desperado who was able to give up on personal fortune, or even wage a war against the entire society – all in the name of art and for the sake of art. It also popularized artistic myths which had already appeared here and there, but it was not until now that they were granted unprecedented rank".28

Golka proposed seven main myths of the artist, which came into full bloom in the 19th c.: exceptionality (the artist is different from all others and this difference is exceptional), individuality (the artist is one and unique, hence incomparable), calling (a true artist is born), selflessness (art is not a discipline of profit making), suffering (the price a genius has to pay), rejection of the artist by the society, and freedom.29 Each and all of the above traits make up the image of an almost divine individual – a mythical figure of an artist who should thus be treated differently from the rest of the society.

The quasi-religious nature of the 19th c. mythology of the artist should be emphasized here. It was connected not only with the myth of the ingenious individual charged with hieratic responsibilities towards the society, but also with the belief that art took over certain specific religious functions. Obviously, it did not mean that it was to return to its original role in service of religion – quite to the contrary. When the theory of _l'art pour l'art_ appeared, art was ridding itself of all utilitarian dependencies: instead of entering the field of religion, it replaced it; instead of involving itself in the rituals of the Church, it extracted the ritual from itself.30 By the end of the 19th c., the artists who expressed the spiritual side of human nature were seen by the part of society which was more materialistically oriented and skeptical towards Christianity, as the spiritual hope for the West. The said artists would distance themselves from the need to express traditional moral principles or beliefs of the middle class. Instead, they focused on emotions, which undoubtedly helped in the perception of art as an autonomous sphere – being a calling in itself. In 1912, Vasyli Kandinsky wrote that the painterly creation was a mystical act, "food for the soul", and the artist was "the priest of beauty". The creator remained absolutely free in art, and was guided through this freedom by the "principle of internal necessity", which took painting – "the genuinely pure art at the service of the divine" – to new heights.31

We also find interesting elements of artistic mythology in Veronese's defence, who stressed the objective autonomy of artistic creation (discussed in more detail further on), but who also introduced subjectively differentiating elements. Veronese did not explicitly underline his exceptional position but instead compared – with a somewhat perverse humbleness – painters to "madmen". Such a comparison stemmed from the specific personal immunity granted to artists. After all, madness has always been a trait requiring special social and legal treatment. The acts of a madman and the liability for them were classified according to non-standard rules.32 Although the artistic myth of madness is as old as antiquity, it became particularly popular owing to the para-scientific concepts of Cesare Lombroso. This Italian psychiatrist and criminologist published a book in 1864 entitled _The Genius and Madness_ [ _Genio e follia_ ], in which he argued that there were traits shared by a genius and a madman of both the psychiatric nature (such as over-sensitivity, vanity, egoism, melancholy, fixation on a single topic, irritability), as well as in terms of physiology (such as problems with the pulse, appropriate feeling of temperature, appetite, nervous ticks). Lombroso's theories found fertile soil as this was the image desired by both the bourgeois viewer, who had to somehow rationalize artistic provocations, as well as by the artists themselves, so eager to be different from the bourgeois.33 The most important psychoanalysts, such as Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank or Ernst Kris, also wrote about the connections between neurosis and artistic creation.34

Towards the Autonomy of Art

One of the most interesting aspects of Veronese's speech was the stress he put on artistic freedom in its formal aspect, and which began to develop at the cost of other (the moralizing, didactic, and the ritual) functions of art. In painting and sculpture, biblical events became the pretext for the search for beauty and harmony (within the regime of mimesis, of course), with ancient artworks being the unattainable standards of perfection. A work was created in line with the rules of art which were also subjected to independent evaluation. It seems that Veronese saw members of the Tribunal as incompetent and unable to fully appreciate the quality of his artwork. He thus delicately suggested that should he be given the chance, he would explain the artistic choices he had made. During the hearing, the painter stressed that he had added the jester with the parrot "for decoration" – he used this purely aesthetic argument to justify his decision to include an entire spectrum of characters unsuited to the subject matter. The artist claimed that the painting was large and had to be dressed up. At the same time, Veronese believed that the addition of Mary Magdalena to the image, as the Inquisitors suggested, would not be a good idea, though he was ready to comply in defence of his honour and that of – _sic!_ – his work.

Such an attitude was nothing out of the ordinary in the Renaissance. Giorgio Vasari defended a painting by Botticelli under the scrutiny of the Inquisition – _Assumption of Mary_ (presently at the National Gallery in London), ignoring issues of dogmatic faithfulness, and focusing his entire attention on the painterly skills of the artist.35 It was Vasari who started seeing art in categories of the evolution of style and progress, as well as talent – something he valued highly. It all resulted in assigning a more sizeable role to the imagination and gradually assisted in breaking away from convention. According to Vasari, Michelangelo was an ingenious hero, unbeatable by either his contemporaries or future artists, one who "won against art" – and who used his own invincible will to transform tradition, the principles of equilibrium, peace and harmony.36

Words condemning such opinions can be found in the famous letter by Pietro Aretino to Michelangelo from 1545 (i.e. the time when the first version of Vasari's _The Lives_ was in the making). In it, Aretino criticized Michelangelo for his decision when working on the Vatican fresco of _The Final Judgement_ to use "the license, so unallowable to the spirit, that you have taken in expressing the ideas. ... of our absolutely true faith.". Aretino also showed his surprise that a man of such talent and wisdom could "have wanted to show to the people no less religious impiety than artistic perfection" and directly accuses Michelangelo, claiming that he valued "art more than faith". He ends his letter with an appeal for the painter to self-censor the more indecent fragments of the fresco (indeed, some could even evoke the impression of an intentional provocation), and also with an appeal for Pope Paul III to react appropriately.37 Worth noting is that Aretino never saw the fresco with his own eyes, and only knew of it from drawings and prints. The rather imprecise information about the painting as described in the letter suggests that the author mainly quoted what was being said about the work. Bernardine Barnes notes that the well-practiced art recipients, i.e. the Church's sponsors, gave artists much freedom. The artists took full advantage of this, not hesitating to show the arduousness of artistic creation and proving their skills by, for example, showing naked bodies in complex arrangements and poses. The ever-wider circulation of prints available to the uneducated and gauche public must have, however, impacted the view of what was allowed in art – particularly in the times of the Counter-Reformation. It must have also impacted the attitude of Aretino and, later, the attitudes of church authorities to the work of Michelangelo. Aretino's appeals did not produce results until after his death – the problem of _The Final Judgment_ was finally dealt with in 1563 at the last session of the Council of Trent, where a decision was taken to repaint the fragments in question. The task was assigned to Daniele da Volterra, a friend and student of Michelangelo's, which stands as proof of the great recognition and respect that the work and its author enjoyed, despite the objections.38

Aretino's argumentation was later continued by, among others, a Counter-Reformation theologian and the royal censor, Johannes Molanus. In his _De historia sanctarum imaginum..._ from 1594, he undermined the autonomy that artists and their works were awarded: "One cannot speak of holy images what the pagan poet [Horace – J.D.] said:

Painters and poets had always the right [given them]

The freedom to boldly create whatsoever they like."39

In referring to Horace's _Ars poetica_ Molanus was no coincidental, given that "wanton" artists and theoreticians of the Renaissance made frequent references to the said excerpt (as had Veronese during his trial).

The process of liberating art from ritual functions was, at the time, undoubtedly augmented by connecting it with science. Artists made references to anatomical and natural studies and used a unified central perspective, which changed the system of presentation (by introducing the unity of place, time and action, as well as a realistic exposition of the different elements of the real world). In the 16th century, the Reformation further contributed to the gradual loosening of what used to be strong ties between art and religion. It now seems, however, that even the later Counter-Reformative instrumentalization of art had no apparent blocking force on the development of autonomous means of expression – the effect of Baroque art, for example, lay in its formal wealth. The emancipatory tendencies were weakened by the painting theory promoted by 17th c. French academics and their literary aspirations (Horace's _Ut pictura poesis_ ), as well as strong ties with the political function (mainly ceremonial). It was not until the activities of the great philosophers and art theoreticians of the latter half of the 18th c., such as Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Immanuel Kant or Friedrich Schiller, that a process began of the final autonomisation of the institution of art which was now seen as a discipline supreme to the practice of life and different from any other activity40.

The views of Immanuel Kant contained in the _Critique of the Power of Judgement_ are seen as key to the development of art's autonomy. It was Kant's philosophy that sanctioned the detachment of the completely "disinterested" judgement of taste from all particularisms including morality. In painting, the beginning of autonomisation proper, i.e. a process that openly and self-consciously leads to a focus on the medium and to the identification of the "aesthetic value as an ultimate value", is most often linked with the oeuvre of Edouard Manet41. As Peter Bürger observes, finally, at the end of the 19th c. and with the emergence of aestheticism, all art wanted was to be just art and nothing more. By removing all social functions from an artwork, artists began to concentrate directly on the specificity of the medium at the expense of the meaning (I call such an approach to art: modernist). The tension which was between the institutional frame (the elevation above life's practice) and the meaning of the different works disappeared. Autonomy became its own meaning, while the artwork became a goal in itself. Bürger highlights the ideological nature of the notion of art's autonomy, which is to overshadow the historical character of the phenomenon typical of a bourgeois society and which gained in intensity as its political domination throughout the entire 19th c. solidified (a similar ideological character was the category of genius, crucial in aestheticism, thanks to which an individually active and outstanding individual could produce something radically special).42

Autonomy under the Attack of the Avant-garde

The historical avant-garde movements born in the early 20th c. launched an attack the institution of the autonomy of art had thus created.43 It was not about the negation of any particular style in art, nor a desire to recover the social meaning of the artwork, but about getting rid of the bourgeois institution of art and using art as a point of departure in order to introduce a new social praxis. It all led to a complete reformulation of artistic categories. The avant-garde not only negated the purpose of bourgeois art, its supremacy over the practicalities of life, but it also radically negated the bourgeois categories of the individual artwork production (if only to quote Marcel Duchamp's _ready mades_ ), as well as the individual mode of reception. The public's outrage in response to the provocation was collective, and the poem writing instructions by Tristan Tzara or the automatism propagated by the Surrealists went as far as suggesting that the distinction between a producer and a recipient was gone. Still, as Bürger suggests, the avant-garde failed, as it was unable to dissolve art in life, or at least not more than superficially as was the case of tying up aesthetics with the cultural industry, where the form became a mere instrument for perpetuating the consumption of redundant goods. Its practicality was, therefore, false and only facilitated enslavement – and not social emancipation.44

By breaking away from the past manner of representation, the avant-garde also destroyed the organic work of art, namely one which directly illustrated the unity of the particular and the universal. Instead, a non-organic artwork was introduced, in which unity was not created by the harmonious relationship between part and whole, but which contained contradictions. An avant-garde work does not give, therefore, the impression of an entirety that would allow for some kind of a holistic interpretation of the meaning. Neither does it offer an explanation by references to any of its parts as these are not subject to any single common "intention" of the artwork; their sequence, or even their existence, is not indispensable. The unity of such a product is mediated in elements which are transcendental to the work; for example, in the context of the institution of art. And it was the context of the institution of art that was required for the perception of the political manifestations of the bourgeois-provoking Berlin Dadaists or the _ready mades_.45 Therefore, the avant-garde perpetuated the existence of artistic works, albeit in a completely redefined form.

The aim of disintegrating the organic artwork and placing its sense aside was to steer the viewer into a state of shock that would evoke feelings of alienation from reality. It would trigger a change in behaviour in the problematic everyday experience. Generally, alienation was the key principle governing the avant-garde artistic intentions and the practiced artistic method. However, Bürger doubts whether the shock strategy was effective, as shock is of a non-specific nature and it is difficult to determine the direction of possible changes elicited in the public. Furthermore – as was the case with the Dadaists – the public reacted with only anger or aggression which had practically no impact on their daily experience. And even if some changes did take place, they were not exactly long-lasting. Bürger believes that the legacy of the avant-garde has always lain in the mysterious nature of the structure of the artwork and the resistance to finding sense in it. In other words, it was about a new paradigm of artwork and the need to also create a new paradigm for its reception.46 As he observed, "Paradoxically, the avant-gardist intention to destroy art as an institution is thus realized in the work of art itself. The intention to revolutionize life by returning art to its praxis turns into a revolutionizing of art".47

In light of the failures of the first avant-garde movement, it is now clear that the conventional distance between art and life has to be maintained. Even the most abrupt gesture intended to annihilate art is originally rooted in its context. As such, it is subject to an aesthetic classification by its audience and carries art-appropriate meanings. The situation is at the same time burdened by a certain paradox – the gesture becomes visible and socially meaningful as long as it is art (it ceases to be just itself, it starts to have a symbolic function, or rather an additional symbolic function, an additional effect). At the same time, the fact that it is termed "art" alienates it, thus neutralizing its power, affecting and impacting on its effectiveness.

What is important for us is that although the practices of the historical avant-garde movements undermined the bourgeois institution of art in general, the artistic status and position of the individual authors remained at the ideological level very much intact. The dilemma of the avant-garde, neo-avant-garde and the new forms of art (which have their roots in these veins) is thus burdened with yet another important paradox – particularly significant in the context of the freedom of artistic expression – that some elements of the autonomy of art which seem to have already been deconstructed a long time ago, (consciously or otherwise) are used by artists as an insurance policy of sorts for the possible event of coming into actual contact with life.

The Law and Changes in Art

It seems that the change in the social status of the artist, the creation of the artist's mythology and the emergence of art autonomy had a decisive impact on how the freedom of artistic expression was shaped. All these elements had already revealed themselves in Veronese's trial, if only in their initial stages. Obviously, the arguments that the painter gave for his defence before the Inquisition Tribunal (a formal court-like procedure) a decade after the Council of Trent, could not be effective. Veronese was soon forced to admit his mistakes and accept the limits of artistic imagination. The already appearing problem of the artist's immunity and the autonomy of art was not taken up by the judges. Art was subject to legal sanctions identical to those applicable to other spheres of life, in particular when the artwork could be popularized by means of graphic art techniques. For example, _the Edict of Worms_ , issued in 1521 in response to the sprawling Reformation, allowed Emperor Charles V to introduce preventive censorship of anti-Catholic texts and paintings, as well as impose sanctions on authors, printers, and artists who would violate the provisions of the document.48 This type of legal restrictions (often of religious provenience) were not yet counter-argued by the juridical concept of the freedom of art – the defence of a questioned artwork took place not so much in the sphere of law but by references to the mastery of the artist, the aesthetic qualities of the given artefact or by appealing to the goodwill of the persons in power to take an arbitrary decision of "to be or not to be" of the artist. The artwork was thus excluded in such an informal manner from judgements typically applied to other social facts. At the same time, the ever-growing mythology of the artist resulted in excessive tolerance of the artist's deeds which sometimes exceeded even the field of art. The way this immunity worked depended on the time, place and the context of the state, class and politics. Still, the tendency which originated in the Renaissance to allow special treatment of art and artists was consistently growing, particularly as of the end the 18th c. and was finally incorporated into both legislation as well as judicial practice.

In the late 18th c. the first constitutional acts were drawn up ( _The Virginia Charter_ , 1776; _The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America_ , 1776; the French _Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen_ , 1789) which marked the emergence of institutions key to the modern understanding of the freedom of speech and art, i.e. the idea of the natural rights and freedoms of the individual, as well as of the state controlled by the law and functioning on the basis of the statutory law. The qualified form of individual rights and freedoms are human rights. It is believed that their source is not the state, but the inherent and inalienable dignity of a person; hence, they are independent of any differentiating traits (origin, race, religion, age, etc.). Two categories of human rights were constituted in the first phase. In line with the liberal concept of individual rights, freedoms seen as fundamental were of a personal nature, guaranteeing their holders the so-called _status negativus_ , i.e. a sphere which would be free from any intervention by the state (personal freedom, freedom of conscience, religion, correspondence, etc.). The second category, being the derivative of a democratic system, contains political rights and freedoms which guarantee the individual the possibility to exert an influence on the authorities, i.e. the so-called _status activus_ (e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or electoral rights).49 In the 19th c., these democratic tendencies were subject to strong feudal reaction, which obviously impacted the freedom of speech. The problem, however, was not whether individuals had the right to enjoy this freedom, but to what extent. The concept of the freedom of artistic expression was not yet that significant at the time. Most of the society saw art in categories of sublime subject matter and the fulfilment of moral duties, and not of autonomous rules and the right of transgression. Nobody thought of art as an element of a constitutionally protected freedom of speech, much less that it could become a completely autonomous notion.50 What was important, however, was that the successively changing political systems in Europe were usually confirmed in more or less liberal acts of a constitutional nature. Furthermore, restrictions in the freedom of speech had to stem – at least formally – from legal provisions established by more or less democratically sanctioned organs of the state, and not by means of a discretionary decision of an absolute ruler or the Church.51

At the same time, the progressing autonomation, institutionalization, and further mythologization of art had to have an influence on both legislators and the courts. By the end of the 19th c. it was noticed that special provisions regulating different issues related to art had to be installed (much effort was put, for example, into the development of copyrights, and special customs regulations were introduced). In 1919, in the Weimar Republic, the first ever separate provisions guaranteeing freedom of art were introduced to the Constitution. One could ponder, whether paradoxically art actually benefited from this juridical empowerment, regardless of how unavoidable it was. The legal provisions were as protective as they were burdensome to artists – officially, what blocked artistic freedom were other social goods recognized by the law. The antagonisms between artists and the authorities are as old as antiquity, though it was actually from the end of 19th c. that they began to culminate, when conflicts about art started to be resolved in a rationalized manner within the discourse of human rights and freedoms, as well as legal procedures.

It should be underlined that from the very beginning of these processes, there has been a conviction about the incompatibility of these two spheres of discourse. A renowned German philosopher of law, Gustav Radbruch, was very straightforward about the matter, and said that "law and art remain in a completely natural state of mutual hostility".52 Costas Douzinas, professor of law at the University of London, recognized the presence of the conventionally accepted difference between the two spheres. Focused on the past and on the text, law "hates" novelties; it does not understand new languages and is capable of understanding art only once it has entered the canon or the tradition, i.e. when it starts resembling law. But art is constantly on the go, it overcomes conventions and highlights the freedom of creation.53 Contemporary legislation, by including justice in the text and in the reason, in the rational rules of interpretation and application of law which are to be as far away as possible from such notions as imagination, novelty, emotions, understatement, passions, subjectivity, or virtuosity, officially declares its absolute independence from the sphere of aesthetics.54 On the other hand, artists do not seem to be interested in law in their practice. As a matter of fact, different representatives of the world of art constantly underline that art should be subject solely to the aesthetic – and not legal – judgement. They seem to be saying: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and things which are artistic – to the art world". The discussed dissonance stems from what Max Weber observed as a gradual doubt in the divine Revelation which once made human reason uniform. The enlightened shift in thinking led to a situation in which questions about knowledge, morality and justice, as well as taste began to be considered as part of a scholarly discourse, the theory of morality and jurisprudence, as well as art criticism – institutionalized areas controlled by experts. It was the thinkers of the Enlightenment (particularly the most prominent of them, Emmanuel Kant), who began to develop three independent domains: objective science, universal morality and law, as well as autonomous art. Though they wanted to use the potential of these domains for the purpose of rationalizing everyday life, the result was quite different – these areas have actually become separated from their "hermeneutics of everyday communication" as Jurgen Habermas has said.55

Going back to the motif of the consequences of the legal empowerment of art – it seems, considering the context, that there was one other issue that had a significant effect on the form and intensity of the clash between law and art. The modernist autonomation of the rules of art, which finally took place at the end of the 19th c., actually translated into a potent boost for the appreciation of the form. It was the original form that was to be the manifestation of the divine talent and the artist's hieratic aspirations. The ingenious form was to sacralize the artist's activity, raising it to heights unattainable by mere mortals. It was also an insurance policy in case of transgression – the genius manifested in the form mitigated, justified, and even abundantly compensated for whatever violations of norms had transpired.56 Acting in a state of absolute freedom and devoid of any principles, as Kant would put it, but realizing itself in an ingenious form, a talent could not possibly be limited – not even by law, which by sanctioning the special status of art, seemed to have taken that fact into consideration.

However, the avant-garde, by turning towards challenges which were transcendent to form (such as social change, political declarations, etc.) caused a revision of the rules of the game which were just being formed. As early as the first Dadaist presentations, the notion of art was stripped of whatever essential references it had hitherto held, and was based solely on institutional pigeon-holing. At the same time, art began to be ever more elitist, hermetic, and difficult to evaluate due to the blurring of criteria. This has profoundly shaken the foundations which bore not only the justification for its social, but first and foremost, its legal immunity.

Of importance, despite the negation of form by artists and regardless of their revolutionary declarations, art still aspired to be commonly recognized, to hold a universal position and enjoy a social guarantee, as well as a legal untouchability. An anti-bourgeois artist who was not interested in giving up bourgeois privileges. Their rationale apparently no longer lay in the genius revealed in the form, but the very notion of art, which was ever more enigmatic. I believe that this was the root cause of many tensions, including contemporary strained relations. It can be said that the ideological status of the sacralized sphere of art (the artwork and the maker), which originated in the Renaissance and was later confirmed in the 19th c., was not really in any way violated by the avant-garde. Despite the Dadaist declarations or the Surrealist provocations that anyone can be an artist, the disoriented members of the bourgeois were actually forced to grapple with the myth of the untouchable genius-creator and the sacralization of artworks. The subsequent revaluations of notions such as art, form, genius, universality of the canon and judgement of taste, originality and the autonomy of the creative subject have not changed the art world's attitude to immunity either.

Therefore, changes in the art world which took place over the past century, further complicated art's relations with the law. Art constantly maintains the autonomy of its field. In other words, as Pierre Bourdieu notes, its validation takes place within the realm of the art world and people who are recognized as experts. Its definition, however, no longer refers to any essential traits. Only a small group of artists and artistic technocrats (who are the core of the art world) have the appropriate competences to artistically sacralize virtually all types of actions, including almost all types of transgressions. Considering the situation, any suggestions to exclude art from legal assessments would mean the creation of a jurisdictional loophole, the shape of which would depend on the highly unstable and non-democratic mechanisms perpetuating throughout the art world. This would in turn lead to great legal uncertainty in social relations. Furthermore, artistic expressions are used for conducting intense social and political activities. Consequently, the assessments in the realm of art go far beyond aesthetics and apply such criteria as agency. It is thus illegitimate, if only for this reason, to bestow legal privileges on one side of the social argument and, secondly, to pretend – as is often the case – that it is apparently adequate to apply exclusively aesthetic categories when appraising it. With respect to the latter problem, what should be noted is the technical aspect of court proceedings in the continental legal systems – when considering a case whose causative act involved the use of an artwork (e.g. presenting a slanderous painting or a hate-inciting film), or if the causative act is of an artistic nature (e.g. an injury suffered by a human being or the cruel treatment of an animal during a performance), it is not assessed from the aesthetic perspective but whether the given act meets the constitutive elements of a crime. Even the highest quality paintings or the best made films can propagate slander or incite hatred against a specific group of people; even the most interesting and most profoundly cathartic performance can cause damage to a person or an animal. We should consider whether granting art such legal privileges affords it the highest of importance, or perhaps it pushes it out onto the margins by implying either a certain leniency in the treatment of the socially "other", or even by revealing the periodic hostility of the non-privileged groups.

In other words, the imposed exclusion of artists from legal liability is anachronistic. On the other hand, it breaks away from the principles of equality of individuals before the law. It does not mean, however, that the artistic categories cannot have a certain impact on the legal qualification of acts. Quite to the contrary – they can, but their consideration should each time be well measured and should depend on the specific circumstances and the specificities of the different legal systems. In a later part of this work I shall discuss how the problem is manifested in the Polish context. However, before I do so, I would like to focus on the traditional discourse concerning the defence of art.

**1.2 Types of Defence**

In his interesting book _Transgression: The Offenses of Art_ , Anthony Julius has summed up the ever-repeated rhetoric patterns aimed at the social confirmation and the legal immunity of art. On these grounds, he has defined five types of defence of controversial artworks (I shall also apply the notion of "defence tactics"). These are: aesthetic alibi, the First Amendment defence, estrangement defence, formalist defence, and canonic defence. The first two tactics highlight the person and the rights of the artist, while the three latter ones are focused on the artwork – they propose its interpretation which would lead to including the artwork in the canon of art history, thus sheltering it from any sanctions.57 Julius was right to stress that the development of defence tactics is a response to censorship stemming from transgression in art. He has distinguished three types of transgression: the rejection of the established artistic practice (rules of art), the infringement of certain social convictions or beliefs (the breaking of a social taboo), as well as challenging the principles of the state (political resistance). At the same time, a single work of art can be multi-transgressional.58

Estrangement Tactic

In his book, Julius focuses exclusively on the tactics which refer to the nature of the artwork – be it of estrangement, canonic or formalistic nature. He stresses that it is the first one which is the most important, containing – in effect – both of the other types. In its most tamed form, the estrangement tactic underlines the significance of art as it teaches us to notice a new beauty in nature, the existence of which we had not even dreamt of. In its more radical version, it highlights the fact that art crushes all illusion, unmasks superstitions, suspends all obvious truths, and generally shakes up the way we perceive the world. The best art has to be difficult, irritating, evoking a negative reaction in the viewers, their defiance, repulsion, and a feeling of being offended – all leading to a mental and intellectual alienation. Initially, art was there mainly to console and help one flee from the worries of the everyday. However, in the 19th c., it also embraced all that was horrid and painful. Experiencing art can be hurtful both for the viewer and for the artist. Sometimes the pain can be a means in itself, but it can also be a way by which the artwork conveys truth (however, the work is a failure if the public comes to the conclusion that the horror is limited to the artwork and is not present in real life). The impact of true art is thus different from popular culture saturated with images, as this only reflects an illusion that society feeds on. In various - rather unpleasant - ways, true art teaches the viewers and saves them from the prison of common awareness. At the same time, the lesson is not a positive one. Instead, it returns all that had been repressed by opening our minds to all that is possible, but of that which we had not been aware. The demystification, though abrupt, need not necessarily be permanent. Nor must it aim to change one's opinions, but rather one's attitude. It could be thus said, that it expands our understanding of our understanding. Therefore, art's role here is that of a solvent of ideology, as it replaces all that had been falsely accepted with a revelation. The estrangement defence is a derivative of Kant's philosophical concepts, particularly his theory of the sublime. He claimed that some experiences exceed our comprehension – they not only make us feel small but also deprive us of feeling who we are, as if they have momentarily uprooted us.59

It could thus be said that this tactic is to prevent the censoring of artworks which often aim at revealing another type of censorship that creates divisions at the deepest, pre-preventive level into the debatable and the obvious (doxa), and the invisible manner in which our subjectivity is produced – the "immovable" foundations of our being (also see the Introduction). By unravelling the ideological work of the doxa, some transgressive works create heterodoxies, i.e. a sphere that is subject to overt repression of censorship. It is in times of heterodoxic disputes that defensive tactics are sometimes triggered. Some of them (in particular the alienation tactic), are to explain and legitimize art which problematizes the deeper, pre-preventive level of the doxa.

Formalist Defence

In line with the postulates of formalist defence, the overseeing of an artwork's formal properties means the lack of understanding the art of the contemporary epoch. The tactic focuses on the form of the work, and ignores its subject matter or content [deriving thus from modernist narratives – J.D.]. Anxiety or shock are the wrong reactions to an artwork, as they are caused by the miscomprehension of the essence of art, the task of which is to explore the question of form and not to change the world – art is here focused on itself, on its own inner laws, and not on the external reality, the viewers included. For the latter to perceive the artwork correctly, they must contemplate its aesthetic qualities, as form is what makes art unique and different from what it represents. The formalist tactic, similarly to the alienation tactic, also derives from the philosophy of Kant.60

Julius believed that the formalist tactic was "invented" by Emil Zola, when the latter stood in defence of Édouard Manet's _The Luncheon on the Grass,_ which had been ferociously attacked for the figure of the naked woman sitting in the company of two fully clothed men, as well as for the lack of _finis -_ no decorum - and the nonchalant attitude towards the public. Zola wanted to neutralize the subject and instead shifted the focus onto the formal characteristics of the work, thus proving its harmlessness.61 This type of defence applied by Zola was, Julius claimed, a provocation in itself – ethically neutral towards the subject matter presented; the stance was constitutive of a formalist defence and unbearable to Manet's critics. Such a defence, however, does encourage one to ignore rather significant aspects of the work as it speaks of a piece which depends on form on the one hand, and transgresses it, on the other.62

It would be justified to say that elements of formalist defence appeared as early as the 16th c. The very initial constituents of this tactic were already present in the trial of Veronese, for example. The author began to pick out the autonomous formal aspects of the painting ("beautifying", "adornment") which, in his eyes, were significant enough to justify whatever doctrinal infringements may have occurred (for other examples, see pg 24). The highly inadequate manner of this type of defence in reference to most transgressing works should be mentioned here. Formal issues in such artefacts are usually limited to the necessary minimum, so as not to make it easy for the viewer to flee from a genuine encounter with the artwork, and so as not to break the shock caused by the transgression.

The Canonic Tactic

The canonic tactic is aimed at supporting works which may seem completely detached from what used to be recognized as art. The shock among the viewers is thus stifled by placing the artwork into a context of other shocking pieces. In contrast to the formalist tactic, the aim here is neither to negate the shock nor seek it – as is done in the estrangement defence. The key assumption is that what is being shown as radically new depends, to a smaller or larger extent, on previous artworks. This genetic dependence automatically endows the work with a position in the realm of art. Canonic defence is, to an effect, a history lesson for the public – if a new work of art is rejected, then it also causes the rejection of what has been in the canon for a long time, and that would obviously lead to an absurd conclusion. So – the art which has been verified by time now acts in support of new art.

There exists a number of versions of canonic defence. The first one focuses on the continuity of reception and that, as it is said, "all innovative works of art were initially met with no understanding and hostility from the viewers". With time, however, these prematurely negative emotions subsided, the work was accepted and served as a benchmark for successive ones. The initial resistance of the public paradoxically confirmed the work's value and, at the same time, placed it among important pieces which had evoked similar reactions. The second variant of a canonic strategy stresses the continuity of artistic practices and claims that "all innovative (great) artists act the same way when making their art". In other words, instead of restraining artists, we should be happy that we have the chance to participate in something new. According to the third variant, the accent is placed on the continuation of the problem dealt with by the artist. It is thus said that "the same subjects, the same motifs could already be seen in Renaissance works, and they did not shock anybody". In the fourth and final variant, if there is a completely revolutionary work which breaks away from the past, it belongs to a long line of artworks which were recognized as art, as they departed from the position of anti-art63, claiming that "there is a tradition of breaking away from tradition" and that "discontinuation is a continuation".

Julius sees links between the emergence of the canonic tactic with the spectacular failure of artistic criticism in the form of the negative assessment of impressionism which, despite the complaints of professionals, turned out to be a huge artistic success. The mistake made by the professionals only confirmed the fact that art which is made here and now should be looked at from a distance, not judged spontaneously, but allowed to be tamed and absorbed in due time. The canonic tactic is thus focused on the immediate result of securing new art, before time does its job and the artworks find acceptance or, at least, do not stir up such vehement emotions, or simply vanish. Such a method, however, requires a temporary incapacitation of the viewers who are asked to defer their opinions and wait for time to pass and get its job done. As Julius notes, it can actually lead to succumbing to the rather non-transparent mechanisms of promotion, commercialization, and institutionalization of art – in other words, to its distorted reception.64

While resisting the aim to negate the deferred – as Julius notices – the nature of canonic defence by the viewers, the aspect of "immediateness" on the part of the artist should also be considered. Here, it seems that the artist refers to the most basic feeling of justice in the context of social and legal precedents from the past. This line of thinking is based on a simple syllogism – if similar artworks (or artworks that evoked similarly shocking reactions, which were either thematically or formally equally transgressive) now function in the art canon and have become legal, then the particular artwork should also be seen as such. On a more universal note – "if others have done the same or in a similar manner and have not been punished, then it would be unjust if only I were held liable for my deed". Julius seems to miss the almost fundamental pragmatism of the nature of precedent in canonic defence. Analogies with legal precedents of the _common law_ system are obvious; however, regardless of the juridical system, this tactic seems to have an exceptional validating power. In both the _common law_ and continental legal systems, when experts are asked to assess whether something is a work of art or not, they must not only follow their own convictions, but must also consider the accepted artistic practices and the state of knowledge on art. In other words, even if a particular expert believes that works of art are only those which meet the pre-avant-garde standards or – as Bürger would say – be of the organic type, it cannot be overlooked that other types have for decades been recognized both in scholarly theory and in the artistic practice as fully-fledged elements of the art canon. It seems that all sorts of different mutations of canonic defence are the most popular for reason of their obvious nature65.

However, in contrast to Julius, I would seek out the roots of this tactic – similarly to the formalist defence – traversing as far back as the 16th c. It is quite clear that the mature form of canonic defence (in its second, or at least third variant) had already appeared in the argumentation of Veronese. According to the painter, the path which led to a different interpretation of the theme of _The Last Supper_ was paved by the great Michelangelo himself, who depicted the scene of the _Last Judgement_ "with little reverence" in one of the most sanctified places in Catholicism, and bore no consequences for the deed. Veronese thus called on artistic authority figures and iconographic tendencies of precedence from the past. In this manner he sought to confirm that a similar non-orthodox practice of treating the subject matter already had a tradition. His aim was also to have his art included in a certain commonly recognized canon of artists and works. The argument must have been a sound one if the Inquisitors were made to contradict the obvious – they underlined the integrity of Michelangelo's masterpiece a few years after it had been repainted by Daniele da Volterra by decision of the Council of Trent. Not to mention that the idea of further re-makings or even the work's complete destruction reoccurred a number of times over successive decades.

Other Defence Tactics

Julius is brief in his description of the defence types in reference to the figure of the artist. Aesthetic alibi (or the immunity of art), gives the artist the right to create art understood as a special and privileged realm, in which "the unsayable may be said", and "the unpicturable may be pictured".66 It seems that such a tactic is genetically interlinked with the notion of _licentia poetica_ , popular among artists. Both notions are generally two sides of the same coin: while _licentia poetica_ expresses the positive aspect of art (a right to), artistic immunity has negative connotations, and draws on the defensive aspect of art (a right from). It is the latter type of defence to which all arguments used to protect art as a separate sphere should be linked, including the legal ones. According to Julius, however, defence based on the First Amendment uses the contemporary system of constitutionally guaranteed human rights or, more precisely, the right to freedom of expression. Contrary to the immunity of art, such argumentation places art as a means of communication that deserves broad protection, just as political or commercial expression does. Generally, the entire universe of expression is privileged from among other social activities by being at liberty to enjoy a higher level of protection.67

Let us also focus on the connections between the two groups of defence tactics, i.e. between the immunity of art and the First Amendment defences, and the estrangement, formalist, and canonic tactics. It seems that in the case of trials before the court or even in the event of a threat of a court case, estrangement, formalist and – in particular – canonic defence all aim at gaining recognition for the particular work in the field of art. Only then is it possible to refer to specific meta-tactics: the aesthetic alibi (art as a free domain, in which more is allowed), or the First Amendment defence (i.e. the work is not a senseless provocation or downright vandalism, but art – hence it has a hidden meaning, and it is a form of social communication e.g. reminiscent of fierce political journalism. As such, it requires special constitutional protection). Therefore, the three types of defence are either a form of elevation of art above social practice, or they aim to include it (which, to my mind, is a more desirable objective) in the controversial though legally accepted form of social communication.

As I have tried to show using the example of Veronese and the controversies connected with Michelangelo's fresco, some of the defence types identified by Anthony Julius – in particular the immunity of art (aesthetic alibi), canonic and formalist defences – can trace their roots as far back as the 16th century. Even if they were not used in their pure form at the time, it is clear that those arguments would later be developed to their full form in the future, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, the practice does not so much stem from the Enlightenment, but is rooted in Western modernity.

The relevance of Veronese's trial is revealed also in other elements of the hearing. The painter swore he thought he was acting appropriately, and that he was not aware of the controversy his painting might trigger. Today the situation is quite similar – artists also claim that they had no intention to cause a scandal or offend anyone. In reality, however, we are dealing with yet another type of defence, which I would call intentional. It ties in with a group of tactics which relate not so much to the artwork, but to the figure of the artist and the context in which he/she functions (immunity and First Amendment defence). Intentional defence refers to the pure intentions of the artist. It is said that "the artist did not intend to offend anyone" that "he was only led by an exclusively artistic intention", and that "he was not aware that his work could offend anyone". In line with the terminology of contemporary criminal law, the intentional tactic may be seen to indicate that the act had not been perpetrated intentionally. Such a tactic seems to be more prevalent in the continental legal system rather than in common law.

As was the case in the 16th c., it is still very difficult to verify statements which constitute the basis for intentional defence, particularly if the sense of the artwork is referred to or – to use the criminal law jargon – when "the subjective features of the act are established based on the objective circumstance in which it was perpetrated". The Inquisitors tried to explain the meaning of the painting, or some parts of it, in an effort to try to discover the true motifs of Veronese's actions. However, they were constantly challenged by such abstract, "unrealistic" and "innocent" notions as wealth of creative imagination, immanent composition needs or the simple desire to adorn the canvass. "What is the meaning of the depiction of the figure who has blood coming out of his nose?" – the Inquisitors asked. "I painted him as a servant, who due to some accident had a bloody nose". "That man dressed as a buffoon with the parrot in his fist, for what purpose did you paint this on that canvas?" "As an ornament" – answered Veronese with what seemed to be a disarming innocence.68 Likewise in contemporary times, court trials regarding artworks (not limited to visual arts) cause many problems with establishing the meaning of a given artistic gesture. It is thus difficult to determine the intention of the artist – we are often unable to prove what the artist wanted to actually express, neither can we confirm what the artist "actually" said. What was in the artist's mind during the creative process (even the artists themselves are often uncertain): was the intention to mock or to adorn, to slander or only to criticize, to destroy or to create, to plagiarize or to creatively rework? Or perhaps none of the above? It is also possible that all these options fall into an entanglement of configurations of elements coming from incompatible orders that evade any simple dialectics.

It should be pointed out that also in the case of the 16th c. criticism of Michelangelo's fresco there were responses which are typical of our times: people who had never seen the work in question were outraged (interestingly enough, the description of Buonarotti's fresco as given by Veronese before the Tribunal also seems to indicate that he had only known the painting from someone else's account), artists were accused of ignoring accepted values in the name of art, there were calls for censorship so as to protect some unidentified vulnerable groups (in those times it was the simple folk; today it is most often children), and a broader circulation, i.e. a more widespread accessibility of the work was restrained.

No doubt then that the defence tactics as indicated by Julius are also present to a smaller or larger degree in conflicts related to controversial works of art in Poland. Furthermore, as in other countries, they obviously acquire a certain regional specificity. Notably, the almost absolute absence of argumentation referring to a line of defence which would draw on the First Amendment is most visible. This is the result of a legal tradition which is different from the American one, as well as a certain mental inability to see beyond the fetish of art. An example of what the combination of "American aspirations" and "Polish entanglements" could lead to was visible in the form of activities of the Indeks 73 social initiative. Members of the collective acted in support of artistic freedom of expression as stipulated in Art 73 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland (hence the name of the initiative), indicating, at the same time, the need to directly apply this legal provision in relations between private law entities (e.g. artist – exhibiting institutions), or in possible attempts related to the censoring of art.69 In the Polish doctrine, however, the so-called horizontal functioning of human rights and freedoms is a highly debatable issue70. Furthermore – and let us underline it yet again – the freedom of artistic expression as one of many in the constitutional catalogue of freedoms, is not absolute in nature, neither is it even treated with priority. On the contrary, despite the equality of constitutional freedoms declared by the Supreme and Constitutional Courts, both tribunals seem to recognize it as inferior to, for example, the freedom of religion. It would be quite interesting, incidentally, to consider the question of whether artists' transgressive explorations seen from the viewpoint of estrangement defence (namely, recovering all that is repressed and uncovering truth about humans) could have their axiological and normative basis in the Preamble to the Polish Constitution. After all, it speaks about the universal values (truth, justice, good and beauty) as arising from different sources – both religious and non-religious.

There is another tactic, which is rather specific to the Polish context, and which does not reveal any greater similarities to any of the ones already described. It involves the condemnation of the Polish situation as being "parochial", separating Poland from the "civilized" Europe and the western world in general. The latter is presented in this case as some kind of separate and unified entity – a synonym of progress and appropriate standards in assessing culture both in the society, as well as in legal practice. In line with such argumentation, artists in the West are allegedly never taken to court for their art. Furthermore, the courts, including the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), stress the significance of the freedom of art, and recognize its special immunity. All public debates on art are substantive and free of any hatred or political demagogy, but with respect and understanding for art, as well as in the spirit of condemnation for any attempts at stifling artistic freedom. In this context, both in the sphere of law and the critical reception of art, Poland should aspire to these standards which have for years, been allegedly in common practice in the West (for examples see....). I would call such argumentation, which is in fact auto-colonial, a **tactic of cultural depreciation.** It has no direct application in trial proceedings, and is of a rather extra-legal nature. It is used to exert a specific psychological pressure on the aggrieved, as well as on public opinion, law enforcement and judges. Prosecutors and judges are made aware that should charges be pressed against an artist or – what is worse – that an artist should be convicted, the situation would be an international _faux pas_ serving only to confirm the backwardness of both the country and its people.

**1.3 Defence Tactics in Court Practice**

Cincinnati v. CAC

It is with skepticism that Anthony Julius assesses the specific nature of the estrangement, the formalist and the canonic lines of defence. Among other things, they make the viewers seem ignorant and clueless about the objectives and history of art, blind to its incredible nature. Such tactics perform both the hermeneutical, as well as protective functions, pointing, at the same time, to the art world's aspirational horizons. The message seems to be: "leave artists and art alone, don't get in the way, don't limit it".71 All three types of defence mediate between art theory and artworks – they instrumentally adapt the theory on the one hand, and highlight selected aspects of the artwork, on the other. Both sides are thus unavoidably simplified. Defence tactics mask those aspects of the work which they are unable to explain – usually their transgressive character. These tactics are, moreover, frequently unable to cope with the problems presented by contemporary artefacts. They overestimate many of them, while in others they ignore the elements of value. Furthermore, each tries to grapple with the challenge of the artwork's transgression as if by simultaneously contradicting its transgressive nature. As they are fragmentary and biased, they all aim at taming transgression, offering in return its general acceptable understanding as a permanent, uniform, and a basically pleasant aspect of the process of creation. However, such a narrative of art produces a fake image.72

A virtually classic example of an artwork being distorted by the use of a defence tactic (formalist and canonic), was the famous trial from 1990 regarding the photography exhibition of the American artist, Robert Mapplethorpe at the Contemporary Art Centre in Cincinnati (CAC). Due to the fact that seven of the photographs by Mapplethorpe were classified as pornography, the gallery and its director were charged with two offences: pandering obscenity and the illegal use of a child in nudity-related material. Whether a particular artwork was obscene or not was determined on the basis of a test (still binding) developed by the Supreme Court in 1973 in the case of Miller v. California [413 U.S. 15 (1973)].73 As far as photographs presenting children go, it is an offence in the state of Ohio to possess or to view by anyone any material or performance depicting a nude minor who is not a child or a ward of the person viewing, unless the material is presented in good faith for an artistic purpose to a person with "a proper interest in the material" and the parents have agreed in writing to the taking of the photograph and to the manner of its exhibition.74

The defence presented a highly elaborate argumentation lasting four days, which was to prove that the incriminated photographs were serious works of art. As Stephen Dubin writes "Defense witnesses were alchemists who... transformed the arc of the urine being directed into a man's mouth into a classical study of symmetry". This extreme sexual act was analyzed in the context of the tensions of the diagonal directions in the composition.75 Thus, the defence attorneys applied a highly developed formalist tactic. In contrast, the concept applied in reference to the accusation regarding the presentation of children, was a canonic one. References to classical art motifs, such as the Renaissance _putti_ were highlighted. There was also a specimen of evidence presented in the form of sworn statements by the children's parents. They testified that they never saw these photographs as anything more than innocent and natural portraits and works of art. They also expressed the esteem they held for Mapplethorpe as a serious artist, and confirmed that they had not only agreed to the photo shoot but were also present at it.76

Although in terms of the hearing, the formalist-canonic tactics adopted by Barry and the CAC proved effective (the case ended in acquittal), they took away the depth and complexity from the highly sophisticated works, i.e. Mapplethorpe's shocking pictures. Despite the obvious fact that Mapplethorpe was a formalist, it is also obvious that the power of his _Portfolio X_ photos transgressed (and maybe even nullified?) the importance of the form by the drastic subject matter.77 The use of an extreme version of the formalist tactic, however, tried to reverse this order and reduced the artwork to a selected arrangement of elements of the composition. It was thus possible to construct the appropriate distance to the work and, consequently, remove the content from the field of vision. What the jury was made to see at the trial were timeless works which carried a purely aesthetic (sic!) pleasure, "abstract composition" of the quality of Kandinsky – and not photographs revealing a sometimes shocking sexual behaviour.

When criticizing defence tactics, however, one must remember that the discussion focuses on a set of discursive practices which – owing to their clarity and persuasive nature – are to alleviate social outrage, remove the threat of a possible court case or other sanctions and, in the case of litigation, help convince the court that the accused should be acquitted (or the action against the defendant dismissed altogether). During court proceedings, their strength lies in the power of authority of the experts called to the stand, and are not magical attempts to falsify reality, but rather, a rhetorical means originating in the scholarly reflection of art. The shape and manner in which these tactics are used in the courtroom depend on the very specific discourse to which they have to adapt. This discourse is based on cynical rhetorical practices which are to play out in the legal and factual arguments so as to end the trial with a desired verdict. It is no wonder then that after a case against the customs office regarding Brancusi's _Bird in Space_ in 1927, Edward Steichen said, "The _Bird_ was its own best witness. It was the only clean thing in the courtroom. It shone like a jewel."78 (If truth be told, one would be hard-pressed to find a more emphatic expression of the modernist programme of the autonomy of art). The form and application of defence tactics depend on the general specificity of the court discourse, which has to be positivist, based on a binary division and essential categories (guilty - not guilty, predicted - did not predict, offended - did not offend, art - not art, etc.). Furthermore, they are a function of how the different provisions of substantive law are constructed, and of the dynamics of the proceedings in the case. For example, the decision to use an extreme version of the formalist defence in response to the charges of the dissemination of obscene materials by Barry and the CAC seems to have stemmed from the nature of Miller's test, which decriminalizes an artwork as long as it presents "serious artistic value". It seems that the test focuses on the immanent characteristics of a work (the intentions of the artists or the modal circumstances, such as the site of its exhibition, seem to be of much lesser importance). Therefore, the institutional categorization of a piece as a work of art may turn out to be insufficient – it also has to be good art. The team of defence lawyers was thus to briefly and simply prove that Mapplethorpe's photographs were high quality artworks. In the case of an artistically sublime creation, the easiest and safest way out was to show the work's "serious value" by its formal analysis, while simultaneously the miraculous veil of the form also masked the drastic nature of the depicted scenes. The state law of Ohio, on the other hand, assumes no criminalization for looking at photographs of nude minors as long as these images are presented in good faith for artistic purpose. Hence, only the artistic aim of the presentation with no references to the quality of the art might protect the artist/exhibiting institution from criminal liability.

Therefore, defence tactics are not – as they cannot be – advanced and exhaustive lectures on art history, theory or sociology. It is, however, exactly for this reason that in the case of _The Perfect Moment_ it is difficult to speak of the victory of freedom of speech, freedom of artistic expression, or the right of the individual to show (if only in limited circumstances) his or her own environment, convictions and sexual preferences. It was more of a victory of the instrumentally used ideology: the narrative of modernism, the myth of the artist-demiurge, and the gallery seen as a temple of art.79

Such a conclusion takes us a bit further into the analysis of the problem of defence discourses than what was suggested by Julius. I would particularly like to focus on the stances and the awareness of the artists (the schizophrenic overlapping of the two elements), when the perception of the artist as a genius-priest, as well as elevating the sphere of art above the practice of life is combined with the creators' avant-garde claim to intervene in the social praxis. Let us take a look at how these traditions (romantic-modernist and avant-garde) can permeate court proceedings.

The Case of Grosz and Herzfeld

The tension between the two extremes of the above-mentioned art discourse was perfectly revealed during the famous pre-war trial of Georg Grosż The artist, connected with Dadaism (hence, _par excellence_ representing the avant-garde movement) aimed not to elevate art according to the postulates of modernism, but to completely eliminate such thinking and use art to aggressively encroach onto the realm of life so as to change the social praxis. His line of defence included references to the exceptional status of art and the artist. The bourgeois aura of art, which the avant-gardists aimed to destroy, was now to be their salvation. The trial was also important from the legal point of view as it revealed the deep divisions as to the application of immunity to art in the domain of the justice system. It was also for the first time in history that the modern constitutional provisions, which _expresis verbis_ guaranteed the freedom of artistic expression, came into play.

In May 1928, Grosz and his publisher, Wieland Herzfelde, were taken to court in Charlottenburg on charges of offending church institutions (§166 Strafgesetzbuch, the German Criminal Code, hereinafter StGB) by means of three drawings: no. 2, 9 and 10 from Grosz's portfolio entitled _The Background_ ( _Hintergrund_ ). It was the third litigation against Grosz and, as was the case with the first two, it was connected with his drawings published but the radical left wing publishing house, Malik Verlag, founded by Herzfelde.80 Already by the end of March, the prosecutor had issued a confiscation order of the drawings and printing plates pursuant to § 41 StGB, in reference to § 166 StGB. Furthermore, the police raided the publishing house, seizing over 3500 copies of the incriminated images. _The Background_ portfolio included seventeen out of an over one hundred drawings that the artist had made as decoration to Jaroslav Hašek's play, _The Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk_ , performed in April 1928 at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz in Berlin. The portfolio, printed in 8 thousand copies, was available for purchase for 1 mark and 70 pfennig.81

Grosz was defended by Edwin Redslob, the Minister of Arts in the Weimar Republic, who was called by the defence to serve as an expert witness in art history. In his testimony, he stressed that the status of an artist unavoidably led the defendant to a conflict with the law, as he served the role of an "accuser of the society" of sorts, and that his works would only be understood in the future. As an example to his thesis of a delayed appreciation of an artwork, Redslob offered the case of Max Klinger's _Crucifixion_ (1890). This artwork, once shocking, was at the time of the trial already seen as belonging to the canon of masterpieces. The expert thus applied the synergy of estrangement and canonic defence tactics, and also invoked the freedom of art protected in the Constitution of the Weimar Republic (1919). In light of the clash between the outdated imperial provisions of the German Criminal Code of 1871 and the provisions of the new constitution,82 the judge noted that it was not the role of the court to situate the artist beyond the still binding legal provisions, even if the artist was motivated by the passion for art.

Grosz himself stressed that he was representing a social minority and that he was acting like a "scourge" (estrangement tactic). He rejected the fact that he was speaking on behalf of specific political forces, though he did admit that his works bore certain political connotations. At the same time, he strongly stressed that an adequate explanation of art is impossible. Nevertheless, he made an effort to explain his works, but his words failed to convince the judge.83

In December 1928, Grosz and Herzfelde were sentenced to a fine of two thousand marks each, with a forfeiture of drawing no. 10 and the printing plate. The verdict was solely due to the manner in which the artist had presented Christ. In the opinion of the court, it was a degrading way of showing a symbol worshipped by many and thus constituted a severe insult to the "institution" of worshiping Christ in the Christian practice.

Grosz and Herzfede appealed to the Country Court. In April 1929, the court presided over by judge Julius Siegert – commonly regarded as ultraconservative – found the two defendants not guilty on grounds that the objective features of the crime of insult to church institutions were not fulfilled. The very daring manner in which the reasons of the judgement were formulated, considering the time, should be stressed here. In them we read about the significance of art and the possibility of its limitations only if other goods are drastically violated (the immunity of art was thus called upon). In the opinion of the court, for the case to be correctly considered, it was necessary to account for what the artist wished to convey by means of his drawings. It was necessary, for that reason, to see them together with the other 14 sketches. Only then could an independent viewer understand that Grosz aimed to show the suffering, senselessness and brutality of war (it is worth emphasizing Siegert's approach which was open to the contextualization of the work). The court decided that drawings no 2 and 9 were a criticism of the representatives of the Church, who incited war-like sentiments. Similar was the case with drawing no. 10, which however, contained an additional message: "just as the gas mask or soldier's boots do not befit the image of Christ, likewise the teachings of the representatives of the Church inciting war do not befit the true Christian message".84 The fact that Grosz showed how the pro-war words of the Church offended the Christian teachings did not mean that he meant to offend these teachings. His aim was to condemn the pro-war Church propaganda. As to those who would still feel offended despite their correct interpretation of the pictures, it should be stated that insofar as church institutions are protected against blatant offence, they are not protected against criticism. The need for the protection of church institutions in the understanding of § 166 StGB should be limited to specific cases, whose brutality of form and the intention of the author is beyond discussion – which is not true here. The opinions of people who abstain from trying to capture the actual meaning of the works but only perceive the superficial, are meaningless – they cannot determine the limits of the freedom of art as it would put it into a "straightjacket" of sorts, restricting art's capacity to perform its social, cultural mission.85

Upon an appeal by the prosecution who, among other arguments, claimed that the freedom of art has its limits within the provisions of law, the senate of the Supreme Court repealed the verdict in February of 1930 and referred the case back for reconsideration. As to the question of the artistic freedom of expression, the Supreme Court negated the broad scale of the freedom of art determined by the Court of Appeals on grounds of art's cultural mission. It claimed that art could not be seen as superior to other activities in cultural life – as long as they enjoyed equal rights. The artistic creation was to halt at a limit set by the legally granted protection of other cultural activities. For this reason, the artist was not allowed to break the bounds as stipulated in § 166 StBG, particularly in the case of a work which **served not only artistic objectives but which was also developed for other specific aims** (highlighted by J.D.).86 Thus, the Supreme Court observed the incompatibility of the autonomous and interventional aspirations of art and indicated that only the first ones, if at all, could be met with special treatment by law.

After the reconsideration of the case, Grosz and Herzfelde were found not guilty. However, the prosecution pressed on with further appeals. The case was finally resolved with a decision of the Court of Cassation. In November 1931, both the defendants were acquitted from the charges of having committed the offence of insulting religious institutions, as the subjective features of the crime had not been fulfilled. At the same time, the court applied § 41 StGB, enabling the confiscation or destruction of the incriminated material in reference to drawing no. 10, justifying the decision that the acquittal of Grosz and Herzfeld would lead to an excessive dissemination of the image and, in consequence, new accusations.87

The trial of Grosz and Herzfeld revealed two problems which remain relevant to this day. The first one is related to the understanding of the legal status of art and its function within law. The bourgeois institution of law in the early 20th c. recognized the bourgeois institution of art as an independent asset worthy of protection – artistic expression was granted protection (immunity of art) as a selected sphere of life elevated above the social praxis. Once the artists began to contest the institution of art thus understood, and set out on their intervening mission, a problem emerged with the legal classification of such types of expression. As the Supreme Court noted in their polemics to the judgement passed down by Judge Siegert, an artist could transgress the limits set by other legally protected goods, particularly if this art served objectives other than the artistic purposes (and these should be understood in the Kantian spirit as a formal purpose, i.e. purposive without purpose). However – and this is the second problem – Grosz himself stressed in the proceedings that he was a representative of a minority, and that his art had political connotations and served as a "scourge". Estrangement and canonic defence with reference to the aestheticized oeuvre of Max Klinger also appeared, and Judge Siegert called on the immunity of art. Art was thus treated here as a simultaneously engaged social activity and as something diametrically detached and different, which naturally escapes all legal evaluation and prevents a true encounter with life from taking place. Grosz scourged the dominating majority; but then, he had the unquestionable competences of an ingenious artist to do so. The hits were to be received with humbleness for his obviously extraordinary art. Of course, the defendants had to defend themselves, and they were rightly acquitted. The question is, however, whether the arguments presented in the case were congruent with the revolutionary declarations of the charismatic Dadaists. After all, just a few years prior to the trial they would negate the canon, the tradition, and the autonomous sphere of art — even art itself. As Hans Richter, a representative of the Berlin Dadaists said, "To hell with art, if it gets in the way [of activating people's energy – J.D.]".88

**1.4. Summary**

The legal relevance of the notion of "art" is a consequence of a complex historical process originating from the Renaissance. It was then that changes in the status of the artist took place. Guild craftsmen would gradually receive independence and the popular recognition of their skills and talent. In a parallel process, art was – somewhat shyly at first – releasing itself from its role subservient to other spheres of life. These developments climaxed in the late 18th c. (the fall of guilds, the emergence of the bourgeois society, Kant's philosophy, the romantic cult of the genius) so as to finally result in the fully autonomous institution of art in the following century (modernism) and the myth of a creator who is different from the social rest (bohemia, the sacralization of art), and thus deserves special treatment (immunity). Despite the attacks of the avant-garde or the attempts to question the modernist narratives by post-modernism,89 there is no doubt that the symbolic potential of the concept of "art" still maintains its power. It is particularly well seen whenever the taboo of art itself is infringed, or in a situation of the emergence of diverse artistic defence tactics.

Out of the three types of the defence of art from censorship indicated by Anthony Julius, two seem to stand out in significance: the canonic and the estrangement one. The first one is based on the feeling that certain values, such as justice, are continuous. It also has a universal and a strongly persuasive and legitimizing character. The significance of the estrangement defence lies in the fact that, in essence, it is the hermeneutics of most of the transgressive or subversive artworks. It explains the most general code of transmission that facilitates a suitable approach to artefacts, leading to an understanding of them and then either to the acceptance of them, or to the complete rejection of them. Without the code of alienation, not only is it impossible to have a defence, but generally speaking, even an analysis of many transgressive and engaged works. From among other types of defence, there is one more of a special standing – elaborated further on – namely, the intentional tactic. It derives from the specificity of the continental legal systems which usually require an investigation into the consciousness and the will of the perpetrator.

I believe that what is important is the tension between the demands of the artists to have art fully present in public life, and the attachment to the privileges resulting from the mythologization of the artistic sphere. It seems that with all their aspirations to comment or even to influence the social reality, the authors should be conscious of the fact that the gestures they make may be tantamount to the rejection of the modernist assumptions that could be used to grant protective immunity for their actions. Particularly, that it was the artists, who already in the mid-20th c. used all possible means to deconstruct the artistic myths determining how art was actually thought of. It is rather strange that once they had stripped their viewers of all illusions, they themselves did not lose the conviction of their own unique status and role. Such partial resignation from autonomy (related generally, to only the means of expression) undermines the credibility and the sincerity of artistic interventions, and neutralizes the intended effect, not to mention that it unjustifiably places the artist in a privileged position in the society. An artist who takes up arms with the aim of performing a coup cannot scream to the troops of the _ancien regime_ to stop shooting at him because as much as he is a revolutionary, he is also an artist – and you don't shoot at an artist. On the other hand, if some post-modern artists see their transgression only as a game, a play (i.e. a means in itself) then there is no reason why the rules of their game cannot be adapted to the legal framework binding in the society. A game or a play is always frivolous in form and thus can be effortlessly changed without detriment to the message, as it will retain its frivolity as it had previously done.

I would like to stress that as much as my deliberations seem to be against the interests of artists, they are not in favour of the prosecutorial censorship of art. They are more of a reflection on the often ambiguous and inconsistent stance of those representing the art world. The myth of the exceptional and hence untouchable artist has been tailor-made to the situation of transgression in the realm of the modernist conventions and the cult of the form (softening and masking the potential transgression) and, at a successive stage, to the eccentric encroachments into life, which the bohemia of the 19th c. allowed itself. At the moment when the junction was reached where transgressions were elevated to the rank of art, and thus entered into the official cultural circulation, they gained the symbolic authority of a "magical" work and a rasp occurred; all the more so that the assumption was to connect with life. Consequently, strong social and legal tension started to appear. I believe that it is improper to create an abstract immunity — based on a phantasmagorical magical sphere of art — which would protect against any legal interference and _de facto_ allows for breaking the law. The autonomy of the field that Bourdieu writes about (let us be clear – one which is different from the autonomy of art) should not, by default, protect against an _ex post_ legal evaluation, though the rules of the game, interpretation and evaluation of the work as shaped by the field, can impact the juridical qualification of a given act.90 Thus, any possible liberalization of the provisions limiting the sphere of communication should not be introduced in the name of the freedom or art, but in the name of the freedom of us all. As we shall see later on, these problems are very much pertinent in the Poland of today, though they are not the only ones deserving of the attention of the reader.

20 P.H.D. Kaplan, "Veronese and the Inquisition: The Geopolitical Context," in _Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts_ , ed. E.C. Childs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 108-111.

21 Kaplan, "Veronese," 105.

22 See P. Bourdieu, _Rules of Art:_ _Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field_ , trans. S. Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996). On the processes of artistic emancipation see e.g. N. Heinich, _Być artystą. Rzecz o przekształceniach statusu malarzy i rzez´biarzy_ , trans. L. Mazur (Warszawa: Vizja Press&IT, 2007), 11–59 [French edition: _Être artiste. Les transformations du statut des peintres et des sculpteurs_ (Paris: Klincksieck, 1996)].

23 M. Jay, "The Aesthetic Ideology as Ideology, Or, What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics?," _Cultural Critique_ , no. 21 (Spring 1992): 41-61.

24 On Goya see J.A. Tomlinson, "Goya and the Censors," in _Suspended License_ , ed. Childs, 125-147.

25 For more on the subject, see M. Golka, _Socjologia artysty nowożytnego_ (Poznan´: Ars Nova, 1995).

26 Golka, _Socjologia,_ 45; the year 1831 (of Honoré de Balzac publishing his short story _Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu_ ) may be accepted as the symbolic date of such _"isolation"_ of the artist. Balzac was one of the first writers to introduce self-standing painters as protagonists, such as the young Poussin (professional academic _par excellence_ ) and his master, one Frenhofer. The latter, torn between genius and madness, embarked upon a quest for truth of art in full negligence of all academic canons, ultimately placing his own life at stake. Numerous artists, including Cézanne himself, identified themselves later with Frenhofer's character.

27 Heinich, _Być artystą_ , 45.

28 Golka, _Socjologia,_ 53. Notably, the blueprint that _bohemian_ exercised such control over public imagination, and became so profound that in his 1867 essay on Manet, Émile Zola felt obliged to emphasise the artist's regal and solemn nature. See: E. Zola, "Une nouvelle manière en peinture. Édouard Manet," _Revue du XIXe siècle_ , January 1, 1867.

29 Golka, _Socjologia_ , 65-89.

30 P. Bürger, _Theory of the Avant-Garde,_ trans. M. Show (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press 1984), 26.

31 V. Kandinsky, _Concerning the Spiritual in Art,_ trans. M.T.H. Sadler (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1977).

32 According to criminal law, it has been recognised since the late Middle Ages that insanity shall result in the exclusion of or restriction to criminal responsibility; present-day interpretation of the perpetrator's insanity developed between the 16th and 17th centuries; ever since, the perpetrator's insanity has been a factor excluding the unlawfulness or criminality of his or her action. Therefore, even in those times one could speak of a countertype of madness, see e.g. S. P _ł_ aza, _Historia prawa w Polsce na tle porównawczym_ , vol. 1 (Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka, 2002), 373.

33 Golka, _Socjologia_ , 25-26.

34 Also today, there are certain tendencies ascribing inner conflict to artists, alongside mental instability, peculiarities, and propensity to madness; in Poland, this theory is proven e.g. by the media's reaction to artworks by Katarzyna Kozyra – _pars pro toto_ of contemporary artists (see e.g. pg 192 and 251).

35 G. Vasari, _Lives of the Artists_ , vol. 2, trans. J. C. Bondanella, P. Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), 226.

36 _K. Estreicher,_ "Wstęp," in _G. Vasari, Żywoty najsławniejszych malarzy, rzez´biarzy i architektów,_ vol. 1 (Warszawa – Kraków: PWN, 1985), XXXVI. It ought to be categorically highlighted that Vasari's approach was by no means morally or religiously indifferent; quite the opposite – the reader will be left in no doubt as to his Catholic beliefs and moralising engagement.

37 B. Barnes, "Aretino, the Public, and the Censorship of Michelangelo's Last Judgment," in _Suspended License,_ ed. Childs, 68-69.

38 Barnes, "Aretino", 77-78.

39 J. Molanus, "O historii _s_ ´więtych obrazów i wyobrażen´, aby by _ł_ y w _łas_ ´ciwie używane, a przeciw nadużyciom, cztery księgi, 1594," [" _De Picturis et Imaginibus Sacris, pro vero earum usu contra abusus_ , 1594"], in J. Bia _ł_ ostocki (selection and commentary), _Teoretycy, pisarze i artyści o sztuce 1500-1600_ (Gdan´sk: s _ł_ owo/obraz terytoria, 2007), 154-171.

40 In analysing the issue of art's autonomy from the Marxist vantage point, Peter Bürger uses the phrase _"the institution of art"_ to describe the system serving the purposes of creating and distributing art and art-related beliefs typical for a given era, of noticeable impact on the reception of artworks. In 19th century bourgeois society, elevating art above daily life and complete autonomisation of the field of aesthetics were absolutely vital to the institution of art. According to the blueprint laid out by Bürger, the purpose of sacral art was to represent the object of cult; collective craft was responsible for its production; reception thereof was collective, or sacral; the purpose of courtly art was to depict the representational object; its production was individual, its reception collective, or sociable; the purpose of bourgeois art was to portray social self-identity (satisfaction of anachronistic needs displaced from daily life), production and reception thereof individual. Bürger, _Theory_ , 47-48.

41 C. Greenberg, "Necessity of _Formalism,_ " in _New Literary History_ no. 3 (Autumn, 1971): 171-175. Manet's importance to the abandonment of academic restrictions and to the recognition and development of autonomous rights of painting is commonly recognised. His role was accentuated by such authors as Émile Zola, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, André Malraux, Clement Greenberg, Michael Freed, Pierre Bourdieu, and Arthur Danto.

42 Bürger, _Theory_ , 47-51.

43 Bürger primarily includes Dadaism, surrealism and constructivism as part of these trends, all breaking away from artistic tradition and contesting the bourgeois institution of art. He recognises expressionism, futurism, and cubism to a lesser extent; the latter, while rejecting the Renaissance representative convention, failed to share the primary avant-garde demand of acknowledgment of art as a life praxis.

44 Bürger, _Theory_ , 61–68.

45 Bürger, _Theory_ , 56, 69–71.

46 See also Bürger, _Theory_ , 100-105. Here, I am offering such extensive description of the avant-garde paradigm of the non-organic oeuvre for the following reason: the vast majority of Polish audiences and art critics of the nineties have refused (and continue to refuse) to recognise such produce as art – while numerous critics sharing Bürger's beliefs have united in their lack of acceptance for subsequent repetitions of avant-garde gestures (see e.g. pg 200).

47 Bürger, _Theory_ , 72. Hal Foster corrects Bürger's deliberations on the avant-garde, also rehabilitating the neo-avant-garde that the German theoretician particularly despises. Foster points to the fact that the very act of juxtaposing art and life places autonomy (after all, questioned in itself) on art's side while hypostatising life as if it were a phenomenon awaiting artists ready to gently immerse themselves therein, once all boundaries of form are severed. Concurrently, Foster discerns actual power in discrepancies of the avant-garde, in its non-reducible performance between art and life. He further emphasises that while the historical avant-garde had only been re-examining conventions, only the neo-avant-garde managed to fully comprehend the former's mission and point the shafts of critique against the institution of art, replacing nihilist attacks with deconstruction and systematic (seemingly endless) analysis. H. Foster, "Who's Afraid of the Neo-Avant-Garde?," in H. Foster, _The Return of the Real. The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century_ (Cambridge Mass. – London, The MIT Press, 1996), 1-34.

48 C. Andersson, "The Censorship of Images in Reformation Germany, _1520-1560_ ," in _Suspended License_ , ed. Childs, 34.

49 W. Zakrzewski, in _Polskie prawo konstytucyjne_ , ed. W. Skrzyd _ł_ o (Lublin: Morpol, 1998), 171-172.

50 The perception of art and freedom of creation by 19th-century lawyers is well-illustrated by the trial involving Gustave Flaubert's novel _Madame Bovary_. In January 1857, Flaubert, the _La Revue de Paris_ magazine which published the book, and the publisher were all charged with moral turpitude and a breach of public and religious morality. Demanding a ban on the novel's distribution, imperial prosecutor Ernest Pinard emphasised the realistic (and thus immoral) nature of descriptions depicting the unrefined nature of contemporarily portrayed love scenes; "Art that observes no rule is no longer art; it is like a woman who disrobes completely. To impose the one rule of public decency upon art is not to subjugate it but to honor it". In a judgment of 9 February 1857, the court stated i.a. "... given that his book, has apparently not, like certain other works, been written for the sole purpose of pandering to sensual passions, to the spirit of license and debauchery, or to ridicule things that must be surrounded with universal respect; given that his only fault was to have lost sight on occasion of the rules that every self-respecting writer should not violate, and to have forgotten that literature, like art, will accomplish the good it is called upon to do only if it be chaste and pure in substance as well as in form ... the tribunal acquits them of charges brought against them ...". Description of the case and all quotes: F. Brown, _Flaubert. A Life_ (London: Pimlico, 2007), 327-329.

51 Problems with 19th c. state censorship are wonderfully illustrated by press activities of the eminent French painter and political caricaturist Honoré Daumier (1808–1979), sentenced in 1832 for the mockery of King Louis Philippe I in satirical cartoons published in the press. While in the times of Louis Philippe, France was a parliamentary monarchy based upon the Constitutional Charter of 1830, guaranteeing freedom of the press, the king began gradually restricting the range of rights and freedoms. During the period of August 1830 through October 1834, 520 trials were held in France against publishers of the oppositionist press, 188 convictions passed despite the judges' goodwill. On 16 October 1835 (in the wake of a failed bomb attack against Louis Philippe), the monarch's regime passed a special press law banning i.a. any criticism of the king or his family, the monarchical order or rules of succession, or any government action approved by the king; furthermore, the new law introduced preventive censorship of illustrations published by the press. R. Terdiman, _Discourse/Counter-Discourse. The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France_ (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985), 152-162.

52 G. Radbruch, _Filozofia prawa_ [ _Rechtsphilosophie_ ], trans. E. Nowak (Warszawa, 2009), 117.

53 Yet Douzinas points out that in reality, the law does not forget paintings or art, exercising more or less blatant control over these areas of public life. Moreover, legal and aesthetic verdicts tend to be much more akin than traditionally believed. C. Douzinas, "The Aesthetics of Law," in _The Trials of Art_ , ed. D. McClean (London: Ridinghouse, 2007), 65-86.

54 See e.g. judgments of American courts of law: Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 230, 251 (1903); Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 US 413, 427 (1966); Pope, 481 U.S. at 505; State v. Walden Book Co., 386 So. 2d 342, 246 (La. 1980); judgment of an Australian court of law concerning the showing of Andres Serrano's _Piss Christ_ – Pell v. NGV (1997). Polish writings also emphasise the separation of law and aesthetics, e.g. M. Filar, "Sztuka a zagadnienia pornografii," _Nowe Prawo_ no. 10 (1978): 1446; J. Piskorski, "Dekryminalizacja dzia _ł_ an´ artystycznych," in _Zagadnienia współczesnej polityki kryminalnej_ , ed. T. Dukiet-Nagórska (Bielsko-Bia _ł_ a: Wydawnictwo "Sto", 2006), 253. The Regional Court in Gdan´sk, on the other hand, concluded as follows in justifying Dorota Nieznalska's conviction (Ref. No. IV K 638/02): _"_ The court does not repudiate the value of socially engaged or any other art, as the court has no intention of acting as an art critic".

55 J. Habermas, "Modernity – An Incomplete Project," in _The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture_ , ed. H. Foster (Port Townsend, Wash: Bay Press, 1983), 3-15. See also Douzinas, "The Aesthetics," 66-67.

56 This is apparent in the case-law of court examining charges of the pornographic nature of artworks (see also pg 126). Swiss courts of law, for example, have confirmed the necessity of adorning obscene representations with artistic form, allowing average viewers a distanced reception (contemplative rather than sensual, were one to follow Kant's lead). In the case of painter Josef Felix Müller, the court of first instance (of trial) concluded that the vulgarity of his paintings is blatantly perceptible, and that _"Even with an artistic aim, crude sexuality is not worthy of protection."_ The appellate court, on the other hand, stated as follows: "These are not works which... in treating a particular subject or scene, allude to sexual activity more or less discreetly.... Sexual activity is crudely and vulgarly portrayed for its own sake and not as a consequence of any idea informing the work. [...]". The Court of Cassation pointed out that "... works of art per se do not enjoy any special status (a work of art, however, is not obscene, if the artist contrives to present the subjects of a sexual nature in an artistic form, when their offensiveness is toned down and ceases to predominate)...". Based on information contained in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in the case of Müller et al. v. Switzerland of 24 May 1988, app. no. 10737/84.

57 A. Julius, _Transgressions: The Offenses of Art_ , London 2002.

58 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 102.

59 On estrangement tactics, see Julius, _Transgressions_ , 30-36.

60 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 36-37.

61 Notably, however, Manet himself did not ignore the topic to the extent Zola would have wished for; the painter's comments emphasising his wish to show a female nude _en plein air,_ in an attempt to confront Giorgione's vision, are well known.

62 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 38-42.

63 On canonic defence, see Julius, _Transgressions_ , 42-48.

64 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 44. Pierre Bourdieu would claim that such tactics allow a work created in the so-called field of restricted cultural production (innovative works abandoning the canons) to pass into the so-called field of legitimate (canonised) production, therefore also approved in the school canon.

65 It is worth noting, however, that entering the canon does not guarantee the absolute inviolability of a work or its creator – what is important from the point of view of an artist or even a court of law, does not necessarily must have the same value for the rest of society, particularly in the context of culture wars.

66 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 26-28.

67 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 2-28. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted in 1791, guaranteeing i.a. the freedom of speech and press. It became the basis for the liberal case-law of United States courts of law, engaging in particular, in the protection of the freedom of speech against state interference. In American reality, the tactic of referencing the First Amendment is much more than a rhetorical defence measure – the First Amendment is a constitutional meta-rule of public life, organising values, ways of thinking, and legal interpretations.

68 There obviously remains the question of whether Veronese's oeuvre was truly as _"naïve"_ and _"innocent"_ as it is claimed. Given the catholic-protestant disputes concerning transubstantiation and consubstantiation, it seems that figures in German-style attire assisting at the Last Supper and the servant bleeding from the nose are more than ornamental staffage – it seems that their polemic-and-theological subtext runs deeper. No wonder these particular elements of representative imagery spiked the Inquisitors' particular suspicion.

69 <http://www.indeks73.pl/pl_,index.php>, accessed November 9, 2014.

70 Legal doctrine recognises vertical (state-individual relations) and horizontal (relations between private-law bodies) application of human rights and freedoms. No consensus has been reached on whether horizontal application is only indirect (constitutional norms used only as interpretation directives in the application of other normative acts), or direct in its nature as well (constitutional norms as the sole basis for passing individual and specific decisions). B. Skwara, "Horyzontalny skutek praw i wolno _s_ ´ci w systemie Konstytucji RP," in _Dylematy praw człowieka_ , ed. T. Gardocka, J. Sobczak (Torun´: Wydawnictwo Adam Marsza _ł_ ek, 2008); B. Banaszak, _Prawo konstytucyjne_ (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 1999), 389; W. Osiatyn´ski, _"_ Wprowadzenie do praw cz _ł_ owieka", accessed on November 9, 2014, <http://www.hfhrpol.waw.pl/pliki/WOsiatynski_HistIFilo.pdf>, accessed November 9, 2014. On Art 73 of the Polish Constitution see pg 61. For the English translation of the Constitution see <http://www.sejm.gov.pl/prawo/konst/angielski/kon1.htm>.

71 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 31-32.

72 Julius, _Transgressions_ , 48-50.

73 Under such a test, members of the jury have to in turn rule on the following: firstly, whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (or evokes lustful thoughts); secondly, whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; thirdly, whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. The test is cumulative in nature – in other words, the first two questions have to be answered in the affirmative and listed features have to be found lacking in case of the third question for obscenity of a given work to ultimately be confirmed.

74 G. Vassall-Adams, "Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment," in _The Trials_ , ed. McClean, 293.

75 S. C. Dubin, "The Trials of Robert Mapplethorpe," in _Suspended License_ , ed. Childs, 378.

76 VassałAdams, "Robert Mapplethorpe," 294.

77 On the relation between art and the power of images see D. Freedberg, _The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response_ (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989).

78 S. Giry, "An Odd Bird," _Legal Affairs_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2002/story_giry_sepoct2002.msp>.

79 See also S. Culver, "Whistler v Ruskin, The Courts, the Public, and Modern Art," in _The Administration_ , ed. Burt, 151.

80 The first so-called Dada trial took place in 1921. The artist was charged with defamation of the military ( _God With Us_ political portfolio, 1920). Three years later, Grosz was charged with the dissemination of obscene material ( _Ecce homo_ portfolio, 1923). In both cases, Grosz was fined. M. Carmilly-Weinberger, _Fear of Art: Censorship and Freedom of Expression in Art_ (New York & London: R.R. Bowker Comp., 1986), 98-99.

81 M. White, "Not Another Blasphemy Trial!: The Prosecution of George Grosz and Political Justice in Weimar, Germany," in _The Trials,_ ed. McClean, 256.

82 Art 102 of the Weimar Constitution eliminated censorship, Art 135 guaranteed freedom of conscience to all citizens, Art 137 guaranteed separation of the Church and state, Art 142 read, _"Art, science, and the teaching thereof are free. The state shall guarantee their protection and participate in their safeguarding"_. White, "Not Another," 257.

83 White, "Not Another," 256-260.

84 A. Kulczak, _Strafrechtliche Einbruchstellen in den Lebensbereichen "bildende Kunst"_ (Aachen: Shaker, 1993), 189-190.

85 Kulczak, _Strafrechtliche,_ 189-190.

86 Kulczak, _Strafrechtliche,_ 195.

87 White, "Not Another Blasphemy," 264.

88 H. Richter, _Dada: Art and Anti-Art_ , trans. D. Britt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997), 113.

89 My use of the term "post-modernism" spans from a trend in art initiated in the 1960s in reaction to modernism founded on Clement Greenberg's formalist theory of art. Post-modernism undermined i.a. such modernist ideas as originality, development, purity of genres, focus on the medium, separation of art and praxis of life (autonomy), universality, ideological neutrality of Kant's judgment of taste, elitism, distinction between good and bad/high and low art, and assumptions of pure and direct projection of the artist's personality onto his/her artwork.

90 I find claims to the effect of recognising as fact that a given violation was committed by an artist as sufficient premise for justification, even if said violation did not in any way tie-in with his or her artistic activities, to be particularly ludicrous. When the United States prosecution services applied to Polish authorities for the extradition of Roman Polan´ski, who was charged with the rape of 13-year old Samantha Geimer in 1978, many representatives of culture in Poland defended the film director, referring only to his genius. A publicist of the liberal left-wing _GW_ wrote, "While everyone is equal before the law, some were blessed by God with extraordinary talent and will. And they are first among equals... I am appealing for humility in the face of immense talent. This is a gift, in whose face we remain helpless in our moral judgment." S. Blumsztajn, "O pokorę wobec talentu apeluję," _GW_ , September 30, 2009.
**II. LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE FREEDOM OF ART IN POLAND
( _WITH ANNA DEMENKO_ )**

**2.1 Terminological Comments**

Since the deliberations contained here refer to Polish law, the foreign reader would be best served with a handful of terminological explanations. Despite the deep controversy in the doctrine as to the structure of the "crime" as such, the deliberations have been based on the notion of "crime" understood as: an act — an act that is prohibited, unlawful, socially harmful to a degree higher than insignificant and culpable.91

The exclusion of unlawfulness, the noxiousness of an act to society, or guilt always results in a situation in which even if an act is prohibited, it cannot be deemed a crime. A prohibited act is one whose features (i.e. traits characterizing the given act) have been defined in the act of law. Among these, we differentiate **objective features** (those which are of an objective nature, i.e. independent of the intellectuałmental attitude; these include: means of behaviour, circumstances of time, location, and situation and, sometimes, also the effect), as well as **subjective features** , i.e. the intentionality or unintentionality of the perpetrator (i.e. the intellectual attitude of the perpetrator to the behaviour fulfilling the objective features). As a rule, it is required for a prohibited act to be committed intentionally – the perpetrator is liable for an unintentional perpetration of a given act only in cases the law so stipulates. An act can be **committed intentionally** with a willful or conceivable intent. A **willful intent** ( _dolus directus_ ) occurs when the perpetrator, encompassing in its consciousness all features of the prohibited act, wants to commit it, i.e. he/she is aware of the inevitability of certain effects, even if they are not of importance to him/her. A **conceivable intent** ( _dolus eventualis_ ) occurs when the perpetrator takes into consideration the commitment of a prohibited act and agrees to it. An act **is committed unintentionally** when the perpetrator does not have the intent to commit a prohibited act but commits it by violating the rule of caution, and does so despite having foreseen the possibility, or – objectively speaking – having had the opportunity to foresee it. To claim that a person has committed a given crime, it is a necessary though insufficient prerequisite to determine whether the perpetrator's behaviour has fulfilled all the subjective and objective features of the act of which he/she is accused, i.e. that he/she has committed "a prohibited (punishable) act". Furthermore, the perpetrator's behaviour must also be unlawful, culpable and socially harmful. Behaviour is unlawful when it fulfils the features of a prohibited act with the simultaneous absence of circumstances justifying its secondary legalization (i.e. lack of circumstances excluding unlawfulness). The circumstances which exclude the unlawfulness of a given behaviour are termed **countertypes** in Polish doctrine. These include, e.g. necessary defence, the state of necessity as provided for in Art 26 §1, as well as experiment. There is an ongoing debate in the jurisprudence as to whether an artistic nature of an act can be seen as such a circumstance. **Culpability** , on the other hand, means – in line with the purely normative concept – that the perpetrator is charged with an unlawful prohibited act in a situation in which he/she could have abstained from its commitment. Circumstances which exclude guilt are, e.g. the perpetrator's non-accountability, the fact that he/she is a minor, or that the act was committed in a state of necessity as provided for in Art 26 §2 PCC,92 or by way of the perpetrator's justified though incorrect conviction that a circumstance excluding guilt or unlawfulness was in place (e.g. that a situation had taken place which justified a necessary defence).93

The common courts in the Polish legal system are regional, district and appellate courts. They adjudicate in cases of criminal law and what is broadly understood as civil law. The proceedings are at least of two instances. The Supreme Court oversees the activities of the common courts in their adjudicating capacity. As such, therefore, it considers cases brought to cassation or to other legal remedies, and passes resolutions resolving legal issues. The Constitutional Court is an independent constitutional organ of the state. As an organ of the judiciary, it is independent of the legislative and executive powers; however, within the judiciary, it also maintains a position autonomous from all other courts, including the Supreme Court. The basic task of the Constitutional Court is to decide whether the lower-ranking legal norms are in compliance with those of higher rank (especially pertaining to the Constitution) and, if need be, to eliminate the norms which are not compliant with the system of the law in force.

**2.2 The Concept of Art in the Polish Legal System**

The current regulations refer rather perfunctorily to such notions as "art", "artwork", "artistic creation", "artistic activity", "artist", without providing any definitions of these concepts. For this reason, it is perhaps worth the while to dwell for a moment on the understanding of the term "art", as it is the basis for any further deliberations which will be made easier once certain notions are now determined.

The most profound reference to the sphere of art is embedded in Art 73 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997, which stipulates that "the freedom of artistic creation and scientific research as well as dissemination of the fruits thereof, the freedom to teach and to enjoy the products of culture, shall be ensured to everyone". It should also be underlined that despite this guarantee, the different laws do not, in principle, provide for any special privileges allocated to art.94 The legislator consistently avoids a normative determination of what constitute concepts such as art, creation, or artistic activity, leaving the decision in the hands of the doctrine and judiciary.

As it has already been mentioned, lawyers both in Poland and elsewhere in the world stress the fact that art lies beyond the sphere of legal deliberations. On the other hand, however, attempts emerge to actually make this concept more specific, both in theory and in practice. Some definitions of art presented in Polish literature refer to copyrights, the subject of which is the so-called work, i.e. any manifestation of a creative activity of an individual nature established in whatever form (Art 1 of Copyrights and Affiliated Rights).95 These definitions, however, leads to certain doubts stemming from issues such as the systematic negation observed in contemporary art of values, for instance novelty, individuality/independence, or an established form. In other words, there are artworks which are not works (such can be found in, for example, minimalism, conceptualism, Dadaism), and vice versa – there are works which are not artworks (which does not mean to say that they cannot become artworks should the artist decide so).

Authors do not fare any better who deal with the so-called art countertype (i.e. the concept according to which the artistic nature of an act would exclude the criminal liability of the perpetrator, and who also usually refuse to divagate into the meaning of the notion of art. At the same time, since the features of a countertype must be determined, they tacitly accept certain assumptions related to it. In his formulation of the features of an "art countertype", Jarosław Warylewski has recognized that when evaluating an act from the perspective of criminal law, it should be investigated whether the perpetrator is an artist and whether his/her actions have led to the creation of an artwork. Furthermore, it should be examined whether the perpetrator was motivated by the wish to achieve an artistic objective.96 In no way, however, does he explain what he understands by the terms "artistic" and "artwork".

According to Marian Filar, a detailed analysis of "what is art" is not the task of lawyers, and the only criteria that he sees as feasible are "the criteria of aesthetic and technical skill manifested in, _inter alia_ , the use of artistic means of expression so as to transpose onto the viewers the vision of the world and the emotions evoked by its phenomena felt by the author.... all possible tendencies aimed at capturing the notion in categories of moralizing or identifying art with good should be rejected...".97. A similar bent, embedded in the Kantian tradition, has been adopted by Justyna J. Nalewajko and Rafał Kubiak (also see p. 92). It is however surprising that the examples of contemporary art these lawyers have decided to analyze are the drastic, ostentatiously anti-aesthetic and socially engaged performances by Chris Burden, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, which are unlikely to fit the definiens they have outlined.98

The most promising trope in the analyzed attempts at defining art is the randomly occurring subjective aspect (which is not, however, further elaborated, or else it is elaborated incorrectly) – in other words, the activities with an artistic aim, with an artistic intention. This has not escaped the attention of Warylewski, though he sees it as of secondary importance. Justyna Nalewajko and Rafał Kubiak have also written about the artistic aim. However, as it has been mentioned above, their understanding of "artistic" is very narrow and thus inadequate. The subjective feature in determining the artistic attribute in art countertype has also been highlighted by Magdalena Budyn-Kulik and Marek Kulik, who have assumed that everything which has been motivated by the wish to attain an artistic aim is an artwork.99 Mateusz Bieczyński, in his reference to the German jurisprudence which stipulated a broad, materiałsubjective interpretation of an "artwork" and "artistic creation", has also indicated that the artistic nature of a work should be determined by the artistic aim of its author which it reveals.100 However, the problem with these proposals (except for Bieczyński's) is that criminal analyses of different cases result in a specific recidivism of the Kantian tradition. Thus, it shows just how Polish lawyers (and not only lawyers, for that matter) are attached to the modernist tradition of understanding art.

It seems that the many misunderstandings in an effort to define art stem from a specific helplessness in coining definitions in such areas as aesthetics or art history, which always had to grapple with unresolved disputes about the sense of this very concept. Still, their achievements should not be ignored. An insight into the aesthetic categories can undoubtedly help in juridical deliberations, placing them in the correct context and rendering them more compatible with the reality of the art world.

The Institutional Approach

In his book _Definitions of Art_ , Stephen Davies has indicated that the contemporary deliberations about the definition of art present two basic tropes: the functional and the procedural. Representatives of the first believe that art has to serve specific functions – usually one connected with providing an aesthetic experience. Only such works which serve certain functions can be seen as artworks, regardless of the procedures in which they were created or the artistic context. In contrast, advocates of the procedural approach assume that regardless of the functions being served (not negating that it may and does serve functions), art has to be created in accordance with certain rules and procedures, and its status is awarded to it by persons who have earned the authority to do so.101 The procedural categorization of a work as an artwork is purely descriptive. Only once the object is elevated to the position of an artwork by means of certain rules, is it subject to an assessment (the categorization of an object as an artwork comes from a different order than that of aesthetic valuation). Proceduralists do not formulate any minimum aesthetic conditions that an artwork has to meet – no matter how bad it is. Neither are they interested, as far as the definition goes, in the question of the role of the place of art in our lives.102 The most profound definition of art in the procedural trope is one of an institutional nature.

As we have indicated above, Polish legislators have assumed that they are incompetent in deciding on what art actually is. In particular cases the answer to the question has been left to the courts (or other organs conducting the proceedings, such as the police or the prosecution). Due to the autonomation and professionalization of artistic issues, their understanding requires an ever-expanding specialist knowledge. For that reason, the courts or law enforcement agencies usually seek counsel from experts in the field of visual arts. In this sense, the system of justice draws on a quasi-institutional meta-definition of sorts – "art is what expert witnesses recognize as art". If a historian or an art critic, aesthetician or curator, i.e. a representative of the so-called _art world_ decides that a particular product is or is not art, then the court on principle acknowledges this opinion (though as an independent institution it is not bound by the recommendations of experts). The court draws on the assessments of experts who should, however, always take into consideration a broad cultural and scientific context, as well as the historical perspective, instead of relying solely on their own personal convictions. In other words, even if they identify themselves with the functional definition of art which, for example, refuses to see artistic features in _ready mades_ or in works from the field of critical art, they should still indicate before the court that the definition does not reflect the well rooted artistic and exhibition _praxis_ or the preponderant conclusions drawn by contemporary studies in reference to art, where the procedural approach dominates, if only tacitly assumed. The practice and legal doctrine should also aim at a broad approach to such notions as art, artistic creation, artist, or artwork, so as to best reflect the actual state of contemporary practices in the world of art. Hence, it seems necessary to draw on institutional theories which possess an innate inclusiveness.

The first to acknowledge the constitutive context of the concept of an "artwork" was Arthur Danto (though he saw himself as an essentialist). Intrigued by Andy Warhol's _Brillo Box_ exhibited at New York's Stable Gallery, he introduced the term _Artworld_ to the terminology of aesthetics. The word describes a compilation of "an atmosphere of artistic theory" and "a knowledge of the history of art", i.e. elements which "the eye cannot decry". The difference between the _Brillo Box_ and the regular Brillo cardboard boxes from a store lies in this very theory, which transfers the carton into the world of art and protects it from falling back to the level of the real object which it is.103 In the process of developing his definition of art, Danto began to gradually depart from the assumptions presented in the famous article _The Artworld_. However, his concept of shifting the focus of discussion on art from the inter-subjectively perceived traits of a work onto the context in which it has been created and in which it functions, has been taken up by other theoreticians. Their efforts bore fruit in developing the proper institutional definitions – quite to the contrary of Danto's intentions. George Dickie is seen as the classic proponent of the institutional theory.104 One of those who have critically revised Dickie's theory, was Stephen Davis. His deliberations seem to be particularly inspiring in the legal context.

Davies' observations in terms of defining art can be briefly presented as follows: for a work to be an artwork it needs to have a special status, which is conferred by a member of the art world, usually an artist with the appropriate competences due to the role he/she occupies in the art world. Artworks are the products of the art world which is an informal institution structured by the roles played therein. It has its own history, has grown from non-institutional social practices and has developed over time. The conventions of awarding the status of an artwork have changed within its field over time. The practices from which this institution sprouted were initially aimed at what we see today as the points or the functions of art. Due to the fact that the art world has been changing, it sometimes acts without any direct references to these functions, or even in opposition to them. There are also art worlds outside of our (Western contemporary) culture. Our art world and its practices derive from the Ur artworks; we recognize Ur artworks as art because the art world has accorded them such status. If the art world had never emerged, we would not have artworks but merely objects created in the world of religion, for example, on which we would focus our aesthetic attention. Many of the artworks can only be admired as such in their relation to the works that had been created before. Thus, artworks are the products of the art world. "Artist" is a term denoting a role in the art world – it is usually the artists themselves who are conferrers of art status. However, according to the institutional theory, the fact that such status is achieved, is not exclusively related to the role of the artist. There are other conventions which allow for such status to be granted, not to mention certain quantitative restrictions in adopting specifically defined roles, as well as a limited range of objects or modes of activities by means of which art status may be achieved. If the convention of conferring art status is to be used successfully, the creator of the art in question should intend for his product to be perceived in one of the ways in which art has been correctly viewed in the past. The effective and durable use of the competences assigned to a given role depends on the recognition by and cooperation with other members of the art world. In particular, attempts to change the convention of conferring art status can only be successful if the agent is a prominent person in the art world. One person can be more of an artist than the other; hence, he/she can be more eligible to use certain conventions to confer art status than others who are "less important" artists.105

It seems that references to the art world in a situation of a court trial simplify (though do not render it unproblematic) the verification of what could be recognized as art because the modal circumstances, related to the roles and competences in the art world, are subject to a relatively easy evidential verification. This helps escape the risk of falling into the complicated divagations over the fulfilment of the threshold level of the aesthetic function of art, and wards off such absurd conclusions as the exclusion of _ready mades_ or conceptualism from the realm of art. Bearing in mind the specificities of criminal proceedings, for the purpose of the present publication an attempt at constructing a "test of the artistic nature" could be undertaken, based on the observations stemming from Davies' institutional theory.

Intentionality of action and the competences of person X to follow the specific conventions of the art world should be investigated in the test, first and foremost. X does not have to be an artist. In a minimum scenario, X's awareness of performing the social role of the artist at the time of committing the act, i.e. the awareness of his/her own action would suffice. The effect of X's actions does not, in principle, have to satisfy any threshold aesthetic requirements. When making the decision that a particular product or activity is a work of art, X has to want for his/her action to be seen in one of the ways in which art has been correctly viewed in the past.

In establishing the subjective elements in X's creation, the usually helpful element is the institutional context, in the strict sense of the word, i.e. modal circumstances, such as activities performed during a festival or as a gallery project, as well as artistic achievements or education. At the same time, these elements define the limits of X's competences to perform certain actions (we agree with Davies that there are competences which confer art status, and that they can be effectively exercised by almost anyone, e.g. an amateur painter, but that there are also those competences which can only be used by some). The absence of the mentioned modal circumstances can lead to grave evidential problems and result in a situation in which the art world does not recognize a particular act as belonging to an artistic convention. If, for example, there was an X who was a non-artist, and who walked out into the street naked, his/her aspirations would not likely be recognized as artistic. The case would be different if it was a professional who had the competences to make radical gestures and whose credibility was established by his/her career (not so much his/her education). This is the key moment in which the act of X amounts to art - it is subject to artistic identification, as Danto would call it106 and, at the same time, it lends itself to interpretation by representatives of the art world. In a trial before the court, it is usually expert witnesses, but also people from outside of the judiciary who are well acquainted with the case and who identify themselves with the art world (a person who declares no interest in art and who does not know about art is thus rid of competences of performing an artistic assessment of a given work). Whether we are dealing with art or not depends, therefore, on two elements: firstly, the intention of the artist and, secondly, the acceptance of the art world which takes place following specific rules of competence.

Such a procedure would be a universal _modus operandi_ in the sense that it would refer to all sorts of media and means of expression, be it _ready mades_ , performance art, or the classically "artistic" painting. In the latter case, if the author is an amateur and the image is rather clumsily made, it still has the competences to be awarded the status of an artwork. The problem can arise when the subject matter of the painting is controversial, e.g. offensive or pornographic. In such a case, despite the intentionally assumed artistic nature, the product of the amateur painter may not be recognized as art. This is due to the fact that the painter has resorted to conventions which not everyone has the right to apply in the art world (just as not everyone has the competence to claim that a urinal is an artwork). The usually specific justification for taking up a controversial subject is the competence of a recognized artist. In the case of painting, this can also be certain talents verifying the artistic intention (proving one's talents can be one of the informal ways of acquiring the competence to be an artist). When no such talents are revealed in making the bid to be conferred artistic status for a work which is offensive or pornographic on the basis of its aesthetic function, then the claims will be rejected by members of the art world.107

**2.3 Constitutional Guarantees for the Freedom of Art**

The legal basis for the protection of freedoms in relation to art is stipulated in the Polish Constitution, in particular Art 73, contained in the group of provisions on the economic, social, and cultural freedoms and rights. Pursuant to this article, "The freedom of artistic creation and scientific research as well as dissemination of the fruits thereof, the freedom to teach and to enjoy the products of culture, shall be ensured to everyone". This regulation is composed of a number of freedoms; however, for the benefit of this publication, the focus will be placed on only three: artistic freedom, the freedom to disseminate the fruits of creation, and the freedom to enjoy the products of culture. These are jointly termed as "freedom of art", understood not only as a freedom of creation and presentation/dissemination (constituents of the so-called freedom of artistic activity), but also as freedom of access to these works appertained to all.

In the doctrine of constitutional law, as well as in international human rights regulations, it is usually assumed that freedoms stem from an inherent and inalienable human dignity, thus originating from natural law. What it means is that the freedom of art is naturally given to every human individual; however, it is not absolute in nature and, similarly to other rights and freedoms of the individual, it can be subject to necessary limitations. The latter cannot, however, be of a random nature. Art 31(3) of the Constitution cumulatively formulates the prerequisites for the admissibility of restrictions in the enjoyment of constitutional rights and freedoms. These are: first of all, the legal form of the restriction; secondly, the necessity to introduce such a restriction in a democratic society; thirdly, the functional connection of the restriction with the execution of the values as iterated in Art 31(3) (security of the state, public order, protection of the environment, health and public morality, freedoms and rights of others) and, fourthly, the prohibition of infringement of the essence of a given right or freedom.108

From the vantage point of the constitutional protection of artistic freedoms, it is important to establish the relation of Art 73 to Art 54 of the Constitution, pursuant to which "1. The freedom to express opinions, to acquire and to disseminate information shall be ensured to everyone. 2. Preventive censorship of the means of social communication and the licensing of the press shall be prohibited. Statutes may require the receipt of a permit for the operation of a radio or television station".

The term "opinion" is usually interpreted in Polish legal doctrine in the broadest sense, not as an expression of "personal assessments of facts and phenomena in all their manifestations of life, but also as a presentation of views, suppositions, forecasts, or making judgements in controversial issues, etc., and in particular also providing information on facts, both actual and presumed".109 The form in which an opinion is expressed does not matter and is limited not only to verbal expressions, but also includes such means as, for example, the clothes worn, or even the physical blocking of certain actions. It is thus rightly assumed that the freedom of art, as stipulated in Art 73, functions as a concretization of the general freedom of expression guaranteed in Art 54 of the Constitution.110

Art 54 remains in relation with rules of the system of the state contained in Chapter I of the Constitution: with Art 14, pursuant to which "The Republic of Poland shall ensure freedom of the press and other means of social communication" and Art 25(2), which stipulates the requirement for the public authorities of the Republic of Poland to "...be impartial in matters of personal conviction, whether religious or philosophical, or in relation to outlooks on life, and shall ensure their freedom of expression within public life". The nature of the freedoms expressed in Art 54 is thus more than just personal because they also acquire the quality of fundamental constitutional principles.111

Considering the situation from the perspective of the freedom of art, Art 54(2) of the Constitution is of particular significance. In the doctrine, it serves as the basis for the distinction between preventive censorship that is completely prohibited and repressive censorship that is allowed in exceptional cases.

The fact that artistic freedoms have been additionally highlighted in Art 73 can mean that "on the one hand, for the purpose of their interpretation it is possible to apply general constructs and observations referring to the freedom of expressing opinions, thus particularly the consequences of the central place that it has been assigned in the entire system of freedoms and rights of the individual and, on the other, that if Art 73 guarantees these freedoms separately, it thus assigns them special significance and instructs for a particularly strong protection to be placed over them".112 Situating artistic freedom in the remote Art 73, however, can also lead to quite opposing interpretations; namely, that in the legislature it has been ranked rather lowly.113

The doctrine also indicates that in terms of both the content of the freedom of artistic activity, as well as the prohibition of censorship contained in Art 54(2) of the Constitution, the public authorities can in no way use an _a priori_ control that would condition the creation of a given artwork. Neither can public authorities prohibit or render it impossible to convey the effects of artistic creation to the arena of public opinion, either by the author of the work, or by other entities dealing with the dissemination of such a creation (the freedom of public presentation of a work).

Although art by its nature can only be the effect of human activity, it is assumed that the freedoms of artistic creation and the communication of its effects also protect – if indirectly – the freedom of activities of legal entities who act as intermediaries between the artist and the public (i.e. museums, galleries, theatres, film studios, publishing houses, etc.), particularly that some forms of creation can only function within the structures of these entities.114 In this context, also the freedom of enjoyment of the fruit of culture stipulated in Art 73 is important. This means that public authorities have the negative duty of not obstructing access to the fruits of culture.

No positive duties are vested on the state by virtue of Art 73, such as supporting artistic creation or guaranteeing free access to the products of culture. Positive duties of public authorities are provided for in Art 6(1) of the Constitution, in the chapter on the systemic principles of the state: "The Republic of Poland shall provide conditions for the people's equal access to the products of culture which are the source of the nation's identity, continuity and development". Still, the provision does not create subjective rights for the individual (such as, it does not serve as a basis for individual claims for state sponsorship), but only indicates the direction of activities binding for the authorities.115 It should also be underlined that artistic freedoms have been contained in Art 73 as individual rights, which means that their violation can serve as grounds for a constitutional complaint lodged by an individual.116

**2.4 Freedom of Art and Polish Criminal Law**

Preface

Taking advantage of the entitlement contained in Art 31(3) of the Constitution, the Polish legislature has introduced a number of regulations, curbing to a certain extent, the constitutionally protected freedoms, including the freedom of art. These limitations, particularly in the case of the most severe penal measures, always provoke questions whether they do not violate the essence of the given freedom. The role and the function that criminal law plays in the legal system are disputable. Undoubtedly, however, the aim of criminal law is to protect specific legal goods.117 In accordance with the principle of _ultima ratio_ , such protection should only be granted when "we are dealing with severe assaults against social or individual interests, often when the sociałeconomic or legal instruments provided for in the norms of other branches of law, are ineffective".118

As it has been described above, freedom of art consists of various elements. The direct act of creation (acting within the realm of artistic creation in the strict sense of the word), undertaken independently by the artist in a non-public space, shall be exposed to legal restrictions only sporadically.119 If, however, it is connected with whatsoever form of presentation and dissemination (i.e. takes the form of the application of the freedom to communicate the products of creation or to use them), then the probability of a conflict against other protected interests and of a violation of limits set by the law will increase considerably.

As the consequences of transgressing limits set by criminal law are the most severe in the entire legal system, in a further part of this chapter we shall concentrate on analyzing whether – in a situation where a perpetrated act had an art status - this fact should be taken into consideration in its criminal law qualification.

Art as a Feature of a Prohibited Act

Art from the Perspective of the Objective Side of the Prohibited Act

Penal liability means bearing responsibility for a particular act. This obvious truth should be kept in mind as it is colloquially said that a given work offends, insults or slanders. From the viewpoint of criminal law, it is obviously not the work that fulfils the required features of a prohibited act, but the person who generates the work, presents or possesses it, or uses it in any other manner relevant in light of criminal law.

Two situations should be indicated here – a situation where a given behaviour considered as artistic is the causative act (e.g. causing harm to health as part of an artistic action or creating an image with paedophile content), as well as a situation where the artwork was used in the perpetration of the act (e.g. possession of an image with paedophile content or dissemination of an image containing slanderous content). The distinction is based on establishing whether the perpetrator's behaviour, which is relevant in light of criminal law, is an integral part of the work created by the perpetrator, or not. Therefore, during a performance, the behaviour of the perpetrator becomes in itself an artwork.120 However, when the work is used merely as a tool, in the moment it is used, it is an autonomous, previously existing creation – in such cases, the use of an artefact mainly involves its presentation, but does not constitute an artistic creation _per se_. The proposed division is particularly important when determining the criminally liable person (the artist, the owner of the artefact, director of the gallery, or curator), and the time when the act was committed. There is usually a span of days, weeks, months or even years between the creation of the work (the behaviour of the artist), and its use (by both the artist as well as by any other entity). In many cases it is not the artist who should be held liable for any possible insult caused by the exhibition of a painting, but the owner of a gallery and /or curator who presented the given work in the given moment and circumstances.

Drawing such a proposed distinction between a creative act and the use of the artwork is not always so obvious. Problems may arise in a situation when the already finished work is presented – with the consent of the artist – in a specific way which gives it a new meaning. It should be remembered that the way of presenting artefacts can impact the meaning interpreted by the viewer. In such situations, the person who is presenting becomes the co-author of the message – showing a painting of a male nude in a gallery's white cube at an exhibition of nudes in art will be something altogether different from presenting it in a church or at a gay pride parade.

When creating or using a work, it is possible to fulfil the objective features of most of the criminal code provisions. In truth, there are also numerous regulations in whose case it would be difficult to imagine that creative activity could fulfill their features, for example war crimes, crimes against peace, against defensive power of a state, etc. It should be noted, however, that in parallel to the evolution of art, the range of goods that could be subject to violation by art (or through art) has increased profoundly. According to our research, the artistic actions or the use of their effects have most often come into conflict with regulations protecting such legal goods as sexual freedom and religious feelings, as well as – to a lesser degree – honour, dignity, or public order (see Table p.447).

Establishing whether the perpetrator has fulfilled the objective features of a prohibited act when creating and making use of the artwork is usually difficult for two reasons. First of all, in many provisions these features are determined in a manner which is not entirely unambiguous and refers to categories which are evaluative, such as "slandering" or "offending". Secondly, in many cases only once the sense of the artwork created or used by the perpetrator is established, is it possible to assess the perpetrator's behaviour to determine whether it has fulfilled the objective features of the given prohibited act. For example, in order to establish whether by showing a particular painting at an exhibition, the perpetrator has insulted anyone, it is necessary to determine the content of the artistic message comprising of the artefact as well as the context of its presentation.

The content of an artwork is an element of the perpetrator's behaviour allowing for its assessment also from the viewpoint of the precautionary rules which are binding in social relations. Although the place of precautionary rules is still an issue under dispute in the doctrine, the majority of authors recognize them as an element of the objective side of the prohibited act.121 It is impossible to claim that a perpetrator has fulfilled the features of a prohibited act when his/her behaviour has not violated the precautionary rules accepted in social relations, as no infringement of the ban or order contained in the sanctioned norm has taken place.122 Notably, precautionary rules are understood as the generally accepted rules of proceeding with a given good, aimed at securing this good against damage. These rules have not been catalogued anywhere, they are open in nature and may be derived from different sources.123 In cases when they have not been specified in the legal provisions pertaining to particular cases, "it is necessary to resort to other non-legislative normative orders (moral, social, customary, religious norms) or to categories of 'common sense' based on observations of social life".124

In any case, should it be determined that a given behaviour is connected with art, then it is necessary to refer not only to the rules which are binding in the given situational circumstances of creating or using the work, but more importantly, to the rules binding in the world of art, on the basis of which it will be possible to establish the rules of proceeding with a particular good in the context of artistic activities. What we find shocking, in both the press and in advertising, does not necessarily have to evoke negative emotions when it is presented as an artistic expression. The notion of art creates a certain distance in the viewer. When taking part in an artistic event, we usually get ourselves prepared for a specific message and have a high tolerance for what we allow artists. Society has generated certain rules for art – its creation, presentation and use. These are rules of the game, and only once they are transgressed, can the issue of criminal liability be taken into consideration. Quantifying a given behaviour as artistic, i.e. its positive verification according to the rules, competences and the roles played in the art world, can impact the assessment of a subject which infringes on the given good and of the manner of performing certain activities and the tools used for that purpose.

The element which in the context of artistic activity can be of significance in assessing whether the objective features of a prohibited act have been fulfilled by the perpetrator, is the consent of the aggrieved party. In some cases, such a consent obviously leads to the outcome that these features are not fulfilled, as in the case of the offence described in Art 202 §1 PCC.125 In many situations the consent of the possible aggrieved party still does not shield persons creating or presenting artworks from criminal liability. Effective consent can only be expressed by the holder of the goods being the subject of an attack by means of a given behaviour, and only insomuch as his/her autonomy in managing the given goods has not been limited for reasons of other values resulting from a general social nature. Consent cannot thus be effectively expressed in the case of an attack against legal goods which are not at the free disposal of an individual.126 The catalogue of such goods is not clear, and in many cases, it requires a weighing test between the individual and social interest in the protection of a given value. An important guideline as to when an individual can have the exclusive disposal of a given good is the prosecution of a given crime upon an application or a private indictment.127 There is no doubt, however, that an individual does not have the right to freely dispose of goods whose protection is in the social interest, or with regard to which the legislator has directly excluded the possibility of a free disposal, e.g. in case of the protection of human life, which is clearly indicated in Art 150 PCC penalizing homicide by euthanasia. It is further assumed that it is not possible to effectively provide consent for causing severe detriment to health, or bodily harm to the functioning of an organ, or a disorder of health for a period longer than 7 days.128 Neither can an effective consent be given by a minor for recording with the aim of distribution any pornographic content with his/her participation (even if the minor had the appropriate recognition justified by the degree of personal maturity), nor by his/parents as part of the so-called substitute consent.129 There are also doubts as to the possibility of the disposal of goods such as freedom of religious feelings (beliefs), as well as the effectiveness of providing consent to having such feelings offended.130

The Sense of a Work of Art

As it has been shown above, in most cases the key element in the criminal law qualification of a behaviour contained within artistic freedom, is to establish the content of the work created or used by the perpetrator. It is important not only due to the need to establish the necessary facts related to the objective side of the act, but also those related to the subjective side – as it is discussed in a later part of this analysis. It should be underlined here that the ECHR modifies the degree of the protection of freedom of expression (artistic included) on the basis of what it refers to. If the expression (artwork) touches on problems within the scope of politics, criticism of the authorities, or issues which evoke public interest, then it enjoys a special protection against the repressive activities of the state.

In light of the present scholarly reflection on the signification of texts, the assumption that they can be subject to a single unequivocal reading and the intentions of their author is rather risky. There is a dominant conviction in contemporary humanities about the need to reject the so-called metaphysical logocentric concept of the text. The latter would involve arriving at the Truth about a given artwork by learning about its prototype present in the mind of the artist – first of all, what was the work to represent according to the artist's intention and, secondly, what inspiration did the artist draw from the works of others. Stanisław Czekalski points to a certain concept, namely that in order to tell the true history of an artwork, i.e. discover its meaning, it is necessary to indicate the factors which rendered its form, as well as the intentions and borrowings that influenced its visual shape. Such an assumption is based on the notion that the meaning of an artefact is created once and for all in a closed binary relation between itself as a complete product-recording and the dictate-dictation of its causative reasons. The ready work is a function of these reasons, situated in the position of the _signifier_ , which is mimetically subordinate – on the basis of a direct reflection – to its _signified_. In other words, it is the direct reflection of the state of the artist's mind, with all his/her motivations and inspirations.131 In this interpretational paradigm, the roles of the prosecutor, judge, or experts would thus boil down to a reading of the meaning which had already and objectively existed in a given work, allowing us, at the same time, to unmistakably learn the intentions of the author.

However, as a result of the deconstructive type of reading proposed by Jacques Derrida, and the concept of the "death of the author" developed by Roland Barthes, the metaphysical truth of the reading has been undermined – absolute domination over the author and the artwork itself has been won by the viewer-interpreter whose associations, based on the individual image repertory, split up the visual content of the artwork (both scholars claimed that a text does not exist beyond its reading).132 The sense-producing reception of the artwork cannot be verified by its objective traits, as they simply do not exist. They present themselves to us as horizontal references to other works and visual motifs. Any attempts to reach back to the source intention of the author of the artefact are doomed.

Still, it does not change the fact that to the viewer, the visual artwork may insult, promote hatred, be blasphemous or propagate certain political messages. Therefore, to qualify the act related to the artefact, the viewer, prosecutor, judge or expert must grapple with the problem of the artefact's sense, as well as an assessment of the intention of the author or exhibitor.

The case-law and the doctrine determine different standard rules of behaviour and models of perception which are to aid in the correct legal qualification of an act. According to the doctrine, for example, in the case of an insult to religious feelings, it is not only the subjective emotions of the aggrieved that should be taken into consideration. The assessment whether an insult has occurred should also be of an objectifying nature, based on the average sensitivity, or refer to the dominant social assessment. In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the feature "to insult" means a behaviour which, in line with the specific culturałcustomary norms and the popular assessments, is an expression of contempt.133 On the other hand, Jarosław Warylewski suggests that when evaluating an insult, the judgments of persons who have an average sensitivity should be taken into consideration, and not those who are tolerant in the domain of religious beliefs.134 Though the above opinions are directly related to the manner in which the insulting nature of the material is indeed verified, it can be said that they are genetically interlinked with the process of establishing the content of the expression (artistic expression included). In other words, expressions which are legally relevant would be those which, for example, could be read in the same way by a group of people considered to possess moderate sensitivities, and possibly presenting dominant opinions on the given subject. These criteria, however, seem highly imprecise and incompatible with the social functioning of artworks.

It seems that a theory that could provide the basis for defining very general standards set out by the doctrine, and jurisprudence on the one hand, and which on the other hand offers a consistent non-metaphysical view of the interpretation of an artwork, is the anti-foundationalist, persuasive concept of interpretation by Stanley Fish.135

The deliberations conducted by this American theoretician of literature and law revolve in reference to text, which for us will also denote all kinds of visual artefacts (painterly, sculptural, cinematic, etc.). Fish claims that when establishing the meaning, it is impossible to refer to the text as it is in itself the product of mental and linguistic categories, i.e. the consequence of interpretation. Furthermore, although the text/work/world do exist, they do not impose any constraints on us. Such an assumption is not, however, equivalent to the disappearance of norms, standards, or the certainty which always accompany the situation in which we are submerged at the moment. For that reason, the text is paradoxically stable but in many different ways. The given context gives form to the act of communication. It is both necessary but also inevitable – it is impossible to imagine a communication which would not be embedded in a situation.136 Fish thus rejects the Derridean assumption about the infinite openness of the text – the text is only potentially, infinitely open while in reality it is limited by context. It should be stressed that the turn to the context as offered by Fish's theory, though helpful in stabilizing meanings, is also a form of interpretation in light of which a given visual object adopts certain selected meanings (a context is not something out in the world – it is a form of the world's construction). Thus, both the text and the con-text as well as the interpretation – they all emerge at the same time as a consequence of a certain interpretive gesture – the declaration of convictions.

In reference to Fish's expositions, one could say that the context limiting the interpretive possibilities of a work is indicated by the institution of art which authorizes, in the given moment, only the defined scope of interpretive strategies. A work does not provide a platform for a common understanding but there is an area of consensus (in the given time and place) as to the means of production of its meanings stemming from the knowledge on how to act in the realm of the presently functioning institution of art, i.e. the unwritten rules of interpreting art.137 The rules are known to the participants of the game – artists, critics, art historians, art merchants, an aware public in galleries, etc. At the same time, the complete rejection of these rules is impossible – they organize our perception and it is only within the realm of art institutions that some interpretive acts become at all accessible. The interpretive community is not a monolith; hence, interpretation within its domain is not subject to an exclusively automatic repetition. An interpretive community is homogenous in reference to some assumed general aim or the scope of activities. At the same time, however, it is heterogeneous in reference to the practices that it can adapt.138

The rejection of an interpretation does not mean that it has been definitely excluded by the text – it only means that no proper interpretive strategy has appeared thus far which would legitimize such an interpretation. It is not possible to say that it will not appear in the future. Therefore, the source for excluding a given interpretation is not the text itself, but the present consensus in the domain of the given institution regarding the interpretive strategy.139 In our deliberations, such a consensus relates to the assumption that, for example, the Polish trend of so-called critical art makes use of the transgression of a taboo in order to shock viewers, forcing them to reflect on uncritically internalized mental schemes, and that such a creative paradigm is alien to, say, Matisse. It should again be stressed that it is quite possible that such consensus will be transformed in the future, e.g. if the interpretive community recognizes the category of the sublime as inadequate in the description of a work of art or – for a change – in the effect of discovering the correspondence between Matisse and Bonnard, in which both artists confirmed the use of their own blood as red pigment with the aim to tear the mouldering bourgeois away from their fatuous contemplation of modernist fiction, i.e. the so-called good painting.

According to Fish's theory, there is always some kind of a literal meaning of an artwork as there is meaning in each situation, regardless of what we do. This "obviousness" or "literality" of meaning stems from the fact that an interpretive act is already there – it is so deeply submerged in the situation or, possibly, so broadly shared that it is perceived immediately, naturally; so much so that it does not seem to be an act.140 There will always be a literal meaning, though not always the same. And it will also have the potential to change. At the same time, Fish believes that "The fact that the objects we have are all objects that appear to us in the context of some practice, of work done by some interpretive community, doesn't mean that they are not objects or that we don't have them or that they exert no pressure on us. All it means is that they are interpreted objects and that since interpretations can change, the perceived shape of objects can change too".141

In the concept proposed by Fish, new readings are possible thanks to the presence of the old ones. The latter are often created in opposition to the former and it is owing to the antecedent interpretations that they gain a sense at all. Only due to the fact that something has already been said, is it possible to say something else. At the same time, the "other" is usually related to the opinion that what had been said before was untrue, incomplete or partially false. We can assume that in the case of the critical art trend,142 the process is happening on two, so to say, levels. First of all, this type of art identifies a certain social fact which in itself is not a collection of dry data, but an interpretation unconsciously internalized by the society. Secondly, it decontextualizes/reinterprets this fact in such a way that it undermines and unmasks its unconscious conditioning. The art of transgression is a strategy of interpreting the social praxis. At the same time, however, it is subject to interpretation as well – if it happens in the realm of the art world, it is relatively safe. However, if the interpretations come from the outside and ignore the consensus of the art world, or if this consensus does not come from their repertory of how the world should be organized, then a conflict is quite possible. In other words, the interpretation of viewers from outside of the art world may come to a halt at the first, so to say, stage of identifying the "obvious" meaning – i.e. at the level of recognition that a critical artwork infringes on a certain sphere of assumptions and the generally accepted norms (which usually form the unconscious basis for the individual's functioning, and which are obvious, irreducible and final to the individual). When a taboo is thus infringed upon, the viewer feels offended, insulted – a sudden reaction and abrupt resistance is evoked. If we were to translate Fish's theory into the controversies of critical art, we should stress that whether the viewer moves on to the next stage of interpretation depends on his/her knowledge of the interpretive strategies of the art world, acceptance of the consensus regarding the so-called critical art, as well as goodwill. The element of goodwill is indispensable here as it requires the adoption – if only for some time – of the interpretive perspective of the art world. This perspective can be connected with the need to adopt the position of the ironist – to quote Richard Rorty's term – a person who has distance to his/her "final vocabulary", and who is open to discussion about the values and concepts outlining the horizon of his/her being in the world.143 However, not everyone can summon, or rather – as Fish would say - "be summoned" by the category of critical art in order to see a work from the perspective of its assumptions which influence the way in which the artefact is understood. A person who does not know such a category would have to get acquainted with it from the outside, and the person explaining it would have to go back to some point, which would not be point zero (beginning at zero is never possible), but to a place of common agreement as to what could be reasonably said in order to create a platform of common understanding. It could be linked with either questioning or broadening the knowledge of the interlocutor. If the strategy was successful, then the reading of the given creation as a work of specific art (critical art) would become clearer because it would be perceived within the same system of understanding from which it stems. Still, it does not change the fact that even if the successive interpretive stages are within the reach of the viewer (or rather the viewer being within the reach of these interpretations), he/she can always decide that the message connected with the transgression is banal, insignificant, unfruitful or false and, upon weighing the profits and losses, can condemn both the artist and the artwork not only at the level of good/bad art, but also at a more basic level related to such categories as, for example, insult, offence, rabble, betrayal, crime, etc. In other words, the understanding of the manner in which critical art (or any other kind of art) is created, read, and functions, does not guarantee its acceptance, not to mention the acceptance of any specific interpretations of a given work.

Fish thus proposes a persuasive model of interpretation, which includes rules governing the game – certain facts can be recalled only due to the fact that an interpretation, if only rudimentary or the most general, has been accepted. The change of perspective, foundation, and interpretive pre-judgements constitute new facts which had been inaccessible from the previous perspectives. Likewise, new standards are formed according to which the new facts should be assessed. According to the persuasive paradigm, the notions of correctness and acceptability are specific to a given institution, including that of the art world. The knowledge of the common points of departure is a prerequisite for specific competences and roles within this institution. The paradigm, however, does not mark a cognitive anarchy, as it preserves such concepts as texts, norms, judgment criteria, traditions, and valuations. It should be remembered, however, that they function within a set of institutional assumptions which can themselves be subject to debate. Such an art institution brings images-texts to life and keeps them alive. Certain positions in its domain are seen as clear and unworthy of doubt.144

Let us try to apply the observations of the American thinker to the interpretive practice in criminal proceedings. Obviously, the possibility of some kind of transcendentally existing meanings of the artefact needs to be rejected. Their formulation (finding or reaching them is impossible as they do not objectively exist) must be based on consensus within the interpretive communities. It seems that determining the meaning of a work from the point of view of the different elements of the structure of a given crime (e.g. establishing whether it contains content which could be seen as insulting or promoting certain behaviour) should take place by either referring to the interpretive community in which the perpetrator functions or wants to function, such as the art world and – within it – people who specialize in contemporary art, i.e. the interpretive community of contemporary art (A), or to a broader community, such as that of people who are interested in sociałpolitical life but not in contemporary art – an interpretive community (B).145 In each of these communities there, of course, may appear different interpretations, from which the one/s having the most influential persuading power should be chosen. For example, the interpretations of Dorota Nieznalska's _The Passion_ (see p. 108) can lead, when referred to community A and B, to two very different though similarly convincing results: that in a profoundly blunt manner of presentation, the work serves to criticize a specific model of masculinity connected with a para-religious cult of the body and violence (according to community A); or that it is an iconoclastic juxtaposition of the cross with a penis, or even a comparison of Christ to the male member (according to community B). The adoption of the second interpretation leads to a conclusion that a presentation of the work could cause "insult" within the meaning of Art 196 PCC. Therefore, the activities of the persons presenting the piece could fulfil the objective features of a prohibited act. It would thus entail the need to establish whether all the other features of the offence of insulting religious feelings have been fulfilled.

The choice of interpretation to be considered in the assessment of a given behaviour from the perspective of criminal law should take place according to a constant and defined rule. Taking into consideration the fact that one of the basic tasks of criminal law is the protection of specific legal goods against their infringement, the best criterion seems to be the one governing the manner and scope of the dissemination – performed or intended – of the given work. If the work is shown, or it is to be shown at an art gallery, then the senses constructed by group A should be considered. However, if it is to be exhibited in an open public space, then it is necessary to refer to the senses constructed by group B. Referring again to the example of Nieznalska: due to the fact that she presented her work in a niche gallery dedicated to new forms of art, in this case it is the interpretation of community A that should be seen as legally relevant. As it has been indicated, different interpretive variants can appear as part of this community, including one that claims that the presentation of the work was aimed at expressing a negative attitude to God or religion. Establishing possible meanings of an artwork within community A will usually require evidence to be gathered in the form of the opinions of experts – people who professionally specialize in contemporary art. Of course, these experts would not be asked whether the work contained, for example, offensive or pornographic content (this is to be adjudicated by the court), but should point to what meaning of the work can be interpreted by community A, which will then make it possible to qualify it from the point of view of criminal law.

No doubt the procedure of referring to interpretive communities here proposed may evoke a certain danger of placing controversial art in ghettos – imprisoning it within the confines of gallery walls. It would substantially limit the freedom of art creation (as the context of open public spaces would be inaccessible), presentation and its social impact. On the other hand, we could ask the question: why show an artwork in a public space in which it is not comprehensible and/or interesting to the overwhelming majority of passers-by? There is probably no easy way to resolve this dilemma. It seems that the potential legal and especially media "dressing" of a problematic work of art should also include efforts to popularize the interpretive codes, so as to broaden the more substantive and successful perception of the artefact. However, as it is claimed by Pierre Bourdieu, without destabilizing the class structures of the society which obstruct a better access to economic, social and cultural capital, interest in avant-garde art will rather always remain on the peripheries of cultural practices.

The Artistic Aim as an Element of the Subjective Side of the Prohibited Act

Once it has been determined, having taken into consideration the interpretation of a given community, that the production or use of a given artwork fulfils the objective features of a specific act, it is justified to move on to investigate the subjective attitude of the perpetrator. The actions carried out in the process of creating an artwork should be characterized by the so-called artistic aim which should be understood as a wish for the product to be perceived in one of the ways in which artworks were appropriately viewed in the past. Similarly, the dissemination, presentation or possession of a work shall have an artistic aim when the perpetrator is involved in these activities because in his/her assessment, the given work belongs to the realm of art and is thus an artwork.

In the criminal law doctrine, there is a conviction that the artistic aim of the perpetrator excludes his/her intent when committing a possible prohibited act. For example, the action of the artist in the process of an artistic activity excludes the possibility of him/her being assigned the intent of commending fascism or any other totalitarian system. It is difficult to agree with these statements.146 The assumption that the perpetrator acted with an artistic aim does not exclude the fact that he/she also had a criminal intent. In the context of promoting criminal regimes, we need only mention such Nazi authors as Arno Breker or Leni Riefenstahl, not to mention the artists of socialist realism who supported the Stalinist system – likewise in Poland. Even today, the state authorities still know how to take advantage of artists and art for their own promotion, or for the promotion of a given political system. It should also be underlined that artists sometimes even seek the possibility to infringe on different social norms, including the transgression of limits as set by the legal order, seeing such acts as immanently typical of the creative process.

The determination that a perpetrator acted with an artistic aim will therefore, in principle, have no direct influence on the assessment of whether the features of a prohibited act have been fulfilled. What is important is not whether in his/her assessment the perpetrator wanted to create or use art, but whether his/her intent encompassed the fulfilment of the features of a prohibited act. The artistic aim, however, can impact the assessment of the artist's motivation and thus also the assessment of the social harmfulness of his/her activities and the severity of the punishment.

As Polish court cases with the participation of artists have shown, the establishing of the intent of the creator or the person using the artwork triggers particular controversies. In order to determine the consciousness and will of the perpetrator at the moment of committing the act, it is obviously necessary to refer not only to the perpetrator's statements, but most importantly to the objective elements, i.e. the artwork and also, in many cases, to the broader context in which it was used. Such interpretation is based on shifting the artwork from the situational arrangement, in which its meaning had already been established (for the purpose of establishing the objective side of the act) to a different situational arrangement connected with the perpetrator. In the new context, the artwork will attain new — more or less — obvious meanings. This set of circumstances comprises: a specific situation of the perpetrator (often the artist him/herself), the opinions declared, the artistic achievements, the context in which the work had been created and presented, the sense ascribed to it by the interpretive community to which the perpetrator belongs, as well as the assumed artistic and exhibition strategy.147 Such a broad context stems from the fact that the artefact itself – a selected physical object – is often designed not as an isolated object that is subject to interpretation (i.e. itself conveying meaning), but as an element of a larger jigsaw planned by the perpetrator – the assumed situational background.

Let us resort to an example. A poster by Peter Fuss, hung on a street in Koszalin and bearing the slogan _Jews get out of the Catholic country_.148 in the eyes of "passers-by who could communicate in the Polish language, who manifested a certain knowledge about the social relations in Poland and about the history of the country, and who were uninterested in contemporary art" (B), the work would probably be perceived as chauvinistic and anti-Semitic. However, the community of people well acquainted with contemporary art (A), having taken into consideration the graphic form of the poster and the excessively aggressive slogan, could quite successfully see in it an artistic, subversive provocation.149 Fuss' work was hung in a public space accessible to everyone, and for that reason it was the interpretation of community B that should be given precedence. It would thus justify the assumption that by means of his poster, Fuss fulfilled the objective features as stipulated in Art 257 PCC, i.e. public insult to a group of people on grounds of their ethnicity. It would not mean, however, that the artist fulfilled the subjective features of the act, i.e. that he wanted or agreed to such an insult. When determining the subjective features (the intent), it would be necessary to consider the entire context of the exhibition, i.e. to virtually move the work from the street to the holistic situational arrangement, in which the artist acted. Only then, having taken into consideration the broader context, would Fuss' intent to use hate speech for the purpose of criticizing it become obvious - a condition which was already intelligible to the art world. The explanation given by the author should thus be taken as credible. He claimed that it was not his intention to insult, but to draw the attention of public opinion to the fact that the chauvinistic and hateful statements – often in combination with Catholic rhetoric – are commonly available on the Internet where they are not met with the appropriate condemnation from either the public or the authorities. Furthermore, in reference to the case-law of the ECHR, it should be recognized that the artist made a statement about a situation which calls (or at least should call) for serious public concern, and for that reason it should enjoy special protection. The impossibility of attributing willful intent to Fuss excluded him from criminal liability as stipulated in Art 257 PCC.150

It should be highlighted that although the analysis of the meaning of the work and of the intentions of the author are necessary, it does not mean that it brings us closer to revealing some kind of Truth about the situation. It only makes the determination of intellectual and volitional processes in the given context probable, upon the application of a cognitive method which, in the given moment, is seen as the most fitting. This fact, however, does not change the interpretive relation with the intention which should be further analyzed according to the models of inference which are best at that particular moment. The only thing that changes is the attitude to the certainty of the obtained results. As Stanley Fish observes, the fact that the established truths can – if only theoretically – be undermined, does not mean that we cannot affirm them and rely on these truths which, in accordance with our present knowledge, seem to be indisputable.151 In light of the lack of a certainty which would only be attainable through divine revelation, we should act on the basis of the certainty that we are in possession of.

Art as a Circumstance Excluding the Criminality of an Act

Preface

There have been at least several dozen pre-trial proceedings conducted in Poland since 1989 between 1989 and 2011 in cases of alleged crimes committed with the use of artworks152. Of these, three cases came to trial which tried to establish the limits of the freedom of artistic creation (these included the case of visual artists Dorota Nieznalska and Krzysztof Kuszeja, and the death metal band singer, Adam Darski "Nergal" – see respective sections in 2.4). There can be any number of reasons for this rather limited activity of law enforcement in comparison to the number of artworks that could cause controversy, shock and outrage. Apart from the low social importance of contemporary art153 (the range of its influence is severely limited, few people are interested in it and as a result it is rarely represented in mainstream media), there is also another side of the coin. As it has already been mentioned, it seems that the society often keeps art at arm's length, treating it as a type of eccentricity, a separate sphere where more is allowed. This public consent seems to translate to forms of accepted precautionary rules and in turn also the activities of law enforcement. However, situations in which proceedings against artists were terminated and never ended up in the court room can also stem not so much from the fact that the prosecution understands the way in which avant-garde art functions and appreciates the significance of artistic expression, but from the fear of evasive artistic matter and the need to enter into battle in a foreign territory (aesthetics) against cultural institutions, social organizations, scholars, critics, the media and the artists themselves. The case of Nieznalska has shown that the perception of a contemporary work of art requires vast knowledge in different fields of the humanities, and poses a challenge of the polysemy of artistic language. The opinion which was prevalent among the experts in contemporary art who had been called to the stand by the prosecution was one which underlined the specificity and the otherness of artistic expression, with particular reference to canonical and alienating defence tactics. Therefore, if charges are to be pressed in relation to artistic activity, law enforcement must undertake a substantial effort (in the face of a lack of assessment criteria, doubts in the interpretation of the law, the need to rely on the opinion of experts which, for reasons of the matter being analyzed, are not fully verifiable) in a situation carrying the high risk of being exposed to criticism by intellectuals and sections of the media. At the same time, such acts are of low social harmfulness in comparison to the much more common crimes against life, health or property.

In the criminal law doctrine there is a group of jurists, however small, who have decided to contain the state of this specific permissiveness in a theoretical framework. The authors have dwelled on whether an act which fulfils the objective and subjective features of a prohibited act and which is, at the same time, an artistic creation, has or can have an influence on its legal classification. These deliberations are, first and foremost, pertaining to the so-called circumstances excluding the unlawfulness of an act, i.e. the already mentioned "countertypes", and only accidentally touch on the issue of the exclusion of culpability, exclusion of social harmfulness or the precautionary rules which, as it seems, are of key importance here.

Art as a Circumstance Excluding Unlawfulness

The question of countertypes is one of the most disputed issues in Polish criminal law, which is strictly related to the problem of the adopted structure of the crime. For the benefit of this publication, let us assume that by countertype we mean circumstances in which a behaviour fulfilling features of a prohibited act is reassigned legal status, and the conditions of unlawfulness have been excluded.154 Grounds for the repeated legalization of the act is seen in the following: a) the collision of legally protected interests, in which b) following the principles of profit and loss, the sacrifice of the given interest _in lieu_ of another one is seen as socially profitable; with the restriction that c) this sacrifice is necessary, i.e. that there is no other rational possibility of saving the interest which was recognized as superior.155

Art as a countertype is not provided for in the regulations contained in the general part of the Criminal Code. In the section of specifications – the catalogue of crimes, it only appears in Art 256 PCC (cf...). In order to determine the binding force of the concept of an art countertype in Polish criminal law, in the scope which exceeds the regulation stipulated in Art 256 PCC, it is necessary to resolve the fundamental question concerned with the functioning of the so- called "extra-legislative" countertypes which are not stipulated by the law; as well as draw a distinction between the countertypes, the features of which have not been precisely stipulated in the binding legal acts, and the notion of the so-called extra-normative countertypes, i.e. ones which do not have any normative binding basis.156 Not aiming to resolve here the question of the admissibility of the binding force of extra-normative or extra-legislative countertypes, it should be considered whether there could be legal bases justifying the construction of art countertypes; and if so, what should be its characteristics?

Legal sources of art countertypes should be especially sought in the constitutional norms deriving from Art 73 and 54 of the Constitution. These provisions, by virtue of Art 8 of the Constitution, are applied directly. They are made more precise by the wording of Art 2 of the Act on organizing and conducting cultural activities, pursuant to which "The State extends its patronage over cultural activities which involves supporting and promoting creative endeavours, cultural schooling and education, cultural activities and initiatives, as well as care for historical architecture". An interpretation can thus be assumed which recognizes the above regulations as sufficient normative basis for the functioning of an art countertype.

According to some representatives of the doctrine, the existence of such sources is not, however, sufficient grounds for constructing an extra-legislative art countertype. A countertype, just as with any type of a prohibited act, should be characterized by traits determined in the law – the features, which are of an objective and subjective nature, depending on the intent of the perpetrator.157 The circumstances which allow, in specific cases, for the resolution of collisions and the sacrifice of one of the colliding goods, should be of a "typical", abstract nature – similarly to the generalized description of the types of prohibited acts.158 However, all the attempts that have been undertaken thus far to determine the features of an art countertype have not satisfied this condition.

One of the concepts most often discussed in the literature is the already mentioned proposal of Justyna Nalewajko and Rafał Kubiak. The authors recognize the subjective feature of such a countertype in the artistic aim of the perpetrator's activity. They understand this aim as the motivation to convey ideas or experiences. This motivation should be of prime importance in a work of art. Furthermore, the authors observe that the artistic aim is achieved when the message of the artists satisfies the needs of the society in terms of intellectual, cultural and aesthetic development. The artist should act with the awareness of these needs, and also have the knowledge and the will to meet them. An objective feature, on the other hand, would be the work of art itself. The following criteria should be observed when qualifying a product as an artwork: the aesthetic criteria, an assessment by a person of authority in the given field, comparability of the work with other artworks, as well as investigating whether it meets significant social needs in the domain of culture, and whether it elevates the intellectual level of the society.

Complementary criteria which facilitate the assessment could include: the place, time and the circumstances of the presentation of the work. The authors of the concept also give consideration to one additional feature of a countertype of art, namely the creator of the artwork who should be a master – an artist in the given field of art, recognized in the art world and in the society.159 The criticism of the assumptions accepted by the above authors in the context of the art world reality has already been partly presented in chapter....... They have also been met with a negative reception by Justyn Piskorski, who rightly pointed to, among other things, the opacity of the concepts used, and the fundamental principle of equality before the law which is infringed by the proposed privileged position of artists as a specific professional group.160 The arguments presented by Nalewajko and Kubiak are also partly countered by one of the leading advocates of art countertype: Jarosław Warylewski. He claims that an art countertype can only be established when: the perpetrator of the act is an artist, the effect is the act of creation or presentation of a work of an artistic nature and, additionally though not necessarily, the perpetrator was motivated by the wish to achieve an artistic aim.161 As mentioned above, the features thus described are detached from the reality of the contemporary art world, and have no cognitive or explicating value without a precise definition of the notion of "artistic quality".

Piotr Uklański, _The Nazis_ [ _Naziści_ ], 1998, damaged photo installation, courtesy of Piotr Uklanski

One of the more interesting analyses of the exclusion of the criminality of an act in the context of artistic activity has been presented by Magdalena Budyn-Kulik and Marek Kulik162. In their deliberations, they follow the case of the exhibition of Piotr Uklański _The Nazis_ at the Zachęta National Art Gallery in Warsaw.163 The show had outraged actor Daniel Olbrychski so much so that in 2000 he partially destroyed Uklański's work (also see p. 268). Since Olbrychski maintained that he felt insulted by the work, the authors of the concept assumed that he had acted in self-defence. At the same time, they ventured to resolve whether criminal liability for a prohibited act committed as part of artistic activities could be excluded, and on what grounds. Is it a) a countertype, b) a culpability-excluding circumstance, or perhaps c) an illegal behaviour, culpable but devoid of social noxiousness, or socially noxious to a minor degree? If we are to assume option "a", then Olbrychski did not have the right to practice self-defence. If options "b" and "c" are assumed, then the actor had the right to practice self-defence as the act was unlawful.

The above authors believe that the criminal law evaluation of artistic activity resemble the construction of the state of necessity (Art 26 §1 and 2 – see footnote 92); therefore, art typically excludes culpability, and only in exceptional cases does it have the property of excluding unlawfulness. Furthermore, they accept the existence of extra-legislative countertypes and indicate that the countertype of art is of a subsidiary character, as it is necessary that "the artistic aim intended by the artist – if not achievable in any other way – is met by sacrificing the interest of another person".

For the sake of their deliberations, Budyn-Kulik and Kulik assume that art is all that is motivated by the desire to achieve an artistic objective (the constitutive role of the subjective side of the act). They stress, at the same time, that artistic freedom is not absolute, and can be limited by the limiting clauses contained in Art 10(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights and in Art 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Furthermore – an issue one can only agree with – only a specified group of interests (such as bodily inviolability, honour, morality, religious convictions, freedom) in certain clearly defined factual arrangements can be sacrificed in the name of artistic activity.

When analyzing the features of the countertype of art, the authors have concentrated on the social profitability of sacrificing one of the interests in the collision. They claim that not all artistic activities can satisfy this condition. They believe that social profitability may manifest itself – however rarely – in "the very emergence of an artwork with a specific aesthetic value" but that it can also "constitute a value which is somehow significant in cognitive terms within the scope of the democratic and pluralist nature of the Republic of Poland in terms of the social awareness of the possibilities of freely expressing oneself by various means and, at the same time, a social awareness of a protection of legal interests and a psychophysical well-being against the uncontrolled manifestations expressed by other people". The authors are, at the same time, interested in the potential social profitability which would be assessed _ex ante_ and not _ex post_ , as in the latter case the assessment would depend on the recipient's reaction which is not controlled by the artist and which could be very different from what the creator had intended. They present an example of an artwork which was socially profitable despite its infringement on someone's interest – Klaus Mann's novel _Manifesto_. In the character of Hendrik Höfgen (an opportunist actor collaborating with the Nazis), Mann depicted his brother in-law, Gustav Gründgens – a fact which "undoubtedly was an assault against the reputation of the latter, but at the same time was a criticism of Nazism and thus was of profound social significance".

When applying their deliberations to the case of Olbrychski, the authors decided that the exhibition fulfilled the features of the offence of an insult. Therefore, they asked whether it would be possible to exclude the criminal liability of the author of the exhibition by following the rule of the countertype of art. They agreed that the installation was of an artistic nature; however, they questioned the socially significant effect which was to be attained by its means.

The photographs did not have any captions which could steer the viewers to the intended message of the artist. The only imaginable socially viable objective of such an exhibition... is to recognize the illusory beauty of morally ugly ideas. To leave this message to be discovered... solely thanks to the acumen of the viewers, made the aim of social viability an illusory one. In such a situation, the viewers' feelings may have followed in the direction undesired by the creator; for instance, that by presenting handsome, well-known actors in uniforms which usually invoke negative connotations, there may occur a transferal of sympathies from the actors onto the figures of Nazi soldiers that the actors had portrayed.

Furthermore, Uklański's exhibition did not meet the condition of subsidiarity, even "considering the assumption most favourable to the artist" that the aforementioned intended message of the artwork did indeed exist. In the opinion of the authors, such an artistic aim could also have been achieved if information had been provided by the gallery, attesting to the fact that the actors had not served in the Nazi army and that they had never supported Nazi ideology. In the opinion of Budyn-Kulik and Kulik, in the case of _The Nazis_ , there is no possibility for the artist to have his liability excluded, and the actor Daniel Olbrychski had the right to practice self-defence.

It is impossible to agree with most of the theses presented by the authors. First of all, the condition of subsidiarity for art is but a fantasy – an artist can always be reproached that he/she did not have to express him/herself in that specific way given that an artistic statement is never based on a necessity, despite the internal feeling of the artist that what has been created is an artwork that is good, interesting, wise, beautiful, or revealing. Neither did Klaus Mann have to criticize the phenomenon of convenient collaboration with the Nazi system by slandering his brother in-law. Other ways of such criticism are infinite (some better, some worse, but – here comes the key word – different). The only way to understand subsidiarity in the case of artistic creation is that when a thought is given a particular form, it always results in an artwork that is exceptional in its own way. Any change to the work results in a new entity, a new work. That is why, for this particular artwork to exist, it is this and no other form which is necessary.

Secondly, the assumption to assess an _ex ante_ evaluation of the work clearly makes no sense. It is not really clear how to estimate such profitability without taking into consideration the social assessments (by the viewers and professionals). After all, it is these assessments that bestow (sometimes after a long time) value to the work whose interpretation may be different from what the artist had assumed. What is more, the artist does not even have to fully rationalize his/her message or justify the aim of his/her creative actions. It is the opinion of many that the more complex the reception of a given work, the more considerable its quality. Therefore, thirdly, the requirement proposed by the authors that every controversial artefact should be accompanied by the author's explication, points to the miscomprehension of the rules governing the reception of an artwork. The artist would have to assume that the viewers are idiots who are incapable of individual interpretation of the work. The arguments offered by the authors should thus be reversed, underlining that the discovery of the work's message should be solely left to the viewer. This is one of the elements that makes an artwork profitable – it forces the viewers into making an emotional and intellectual effort, sometimes resulting in a _catharsis_. Fourthly, if an explication is to be added to the artwork, it has to be permanent. In other words, each public exhibition would have to be accompanied by the said description. However, apart from changes at the semiotic level, it would also mean an ontological change – thus creating an entirely new work of art.

Fifthly, the authors have assumed that "the responsibility for an act infringing on someone else's interest of a moral or religious value for solely aesthetic reasons cannot be excluded (neither at the level of unlawfulness nor culpability)". The problem, however, is that it is not possible to completely separate the aesthetic assessment (formal) from the substantive one (ethical). It sometimes occurs that the formal qualities of social perception achieve a kind of ethically purifying property (Cf. e.g....). On the other hand, in works such as _The Nazis_ , it is from criticism of the uncritical reception of the reality around us that the work gains its value. Aesthetic issues retreat to a secondary position, and may even interfere with the reception of the work, allowing the viewer to escape the uncomfortable message and flee into the safe contemplation of the formal qualities.

Sixthly, the basic condition the authors assume for the purpose of the legal assessment of the artwork is the verification of its meaning, but when they do so – it is very superficial and biased ("the illusory beauty of the morally ugly ideas"). The "dangerous" direction of the viewers' interpretation ("in presenting handsome, well-known actors in uniforms which usually invoke negative connotations, there may occur a transferal of sympathies from the actors onto the figures of Nazi soldiers that the actors had portrayed"), is actually what seems to be the key trope in the reception of _The Nazis_. Uklański goes so far as to indicate that the contemporary film industry often presents Nazis in a very alluring, thus very dangerous manner. It is not his artworks which is a threat here, but all those dashing hunks in their perfectly tailored uniforms who are watched by hundreds of millions – by mediating the viewers' imaginings of war, they attenuate the immensity of Nazi crimes.

In summary, Budyn-Kulik and Kulik are right in their conclusions that in the case of Uklański's exhibition, the artist would not be able to call on the countertype of art. However, the authors make this observation on the basis of incorrect assumptions – not because the countertype of art does not take place in this specific case, but because the prerequisites they had indicated of such a countertype could never actually be realized.164

The extra-legislative nature and, first and foremost, the fluidity of the possible features, make the general countertype of art a highly problematic issue. It has few advocates in the doctrine and if it is ever referred to in judgements, it never constitutes the proper basis for acquittal. The argumentation of the Regional Court in Gdańsk in one of the judgments in the case of Dorota Nieznalska is correct, namely that the prerequisites of such a countertype presented in the doctrine are too blurry to unambiguously describe the circumstances in which the unlawfulness of the act fulfilling the features stipulated in the statutes could be excluded.165

To base such a countertype on subjective merits and on the artistic intentions of the perpetrator is not justified. As it has already been indicated, the fact that a particular desire of the perpetrator to attain an artistic aim can be established, does not exclude the possible intent to commit a given prohibited act.

In turn, creating a countertype of art in reference to the subject "being an artist" violates the constitutional principle of equal rights and of the equality of citizens in the eyes of the law. Even if we agreed to a counter-argument, there immediately appears the question of who should be granted this privileged position – a graduate of an art high school or only graduates of fine arts academies? Or perhaps ambitious self-taught persons? How about manually gifted children? And if so, how ambitious, and how talented?

Constructing the discussed countertype on the basis of objective features, such as art or artistic activities (which can be stretched and twisted quite infinitely nowadays) is also doubtful. Likewise, the terms used in criminal law are often ambiguous and imprecise - such is unavoidable. Notwithstanding this, the interpretation of the feature of "artistic nature", which is fundamental for the purpose of the possible establishment of the countertype of art, as well as of determining whether the behaviour in the specific case was in line with the adopted definitions will, in most cases, require a counsel of experts from the art world, which is internally diverse to an extreme in its opinions, and rather "chimeric". The institutional perspective in defining art, adopted in the present elaboration, shifts the discussion from the likes and dislikes, or the potential function of an artwork to the level of the rules organizing the art world. This can objectivize and facilitate the process of concretizing key concepts. However, it also needs to refer to the subjective elements which are problematic in constructing the countertype – an activity with an artistic aim.

First of all, the very fact of a given act being encompassed within the framework of artistic freedoms does not justify the general exclusion of its unlawfulness. Concepts of the purifying properties of art in itself should be rejected. They could lead to the exclusion of unlawfulness of a behaviour violating the precautionary rules, a behaviour which is culpable, fulfils the objective and subjective features of a crime, and is socially noxious. One cannot agree with the notion that "there is virtually no threat posed by artists; hence, the involvement of the state in combatting them is dangerous".166 Placing the problematic use of the term "combatting" aside, this general assumption is not only untrue but it also testifies to the disregard for both the art and the artists, in so doing, rendering their actions devoid of performative power and meaning. The countertype of art could also evoke in some parts of the society a feeling of inequality before the law, as well as a legal helplessness which can lead to frustration or even aggression.

Taking into consideration the legal, dogmatic problems, but also the social, ethical and artistic consequences of the institution of the countertype of art, the decriminalization of artistic activities based on the abstract criteria of the exclusion of unlawfulness seems neither possible nor even needed. The criminality of acts of an artistic nature should be analyzed _a casu ad casum;_ for example, by refraining from referring to the extra-legislative circumstances which exclude unlawfulness or culpability, it would be possible to establish that the act by Uklański as described above was originally legal as it did not contravene the precautionary rules of proceeding with a given good. Even if we were to assume that it was otherwise, the artist had acted unintentionally.

Art as a Circumstance Excluding Culpability

When rejecting the concept of the countertype of art, it should be considered whether the fact that the perpetrator was either creating an artwork or utilizing it when perpetrating the prohibited act could lead to excluding his culpability. Neither art nor a broadly understood artistic activity, are statutory circumstances excluding culpability. The possibility of constructing extra-legislative circumstances excluding culpability is just as debatable as the admissibility of extra-legislative countertypes.167

The issue of art as a circumstance excluding culpability has been rather limited in the doctrine to the writings of Budyn-Kulik and Kulik and, as it has been mentioned above, the authors' stance towards this construction is positive. They believe that the exclusion of culpability is analogous to the state of necessity, i.e. when the behaviour fulfils the features of a prohibited act but follows an artistic aim, the infringed goods do not present a value significantly higher than the freedom of artistic expression, and the said behaviour is of a subsidiary nature. The authors further note that in many cases it is difficult for the artist to unequivocally assess which of the legal goods in a given collision is of greater value, and whether by means of their artwork, he/she can infringe on the goods of a value which is higher, but not significantly higher. In such situations, when it is difficult to objectively weigh the social profit and loss, the exclusion of the criminality of the act takes place through the exclusion of the perpetrator's guilt.168 The arguments presented against the concept promoted by Budyn-Kulik and Kulik as to the art countertype remain valid, also in reference to the deliberations of these authors on art as a circumstance excluding guilt.

When observing the artistic practices and the attitude of the society and media towards artworks, it should be noted that artists or people using their works often assume that art is under some kind of special protection and is thus situated above the law in force. The mythologized position and the role of the artist is the reason why many contemporary authors are genuinely convinced that by creating and presenting art they are free of virtually any legal restrictions. This may, in turn, lead to erroneous ideas about there being a specific art countertype in the Polish legal system. This incorrect assumption concerning the lack of unlawfulness of artistic activities or the utilizing of art, can sometimes be recognized as a justified error which excludes culpability pursuant to Art 29 PCC or, possibly, as a justified error as to the illegality specified in Art 30 PCC.169

Art and the Social Harmfulness of an Act

An element which is indispensable in establishing the criminality of a given act is the determination of whether the act has caused social harm to a degree higher than insignificant.170 In the vast majority of cases, the statement that by means of his/her behaviour the perpetrator has fulfilled all the other prerequisites of criminal liability, in particular those defining the features of a prohibited act (which at the moment of penalization were _in abstracto_ deemed noxious by the legislator), leads to the assumption that the said behaviour was socially harmful. It is extremely rare to find cases in which the exclusion of criminal liability is due to the absence of social harmfulness.

Social harmfulness of a given act is particularly important from the point of view of the severity of the punishment imposed in an individual case on a specific perpetrator. The fact that the perpetrator created or utilized an artwork and thus fulfilled the features of a prohibited act will often impact the assessment of the harmfulness of his/her behaviour. First of all, due to objective elements including the context of the activity, the manner of dissemination or of rendering the artwork available, such as its presentation in a gallery frequented only by a specific group of people comprising lovers of contemporary art or at a ticketed exhibition, the work will undoubtedly pose a reduced threat to the protected legal good than if it were presented in an open public space or by means of mass media. The public reception of art and the position of art are located within two extremes: the conviction that the artist and his/her works are special and unique entities, and the feeling of the hermetic nature of art, its small social impact or even insignificance in light of topical problems affecting the world. It seems that the resultant of the two modes of awareness is the rather common belief that art is allowed more, which should also be taken into consideration in assessing the social harmfulness of the given action. Secondly, the artistic affiliation can significantly influence the assessment of the subjective elements, i.e. the motivation of the perpetrator and the form of his/her intent, e.g. the possible desire to create certain positive values or to trigger a public debate.

Art in the Context of Chosen Criminal Offences

Insult to Religious Feelings

The contemporary crime of blasphemy has survived in just a few countries of the European cultural area. In most cases, it has been replaced by a secularized post-Enlightenment construction aimed not so much at the protection of the Divine Being, but at the protection of the religious feelings of individuals, as well as public peace.171

In the case of Poland, the crime of blasphemy, severely punishable by a sanction stipulated in the Criminal Code of 1932,172 ceased to function after WWII. In the Criminal Code of 1997 presently in force, the protection of religious freedoms are contained in Chapter 24, which also includes Art 196 – of the greatest importance in the context of the freedom of art. Pursuant to this regulation: "Whoever insults the religious feelings of other persons by defaming in public an object of religious worship or a place dedicated to the public celebration of religious rites, shall be subject to a fine, the penalty of restriction of liberty or the penalty of deprivation of liberty for up to 2 years." The regulation in the exact same wording also functioned in Art 198 of the Criminal Code of 1969, and in an almost identical wording in Art 5 of the decree of 5 August 1949 on the Protection of the Freedom of Conscience and Confession.173 This provision did not stir up any controversy until the democratic system was introduced, when it occurred that it could significantly curb the freedom of expression which, in the times of communism, was obviously nothing more than illusory. These controversies stem primarily from the strong domination of the Catholic religion in Polish public life which can lead to the use of criminal law to stifle opinions unfavourable to this religion and, secondly, due to the numerous discrepancies in the interpretation of the provision itself, occurring both in the case-law and in the doctrine. Generally, apart from the prerequisites of the "public" activity of the perpetrator,174 as well as the "place dedicated to the public celebration of religious rites", the remaining features as provided for in Art 196 PCC are a source of disputes — both small-scale and sizeable — among lawyers. It should also be highlighted that the determining of these features can encounter even more difficulties in contemporary times due to the blurring of the very notion of religion.

Polish legal doctrine varies in defining the goods protected by the regulation discussed – different things are mentioned: the freedom of conscience and religion, religious feelings, the idea of the freedom of convictions of citizens in issues of faith, as well as the protection of the public significance of religion. Although it is accepted that the basis of the assessment of whether religious feelings have been insulted should be the so-called average sensitivity and not the subjective feeling of the aggrieved, the manner in which this sensitivity is to be established is the cause of many problems, making this category unclear and very unstable. Doubts arise at the stage of determining whether the crime is of a causal (material) or non-causal (formal) nature, and in the interpretation of objective features such as "insult" or the "object of religious worship".175 The subjective side of the prohibited act under discussion is also disputable – there was no consensus in the doctrine whether the act under Art 196 PCC can be committed exclusively with _dolus directus_ , or perhaps also with dolus eventualis.176 It was not until 2012 that the dispute was resolved by the Supreme Court in a ruling passed in response to the legal question posed by the District Court in Gdańsk in the case of Adam Darski "Nergal". The Supreme Court decided that the act penalized under Art 196 PCC can be committed intentionally, with both willful intent ( _dolus directus_ ), as well as with a conceivable intent ( _dolus eventualis_ ).177 From the point of view of the freedom of expression, such an interpretation is highly controversial, as it allows for criminal liability to be likewise borne by a person (e.g. an artist or curator) who, when exhibiting a work, anticipates that the given exhibition may offend religious feelings of other people (though it is not actually his/her intention), and thus places appropriate warning signs. Such a situation can lead to preventive self-censorship and to cutting the viewers off from a given field of artistic expression.

In relation to the above, voices were raised among scholars that the regulation under Art 196 PCC imposed certain significant doubts as to its compliance with the Constitution. First of all, the problems with interpreting the regulation can be in contradiction to the basic principles of criminal law; namely, the definitude of the statutory description of a prohibited act ( _nullum crimen sine lege certa_ ). Secondly, the fluidity and subjectivity of assessments can lead to the violation of the essence of the freedom of artistic creation (Art 31(3)2 of the Constitution). Thirdly, it is doubtful whether the limitations to the freedom of expression deriving from this regulation, and in particular to the freedom of artistic creation, can be recognized as compliant with the principles of proportionality contained in Art 31(3)1 of the Constitution.178 This stipulates that the degree of the limitation of individual rights can be justified on the grounds of the importance of the public interest thus promoted. The Constitutional Court has resolved some of these doubts (which is not to say that it has dispelled them) in a judgement of 6 October 2015 upon examining a constitutional complaint lodged by a singer and celebrity, Dorota "Doda" Rabczewska. In June 2012, Rabczewska was legally convicted for offending religious feelings and given the fine of PLN 5,000 (currency after redenomination, ca USD 1400) on account of her statement made in an interview that when it came to the creation of the world, she believed more in scientific discoveries than in the Bible written by "some dude plastered with wine and smoking some kind of weed". In October 2012, the singer lodged a complaint with the Constitutional Court claiming that Art 196 PCC was unconstitutional as: 1) it makes it impossible for non-believers to freely express their views (Art 53(1) in relation to Art 54(1) of the Constitution); 2) the limitations therein contained are disproportional and exceed the necessary scope in a democratic state under the rule of law, and violate the essence of freedom of expression 54(1) in relation to Art 31(3) of the Constitution); 3) it protects only religious believers against insult to feelings, relegating the legal protection of the feelings of non-believers to the margins (Art 25(2) in relation to Art 32(1) of the Constitution), and 4) it does not meet the requirements of definitude and certainty of the provisions of criminal law (Art 42(1) in relation to Art 2 of the Constitution). In response to the complaint, the Constitutional Court ruled that, _inter alia_ : the indefinitude and lack of clarity of the "insult to religious feelings" and to the "object of religious worship" as stipulated in Art 196 PCC are supplemented in case-law and in the doctrine of criminal law with its comprehensible content which is not ambiguous nor open to doubts in the social sense. The accusation of the lack of clarity or precision of the expressions given is not to such an extent that it violates the principle _nullum crimen sine lege certa_ (Art 42(1) and Art 2 of the Constitution). The principle does not exclude the possibility of using linguistic expressions which are indefinite or evaluative. According to the Constitutional Court, neither does Art 196 PCC violate the essence of the freedom of expressing opinions, stipulated in Art 54(1) of the Constitution. "It would be difficult to claim that the essence of freedom of expression was reduced to expressing views which are defamatory or insulting to people's feelings; hence, showing disdain by means of offensive or degrading statements or gestures, which are not subject to qualification in categories of truth or falsity". Although there is no doubt that the penalization of insulting religious feelings is a limitation of the constitutional freedom of expressing opinions, it is meant to counteract this type of "criticism" which is based on replacing substantive arguments with insults, at the same time justifying the action by references to the freedom of speech. An insult should not be a standard which is accepted in a democratic state. According to the assessment of the Constitutional Court based on Art 196 PCC, the limitations placed on the freedom of expressing opinions cannot be deemed disproportionate, i.e. not useful and not leading to an intended objective, but neither can they be excessively burdensome. Although outside of the scope of recognition, the court still expressed the conviction that "in a country under a democratic rule of law, belonging to the European culture whose indicators incorporate such values as tolerance and ideological pluralism, protection of the religious feelings of others... does not have to result in the possibility of imprisonment, in particular in a sentence lasting 2 years." The court expressed the opinion that such a measure was too acute and stood in conflict with the principle of necessity of a given limitation of rights and freedoms in a democratic state. The ruling of the Constitutional Court regarding the substantive deliberation of the complaint should be considered controversial. In upholding a conservative jurisprudence, the court confirmed the relatively low status of the freedom of expression in the Polish legal order. At the same time, the judgement was much welcomed by the then incumbent political forces (in the opinion presented during the proceedings, the Parliament and the Prosecutor General pointed to the fact that Art 196 PCC was compliant with the Constitution).179

Rabczewska lodged an application with the ECHR; however, this court's case-law indicates that it may not necessarily have a positive outcome. The freedom of expression in Europe does not share the high precedence that it enjoys in the United States. Not to mention the fact that for historical reasons, the attitude to religion is very complicated and diverse.180 In 2008, the Venice Commission recommended a liberalization of provisions on limiting the freedom of expression in the context of religious freedoms. The subject of the Commission's deliberations was a set of three types of crimes: hate speech (inciting hatred), insult to religious feelings, and blasphemy. In the opinion of the Commission, punishment for statements which are in collision with someone's religious freedom should be the final resort when no other sanctions, including those from civil law, offer the proper protection of individual rights. The Commission subscribed to the opinion of the European Parliament that "blasphemy should not be treated as a crime". On the other hand, the insult to religious feelings can only be penalized when hate speech is also the constitutive feature of a given crime; and according to the Venice Commission, it is hate speech which sets the legal limits of freedom of expression (including artistic) in matters of religion.181 Neither the Polish legislature nor the Constitutional Court have dwelt on these issues. In reference to the recommendations of the Venice Commission, it should also be noted that, on the one hand, the application of the provisions of civil law by the courts (as a potential alternative to Art 196 PCC) does not sufficiently guarantee the protection of personal rights of a religious nature; and they could, on the other hand, turn out to be more detrimental to the freedom of speech than criminal sanctions.182

Dorota Nieznalska, Passion [ _Pasja_ ], 2001, steal, photography, 104 × 92 cm, film 45 min, courtesy of Dorota Nieznalska

The Case of Dorota Nieznalska

In January 2001, the "Fakty" news show of TVN (a private TV station with a liberal agenda) aired biased material about an installation by the artist Dorota Nieznalska, exhibited at the Wyspa Progress Gallery in Gdańsk. The piece, titled _Pasja (The Passion)_ , was made up of a metal cross, suspended on a metal chain from a ceiling, and a video. The length of the arms of the cross was 105 x 90 cm (despite the slightly longer vertical beam, the cross had the appearance of being even-armed). A photograph of the lower part of a male nude was glued onto the front of the cross in such a way that the penis was located in the central part of the object. The other part of the installation comprised of a looped slow motion silent film showing strained faces of a man lifting weights in a gym. Provoked by the televised material, MP's from the extreme right-wing party League of Polish Families (LPR), Gertruda Szumska and Rafał Strąk, barged in on the already closed and dismantled exhibition with a group of their supporters, and demanded they be shown the piece. The artist refused but the politicians notified the prosecution of an alleged crime of insult to religious feelings. On 12 April 2002, the Public Prosecutor's Office (PPO) in Gdansk filed an indictment against Dorota Nieznalska. The artist was charged with allegedly insulting the religious feelings of different persons on grounds that in the period from 14 December to 21 January, during an exhibition of the work _The Passion_ at the Wyspa Progress Gallery, she had publicly defamed an object of a religious cult by presenting male genitalia in the centre of a metal cross, and thus committed a crime provided for in Art 196 PCC183 (see. p102 - 103).

The artist did not admit to the charges of which she had been accused. Her line of defence followed three main elements of reasoning. First of all, the aim was to indicate that her behaviour had not resulted in the defamation of an object of religious cult in a manner that had insulted the religious feelings of other people. In particular, it was indicated that the cross used as part of the installation titled _The Passion_ , was not an object of religious cult and was related to a number of meanings. Furthermore, it was claimed that the behaviour of the accused was not of a defamatory nature. To this effect, the defence filed a motion for evidence to perform an inspection of the reconstructed version of _The Passion_ so as to assess the nature of the installation and its message. The motion was dismissed by the court. One of the methods of undermining the objective side was to apply the canonic tactic and file another motion (also dismissed by the court) to admit evidence from the opinion of an art history expert for the purpose of explaining two issues: the existence of works showing suffering and nudity of the human body present in the Catholic cultural tradition, in texts and in images, as well as the evaluation of the nature of the so-called engaged art. The purpose here was to prove that _The Passion_ belonged to the artistic canon and thus was not in any way objectively offensive in its expression.

Secondly, the defence indicated that the artist had been knowledgeable about these canons and could thus assume that her work would not be perceived as defamatory – an argument which would dismantle the subjective side of the act. The canonic tactics would make the intentional defence credible by awarding it the argument that the artist had not intended to defame or offend anyone. By showing that she did not pursue a direct intention but a possible one at the very most, was particularly important, as the defence argued that the crime as provided for in Art 196 PCC can only be committed with _dolus directus_ on the part of the perpetrator (also see p. 104).

Thirdly, the defence – basing its argumentation on the opinion of Jarosław Warylewski, referred to the extra-statutory art countertype, which excluded the unlawfulness of the act. In line with the said opinion, an art countertype should be identified by such features as: the artist as the perpetrator of the act, the production or presentation of a work of an artistic nature as the effect of the artist's behaviour, as well as the desire to attain an artistic aim by the perpetrator. Furthermore, the defence indicated that if someone did not wish to see _The Passion_ , one did not have to; hence, the aggrieved had contributed to the perpetration of the crime.

The court did not agree with any of the above arguments and on 18 July 2003 sentenced the artist to 6 months of limitation of liberty based on non-compensatory, controlled, community work of 20 hours per month (a punishment more severe than what the prosecution had demanded), and further ordered her to pay the costs of the trial. In the rationale for its decision, the court decided that the establishment of the facts of the case was indisputable. In assessing whether the defendant had fulfilled the elements of the objective features of the crime she had been charged with, the court decided that the cross used in _The Passion_ installation was indeed an object of religious cult in the understanding of Art 196 PCC. – "the cross is definitely a symbol of suffering; however, it should be indicated that in the reality of Christian civilization, the cross is a symbol of suffering because it was Jesus Christ who died on it, and not for any other reason". Moreover, there was no doubt in the mind of the court that the cross had been defamed on account of the use of the name _The Passion_ and the introduction of a male organ in the usual place of the figure of Christ, both of which evoked immediate associations. In reference to the arguments presented by the defence as part of the canonic tactic, the court also observed that "it is difficult to identify natural nudity of the body in an image or a sculpture of a sacral nature with the use of a male organ separated from the figure of a man and used in the form of a symbol, as Dorota Nieznalska has done". Furthermore, the court also dismissed as unnecessary, an inspection of the installation and its reconstruction, as the aggrieved argued that even if they had seen the entire installation and regardless of where they would have seen it, they would still feel insulted.

In its substantive interpretation of Art 196 PCC, the court decided that the crime of insult to religious feelings can be committed both with a _dolus directus_ , as well as _dolus eventualis_. Still, it had no direct influence on the formulation of the court's decision as the court did agree with the auxiliary prosecutor that the defendant had aimed at artistic and personal success in her milieu, and for that reason she was ready to go as far as to insult religious feelings. The defendant was aware that the work she had produced was insulting to people of faith, as it is impossible for a person with a university degree and an inhabitant of Poland, where 95% of the population is of the Catholic persuasion, to be unaware of the consequences of her deeds. The insult to the religious feelings of other persons was the inevitable effect of the artwork, and must have been foreseeable by the artist. In the opinion of the court, neither did any circumstances exclude the culpability of the defendant. "The fact that the defendant consulted her work in her milieu, and had not been given any negative feedback, does not exclude her guilt and liability for making the wrong choice."

In reference to the art countertype excluding unlawfulness, the court decided that there was no such countertype in Polish criminal law. It has not been envisaged by the act of law, neither are there grounds for constructing a countertype based on the custom. Such a countertype would be in contradiction with the Constitution, and its attributes would be unclear and open to evaluation. The court observed that there were already difficulties at the point of who could call upon such a countertype – "anyone could present themselves as an artist and believe that it gave them legitimacy to undertake any actions in gross violation of the rights of others". Furthermore, "... the fact that a given work fits into the framework of art, be it contemporary, archaic, or of another kind, is of no consequence in light of the fact that it should not insult the feelings of other persons".

In terms of the aggrieved having contributed to the perpetration of the offence, the court stated that "for the act to have occurred, it is not necessary for the aggrieved to be directly exposed to the blasphemed object of cult.... From the point of view of the resolution of the case, it is absolutely of no difference whether the aggrieved had seen the installation _The Passion_ in the Wyspa Progress Gallery, or whether they saw it at a later time on television; and that this conclusion stood even if they had not been exposed to the work in its entirety."

When deciding on the sentencing, the court came to the conclusion that a fine would not be a punishment of sufficient severity for the defendant, who had achieved fame on account of the scandal she had caused, and would be, as a result, invited to numerous exhibitions. For that reason, the court sentenced the defendant to limitation of liberty, with respect to the high level of social harmfulness of her deed. The court did not decide to sentence the defendant to the penalty of imprisonment as provided for in Art 196 PCC only due to her previously clean criminal record.

The verdict was immensely controversial, both in legal, as well as in other terms. When reading the rationale of the judgement, one gets the feeling that the judge presiding over the case - Tomasz Zieliński - adopted a very personal approach towards the case, motivated by his own faith. To him, the issue did not concern symbolic operations or conventional elements of faith, but was about a certain essential reality that he recognized as a given. Therefore, in the eyes of the judge, the prototype had literally "jumped out" from this reality and replaced Nieznalska's object. In other words, as David Freedberg would say, an elision of the image with its prototype had taken place. That is probably why Judge Zieliński ignored the problem of the viewer's direct encounter with the work, as to him, its defamatory nature was obvious and indisputable in each of its elements. The judge displayed no hesitation, nor did he have any need of expert opinions. The multi-layered meaning of the artwork and of the cross' symbolism, not to mention the problematic issue of qualifying Nieznalska's cross as an "object of religious cult", held no significance for him; neither did the testimonies given by the artist or witnesses of the defence. It was, as if the judge himself felt offended, and this state of affairs was proof enough for him. One could even say that it was the judge who was "the aggrieved in the case".

In reference to the purely legal aspects of the verdict, it should be noted that regardless of the shortcomings (presented hereinafter) indicated by the court of second instance, the description of the act with which the artist had been accused was also erroneous. It assumed that she had acted individually and presented the installation at the Wyspa Progress Gallery on her own, and not in collaboration and in agreement with other people. The insult to religious feelings with which she was charged was not the result of the fact that the artist had created the installation but that it had been presented. In this respect the liability, first and foremost, lay with those who had exhibited the work, i.e. the management of the gallery. Such an arrangement as the one under scrutiny requires the establishment of the extent to which the artist acted in agreement with the said management. This particular circumstance had completely escaped the attention of all the courts passing judgement in the case, which undoubtedly stemmed from a flawed formulation of the indictment.

Furthermore, the court interpreted the content of the presented work in a discretionary manner. In order to determine the proper message of the piece presented in a closed, niche gallery, what had to be taken into consideration was the interpretation adopted by the interpretive community of persons specializing in art and not the opinion at large (including the panel of judges) of all people interested in public life.

The court was correct in negating the possibility of referring to an art countertype and criticizing the features of such a countertype presented by the defense, though it should be recognized that the arguments used by the court were incorrect. The court was also correct in assessing that the crime of insult to religious feelings was a material offence, the perpetration of which required that the religious feelings of a number of persons be insulted. However, the court of second instance also pointed to the incorrect assessment pertaining to the causal relationship between the action of the defendant and the effect – that being the insult to religious feelings of the aggrieved.

Assuming that the crime as provided for in Art 196 PCC could be perpetrated with a _dolus eventualis_ , the court had not undertaken to weigh the interests therein, nor to reflect on the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression and artistic expression. Neither did it reflect on the rule of necessity to apply a given constraint in a democratic state of law, nor did it consider the question of debate on matters of public interest. The judge, quite outrageously, assumed that the defendant had achieved fame — which he translated into material benefits — due to the scandal, and for which reason he meted out a harsher sentence to her. What is important, however, was that the specific nature of the imposed sanction (non-compensatory community work) could have been perceived – especially by people in the cultural arena – as a disregard for the defendant as an artist, or even as an act of misogyny. Journalist Tomasz Piątek ironically commented on the judgement: "it is a well-known fact, after all, that artists, especially modern artists, are parasites making incomprehensible, meaningless things with taxpayers' money. Such a thought process can be discerned in the choice of punishment - half a year of performing socially useful work. 'Go do something productive, Child!'".184 Piątek's diagnosis was paradoxically confirmed by those who agreed with the court's decision. One right-wing journalist wrote that the court "resorted to an educational punishment of a purely symbolic nature. The aim is clear. To shame, to bring about reflection, but not to give any pretext for the appearance of martyrdom".185

The sentence passed by Judge Zieliński was "a sign of the times". In Poland, the domination of the Catholic religion in public life remains a chief component. In the view of a certain section of the society (it is difficult to say how large, but one which is highly visible), the said religion is not to be regarded as one of the elements of a democratic and pluralist sociopolitical system, but the element that ultimately stipulates what the principles are. Any attempts to verify this state and introduce mediation based on equality between differing viewpoints, are seen as a return to the times of enforced communist atheism, and as an assault against the nation's identity. This phenomenon is relatively constant though its intensity varies according to the times. Worthy of mention is the cultural conflict which began to exacerbate from the beginning of the century. In 2001, when post-communists came to power and accession to the European Union was ever closer, the media systematically reported on different scandals in the art world, and the extreme right-wing party LPR engaged in a series of legal incursions aimed at cultural institutions, particularly those involved in contemporary art, and perceived by conservative circles as an ideological enemy (one such attack led to Nieznalska's indictment). The reasons for the sentence are also clearly related to the media debate on contemporary art which had shaped the artistic awareness of Poles after 1989; no doubt, likewise the awareness of Judge Zieliński.

In favour of the defendant, Nieznalska's defence appealed against the entirety of the sentence issued by the Regional Court. The appeal included accusations of both violations of the procedural law, errors in factual findings, as well as a breach of substantive law. In the ruling of 22 April 2004, the District Court in Gdańsk overruled the contested sentence and referred the case back to the Regional Court for reconsideration.186 In its diagnosis, the District Court limited its consideration of the appeal to the violations of procedural law. The court of second instance observed, first and foremost, that the justification given by the court of first instance did not meet the requirements to which the court is obliged; namely, to indicate which facts it had considered proven or unproven, as they pertained to evidence that the court either relied on or rejected as evidence; as well as the omission of explaining the legal basis, and citing the motivation taken into account in determining the punishment. The said defects prevented the Court of Appeals from being able to review the correctness of the judgement passed. In this manner, the Regional Court had infringed on the defendant's right to a defence. In the opinion of the court of second instance, the court of first instance was at fault in its lack of consideration of the ambiguity of the title — _The Passion —_ as it was at fault in concluding that the defendant "had separated a male organ from the figure of a man", as there were also other body parts visible which had an impact on the message the artwork conveyed.

The District Court ruled that the Regional Court had determined the intent of the defendant in a simplified manner. Furthermore, that it did not explain the basis on which it had assumed the fact that the defendant was ready to insult religious feelings for the benefit of success, and that she had been aware that the produced work was insulting to people of faith, and that despite this awareness, she had decided to show the work publicly, and that the insult to religious feelings was an inevitable and predictable outcome of her work. The court further ordered the Regional Court to seek the opinion of an expert in art history, as well as to respond to all the motions for evidence submitted by the parties, and to re-take the evidence, including a detailed hearing of the accused and witnesses for the defendant, with the express aim of establishing the defendant's intent.

On 26 November 2004, the case was once again brought to the Regional Court187. The court (in a new formation) complied with all the recommendations of the court of second instance, including the reconstructed installation of _The Passion_ , which was duly subjected to inspection. A viewing also took place of the original televised material from 17 January 2002, featuring the exhibition at the premises of the Wyspa Gallery. It included a general overview of the show, footage of the different elements of the installation, and an interview with Nieznalska, as well as information about the exhibition aired by the TVN "Fakty" news programme. Furthermore, the court took evidence from the opinions of experts in journalism and mass media information techniques (opinion of Dr Małgorzata Lisowska-Magdziarz188); religious studies (opinion of Prof Zbigniew Pasek189), as well as art history (opinion of Prof Eleonora Jedlińska190).

In a judgement of 4 June 2009, the court acquitted the defendant. On the basis of the evidence taken, the court established the facts in the case and additionally described in detail all the elements of the installation in question. It also pointed to the lack of objectivity of the material aired by the TVN television station, in depicting the work of the defendant, and confirmed that the emphasis of the artist's oeuvre was in critical art. The court also presented the defendant's explanations as to the content of her piece.

In a subsumption of the facts in the case considered under Art 196 PCC, the court decided that an insult to religious feelings had taken place with regard to those aggrieved persons who had personally seen and listened to the footage of the defendant's work as presented in the TVN television station material on 17 January 2002. Taking into consideration the specific sensitivity of the aggrieved persons with regard to their religious beliefs, the court decided that the cross used by Nieznalska could have been seen as an object of religious worship, and her actions as defamation. As an objective measure of insult and offence, the court thus assumed a high degree of sensitivity reminiscent of devout persons who are in no way interested in contemporary art.

The court pointed to the fact that the insult to religious feelings did not ensue from the viewing of the said installation, but on account of the televised transmission on the TVN "Fakty" news of 17 January 2002. The court therefore questioned the causal effect between the actions of the defendant and the perceived insult to religious feelings felt by the aggrieved, due to their inability to have become acquainted with the work at the place of its exhibition and in the form in which it had actually been presented.

The Regional Court devoted much of its deliberations to the analysis of the attributes of the subjective side of the provision of Art 196 PCC. In the opinion of the court, Nieznalska acted with _dolus eventualis_ – i.e. she was aware that the juxtaposition of the Christian symbol of the cross with the naturalistic image of male genitalia could result in a feeling of offence among people with specific viewpoints, and likewise be perceived as an affront to the predominant aesthetic and moral sensitivities evident in Polish culture. The defendant herself confirmed that in exhibiting the work she had accepted the possibility of negative reactions from the audience. The court rightly noted that the said provision did not allow for the unambiguous determination on the matter of whether the offence of insult to religious feelings could be perpetrated with both _dolus directus_ and _dolus eventualis_. However, by referencing systemic interpretation, the court stated that only the thesis of a _dolus directus_ allowed for respect of the constitutional principle of balance with regard to personal freedoms, without applying a clear primacy to any of them.191 Should _dolus eventualis_ be considered possible, then no artist who referred to a religious subject matter or used religious symbols would ever be given sufficient guarantee that the work would not offend someone's religious feelings and thus lead to criminal liability, which would inevitably block any serious development of art.

To conclude, in acquitting Nieznalska, the court based its judgment on two premises – in the first place, that she had acted with _dolus eventualis_ , and her behaviour had not fulfilled the subjective features of the act she had been accused of, as they could only be committed with a _dolus directus_. Secondly, indisputable doubts were raised in the case as to the causal effect between the behaviour of the defendant and the disclosed effect in the form of the insult to religious feelings of the aggrieved. In such a case, in line with the fundamental rule of a criminal trial — _in dubio pro reo —_ the court resolved the doubts in favour of the defendant. At the same time, the court decided to completely abandon any deliberations on the countertype of art. Such a decision was justified to the effect that, in the opinion of the court, the features of a prohibited act had never been fulfilled. From the arguments presented by the defence, the court decided to focus on the trope of intentional defence, with reference to the intent with which the act had been perpetrated.

On 28 October 2009, the PPO in Gdańsk-Sródmieście appealed against the second judgment of the Regional Court entirely in disfavour of Dorota Nieznalska.192 The PPO claimed that the sentence violated substantive law and that the court had made a mistake in establishing the facts of the case. According to the PPO, the court had committed an error in deciding that the accused had acted exclusively with a _dolus eventualis_ , and that the crime provided for in Art 196 PCC could only be committed with a _dolus directus_. In their opinion, not only had Nieznalska agreed to commit the offence as provided for in Art 196 PCC, but she had actually embraced it as a pathway to fame. Furthermore, the prosecution also questioned the position of the court, in which the latter had pointed to doubts of an adequate causal effect between the behaviour of the accused in the gallery in Gdańsk, and the effect in the form of insult to religious feelings. In the assessment of the prosecution, the collected evidence did not justify the claim that the presentation of the installation in the form exhibited at the Wyspa Gallery, which was in line with the views of the defendant, would not evoke in the general Polish audience, feelings of public defamation of the cross or cause an insult to their religious feelings.

Upon considering the appeal, on 4 March 2010 the District Court upheld the judgement and deemed the appeal unfounded193, stating that in its opinion the Regional Court had been correct in assuming that the defendant had not acted with a _dolus directus_ , but the District Court also did not share the opinion that the defendant had acted with a _dolus eventualis._ The court of second instance stated that the defendant could only possibly have acted unintentionally. In so stating, the court referred to an interview the defendant had given on the TVN television station on the closing day of the exhibition, in which she said that while "people of faith may feel shocked by the installation, upon receiving an explanation of its artistic message, they will understand and will not feel in any way insulted by the work". The court further observed that Nieznalska had exhibited both in the country and abroad and, contrary to the claims of the prosecution, had not needed a religious scandal to make herself known. During the intervention of the MPs from the LPR political party in the Wyspa Gallery, the defendant went to lengths to avoid a scene which could have — given the large number of journalists present — generated intense media attention.

The court ruled that it was not Dorota Nieznalska who was to be held responsible for the content of the message that had insulted the religious feelings of the aggrieved, but that these persons could have felt offended by the content presented in the mass media, which differed profoundly from the sense the artist had assigned to her work. At the same time, the court found that the evidence collected in the case did not allow for establishing whether information objectively presented would insult religious feelings, and that this doubt had to be resolved in favour of the defendant ( _in dubio pro reo_ ).

The Case of Adam Darski

Art 196 PCC was also brought to bear in the charges formulated against Adam Darski, whose stage name is "Nergal" – the frontman and lead singer of Behemoth – a Polish black metal band. This event is worth mentioning in the context of visual arts since the question of the binding nature of an art countertype was considered in the initial stages of the trial.

On 13 September 2007, during a concert at the Ucho Club in Gdańsk, as a prelude to one of his pieces, Darski opened up the Bible and, tearing out its pages, he tossed them at the audience, saying: "This is the Holy Scriptures, so they say; I say – it is a book of lies, fuck this shit, fuck this hypocrisy, eat this shit"194. Following a notification filed in the PPO by four parliamentarians from the right wing PIS party [the Law and Justice party], who had watched Darski's performance on the Internet, the prosecution launched pre-trial proceedings and filed a further indictment in the Regional Court in Gdynia citing the grounds that a crime stipulated in Art 196 PCC had been committed. The prosecution accused Darski of having publicly defamed an object of religious worship in the form of the Holy Scriptures during a concert, thus insulting the religious feelings of other people.

In the judgement of 18 August 2011, the Regional Court acquitted Darski195. During the trial, the singer pleaded innocent. The defendant emphasized that, among other things, it had not been his intention to insult anyone, and that the concert was ticketed for the very reason that "random persons who did not belong to the band's target audience, could wrongly interpret the message". Each ticket carried information indicating that filming, recording and distributing of the concert was prohibited. Darski further testified that no fan present at the concert had felt offended, and that also in attendance at the concert was Pneuma – a Catholic rock band – who likewise had not felt offended.

The court reached the decision that the behaviour of the defendant fulfilled a number of objective features of the crime provided for in Art 196 PCC. In particular, the court found that based on the opinion of an expert in Religious Studies, the Bible is an object of religious worship, and that Darski's behaviour could be seen as a defamation of such an object. He had committed the act publicly – in front of a considerably large, live audience. Despite the above-mentioned factors, the court acquitted Darski, ruling that 1) he did not act with _dolus directus_ to insult the aggrieved people in the case; 2) his act was committed as part of an art countertype.

In reference to the interpretation adopted in the case of Nieznalska, the court ruled that the act provided for in Art 196 PCC could only be committed with a _dolus directus_ (i.e. the perpetrator wants to, and aims to insult the religious feelings of specific people). The court further observed that: "The assumption of the possibility of the perpetrator's action pursuant to the crime provided for in Art 196 PCC, when committed with a conceivable intent _(dolus eventualis), was de facto, an extension of an ad infinitum group of addressees of a given behaviour — with the said extension being applied post factum to include persons who may potentially learn about a given activity_ [italics in the original] – which eliminates adequate causation as relates to the specific »perpetrator–victim« bond – and is thus contradictory to the fundamental principles of criminal law". The court came to the conclusion that the defendant acted with _dolus eventualis_ in offending the religious feelings of members of the concert's audience. However, no-one felt offended and no-one had been determined as being directly aggrieved in the case. The court also noted that the notification of the crime filed by the aggrieved was based, among others, on opportunistic motives and not as a result of the actual perception of the concert being offensive to religious feelings. It was further observed that the adoption of _dolus eventualis_ and, at the same time, the indirect nature of the insult – would lead _post factum_ to "censoring a fragment of social life in which the parties expressing negation are not the direct participants and were not the intended addressees". The court underlined the fact that the defendant used the Bible as a prop for expressing criticism of the Church, and not as a prop to insult religious feelings. The Church, which itself participates in public debate and is critical of specific areas of the social life of citizens, should be prepared for reciprocated criticism.

Apart from the fact that it was recognized that the defendant's behaviour had not fulfilled the subjective features of the act he had been accused of, the court referred to the countertype of art, stating that "it was an act within a specific artistic creation - it had taken place at a concert of a specific music band ... who had performed under the banner of a specific message ... addressed towards a select audience, and furthermore, this message was integral in its content - it was a kind of show all of its own ... . "At the same time, the court cast criticism on the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in _Otto Preminger Institut v. Austria —_ a case often referred to in the context of the conflict of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, indicating that it allows for activities similar to preventive censorship. The court also emphasized that in this given matter one could not speak of the countertype of the consent of the aggrieved – those who had notified the authorities concerning the crime had the right to attend the concert so as to formulate their own opinion about it and assess whether Darski had actually offended their religious feelings – "the adoption of different criteria would _de facto_ be tantamount to the introduction of a kind of preventive censorship towards the aggrieved, which is unacceptable".

Both the auxiliary prosecutor and the prosecution appealed against this verdict. In order to resolve the objections raised by the appellants, the District Court in Gdańsk referred the legal question to the Supreme Court, requiring a principal interpretation of the act of law: "Can the crime provided for in Art 196 PCC be perpetrated only when acting with _dolus directus_ , or is it also possible when acting with _dolus eventualis_?" In the above mentioned resolution of 29 October 2012 (file no. I KZP 12/12), the Supreme Court ruled that the crime provided for in Art 196 PCC is perpetrated by a person who fulfils all the objective features of the misdemeanour with either _dolus directus_ or _dolus eventualis_. In the opinion of the Supreme Court, the act as provided for in Art 196 PCC can be perpetrated in both forms of intent, referring to all its features, i.e. both to the executive act by "defamation" as well as to the result of "an insult". Referring to the jurisprudence of the ECHR, including the judgement in the case _Otto Preminger Institut v. Austria_ , in addition to the views of the doctrine, the Supreme Court concluded that "an artistic expression cannot be »insulting to others without purpose«" as it then »does not contribute to any form of public debate«". The concept of the possibility of perpetrating a crime provided for in Art 196 PCC entirely on purpose ( _dolus directus)_ , as well as with _dolus eventualis_ "guarantees a balance between the freedoms protected by these provisions and... does not, in any measure, limit the freedom of artistic expression". This interpretation adopted by the Supreme Court, in consequence, resulted in the District Court repealing the acquittal and referring the case back to the court of first instance for reconsideration196.

Having reconsidered the case, the Regional Court in Gdynia, in the judgement of 3 June 2013, acquitted the defendant once again197. It was reiterated that the defendant had fulfilled a number of features of a prohibited act provided for in Art 196 PCC in the form of an insult; in particular that Darski had acted with _dolus eventualis,_ with respect to insult towards religious feelings; however, only towards those in attendance at the concert, since he had not offended the religious feelings of said/these persons, he did not fulfil all the features of the act provided for in Art 196 PCC. The defendant, furthermore, had not acted with either _dolus directus_ or _dolus eventualis_ towards the aggrieved in this case. Hence, the court ruled that deliberations on the art countertype were redundant. In the judgement of 11 February 2014, the District Court in Gdańsk dismissed another appeal of the public and auxiliary prosecutors198. At the same time, the court stressed that it was illegal to publish the recording from the concert on the Internet, and that it had been done against the will of the defendant. Thus, the defendant did not agree that persons other than participants of the concert should become acquainted with its content, and neither did the defendant want, nor agree to an offence towards the religious feelings of these persons.

In reference to the decisions described above, a number of issues should be addressed. First of all, the courts concurred that the action of the defendant was one of an artistic nature, and that it was an integral part of the artwork created – the features of the prohibited act were, therefore, fulfilled by the creative act alone. The correct interpretation of the content of this act and the action performed by the defendant had to be applied to the appropriate interpretive group. Due to the fact that the act had taken place in a closed space with limited access, the meanings adopted by the interpretive community A should be taken into consideration, i.e. the community of the art world, and in particular, people involved in the specific genre of music that is black metal. The courts did not perform such an analysis; however, they did accept the defendant's clarifications in this respect, who stressed that the nature of his behaviour was to be critical of the church. This interpretation was later confirmed by the witnesses interviewed, including Catholics present at the concert. Notwithstanding this, the courts came to the conclusion that the objective features of the act provided for in Art 196 PCC had been fulfilled, i.e. that the Bible, as an object of religious cult had been defamed and the religious feelings of the persons who presented themselves as aggrieved in the case had been insulted. One could have doubts as to such a qualification. If one was to assume that the behaviour of the defendant only expressed criticism and not disdain towards institutions of the Church, then it should not be qualified as the defamation of certain objects and as insult to religious feelings. In this respect, the behaviour of the defendant did not fulfil the objective features of the act he had been accused of perpetrating.

Secondly, the basis for Darski's acquittal was the conclusion that none of the concert participants towards whom the defendant had acted with _dolus eventualis_ of insult to their religious feelings, was actually insulted. Following this line of thinking, there is no doubt that the defendant should be convicted if any of the persons who acted in the case as the aggrieved, had intentionally attended another concert of Behemoth so as to inspect the behaviour of the defendant and assess whether it was insulting to their religious feelings or not. Such an interpretation, however, would only cause a freezing effect. The artist would each time have to undertake specific actions, such as controlling those admitted to the concert, in order to limit the potential threat of a criminal case. He would thus be deprived of the possibility of using means of expression comprehensible and acceptable to the adequate interpretive community (in this case, fans of black metal). In order to secure the artist against such consequences, it is possible to, on the one hand, resort to the construction of the consent of the aggrieved – which was rejected by the Regional Court in Gdynia during the first consideration of the case. The court rightly observed that the aggrieved had the right to watch Behemoth's concerts; however, having thus acted, they had to take into account the possibility of having their religious feelings insulted. On the other hand, however, it is also possible to perform an appropriate qualification of the defendant's fulfilment of objective features and pursue an interpretation of the content of his statement not from the perspective of the cultural field of the possibly aggrieved party, but from the perspective of those to whom the message was addressed.

Thirdly, the part of the Supreme Court's statement, in which it underlined the equal significance of both religious freedom and the freedom of expression, sounds somewhat coquettish. The very fact that there are provisions of criminal law protecting religious feelings and the lack of such provisions which would particularly protect the freedom of expression, indicates a certain disproportion. Moreover, by recognizing the fact that the crime as provided for in Art 196 PCC can also be perpetrated with _dolus eventualis_ , the court had dangerously expanded the scope in which the provision could be applied, thus granting prime status to the freedom which it protected.

Pornography

The fundamental problem which emerges in the context of pornography and art is the question of the artistic nature of pornographic content or the pornographic nature of a work of art. Does the fact that we are dealing with a work of art exclude the trait of pornography? The answer to this question is necessary to assess the fulfilment of the features of the prohibited acts connected with possessing or using different types of pornographic materials. The deliberations over the relations between pornography and art and, in general, the contemporary understanding of these notion, was influenced by 18th and 19th century philosophy, initially through the influence of English aesthetics (the writings of Lord Shaftesbury) and above all, through the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Another key element was the emergence of the bourgeois society and a new mass audience. Kant introduced a distinction between pure and disinterested contemplation that stretched beyond physicality and the sensual, purposive pleasure that made it possible to formulate the notions of fine arts and pornography as mutually exclusive spheres.199 The Enlightenment theories of aesthetics also had an impact on the form of the legal provisions counteracting obscenity. The most extreme concept – of the ontological exclusion of art and pornography – was connected with the dogmatic treatment of Kant's theory: once the concept of self enters the process of creating or receiving art and the intellectual character of the judgement is defiled, we are no longer dealing with true fine arts or with the essential predilection of taste. Therefore, once something had been recognized as a work of art, the possibility of recognizing it as immoral and subsequently fulfilling the features of an offence was excluded. However, the closer the 19th c. approached its end, physical experience grew in importance in both philosophical concepts especially in Nietzsche (and later Freud), as well as in art. Artists began to weave into their works, certain elements typical of pornographic representations, potentially influencing the sensuous interest of the viewers. In contrast to pornography, however, they were not directed at inciting sexual desire. In this new context, pornographic motifs ceased to be a simple offence of taste – they became aestheticized so as to distance and mitigate their impact on the senses – it was the form that safeguarded the artwork from falling into pornography.200 As a juridical response to these phenomena, different concepts were created which envisaged the possible co-existence of fine arts and pornography. These lead to either the complete purification of an artwork (through the power of formal features or the sincerity of artistic intentions), or they accept carnality as important for aesthetic reception, while indicating at the same time the need to maintain the formal properties of the work which inhibit sensuality; as well as the viewer's skill of being able to distanced, speculative assessment of the artefact.

In Poland, the regulation penalizing the creation and specific use of different types of pornographic content are predominantly contained in Art 200 §3 and 202 PCC.201 Neither these nor any other provision directly regulate art-pornography relations, and the judicature does not, actually, present a stance on the issue. For this reason, the issue causes rather a great deal of controversy, which various theoretical concepts attempt to solve. In line with the position taken in this elaboration, the possible co-existence of obscenity and art is undeniable, which obviously results from the adoption of the institutional and not the essential definition of art. There is nothing standing in the way of presentations from pornographic films or photographs (even those seen as drastic and deviant) to become elements of a contemporary artefact. The issue of the form of an artwork is significant inasmuch as it can distance the obscene elements to a point where they lose their openly sexual, pornographic character. References to form, however, are not necessary for a given work to be assigned to the domain of art.

According to criminal law doctrine, the _ratio legis_ for penalizing pornography usually comprises four reasons: firstly, pornography is a manifestation of poor taste, and when imposed, it produces outrage, shock, or embarrassment in viewers; secondly, there is a correlation between the use of pornography and crimes against sexual freedom, such as rape; thirdly, pornography ties in with the objectification and discrimination of women by men as mere sex objects; its production is in general accompanied by sexual aggression towards all participants; fourthly, it corrupts minors, distorting their perception of interpersonal relations (sexual, in particular) during the very period when their personalities are being moulded202. Further reasons are also identifiable – pornography yields a number of consequences: addiction, escalation (in seeking ever-stronger content), desensitization, emulation (increasing propensity for real life application)203. The first of the aforementioned arguments appears to be indisputable and is seen to be of paramount importance in rationalizing the regulations adopted as part of the Polish Criminal Code.

The absence of any definition of "pornographic content" – a concept that depends on the context, is historically changeable, and of a sensitive nature – remains an issue continuously resurfacing in connection with the application of regulations penalizing specific aspects of the use of pornography. Two approaches to the term "pornography" dominate Polish criminal law doctrine (with Supreme Court case-aw practically non-existent204): one, a subjectivist- _cum_ -moralizing approach (whereby the perpetrator's _dolus_ is for the content to evoke sexual arousal in the viewer)205; two, an objectivist- _cum_ -pragmatic approach (the objective content of presentation and its inter-subjectivist public reception is of importance rather than the perpetrator's _dolus_ )206. While the former tends to be more frequently referenced in the literature, it does seem that the application of the objectivist theory would be more appropriate from the vantage point of judiciary practice, as suggested by the fact that researching the perpetrator's mind-set with regard to the act is rather difficult to objectivize, and thus, can only be demonstrated by an indirect conclusion. According to some interpretations, when determining this aforementioned objectively pornographic content, reference should be given to the so-called normative role model of an averagely sensitive, socially integrated person who is aware of commonly accepted values, in relation to the potential reaction towards how some given content can cause excessive sexual arousal207. Yet, is it noteworthy that according to this objectivist approach, the sexual arousal criterion evokes doubt as to the justification of the punishability of the act, as it seems to suggest that sexual arousal is reprehensible, harmful, and unsafe. According to Mateusz Rodzynkiewicz, aesthetic criteria may be recognized as auxiliary in the legal assessment – forms of expression "non-conforming to minimum aesthetic standards, primitive, vulgar, and highlighting the physiological side of intimate relations only" would be considered pornographic. Rodzynkiewicz believes that "while contemporary art often portrays erotic content, in a form evoking outrage..., recognizing a work as artistic precludes the possibility of categorizing it as pornography"208. Nonetheless, such an approach gives rise to certain issues. Given the nature and modes of creating numerous contemporary artworks and institutional measures of conferring art status upon objects, formałand-aesthetic premises in isolation will not be sufficient as a criterion allowing for the identification of artistic features of any given material. Categorizing any given activity as art will still be possible only once the artist's intent and the artistic aim have been ascertained. One would further be hard-pressed to agree with Rodzynkiewicz's assumption of art's purifying properties (if something is art, it cannot be pornography). In the Polish legal doctrine, such a standpoint was also presented by advocates of the subjective theory based upon the _dolus_ (intent) of the perpetrator – if his/her intent was to evoke aesthetic satisfaction rather than sexual arousal, then the given artwork is not pornographic in nature. Even so, it seems that an artwork's artistic nature does not preclude its pornographic character, which is why any potential definition of pornography ought to be chiefly based on its inter-subjective public reception. Notably, ascertaining the pornographic nature of specific materials should remain independent of defining their artistic status or meaning. For purposes of proceeding under criminal law, the feature of pornographic content should be, as it were, considered outside of the realm of concepts such as "artistic status" or "artistic meanings" of an artwork. In this particular case, the process of ascertaining whether a perpetrator's deeds in creating or using a work of art amount to a criminal offence does not require referencing any artistic (subversive or critical) sense of said work. The point of departure is the recognition of pornography at a specific, pre-iconographic level that is basic, in reference to possibly wide-ranging interpretive groups. The act of placing an image explicitly depicting genitals in sexual congress in an open public space shall fulfil the objective features of Art 202 §1 PCC, regardless of whether any interpretive group simultaneously recognizes such image as an artwork, e.g. in criticizing the phenomenon of pornography.

From the viewpoint of artistic activities, the act of breaching the aforementioned Art 200 §3 and 202 PCC will most frequently take on the form of the artist him- or herself or other persons presenting or disseminating artworks with pornographic content. Given the content of Art 202 §1 PCC— galleries, theatres and cinemas quite frequently follow the practice of displaying information concerning the pornographic nature of content presented. Regardless of whether artworks or "pure pornography" is exhibited at such venues, the display of aforementioned information is sufficient to render the objective features of a prohibited act as defined in said provision incomplete. The viewer has to make a conscious and voluntary decision to encounter the pornographic content therein, and must be provided with the option to discontinue such an encounter at his or her own discretion. Legally, three situations appear to be problematic: when a work with pornographic content is presented without relevant warning; when such a work is visible from the street through a gallery's windows; or when such a work is displayed in a way that forces viewers to pass it _en route_ to another exhibition. The criminality of such behaviour could be potentially excluded for reasons of curtailed subjective aspects (the perpetrator's intent), such as the lack of intent to exhibit pornographic material (e.g. as a result of misconceptions concerning its pornographic nature), or the exclusion of a perpetrator's culpability stemming from the artist's misconception whereby he/she mistakenly assumes that the unlawfulness of his/her action is excluded due to the artistic nature of the given action (and therefore is of the opinion that he/she is acting within the confines of an art countertype). Coincidentally, one cannot tolerate a position whereby any extra-legislative art countertype – targeting a waiver of unlawfulness rather than pornographic properties – would and could be referenced under such circumstances209. In a judgement of 23 November 2010, the Supreme Court quoted Warylewski in declaring that "artworks as well as works of science may also comprise pornographic content; moreover, the failure to criminalize the production, presentation, and dissemination of such works ostensibly arises from the existence of a non-statutory countertype of art and science"210. The court did not elaborate on this statement. It seems that in this case, the existence of an extra-legislative countertype of art was confused with rules of caution; in consequence, certain activities – so long as they are considered artistic in nature – are not perceived as pornographic. The act of exhibiting Gustave Courbet's _L'Origine du monde_ , a work pornographic in nature, among other artworks and without any special warning in a gallery (as the canvas is indeed displayed in the Parisian Musée d'Orsay) would not be recognized as being in breach of Art 202(1) PCC – not due to the secondary exclusion of the unlawfulness of the deed, but because such behaviour is deemed socially acceptable and tolerable (the painting has become part of art history canon, and is universally accepted by visitors to museums and galleries).

Accepting that the artistic nature of an artwork does not eliminate its pornographic character must result in restrictions on the rights of minors in terms of perusing such commodities. Under Art 200 §3 PCC, admitting a minor below the age of fifteen to a show featuring pornographic content – such as the _Made in Heaven_ exhibition of works by Jeff Koons depicting the artist during sexual intercourse with his wife Cicciolina, or an exhibition of photographs by Nobuyoshi Araki depicting Kinbaku-bi bondage techniques – would be a criminal offence. Under such circumstances, it does not seem that parental consent _de lege lata_ precludes the unlawfulness of the act. It is assumed that parents do not have the right to decide at will as to the goods protected by the aforementioned legal provision, i.e. a minor's sexual freedom and ensuring his or her proper mental development211. Provisions of Art 200 §3 PCC currently in force restrict parents' rights in terms of providing minors in their care with specific content, consequently limiting parental authority, which consequence in itself may evoke certain doubts. With reference to _de lege ferenda_ , one ought to consider making the lawfulness of presenting pornographic content (especially if said content is of an artistic character) to minors below the age of fifteen dependent on the consent of their legal guardians, i.e. the persons best-equipped to assess the child's maturity and his or her capacity for encounters with specific content212.

In the context of freedom of artistic creation, particular interpretation related qualms arise against Art 202 §3 PCC and the objective features of "pornographic content with depictions of violence". According to the majority of the Polish law's doctrine, such content includes re-enactment of rape scenes and sadomasochistic pornography213, an opinion also shared by the Supreme Court214. Minority supporters of restrictive interpretation exclude the application of said provision to role-play and simulated scenes, or to scenes not involving the overcoming of an actual victim's resistance215. If we accept, in following with the Supreme Court, that provisions of Art 202 §3 PCC also extend to the production of a pornographic scene with the use of violence, one should consequently conclude that the actual possession of numerous films, such as Virginie Despentes' and Coralie Trinh Thi's _Baise-moi_ (2000) depicting a simulated rape scene, fulfils the objective features of the crime in question. Accordingly, the film could not, under any circumstances, be legally distributed in Poland. An artist painting a picture explicitly rendering a rape scene would thus also be penalized for his or her deed, should it be proven that the intended purpose was to exhibit or sell said work. Notably, the legal provision in question is one of the few directly restricting artistic freedom, given that it is interpreted as the tangible act of creating an artwork comprising specific content – as the creation of certain materials constitutes a criminal offence, provided that the artist acted with intent to disseminate. Such an interpretation seems excessively restrictive, and constitutes a hazard to artistic freedom.

In the context of legal provisions contained in Art 202 §3, §4, §4a PCC, notice should further be paid to works by artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Sally Mann, Jacqueline Livingston, or Jock Struges. Many of their photographs, while hugely valuable in formal terms, explicitly depict the nudity of minors, more often than not, in rather provocative and disquieting poses. Some could well be classified as child pornography. Eliminating the criminality of their presentation (e.g. as part of this book, for the purpose of exemplifying the issue) might become possible once it has been ascertained that the legally protected will not be harmed by such a presentation. An equally important and problematic provision from the perspective of freedom of the act of creating a work of art is Art 202 §4b PCC, which was introduced into the Code following its amendment in 2008 in consequence of adopting the Council Framework Decision on combating the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography216. The provision constitutes a major interference in the private life of individuals, penalizing the actual possession (with no intent to disseminate) of a merely produced or processed image of a minor engaging in a sexual act. In specific cases of assessing whether the objective features of said crime have been fulfilled, difficulties may indubitably arise as to the estimated age of the portrayed characters. The problem – rendering the legal provision itself somewhat grotesque – has become particularly visible in the case of genres such as Japanese _hentai_. Furthermore, in referencing pre-iconographic and basic (i.e. the most universally accepted in the largest interpretive community) interpretations only, provisions of Art 202 §4b obstruct all options of the subversive use of motives referring to child sexuality, as proven e.g. by the case of Krzysztof Kuszej described herein217.

On the sidelines, the counterproductive aspects of anti-paedophilia legal provisions are worth pointing to. While not denying the need for child pornography regulations, American lawyer Amy Adler has emphasized that such laws may result in the re-enactment and dissemination of the very cultural problem they are attempting to combat. In developing a relation between children and sex, legal regulations combating paedophilia develop the perception of children as sex objects. In ordering the examination of how children are portrayed in terms of potential presence of sexual meanings, they force us, as it were, to assume the vantage point of a paedophile218. Concurrently, the issue of paedophilia is such a socially intense topic (a mandatory, radical indignation uniting people in a universal community) that the proliferation of one restriction after another has become the litmus test of the "social sensitivity" of politicians, and proof of their fight for children's welfare. In Poland, politicians from across the spectrum have been introducing increasingly restrictive child pornography laws for well over the last decade. Yet, very few people care to ask themselves whether these actions were properly thought over or effective – and if paedophilia related hazards and problems are the only ones children face219. Furthermore, the situation is also detrimental to the certainty of the law, and may trigger a freezing effect.

The Case of Krzysztof Kuszej

In 2011, artist Krzysztof Kuszej was tried before the Regional Court in Łódż on charges of a number of unlawful acts involving the following: presenting processed images of minors engaging in sexual acts with intent to sell on an online auction website (Art 202 §4b PCC); propagation of paedophilic behaviour, i.e. by presenting the written, self-authored poem _Msza_ [ _The Mass_ ] (Art 200b PCC220); and presenting pornographic content on his website, including images of minors engaging in sexual acts, thereby imposing the reception thereof upon potentially unwilling viewers (Art 202 §1 and 202 §4b PCC). Indictment was preceded by the securing of 21 pieces of artwork from the artist's studio. Said works depicted priests engaging in sexual acts with minors221.

In the judgement of 25 July 2012, the court acquitted the defendant of all charges as listed in the indictment. Throughout the proceedings, Kuszej was consistent in emphasizing that his work as a painter and poet is critical in nature; that his works, while drastic in expression, had absolutely not been created with intent to propagate paedophilia – on the contrary, their purpose had been to condemn the phenomenon in ecclesiastical circles. The only deed Kuszej admitted to was the displaying of his works online; however, not of presenting content which was pornographic in nature.

In examining the evidence, the court i.e. commissioned the expert witness in art history, Dr Izabela Kowalczyk, to analyze and interpret paintings and prints relevant to the case. The expert duly stated that these works were art rather than pornography, "albeit these works observably reference pornography by portraying portions of genitals and their close-ups" – art "references pornography, which does not, however, mean that it is pornography in itself", "furthermore, artistic and legal definitions alike most frequently adopt a definition according to which pornography involves sexual activities or images produced with intent to induce sexual arousal in audiences... ." The expert also referenced canonic defence in highlighting that renderings of children, including children in the nude, have since ancient times been one of the most recurrent themes in art. According to the expert, the images do not seduce viewers, their anti-paedophilic message is apparent, and Kuszej's entire oeuvre bears an equally apparent message of social involvement.222

The court further admitted evidence supplied in the form of an expert opinion by literary specialist Dr Magdalena Lachman. On the basis of Lachman's opinion, the court found that the purpose of the structure of the poem _The Mass_ was to demonstrate how the portrayed character behaves in the absence of control over emotions, when the character seeks libidinal satisfaction, whatever the cost. At no point did the author of the narrative suggest that he approved of such behaviour; to the contrary, immense attention had been paid to achieving the effect of readers being scandalized by the depiction of the inappropriate behaviour.

In the context of all expert opinions commissioned and submitted in the case, including court-ordered mental and sexual health evaluations, the court found the defendant's claim that he had not been creating with lewd intent to be persuasive. Moreover, the court underscored that while persons unconnected to the artistic community might respond to the artworks in question negatively (as duly confirmed by all expert witnesses), it also pointed to the fact that modern art is both specific and intricate, and that Kuszej's works should be examined in the context of the artist's entire oeuvre, which bears the trademarks of social involvement. With regard to acts stipulated under Art 200b PCC, the court found that objective features of the crime had not been fulfilled, as according to expert opinions (Kowalczyk, Lachman) and following an assessment of the defendant's clarifications, it cannot be proven that he had acted with intent to propagate paedophilic content (the subjective feature); whereas, the defendant's works had been created for the purpose of fighting paedophilia rather than promoting it (the objective feature).

With regard to the phrase "pornographic content", of vital importance to legal classification of charges under Art 202 §1 and §4b PCC, the court observed the existence of two positions in the criminal law doctrine – duly referencing the subjectivist- _cum_ -moralizing and objectivist- _cum_ -pragmatic approaches, respectively – and two varying definitions of child pornography. The first is contained in Art 2(c) of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (of 25 May 2000223) which emphasizes sexual intent. The second definition is contained in Art 1(b) of Council Framework Decision No. 2004/68/JHA, wherein no such reservation was made. The aforementioned definitional ambiguities provided the court with grounds to pass judgement with regard to the defendant's actual attitude towards the works created and their assumed reception. The court noted that while the decision, whether a given artwork comprises pornographic content, lies with competent authorities rather than with the defendant, "the defendant's awareness of the meaning of the term is not without consequence to any further legal evaluation of his behaviour". Contrary to the findings of expert witness Izabela Kowalczyk, the court ruled that the defendant's works did indeed include content pornographic in nature, but that Kuszej did not identify his paintings, prints, or poem with such content. The court emphasized an error on the defendant's part as to circumstances classified as features constitutive to a prohibited act ("pornographic content"), in noting that in the legal doctrine, as well as in numerous other scholarly disciplines, the issue has been repeatedly raised that a work's artistic nature eliminates the possibility of classifying it as pornographic; whereas, international law comprises divergent definitions of the phrase "child pornography". According to the court, while the defendant's artworks did include pornographic content involving minors, his sole intent was to showcase his position in condemning the phenomenon of paedophilia rather than in promoting the presentation of pornographic content. The defendant could not be proven guilty of acting intentionally – as criminal offences as stipulated under Art 202 §1 and §4b PCC cannot be committed unintentionally, and the defendant had to be acquitted of all charges under aforementioned legal provisions. In justifying the judgement, the court found the defence's reference to countertype of art to be redundant – as it must first be ascertained that the perpetrator's behaviour fulfils all objective and subjective features, and only then does the possibility arise for referencing countertype circumstances. Yet, the court did, to an extent, confirm the validity of such a countertype in Polish law.

To Kuszej's detriment, the prosecution appealed against the judgement — in its entirety — of the court of first instance to the District Court. The prosecution believed that in determining the existence of intent as well as its form, the court had neglected i.e. the socially acceptable definition of "pornographic content", which is accounted for in the Supreme Court's case law. This, in consequence, resulted in the incorrect conclusion to the effect of the defendant having not intentionally committed the acts in question. It was further emphasized that the defendant being a university graduate and an individual – as he himself claims – concerned with contemporary Polish problems, he should have therefore predicted that his artworks and poem would comprise content paedophilic in nature. Given the circumstances, the court should have referenced the attitude of a model citizen, representative of a specific cultural group, and put forward the question of how such a model citizen would perceive the content presented in the given case, in the perception of a socially integrated person with an average sensitivity, who is aware of commonly accepted values and not concerned with so-called high culture in his or her daily life, and whether such "works" as those under scrutiny did not cross the boundaries of art. According to the prosecution, while art satisfies significant social needs, it is not created in and of itself, and as such should not disregard the feelings of a wider audience, or the cultural conditions under which it is produced and exhibited. The prosecution further believed that the court should analyze the location wherein such "works" [quotation marks copied from the original source] are placed. The content presented by the defendant was available online to an extensive audience, and carried no warnings.

The appellate court did not uphold the arguments of the appeal224. It was observed that the content of the appeal _de facto_ consisted of the questioning of the correctness of evidence evaluation by the Regional Court, which evaluation the District Court believed to be objective, comprehensive, and logical. With regard to the third allegation against the artist (concerning the public presentation of pornographic content), the District Court emphasized that in order to become acquainted with the content posted by the defendant online, as is the case of web access in general, such an action required viewers to take specific action and make conscious decisions in terms of selecting the specific website operated under the defendant's name. It cannot be therefore claimed in this case that specific content was imposed upon viewers. The District Court underscored that key findings of the case involved ascertaining whether the defendant's works feature properties constitutive to material promoting child pornography, and whether the defendant's works could be classified as activities propagating paedophilic behaviour. The District Court highlighted the particular and critical nature of earlier works by the defendant who frequently applied drastic means of expression. Similarly, to the Regional Court, the District Court found that the defendant did not identify his work with child pornography or its dissemination. While the court of second instance noted that the case did not justify any need for referencing the countertype of art – similarly to the court of first instance – it did, in supplement, adopt a controversial assumption that the presence of such a countertype would be justifiable only in the case of art of "a certain value".

Despite the ruling of the District Court to dismiss the appeal, it does seem that the prosecution's position was not entirely unreasonable. A theory indicated by the District Court in reference to opinions of some representatives of the legal doctrine may prompt doubt; according to said theory, posting pornographic content online does not fulfil features constitutive to the criminal offence stipulated under Art 202 §1 PCC, as accessing such content requires specific action to be taken to that end. In light of today's reality, wherein the use of the internet is as common as that of real public space, posting pornographic content online without due warning may be compared to the pasting of a poster e.g. on the wall in a shopping mall.

In evaluating the credibility of Kuszej's claims as to his intent and perception of elements of vital importance, in terms of features of a criminal offence and his will to fulfil these features, the courts of both instances were correct in referring to the interpretive community appropriate for the artist himself, i.e. persons professionally engaged in contemporary art (community A); as well as in recognizing the artist's entire oeuvre, which is frequently polemic in nature. Consequently, it was correctly found that in his activities, the artist's intent was to stigmatize the phenomenon of sexual exploitation of children. And yet – did the evidence as gathered allow courts of both instances to admit the claim ultimately resulting in the artist's acquittal; namely that he had been unaware of his works comprising pornographic content? The response remains ambivalent. While expert witnesses' opinions included statements to the effect of the artist's works not being pornographic in nature – which may well constitute a suggestion as to the artist's own related perception – in the world of art, it is common knowledge that the artistic nature of an artwork does not eliminate its pornographic character. In galleries and museums worldwide, warnings are placed at entrances to exhibitions showing explicitly sexual material. Kuszej himself had taken part in such an exhibition eighteen months before. In such a context, his explanations about his erroneous conviction, lose something of their credibility.

Ascertaining that an artist had been aware that his works are pornographic in nature obviously does not mean that he is "condemned to condemnation". In this case in point, one could well consider whether the artist had acted in an exculpatory honest error in judgement as to the countertype, i.e. had not dwelt upon an erroneous yet justified conviction that being an artist, he was protected by immunity, of sorts: the countertype of art. Since voices approving the presence of such a countertype are raised in case law and the doctrine alike, the artist's conviction that the unlawfulness of his deeds is eliminated for reasons of the artistic nature of his activities would be justified. Even though the perpetrator's behaviour met all the features of a prohibited act, he cannot be found guilty as charged for reasons of the absence of culpability required for criminal liability. Yet, artists' conviction of the general rule of countertype in artistic creation (whatever his art cannot be classified as a crime) should be recognized as decidedly problematic – Kuszej himself assumed such a stance while under trial. He gave the impression of being a person from a different world – by doing no more than referencing the concept of art, he justified the untethered dissemination of his artworks that were not only problematic in terms of the law, but likewise on an ethical plane. The belief that a critical artwork cannot be pornographic in nature, and that it does not have to conform to any boundaries or requirements, even those stipulated under Art 202 §1 PCC (requiring the display of a warning of explicit content), the absence of any consideration for persons with no wish to encounter such drastic works, are all astonishing, not to mention proof of a specific "artsy" indolence. Further disbelief was triggered by the fact that despite the detailed (as the artist claimed) press inquiry concerning the events depicted, his images did not reflect reality. In justifying the inaccuracies in his artworks, Kuszej referred to _licentia poetica_. He obviously had every right to refer to poetic licence – yet the question remains whether such a distortion did not make his works less critical than he would have wished them to be; after all, he succeeded in arming his opponents with counterarguments. In addition, it seems that Kuszej's campaign would have been much more convincing had he attempted to raise its significance e.g. by organizing an exhibition and debate concerning the issue, rather than uploading reproductions of his paintings to the Allegro (Polish equivalent of the eBay) for sale at PLN 5,000.00 apiece.

A brief commentary concerning the art history expert's opinion also seems worthwhile. Izabela Kowalczyk assumed that art is not pornography – that it can merely be a reference thereto. As emphasized numerous times before, such an argument is impossible to uphold. In light of actual data, the difference between the two concepts arises – often as not – from institutional assignment; case in point – Jeff Koons' _Made in Heaven_ (1990–1991) series of works featuring Cicciolina would not be classifiable as pornography, being institutionally assigned to the world of art; whereas, photographs of Cicciolina that are similar to Koons' works and taken for pornographic magazines purposes would be categorized as pornography — no questions asked. While institutional assignment makes sense in the case of defining what is and is not art, it does not fundamentally change pornographic material into non-pornographic. If we assume that the indisputable and crucial _ratio legis_ for penalizing the dissemination of pornography (alongside a number of other related controversial factors) involves the safeguarding of a person — prior to contact — who does not wish to encounter psycho-sexual stimuli capable of causing undesirable sensations of sexual embarrassment, then it likewise applies to pornographic material placed in museums, or on a website featuring artworks. The embarrassment factor could potentially be even more intense under museum-like circumstances.

Safeguarding Honour and Dignity

The group of regulations protecting the reputation and honour of diverse persons or groups of persons remain among the most controversial in the Polish Criminal Code. Such regulations include legal provisions penalizing defamation (Art 212 §1 PCC), insult (Art 216 PCC), insult of a head of state (Art 135 §2 and 136 §3 and 4 PCC), insult of a public official and/or of the state's constitutional authorities (Art 226 PCC), and insult of a person or group of persons for reasons of their/his/her nationality, ethnicity, race, or religious affiliation, or on account of a lack of religious beliefs (Art 257 PCC). Under a considerable part of legal doctrine, the presence of the bulk of aforementioned provisions in their current form is considered particularly hazardous to the freedom of speech, and a potential cause of the "freezing effect". The legitimacy of existing criminal law provisions is questionable – in their present form when applied to the safeguarding of honour i.e. because effective protection of personal rights – such as honour or reputation – may also be sought in civil law action. Under such circumstances, the criminal law protection of these goods seems to be a limitation of freedom, that in light of Art 31(3) sentence 1 of the Constitution is not necessary in a democratic state (the so-called principle of proportionality). Yet, in all its rulings, the Constitutional Court has maintained a rather conservative position – i.e. in a ruling of 30 October 2006, the court found provisions of Art 212 §1 and §2 PCC to be conforming to Art 14 and 54 (1), in conjunction with Art 31 clause 3 of the Constitution225. In a ruling of 6 July 2011, upon having examined a legal enquiry filed by the District Court in Gdańsk in plenary session, the Constitutional Court unanimously declared that Art 135 §2 PCC also conforms to Art 54 clause 1, in conjunction with Art 31 clause 3 of the Constitution and with Art 10 of the ECHR226.

Defamation and Insult

In the context of artistic activity, incidents of damage to reputation (Art 212 PCC227) or to personal dignity (Art 216 PCC228) relevant from the perspective of criminal law occur not so much in the process of the very creation of the artwork, but rather in a situation of it being used – such as the exhibition or presentation of a work which includes content recognizable as defamatory or offensive. An evaluation of whether verbal premises for the breach of honour-protecting provisions have been met ("to slander" or "to insult") will require the ascertaining of the content of an artwork in light of the assumptions mentioned above. Both unlawful acts are prosecuted by private indictment – this means that the victim, rather than an _ex officio_ prosecutor, files and brings the indictment before a court.

One might attempt to identify features of defamation in _The Nazis_ , an exhibition of works by Piotr Uklański (see p. 93), should it be assumed that both the work and its rendering suggested that Olbrychski identified – in terms of his beliefs – with the role of the Nazi officer he portrayed (with Uklański implying that Olbrychski was or is a Nazi), indubitably a humiliating proposal for the actor. Yet under the doctrine, Uklański's act was correctly examined as to the fulfilment features of an insult. Budyn-Kulik and Kulik (who analyzed the case) have emphasized that Uklański – even if unwillingly – had expected and allowed his work to insult Olbrychski in public. The actor himself consistently claimed to have been insulted by the combination of the exhibition's title with his own image229. While referring to someone as a Nazi is an insult under generally acceptable social norms, the position presented by Budyn-Kulik and Kulik raises serious doubt. Let us take a closer look at Uklański's work. Its title is simple – _The Nazis_ – in an unequivocal reference to a homicidal ideology; yet it is but a single element of the complex body represented by the entire artwork. The average viewer (the largest interpretive community), even if unfamiliar with contemporary art, once exposed to the artwork, knows that: he or she has encountered a work of art (the compelling institutional context is of vital importance); the work comprises over one hundred and thirty photographs; photographs depict images of film stars; all actors are dressed in Nazi uniforms; photographs include stills from films known to the vast majority of Poles; he/she has never (because he or she could not have) heard any real (non-cinematic) declarations supporting the Nazi regime from any of the actors depicted. Consequently, the first natural reaction connecting the blunt title of the exhibition with the images presented is augmented by (let us be clear) commonly available information, whereby the unambiguity of identification must become distorted. The awareness of encountering an artwork should strengthen the simple reflection that "something is off here". Referring to an actor portraying a Wehrmacht officer as a "Nazi" is either something of a tautology (verbal confirmation of the role played) or something of an abuse which ought to be ultimately dismissed as absurd – these actors are no Nazis, but have simply donned their "artistic masks", and we obviously know that Uklański has to know this much too. Thus, since the concept of identifying Olbrychski with homicidal ideology is evidently absurd, all that remains to be done is to respond to the question of what else may such a juxtaposition imply.

It seems one would have to put all benevolence and intellectual engagement on hold to truly recognize _The Nazis_ as objectively comprising of insulting content230, something Olbrychski himself had admitted indirectly when explaining in the wake of the assault how he had originally learnt of the exhibition: "During the recent evening of patriotic hymns, a secondary school student approached me and said »I understand the exhibition, but my younger sister asked if you had served in Hitler's army.«" (while younger children had issues with interpreting the artwork, secondary school students did not). Ultimately – and this is obvious to all – each actor was simply dressed as a Nazi. The chief question we are faced with is, to what extent does costume become a source of our true imaginings of war? Uklański's work should be examined within the scope of permissible criticism of a certain social phenomenon, which is an immanent feature of such a critique – it traverses the individual's boundaries without leading to insult. All actors – in this case, well-known persons in the public's eye in Poland, who therefore have to contend with harsher criticism than the average citizen – should be aware of how powerful a medium of imagery can be, the medium of cinematic imagery in particular. Olbrychski's iconoclastic assault only serves to prove that the force in question is decidedly greater than we would be inclined to admit under ordinary circumstances; paradoxically, it also corroborates the legitimacy of criticism adopted by Uklański himself.

Yet, should we even find Uklański's act to be objectively insulting to the actor and fulfilling the objective features of crime under Art 216 PCC, the artist could not be found guilty as charged of _dolus directus_ or _dolus eventualis_. All Uklański could have predicted was that a viewer (even if a member of a wide interpretive community not engaging in art) would initially identify actors with the exhibition's title; he could have further assumed that the viewer would then abandon such a simple yet evidently unjustified presumption, and proceed to the next step in reception of the artwork. Notably, the assumption of the viewer abandoning the Olbrychski = Nazi juxtaposition had been based upon objectively verifiable premises: it is understandable to any viewer of average intelligence that by accepting a role in a film, the actor does not identify him/herself with the associated "artistic mask"; whereas, Olbrychski himself had never given anyone any excuse to believe in his approval of the Third Reich. In summary, Uklański did not want and did not agree to be insulting towards Olbrychski in his work; his original intent was to reveal meanings entirely different from insult or slander.

Safeguarding the Honour of State Officials

Regulated protection of state authorities derives from the ancient Roman construct of _crimen laese maiestatis_ (state treason), and the pre-democratic principle of safeguarding the honour of a given person; the higher his or her social status and rank in state hierarchies, the higher the measures of protection. Yet, such hierarchic trends have been reversed in contemporary democracies, in consequence of three fundamental premises as listed by Wojciech Sadurski (in reference to defamation and insult in the press). Firstly, public figures are better-equipped to respond to an insult in the mass media; secondly, such persons have made a conscious and voluntary decision to accept public positions carrying the risk of increased criticism or even slander; and thirdly, last but not least, the chief purpose of the press is to control those in power at the grassroots level, which is why freedom of press requires increased levels of protection against accusations of slander, which – given their lability – may be applied to quash freedom of speech231. The ECHR also assumes, in cases of insult, weaker protection of public figures, politicians, and – above all – persons in positions of power232.

Regrettably, the PCC has actually emphasized the safeguarding of the honour and dignity of state officials at the expense of freedom of expression, through the legal foundation laid down in a set of specific regulations: Art 135 §2 – insult of the president; Art 136 §3 and §4 – insult of a head or representative of a foreign state; Art 226 §1 – insult of a public official; Art 226 §3 – insult or humiliation of a constitutional authority233. It is disquieting that certain provisions from the Criminal Code of the Polish People's Republic were introduced to the new PCC with only some modifications that do not always have a liberal character. Prior to 1989, such crimes – carrying draconian sentences of imprisonment – had been used to suppress any criticism of communist authorities. Not only do the previous regime-related roots of legislation currently in force suggest unfortunate associations – they actually affect freedom of expression, freedom of artistic expression included, which is precisely why they have been subject to a harsh critique in the legal doctrine234. Notably, the Polish Constitutional Court did not adopt the principle of weaker protection on the part of state officials and, for example, confirmed as much constitutionally in Art 135 §2 PCC, in a ruling of 6 July 2011 (P 12/09).

Wojciech Sadurski lists a number of reasons for such a _status quo_. Among others, weak liberal traditions in Poland have caused the freedom of the press ("and of art", we would add) not to be perceived as a universal value; concurrently, "moral, social, and religious traditions dominant in Poland confer immense weight and gravity upon individual honour and reputation"235. One would be hard-pressed to disagree with such a statement once we realize that _Polski kodeks honorowy_ (The _Polish Code of Honour_ , also referred to as the _Boziewicz Code_ ) comprising the principles of honourable behaviour, dueling included, has seen as many as eight editions during the years 1918-1939. Indeed, in the course of his term in office as president (1990-1995), Lech Wałęsa (any doubts notwithstanding — an icon of democratic change in Poland), with a certain ease, applied harsh regulations of the previous (Polish People's Republic) Criminal Code to safeguard the majesty of his power. Whenever a conflict of honour with freedom of artistic expression is to be resolved, major importance is also attached to the lowly social status of artists and art – contemporary art in particular, usually perceived as no more than a simple provocation targeting media coverage, deprived of any aesthetics, polemic, or cognitive properties, and practiced to boot, for public money. Given such a social reception of art, it becomes quite natural that other legally protected rights (such as state officials' personal dignity) are assigned more weight and gravity.

In the context of regulations protecting the honour of state officials, a work by the Czech group Guma Guar is noteworthy. The said work was shown in late May/ early June 2006 in Bytom's Kronika gallery. Guma Guar's poster depicted Pope Benedict XVI holding pop singer Elton John's severed head in his raised hand, with an inscription: "You are all queers". The Czechs' activity was interventionist in nature – upon learning of the Pope's upcoming visit and prompted by anti-gay statements made by governing politicians (a right-wing coalition was in power in Poland at the time), they informed astonished exhibition curators Magdalena Ujma and Joanna Zielińska and Kronika's director Michał Cichocki that they wanted the work to become part of the exhibition. Ultimately, it was only shown during a concert on opening night, as a result of a compromise agreed upon – as Ujma wrote – "among others, under the pressure... of our rage caused by the fact that we have our backs up against a wall, having become hostages, as it were – of protecting freedom of speech on the one hand, and of protecting Kronika in Bytom on the other"236. In conjunction with the exhibition, a resident of Bytom notified the prosecution of suspicion of crime under Art 136(3) PCC, i.e. public insult of a head of a foreign state.237 The Pope is an unquestionable head of state; whereas, the work portrays Benedict XVI as an executioner of a well-known pop singer (as a symbol of the gay community). In their work, the Guma Guar group suggested that the Pope was a torturer hurling accusations at anyone who disagrees with Church policy concerning homosexuals: "You are all queers". The inscription seems to suggest that dissenters may expect a fate identical to Elton John's. Consequently, should the criminal law of the state of Vatican provide for safeguarding the heads of foreign states on its territory, then the Vatican's prosecution could, by way of reciprocity, file a case citing insult to Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope could also press charges by private indictment against Art 216 §3 PCC. While persons with Roman Catholic affiliations could have perceived the artwork as insulting to the Pope, it ought to be pointed out that the work was addressed to visitors at a cultural centre, a frequent organizer of events problematizing diverse social and political issues. The position of the Catholic Church concerning sexual minorities is definitely one such issue – accordingly, the content of Guma Guar's artwork should be examined from the viewpoint of the interpretive community of persons engaging in art, in the specific context of a critique of power, a social polices-related dispute, and problems igniting public concern. In such an event, case law in the ECHR allows for considerable excess and provocation in means of expression238.

Hate Speech

Hate speech "comprises of (oral and written) statements and iconic renderings which insult, accuse, ridicule, and/or humiliate groups and/or individuals for reasons at least partially non-attributable to them, such as racial, ethnic, and religious creed or descent, as well as gender, sexual preference, disability, or affiliation with a »natural« social group, such as residents of a specific territory, representatives of a specific profession, persons speaking a specific language, etc.". Hate speech always targets a particular group or collectivity239. Under Polish law, hate speech is penalized under Art 256 and 257 PCC240. Art 256 §3 PCC is of particular interest from the viewpoint of the issue discussed herein, as it stipulates a particular countertype of art referring to the concept of the artistic nature of a work, and to eliminating the unlawfulness of an act for reasons of the aforementioned nature. As provided in the said regulation: "The perpetrator of a prohibited act as stipulated under §2 shall not be charged with a crime should he or she engage in such an act as part of artistic, educational, collection, or scientific activities". The countertype as described herein eliminates the unlawfulness of behaviour engaged in with the purpose to disseminate: producing, recording, importing, purchasing, preserving, possessing, presenting, transporting, or transferring printed or recorded material, or any other item comprising content which promotes a fascist or any other totalitarian state regime, or incites to hate for reason of national, ethnic, racial, or religious differences, or on grounds of religious non-affiliation241.

Such a countertype should be recognized as excessively casuistic and redundant, and the content of Art 256 §3 PCC – as flawed. Its literal interpretation would result in the elimination of criminal liability in all cases involving artistic activity, even those comprising the _dolus directus_ of an artist or exhibitor reflecting their beliefs, and tying in with the preparations to propagate of e.g. racist content as defined by Art 256 §1 PCC, or a totalitarian system (the history of art in the 20th century teaches us that such situations were by no means uncommon). On the one hand, it might result in unauthorized immunity conferred upon artists and their work, while suggesting on the other hand that a researcher gathering Nazi-proliferating materials for purposes of a planned publication on the Third Reich – or indeed an artist gleaning online racist materials for purposes of their subversive use in an artwork condemning Nazism – are, in their respective behaviour, fulfilling both the subjective and objective features of a prohibited act (thereby committing a prohibited act), and their criminal liability is only excluded at a further stage of proceedings through the elimination of the factor of unlawfulness.

**2.5 Summary**

The law, criminal law in particular, outlines boundaries, the crossing of which carries more or less severe consequences; the absence of such boundaries would yield anarchy. While society is usually aware that such boundaries have been delineated "somewhere out there", the actual map – in such a labile and obscure field as the freedom of artistic speech in particular – becomes much more apparent at the point of applying individual regulations. The individual application of legal regulations – media-covered cases of pre-trial proceedings discontinued, indictments filed, sentences passed, acquittals granted – serves to delineate the permanent though somewhat blurred border. This is how the _continuum_ of prohibition becomes visible, and begins to have a real impact. The 2003 court sentence of community work for Dorota Nieznalska was more than an "act of justice" against an individual; it was also a performative with far-reaching consequences (despite the lack of legitimacy — after all Nieznalska was finally acquitted). The conviction and the media scandal accompanying the case emboldened right-wing politicians who began terrorizing institutions of culture on a regular basis. Such convictions in "art-related" cases tend to augment invisible censorship and self-censorship alike: artists begin avoiding certain subjects; once they decide to comment on them, they encounter problems with disseminating their work, given that persons employed by art institutions usually face even more dire legal and factual (such as dismissal) consequences of showing controversial artworks. The pressure of censorship doubles – the more internalized and less deliberate, the greater in terms of effectiveness. Supporters of a restrictive approach to freedom of speech believe that this is how the desirable preventive functionality of criminal law works; according to its opponents, this is how the exceedingly hazardous freezing effect surfaces. The qualification contained in the semantic potential of the juxtaposition of two phrases actually constituting two sides of the selfsame coin seems to be of vital importance: at this juncture: "preventive functionality" v. "freezing effect".

Reference literature assumes that prevention (of similar behaviour) constitutes one of the fundamental objectives of any law, criminal law in particular. It may well be declared that "future-oriented censorship" of human activity remains a paramount function of the law. Nonetheless, while every deadly gunshot will fulfil the objective elements of the crime of manslaughter, not every artwork which is controversial in religious terms will necessarily offend religious feelings. In the case of the former, we are capable of outlining a relatively clear definition of restricted and permissible behaviour, respectively – a potential court sentence may only confirm our credence that shooting people is forbidden. In the case of the latter, identifying the perpetrator's prohibited behaviour – and the related limitations – in a sufficiently clear form and manner is impossible, as it depends on a number of versatile factors, such as the context and manner of presenting the artwork, knowledge of artistic codes, type of medium, individual sensitivity of the viewer and given religious community, or even the prevailing social and political conditions, potentially resulting in some individuals' hypersensitivity or ideological hyperactivity. This is why criminal law interference with freedom of speech may result in unjustified preventive restrictions to "non-harmful" behaviours as well. Penalization should accordingly be accompanied with far-reaching prudence – reflections on the preventive effectiveness of sanctions should preferably be replaced with reflections concerning the hazard of a freezing effect. Notably, the freezing effect is further enhanced by ambiguous content of legal regulations, and – as in the case of pornography – by the frequent and increasingly restrictive amendments allowing hugely diverse interpretation. It is also worthy of note that in Poland, courts of the first instance would be far more inclined to interpret the letter of law along the lines of the _in dubio pro libertate_ principle; whereas, the case law of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court, whose jurisdiction accompanies the rulings of the lower courts in the background, tends towards a more conservative and restrictive character.

While the freedom of artistic activity and of the enjoyment of products of culture are a specific form of freedom of expression, and of acquiring information – do they, however, concurrently deserve special protection, unconditional and automatic in distinguishing them from the whole universe of acts of communication? The reverse holds true as well – let us ask ourselves whether the very fact that we are dealing with an artistic act will in any way fail to affect its legal evaluation. The Polish prosecutorial and judiciary services seem to be following the former train of thought in their increasingly frequent references to the non-statutory countertype of art; part of the Polish doctrine seems to favour the latter. The former position, while yielding a broadly-outlined freedom of artistic expression, is based upon foundations of the uncritical adaptation of a romantic-slash-modernistic mythology of art, the flaws of such an approach is extensively discussed in the first part of this book. The latter position should be perceived in conjunction with a negation of the specificity, values, or indeed justifiability of art derived from avant-garde paradigms. It can indubitably result in excess penalization – and, thus, of obstruction – of artistic activity, in particular when aspiring to criticize or transgress. Our ambition here, was to present an alternative for both positions.

Under Polish criminal law, art or artistic activity are not features of any type of prohibited act. Yet, the specificity of artistic expression – which one may attempt to describe in greater detail, if only for the purpose of court proceedings – does occasionally justify a more "liberal" application of criminal regulations with no need of referencing the countertype of art, which is problematic in terms of constitutionality and likewise as a construct. Any criminal law assessment of art-related behaviour and the related recognition of its close ties to art should occur twice: firstly, at the time of determining the principles of caution as relevant to a particular behaviour and to the violation of a particular legal good; secondly, when the meaning of the perpetrator's deed is defined. Ascertaining whether in his or her behaviour, the perpetrator has fulfilled the objective features of a prohibited act will require the artefactual content to be defined with the application of instruments appropriate in analyzing artworks as a specific form of expression – which is why any proper criminal law classification necessitates that in the first place, a given behaviour be assessed as to whether it is art-related or not. The afore-described test may prove useful in ascertaining the above, being that said test is based on an institutional definition propped up by two essential components: the perpetrator's intent, and the art world's acceptance thereof, contingent upon the competencies of the given perpetrator in terms of making a particular artistic gesture. While the fact that we are dealing with an artistic activity or with art should have an impact on the evaluation of the fulfilment of the objective features of the given conduct as described herein, it should not have an automatic or direct impact on the subjective features of the deed. Anyone has the right to act with an artistic aim in mind, which – as ought to be duly and strongly reaffirmed – does not preclude the simultaneous intent to commit a prohibited act. Conferring the status of art upon any activity does not exclude the possibility of said art being – depending on the perpetrator's intent – pornographic, consciously insulting, or hate-inciting in nature. The subjective component in the form of artistic intent is therefore of importance only at the stage of ascertaining whether we are dealing with art at all, and – to a limited extent – when defining the content of the artwork created or used.

Furthermore, defining the ties between a specific behaviour and the overall realm of art may also considerably impact the evaluation of its social noxiousness, as well as potentially lead to the elimination of culpability – once it has been found that the perpetrator had acted upon a justified, honest error in terms of engaging in specific activities within the countertype of art. Art should not, however, become a circumstance resulting in the elimination of unlawful conduct (a countertype), and defined as fulfilling the subjective and objective features of a prohibited act242.

Some provisions of Polish criminal law restrict artistic freedom in a form and manner evoking potential doubt as to premises comprised in Art 31 §3 of the Constitution, objections primarily concerning provisions stipulated in Art 202 §3 and 202 §4b PCC, and – despite the Constitutional Court's affirmative rulings – provisions stipulated in Art 135 and 196 PCC. With regard to the first two Articles, it should be emphasized that they make unlawfulness dependent on the most widely shared pre-iconographic identifications of specific components of the artwork ("pornographic content associated with the portrayal of violence", "the image of a minor engaging in a sexual act"), rather than on artistic meanings interpreted on the basis of said work. Consequently, such legal provisions hamper the use of artistic subversion for purposes of criticizing such phenomena as rape or paedophilia. Furthermore, in contrast to Art 202 §1 PCC, they also penalize behaviour which in no way directly interferes with the rights or freedoms of other individuals.

Polish commentators frequently claim that the cases of Nieznalska, Kuszej, and Nergal are unique on the scale of the civilized world. This is not true. In no country does art enjoy complete freedom – judiciary proceedings against artists or persons liable for presenting artefacts also take place in mature democracies. Poland does, however, seem unique in terms of how frequently prosecution services are forced into the position – in the wake of criminal offence notifications – of initiating related verifying proceedings, and also in terms of how heated such disputes are, usually swiftly morphing into nationwide and purely political issues. Artworks become nothing more than a simple excuse for tirades on the condition of the state and society, or on the history and identity of the nation. Yet, despite these unfavourable phenomena – the proof of incessant cultural conflict – it is noteworthy that up until this day, the post-1989 application of legal provisions has not resulted in a single case of an artist being convicted by final judgement for the creation or use of a specific artwork.

91 _System prawa karnego. Nauka o przestępstwie. Zasady odpowiedzialności_ , vol. 3, ed. R. Dębski (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2013), 102.

92 The state of necessity is a situation described under Art 26. Under Art 26 §1, whoever acts to avoid direct danger to any legally protected goods, should such danger be otherwise unavoidable, and should goods sacrificed be lower in value than goods salvaged, shall not be committing an offence (exclusion of unlawfulness). Under Art 26 §2, whoever sacrifices goods of a value not patently higher than goods salvaged when salvaging legally protected goods under circumstances stipulated under §1, shall not be committing an offence (exclusion of culpability).

93 On the different concepts of the crime structure, its constitutive elements, and exclusion of unlawfulness, see e.g. Dębski, _System prawa_ , vol. 3, 100-124, 304-305, 389-391, 412-418; _Kodeks karny. Część ogólna. Komentarz do art. 1-31_ , vol. 1, eds. M. Królikowski, R. Zawłocki (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2010), 38–51, 88-90, 156-157; W. Wróbel, A. Zoll, _Polskie prawo karne. Część ogólna_ , (Kraków: Znak, 2013), 166-180, 189.

94 The following legal regulations provide for exceptions with a narrow scope of application: Art 3a(2) of the act of 29 August 1997 on the Protection of Personal Data (Journal of Laws of 2002, No. 101, item. 926 with later amendments); Art 11 item 4 of the law of 7 October 1999 on Polish Language (Journal of Laws of 2011, No. 43, item 224); and Art 256 PCC - for more information.

95 Such is the direction apparently followed by e.g. L. Garlicki, in _Konstytucja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej. Komentarz_ , ed. L. Garlicki (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2003), Art 73, pp. 2-3; M. Jabłon´ski, _"_ Wolność z art. 73 Konstytucji RP" in _Prawa i wolności obywatelskie w Konstytucji RP_ , eds. B. Banaszak, A. Preisner (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2002), 553-555.

96 J. Warylewski, "Pasja czy obraza uczuć religijnych? Spór wokół art. 196 Kodeksu karnego," in _W kręgu teorii i praktyki prawa karnego. Księga poświęcona pamięci Profesora Andrzeja Wąska_ , eds. L. Leszczyn´ski, E. Skrętowicz, Ż Hołda (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2005), 367-383.

97 Filar, "Sztuka a zagadnienia pornografii": 1446,

98 According to Nalewajko and Kubiak, the artistic aim is fulfilled once it is confirmed that the _"_ work has been masterfully rendered _"_ , with the _"_ intent to convey ideas or experiences _"_ outshining any motivation involving financial benefit, coveted esteem or popularity. An artwork, on the other hand, should _"_ be distinct in its beauty and its sense of taste relative to a specific social group _"_ , and carry a _"_ healthy and beneficiary general effect _"_ ; the author's artistic message must be _"_ professional, the author him- or herself a master – outstanding in the given field. His or her artistry shall arise from natural talent and skill allowing his or her visions to be rendered in an extraordinary and unique manner. _"_ J. J. Nalewajko, R. Kubiak, "Sztuka jako okoliczność wyłączająca bezprawność?, " _Palestra_ , no. 9 (2000): 31 ff.

99 M. Budyn-Kulik, M. Kulik, "Wolność działalności artystycznej jako okoliczność wyłączająca odpowiedzialność karną," in _Prawnokarne aspekty wolności, Arłamów 16-18 maja 2005 r_., ed. M. Mozgawa (Warszawa: Zakamycze, 2006), 240.

100 M. M. Bieczyn´ski, _Prawne granice wolności twórczości artystycznej w zakresie sztuk wizualnych_ (Warszawa: Wolters Kluwer, 2011), 91.

101 S. Davies, _Definitions of Art_ (London - Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1994), 39.

102 Davies, _Definitions,_ 40-41.

103 See A. Danto, "The Artworld," _The Journal of Philosophy_ , vol. 61, (1964): 571-584.

104 G. Dickie, _Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis_ (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1974).

105 Davies, _Definitions_ , 218-221.

106 Danto, "Artworld".

107 Referencing the aesthetic function of an artwork may be a factor which impacts the decisions of members of the art world, especially in the case of authors who had failed to master related competencies of taking action with negligence of terms such as _"_ beauty _"_ , or manual excellence in craft.

108 As stipulated in Art 31(3) of the Constitution: "Restrictions to the use of constitutional freedoms and rights can only be established by virtue of an act of law, and only if needed by a democratic state for purposes of its safety or public order, or to safeguard the natural environment, health, and/or public morality, or the freedoms and/or rights of other individuals. Such restrictions shall not violate the essence of freedoms and rights."

109 Garlicki, _Konstytucja_ , Art 54, 2.

110 Garlicki, _Konstytucja_ , Art 73, 2; Supreme Court judgment of 2 February 2011 (Ref. No. II CSK 431/10, LEX no 784917).

111 B. Banaszak, _Konstytucja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej. Komentarz_ , (Legalis, 2012), commentary to Art 54. Principles which govern the state ought to be understood as the leading and most fundamental ideas of the Constitution – guidelines for all state authorities as concerns the interpretation, introduction, and application of rights.

112 Garlicki, _Konstytucja_ , Art 73, 2.

113 J. Sobczak, "Wolność ekspresji artystycznej. Standardy europejskie a rzeczywistość polska," in _Rada Europy a przemiany polityczne w pan´stwach Europy Srodkowej i Wschodniej w latach 1989-2009_ , ed. J. Jaskiernia (Torun´: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2010), 612-613.

114 Garlicki, _Konstytucja_ , Art 73, 3-4.

115 Garlicki, _Konstytucja_ , Art 73, 4, 9.

116 Detailed regulations concerning the constitutional complaint have been stipulated in the Act on Constitutional Court Law of 1 August 1997 (Journal of Laws of 2000, No. 102, item. 643). Only a normative act (a law, regulation, ordinance, etc.) may be the subject matter of a constitutional complaint. The regulation precludes any specific judgment or ruling by a court of law or public agency. A constitutional complaint may only question the legal regulation serving as a basis for a specific judgment or ruling. The Constitutional Court shall only examine complaints tying in with a violation of rights or freedoms specified in the Constitution. A constitutional complaint may be filed after having exhausted all legal remedies.

117 Cf. e.g Królikowski, Zawłocki, _Kodeks karny_ , vol. 1, 20-24; Wróbel, Zoll, _Polskie prawo_ , 39-42.

118 A. Marek, "Funkcje prawa karnego w panstwie demokratycznym," _Głos Uczelni – Pismo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika_ , no. 10, Annal XXVI (October 2001).

119 For example, the creation of a work (e.g. in the case of graffiti writing) may immanently tie in with damage to a third party's property (Art 288 or 294 PCC). See Dąbrowski, " _The medium is the message_ "; see also notes on Art 202 **§** 3 and 4 PCC.

120 Creation comprising constitutive elements of crime, so-called crime preparations, such as the theft of paints for the purpose of using them to create a painting, deserves special commentary. Boundary circumstances occur when the process of preparing for the creation of an artefact intended for artistic contemplation is simultaneously treated as part of the creation. By applying transgression (legal transgression included) intended to result in the creation of the ultimate artefact, the author may, for example, research the ways in which various social systems (including supervision systems) operate; individual experience of transgression becomes a component of artistic experience. Suffice it to quote a work by Alina Zemojdzin – _"aLine"_ , _New line of your body_ – who decided to produce human fat-based cosmetics, pack them attractively, and advertise them professionally. Having encountered difficulties with securing the ingredient of human fat legally, the artist decided to acquire it illegally, which could have fulfilled the constitutive elements of crime under Art 44 of the act of 1 July 2005 on the Cell, Tissue and Organ Harvesting, Preserving, and Transplanting.

121 For more information on the subject, see e.g. _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , eds. A. Grześkowiak, K. Wiak (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2014), 85; Dębski, _System prawa_ , vol. 3, 570-579; Królikowski, Zawłocki, _Kodeks karny_ , vol. 1, 148-149.

122 Wróbel, Zoll, _Polskie prawo_ , 174-175. In criminal law, a sanctioned norm is a norm which prohibits or instructs a specific entity to engage in specific behaviour (carrying a penalty) under specific circumstances (the violation of this norm shall be recognised as an act prohibited under a penalty), see L-. Pohl, _Prawo karne. Wykl_ - _ad części ogólnej_ (Warszawa: LexisNexis, 2012), 65, 144.

123 Grześkowiak, Wiak, _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , 85.

124 See e.g. Dębski, _System prawa_ , vol. 3, 571.

125 Under Art 202 §1 PCC, anyone publicly presenting pornographic content in such a way that it potentially forces its reception upon an unwilling person shall be subject to a criminal penalty.

126 _System prawa karnego. Nauka o przestępstwie. Wyl_ \- _ączenie i ograniczenie odpowiedzialności karnej_ , vol. 4, ed. L. Paprzycki (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2013), 173.

127 Under the Polish criminal law system, most crimes are prosecuted by public indictment, i.a. their prosecution is usually handled by a prosecutor acting for the state (so-called public indictment offences). Some public indictment offences may be prosecuted only upon application by the victim (so-called applicative offences). Moreover, a small number of crimes are prosecuted by private indictment – the victim him- or herself would file charges and uphold them in court (so-called private indictment offences).

128 L. Paprzycki, _System prawa_ , vol. 4, 429.

129 For more information on the subject, see P. Daniluk, "Zgoda zastępcza na naruszenie dóbr prawnych w prawie karnym," _Prokuratura i Prawo_ , no. 5 (2005): 70 ff.

130 W. Janyga, _Przestępstwo obrazy uczuć religijnych w polskim prawie karnym w świetle wspól_ - _czesnego pojmowania wolności sumienia i wyznania_ (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 2010), 271.

131 For more information on the subject, see S. Czekalski, _Intertekstualność i malarstwo. Problemy badan´ nad związkami obrazowymi_ (Poznan´: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2006), 58.

132 See Czekalski, _Intertekstualność_ , footnote 60.

133 Supreme Court judgment of 17 February 1993 [Ref. No. III KRN 24/92, _Wokanda_ , no. 10 (1993): 8-10].

134 Warylewski, "Pasja," 367-383.

135 A description of Fish's beliefs has been based on a number of his essays: "Normal Circumstances, Literal Language, Direct Speech Acts, the Ordinary, the Everyday, the Obvious, What Goes Without Saying, and Other Special Cases," in S. Fish, _Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities_ (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1980), 268-292; "What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable?," in Fish, _Is There_ , 338-355; "Is There a Text in this Class?," in Fish, _Is There a Text_ , 303-321; "Demonstration vs. Persuasion: of Critical Activity," in Fish, _Is There a Text_ , 356-372; "Going Down the Anti-formalist Road," in S. Fish, _Doing What Comes Naturally: Change Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies_ (Durham and London: Duke Univ. Press, 1998), 1-36; "Change," in Fish, _Doing What Comes_ , 141-162. [Polish edition of the essays see: S. Fish, _Interpretacja, retoryka, polityka_ (Kraków: Universitas, 2007)].

136 Fish, "Normal," 117-118.

137 These rules, while tying in with precautionary principles valid in the world of art, are not tantamount thereto. On precautionary principles, see p. 74.

138 Fish, "Change".

139 Fish, "What Makes".

140 Fish, "Is There a Text". Also within the law, while courts do quote such rules of interpretation as _clara non sunt interpretanda_ , there is no such thing as the literal or non-literal interpreting of text in the sense that the former would be of universal nature, disunited from some particular purpose. While any interpretation may be literal and neutral, such a rule may apply to a pre-assumed purpose only, and the defining of such a purpose is an interpretation in itself.

141 Fish, "Change," 153.

142 I am referencing the genre of Polish critical art, as this kind of art has been triggering particular controversy in Poland of late, and is also very likely to induce the pressure of censorship.

143 R. Rorty, _Contingency, Irony and Solidarity_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 72 ff.

144 Fish, "Demonstration".

145 Such an outline of the interpretation of community B stems from two reasons. Firstly, excluding persons interested in contemporary art from interpretation community B reflects an unequal distribution of cultural capital in the society, with said capital allowing for the mastering of codes relevant to the given artwork or the competent reading of artworks in general, and contemporary artworks in particular. This results in the decoding of artistic communication exclusively with the use of simple identification principles (what you see is what you get), typical for the broadest disseminated and shared acts of interpretation (see P. Bourdieu in _Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste_ , trans. R. Nice, (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984). Secondly, the community thus outlined seems too broad, which may ultimately result in difficulties with reaching any kind of interpretation consensus; consensus may also become too general or fundamental. The creation or use of an artwork yields its unavoidable entanglement in discourses social or political in nature; thus, should such decoding not necessarily require interpretation rules valid in the world of art only, then – as it seems – a certain knowledge of social and political relations and practices of the given place and time should remain the minimum requirement for recognising an interpretation as legally relevant.

146 W. Kulesza, "Pochwalanie faszyzmu i komunizmu w świetle prawa karnego (uwagi _de lege praevia, lata et ferenda_ )," in _Teoretyczne i praktyczne problemy wspól_ \- _czesnego prawa karnego. Księga jubileuszowa dedykowana Profesorowi Tadeuszowi Bojarskiemu_ , eds. A. Michalska-Warias, I. Nowikowski, J. Piórkowska-Flieger (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2011), 430-431.

147 The need to evaluate a perpetrator's actions in the context of his or her previous initiatives, topics dealt with, and artistic activities, was highlighted by the District Court in L-ódż in a judgment of 6 February 2013, (Ref. No. V Ka 1385/12, unpublished), in the case of Krzysztof Kuszej (see p. 136). The court also commissioned expert opinions for the purpose of defining the nature of the message the perpetrator intended to convey.

148 In January 2007, Peter Fuss' _Jesus Christ King of Poland_ exhibition opened at the _SCENA_ Gallery in Koszalin (the exhibition title referencing an initiative of right-wing members of Parliament who intended to enthrone Christ as the king of Poland at the time). On the premises of the gallery, the artist displayed print-screens from "catholic and patriotic" websites that incite religious and racial hatred. Printouts included a list of 2,000 names of "Polish Jews" considered enemies of Poland by one such website. From that list, the artist selected 56 names, i.a. of well-known politicians and artists, making their images part of the poster, and reading: "This is a catholic country – out with the Jews". During the night before the opening of the exhibition, the artist illegally placed the poster on a billboard on a street accessible to the public.

149 In this context, the term "subversion" shall mean an artistic "re-staging" of sorts, the repetition of a certain phenomenon for the purpose of criticising it – usually accompanied by a slight distortion, a shift in the code, comprised by the artefact itself or arising from the context of its presentation.

150 The offence stipulated by provisions of Art 257 PCC may only be committed intentionally with _dolus directus._

151 S. Fish, _There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a Good Thing, Too_ (New York-Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), 113.

152 In Poland, law enforcement agencies duly notified of a suspicion that a crime has been committed shall – in line with the principle of legalism – under all circumstances be obliged to conduct verifying proceedings. Therefore, while the number of pre-trial proceedings concerning artistic expression is considerable, it remains indicative of an over-sensitivity of certain members of the society rather than of excessive actions taken on the part of the police or prosecution agencies (practically all proceedings were summarily dismissed).

153 The Nergal case obviously involved a song the artist performed live in concert (part of a particular popular culture niche), not a visual arts intervention.

154 For more information concerning this theory, see _Kodeks karny. Część ogólna. Komentarz do art. 1–116 kk_ , vol. 1, ed. A. Zoll (Warszawa: Wolters Kluwer, 2012), 443-444. See also A. Marek, _Obrona konieczna w prawie karnym na tle teorii i orzecznictwa Sądu Najwyższego_ (Warszawa; Wydawnictwo Prawnicze 1979), 22-23.

155 See Zoll, _Kodeks karny. Część ogólna,_ vol. 1, 445; A. Zoll, "Pozaustawowe okoliczności wyłączające odpowiedzialność karną w świetle konstytucyjnej zasady podziału władz," in Leszczyn´ski, Skrętowicz, Hołda, _W kręgu teorii,_ 425-438.

156 Cf. e.g. Królikowski, Zawłocki, _Kodeks karny_ , vol. 1, 742-743.

157 Cf. e.g. Królikowski, Zawłocki, _Kodeks karny_ , vol. 1, 735 -736; Zoll, _Kodeks karny. Część ogólna_ , 444.

158 Zoll, _Kodeks karny. Część ogólna_ , 444; Zoll, "Pozaustawowe," 425-438.

159 Nalewajko, Kubiak, "Sztuka," 37-40.

160 Piskorski, "Dekryminalizacja," 252-253.

161 Warylewski, "Pasja," 367-381.

162 Description of the authors' beliefs and all quotations based on: Budyn-Kulik, Kulik, "Wolność," 233-249.

163 _The Nazis_ by Piotr Uklan´ski presents 164 photographic portraits of well-known Polish and non-Polish actors (Daniel Olbrychski included) who had played the roles of German soldiers. The photos were cropped from films stills and show the actors in Nazi uniforms.

164 Notably, Budyn-Kulik and Kulik offered an artistic justification concept corresponding to that of Peter Noll. According to Noll, such justification could be referenced by someone using general freedoms to create imperative values while breaching lesser ones. Noll further claims that such an approach would allow for differentiation between high-value creations and worthless rubbish, which would be subject to standard assessment under criminal law; for more on the subject, see D. Krauss, "Der Strafrechtliche Konflikt zwischen Glaubensfreiheit und Kunstfreiheit," in _Gedächtnisschrift für Peter Noll_ , ed. R. Hauser (Zurich: Schulthess, 1984), 214-215.

165 Judgment of the Regional Court in Gdan´sk of 18 July 2003 (Ref. No. IV K 638/02, unpublished).

166 J. Hołda, "Twórczość jako podstawowe prawo człowieka. Granice swobody twórczości," in _Ochrona praw człowieka w Polsce po 1989 r. na tle standardów międzynarodowych. Wybrane zagadnienia_ , eds. J. A. Rybczyn´ska, A. Demczuk (Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2012), 149.

167 For more information on the subject, see e.g. Królikowski, Zawłocki, _Kodeks karny_ , vol. 1, 208-209; Wróbel, Zoll, _Polskie prawo_ , 382.

168 Budyn-Kulik, Kulik, "Wolność," 244-246.

169 Under Art 29 PCC, a person committing a criminal offence being justifiably - although erroneously -convinced of the prevalence of circumstances excluding unlawfulness or guilt shall not be committing a crime; should the perpetrator's error be unjustified, the court may resort to extraordinary mitigation of penalty. Under Art 30 PCC, a person committing a criminal offence in justified unawareness of the act's unlawfulness shall not be committing a crime; should the perpetrator's error be unjustified, the court may resort to extraordinary mitigation of penalty.

170 Under Art 115 §2 PCC, in assessing the social harm of an act to the public, the court shall recognise the type and nature of goods violated, the extent of the resulting or imminent damage, the manner and circumstances of the act committed, the weight of duties breached, as well as the form of intent, the perpetrator's motivation, the type of precautionary rules violated, and the extent of said violation.

171 See "Blasphemy, Insult and Hatred. Finding Answers in a Democratic Society," _Science and Technique of Democracy_ , no. 47 (2010): 149 ff. (hereinafter quoted as _Blasphemy, Insult_ ).

172 Under Art 172 of the Criminal Code ordinance of the President of the Republic of Poland of 11 July 1932 (Journal of Laws 1932, No. 60, item. 571): "Whosoever publicly blasphemes against God shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of up to 5 years". This version of the Criminal Code also contained Art 173 safeguarding legally recognised religious denominations and religious associations, their dogmas, beliefs, and rituals, objects of religious worship, and places of religious rituals against insult.

173 Art 5 of the Protection of the Freedom of Conscience and Confession Decree of 5 August 1949 (Journal of Laws 1949, No. 45 item 334): "Anyone insulting religious beliefs by public abuse of an object of religious cult or place of religious rituals shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of up to 5 years".

174 It has been accepted that in order for an act to fulfil the feature of public action, the perpetrator will have to be operating under conditions allowing the act or its content to reach a broader (unspecified) community, or a specified yet larger number of persons. Action taken in the privacy of a home shall not be classified as public insult unless e.g. the artist organises a gallery open to the public in his or her own home. For more information on this feature, see L. Gardocki, _Prawo karne_ (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2008), 301; Grześkowiak, Wiak, _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , 761; _Kodeks karny. Część szczególna. Komentarz_ , vol. 1, eds. A. Wąsek, R. Zawłocki (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2010), 899.

175 According to the prevailing position, objects of religious cult comprise tangibles (such as the Host, relics, altars, etc.) as well as deities and/or other persons of worship, such as the saints and prophets; furthermore, dogmas of faith, and even rituals or phrases involved in the administration of sacraments.

176 On the features of Art 196 PCC see e.g.: _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , ed. T. Bojarski (Warszawa, Lexis Nexis, 2013), 401, 516, 520; Gardocki, _Prawo karne,_ 254; O. Górniok, S. Hoc, S. M. Przyjemski, _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , vol. 3 (Gdan´sk: ARCHE 1999), 171; Grześkowiak, Wiak, _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , 753, 760; Warylewski, "Pasja," 367–383; Wąsek, Zawłocki, _Kodeks karny. Część szczególna_ , vol. 1, 899; Constitutional Court judgment of 7 June 1994 (Ref. No. K 17/93 OTK 1994 part 1, item 11, p. 90.)

177 Supreme Court resolution, 29 October 2012 (Ref. No. I KZP 12/12).

178 Quoted from Piotr Uziębło's legal opinion of 25 March 2007 concerning the conformity of Art 196 PCC with provisions of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland; said opinion was filed in proceedings against Dorota Nieznalska.

179 See the Prosecutor General's position of 27 March 2014, Ref. No. PG VIII TK 91/13, SK 54/13 and the position of the _Sejm_ (Lower House of the Polish Parliament) of 18 June 2014, Ref. No. RP BAS-WPTK – 2074/13, SK 54/13. In January 2012, the _Sejm_ received a draft derogation from Art 196 PCC, developed and filed by the liberal _Ruch Palikota_ [ _Palikot's Movement_ ] party. The purpose of the change was to _"secure freedom of expression and the displaying of personal beliefs in public without fear of being charged with insult to religious beliefs."_ The motion failed utterly: on 30 March 2012, 389 members of Parliament voted for its rejection, while 66 members of Parliament voted in favour of it, with no votes of abstention. Notably, the apparently liberal the Civic Platform (PO) party was in power at the time.

180 The United States Supreme Court took an extreme and unequivocal position with regard to the conflict between freedom of speech and freedom of religion in the case of J. Burstyn v. US, 343 U.S. 495 (1952) concerning _The Miracle_ , an Italian movie by Roberto Rossellini (hence, the case's other name: _The Miracle Case_ ). According to the line taken by the ECHR case-law, on the other hand, the margin of appreciation of domestic authorities in terms of regulating the boundaries of freedom of expression depends chiefly on the area the given expression concerns. Should, for example, it concern political debate, criticism of those in power in particular (see e.g. the case of Karataś v. Turkey, ruling of 8 July 1999, app. no. 42571/98), the margin of appreciation is considerably narrowed by the Court – whereas, state authorities are granted more licence in outlining standards of freedom of expression in the following fields: religion (e.g. Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria, ruling of 20 September 1994, app. no. 13470/87; I.A. v. Turkey, unpublished ruling of 13 September 2005, app. no. 42571/98); morality (e.g. Müller et al. v. Switzerland, ruling of 24 May 1988, app. no. 10737/84); or the integrity and security of the state (e.g. Karataś).

181 Report by the Venice Commission. Adopted by the Venice Commission at its 76th Plenary Session (Venice, 17-18 October 2008). The relationship between freedom of expression and freedom of religion: the issue of regulation and prosecution of blasphemy, religious insult and incitement to religious hatred, in _Blasphemy, Insult_ : 11 ff.

182 Art 23 of the Civil Code could serve as a substantive basis of law for claims filed under civil law for reason of insult to religious belief: _"Human personal interests, in particular such as health, freedom, dignity, freedom of conscience, name or pseudonym, image, secrecy of correspondence, inviolability of the home, and academic, artistic, inventive, and optimisation achievements, are all safeguarded under civil law regardless of any protection stipulated by other legal provisions"_. The catalogue of interests listed under this provision is not finite; moreover, the Supreme Court concluded that religious beliefs shall be included as personal rights (Supreme Court judgment of 6 April 2004, Ref. No. I CK 484/03, _LEX_ 132396). Yet case-law emphasises that expression (artistic expression included) could be recognised as violating personal rights in the form of religious beliefs of an individual only if targeting a specific person or group (community) such a person is a member of, rather than the violation being abstract in form (see e.g. the Supreme Court judgment of 26 October 2001, Ref. No. V CKN 195/01, _LEX_ No. 53107). Notably, under the current legal status, a change to this line of adjudication (i.e. allowance to seek claims in the field of personal rights protection also in case of actions not targeting specific individuals or groups) could yield results decidedly more severe than a criminal sentence for the author of a questioned expression – as potentially it could tie in with a necessity to pay compensation to anyone whose beliefs or feelings were insulted – and there could be dozens or hundreds of thousands of such individuals nationwide.

183 Description of the case based on the judgment of the Regional Court in Gdan´sk of 18 July 2003 (Ref. No. IV K 638/02, unpublished).

184 T. Piątek, "Sacrum i genitalium," _GW_ , June 22, 2003. While the installation itself was judged rather unfavourably by art critics, auction houses were ready to put it up for auction for amounts in excess of PLN 10,000 (ca USD 2,300) in the wake of the scandal. Yet such developments remained merely a speculation, as the work (secured as case evidence) remained restricted from public availability for nearly a decade. While the case was truly media-intense, it did not – contrary to expectations – yield any real profits for the artist: her circumstances were utterly different from what the press had suggested and Judge Zielin´ski had assumed. The scandal deprived Nieznalska of financial means - in order to make a living, she worked in a warehouse owned by her brother's company and even cleaned staircases. Once the trial had begun, a Gdan´sk-based artistic institution where Nieznalska ran art classes for children covertly found a replacement. For a period of time, the artist did not produce any new work, and anxious galleries discontinued showing her works – those that attempted to do otherwise were swiftly pacified by politicians and the Church. It was not until mid 2006 that Nieznalska held her first substantial Polish exhibition, in a gallery owned by billionairess Grażyna Kulczyk at the Old Brewery in Poznan´. Concerns obviously arose with regard to grants, stipends, and applications to fund artistic activities; and since court proceedings were underway, the artist also experienced difficulties in travelling abroad. Last but not least, the artist had been pigeonholed and branded with "the seal of that notorious crucified dick".

185 W. Zyszkiewicz, "Wytrwaj, Temido," _Tygodnik Solidarnoś ć_ , August 1, 2003.

186 Based on the judgment of the District Court in Gdan´sk of 22 April 2004 (Ref. No. Ka 1795/03, unpublished).

187 Based on the judgment of the Regional Court Gdan´sk-Południe of 4 June 2009, (Ref. No. II K 290/05, unpublished).

188 The expert witness was commissioned to provide an opinion regarding the content, interpretation, and potential impact of information broadcast by the _Fakty_ news service of the TVN (TV) station concerning the _The Passion_ exhibition. According to the witness, the footage broadcast by TVN's _Fakty_ did not conform to rules of objective information/ reliable reporting based upon the liberal normative media doctrine or pragmatism inherent to systems founded on principles of freedom, political independence, or the autonomy of general belief. TVN breached these rules in numerous aspects. For example: the broadcast only included negative comments concerning the work; all comments were selected for the purpose of suggesting that insult to religious feelings had been the work's sole intent; off-screen narration and the commentary by the journalist (author of the footage) contained no information except for an evaluation considered from the perspective of a religious controversy; both the narrator and author of the footage used emotionally negative language; the latter discredited the artist's overall oeuvre _ad hominem_ , suggesting that her work was generally received with little enthusiasm; visual footage only showed the cross with the penis, its brief images linked to other religiously controversial artworks and exhibitions; the artist was only shown against the backdrop of her own work or at an empty desk with a computer; whereas her adversaries were shown against the backdrop of churches, chapels, or rooms filled with historical artworks; to display the viewers' reaction, a single shot of two young women was used, with both women staring – as openly suggested by corresponding montage – at the photograph of the penis; the cross, repeatedly shown with the penis electronically obliterated, evoked associations with something _"which could not even be displayed on television"_. The visual image sequence comprised a succession of juxtaposed images which triggered vivid emotions, such as prayers at the _Jasna Góra_ Sanctuary alongside a picture of the penis. Measures used by _Fakty_ to emphasise the reliability of their news became the foundation for turning mere assessment (one-sided, at that) into fact. Moreover, socially recognisable clichés were applied to legitimise the information conveyed: young women (Nieznalska and two young smiling girls representing the audience) who were stereotyped as frivolous, were contrasted with middle-aged and elderly men, epitomising higher values and power (of the Church, institutions of higher learning, art criticism, and the TV station).

189 In issuing his opinion, the expert witness responded to the following questions: 1) What is the meaning of the phrase _"object of religious cult"_ in culture, in prevalent social reception, in the sacral sense, in Christianity and Catholicism? 2) Does the cross rendered as part of the installation fall under the concept of _"object of religious cult"_ – if so, for whom and when? 3) Is recognising the cross rendered as part of the installation as an _"object of religious cult"_ a common phenomenon, predictable with regard to our country's culture? The witness emphasised that within folk Catholicism, which translates i.a. into the coupling of signs and their referents – not only does the symbol carry meaning, but it also personifies that which it refers to. Contrary to the teachings of the Church, most followers of the Catholic religion see _"the cross, a tangible object, as SACRED, not as a reference or indication of sanctity."_ Conversely to folk religion, contemporary avant-garde artists have a different outlook concerning nudity or religious symbolism – to them, these simply constitute creative material. Albeit the cross rendered in the installation is not a crucifix and may convey an extensive array of meanings, such public manifestations of secularisation – a process through which symbols are gradually undergoing in our culture – may evoke social dissent. According to the witness, the cross which formed part of the installation was not an _"object of religious cult"_ ; communication, code, and context allowing for the comprehension and proper reception of Nieznalska's work had all been breached in the case. Furthermore, Pasek emphasised that "the media (TV and press) coverage was developed according to rules other than those prevalent at Galeria Wyspa.... The media reduced the cross to its religious meaning as its only appeal as a news item". The insult resulted in a "confrontation of two distinct interpretations and discourse communities, the media becoming a catalyst of conflict".

190 In issuing her opinion, expert witness Eleonora Jedlin´ska was to recognise the following, among others: a discussion of the nature, purposes, forms, and means of expression of socially engaged art, and to attempt an interpretation of the _The Passion_ in the context of the theory and history of art, and of the artist's testimony. The witness confirmed that Nieznalska's art formed part of a critical trend which attacked social habits forged chiefly by popular culture and the mass media. According to the expert witness, Nieznalska's work did not contain a religious message as such, but rather referred to "certain aspects and attitudes that are related to religious tradition. Associations with the Passion of Christ... are rather ambivalent in nature when confronted with the masculine cult of the able body, and are more readily associated with the very term of "passion" itself. Yet, a recipient of art, with Judeo-Christian origins, will most certainly correlate the artwork with religiosity.

191 Cf. Supreme Court to the contrary in a later resolution of 29 October 2012 (Ref. No. I KZP 12/12).

192 Based on the appeal against the judgment of the Regional Court Gdan´sk-Południe of 4 June 2009 (Ref. No. II K 290/05), filed on 28 October 2009 with the District Court in Gdan´sk by the Regional Prosecutor for Gdan´sk-Sródmieście.

193 Based on the judgment of the District Court in Gdan´sk of 11 March 2010 (Ref. No. V Ka 976/09, unpublished).

194 Based on the judgement of the Regional Court in Gdynia of 18 August 2011 (Ref. No. II K 589/10, unpublished).

195 Judgement of the Regional Court in Gdynia of 18 August 2011 (Ref. No. II K 589/10, unpublished).

196 In a supplement, the District Court also deliberated on the art countertype, rightly emphasising that a reference to such a countertype as grounds for acquittal would primarily require the conclusion that the perpetrator's behaviour fulfilled all subjective and objective features of a prohibited act.

197 Judgement of the Regional Court in Gdynia of 3 June 2013 (Ref. No. II K 155/13, unpublished).

198 Judgement of the District Court in Gdan´sk of 11 February 2014 (Ref. No. V Ka 860/13, unpublished).

199 A. Pease, _Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity_ (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), 2 ff. According to Kant, fine arts – a simile of beauty itself – are subject to contemplative judgement of taste, evoking the pleasure of intellectual reflection. Conversely, pornography (he did not allude to it – the term was not in existence in his time – yet we may explain it in referencing his works) comprises bodily pleasure, constrained sensual stimuli and impulses; Kant believed the mentality of people exclusively indulging in the sensual to be _coarse and ignoble_ [I. Kant, _Critique of Judgment_ , trans. W. S. Pluhar (Indianapolis – Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987) hereinafter: _CoJ_ , §5 and §42]. As pleasure related to the fine arts is purely contemplative in nature, it does not lead to an interest in the object itself (pleasure entirely independent of the object's existence); fine arts are free and independent of any interest, profit, ambition, the author's social position, or even of his or her imaginings of good ( _CoJ_ §5; §12; §43). Conversely, pornography is mercenary in nature; bodily pleasure is the very foundations of its reception and profit is the very foundation of its production. Fine arts are purposive on their own, devoid of any other objective or subjective purpose (formal purposiveness) ( _CoJ_ §11; §13 and §44); pornographic representations are not fulfilled in the form, as their purpose is not form but rather physical arousal. The absence of interest (non-involvement of personal circumstances as grounds for specific preferences) yields the universality of judgement of taste associated with fine arts. Nonetheless, not being based on concepts, it remains aesthetic rather than logical – the judgement of taste only postulates a validity for everyone ( _CoJ_ , §6; §7-9). The reception of pornography, on the other hand, is based on an individual judgement of sense – everyone has his or her own sensual taste for what is pleasurable. Unassisted by concept, a fine arts work is cognised as an object of necessary liking. Yet, as aesthetic judgement follows no objective principle, necessity remains purely exemplary, _"i.e. the necessity of approval of everyone with regard to a judgement that is considered an example of a universal rule that we are unable to define"_. The judgement of taste assumes the existence of such a principle, a so-called _sensus communis_ , which merely based on a feeling believed to be common and universally valid for all subjects – determines what is liked. Senses offer no foundation for such claims; the judgement of purely sensual taste which pornography is based on is unprincipled and singular; as Kant remarked, _"the thought that they have a necessity would not occur to us at all"_ ( _CoJ_ §18-22). Fine arts are the produce of genius – _"the talent of producing something for which no determinate rule can be given"_ – and are thus original ( _CoJ_ , §46). Pornography is not the product of genius; forged in imitation and replication of certain patterns, learnable and permitting exact aims to be achieved (profit, bodily pleasure). Last but not least, fine arts encourage social communication – participation in the life of human communities ( _CoJ_ , §44). Therefore, the reception of fine arts requires more than a discriminating taste and a grasp of the abstract; it also requires the skill of transcending the private (it assumes the existence of a _sensus communis_ ); similar to public matters requiring distance from the randomness of particular interests so as to be able to focus on the common good. In opposition, pornography is a matter belonging to the niches of privacy, leaning towards personal and reprehensible interest.

200 Pease, _Modernism,_ 30 ff.

201 Art 200 §3. Anyone presenting pornographic content to a minor below the age of 15 or providing him or her with objects of such nature, or disseminating pornographic content in a form and manner which allows a given minor to become acquainted with it, shall face the punishment of imprisonment for a period of up to 3 years.

Art 202 §1. Anyone presenting pornographic content in a form which forces it upon an unwilling person shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 2 years §2. (repealed). §3. Anyone producing pornographic content involving a minor or violence or an animal with intent to disseminate, and anyone preserving, importing, holding, storing, or presenting such pornographic content shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of no less than 2 and up to 12 years. §4. Anyone preserving pornographic content involving a minor shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of no less than 1 and up to 10 years. §4a. Anyone holding, storing, or accessing pornographic content involving a minor shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of no less than 3 months up to 5 years. §4b. Anyone producing, disseminating, presenting, preserving or holding pornographic content involving the created or processed image of a minor participating in sexual activity [sexual intercourse and other sexual activities – J.D.] shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 2 years. §4c. Anyone participating in the presentation of pornographic content involving a minor for the purpose of sexual gratification shall be punishable by penalties stipulated in §4b. §5. The court may order the forfeiture of tools or other objects serving or used for the purpose of committing criminal offences stipulated under §§1-4b, even if not owned by the perpetrator.

202 W. Sadurski, "Wolność prasy w systemie praw człowieka (Wybrane zagadnienia)," in _Obywatel – jego wolności i prawa. Zbiór studiów przygotowanych z okazji 10-lecia urzędu Rzecznika Praw Obywatelskich_ , (Warszawa: Biuro RPO, 1998), 150-151.

203 See J. Warylewski, _Przestępstwa seksualne_ (Gdan´sk: Wydaw. Uniwersytetu Gdan´skiego, 2001), 259.

204 In one of the few pornography-related judgements of 23 November 2010 (Ref. No. IV KK 173/10, _LEX_ No. 667510), the Supreme Court ruled as follows: "»Pornographic content« as defined by Art 202 PCC comprises representations of human sexual activities (renderings of human genitals in their sexual functions in particular) contained in a recorded form (such as films, photographs, magazines, books, images) or not (such as live shows) in ways not incompatible with their biological design, as well as representations of human sexual activities incompatible with sexual behavioural patterns universally accepted in the society".

205 See i.e. I. Andrejew, _Kodeks karny – krótki komentarz_ (Warszawa: PWN, 1986), 154; Grześkowiak, Wiak, _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , 795; _Kodeks karny. Część szczególna. Komentarz do art. 117–277_ , vol. 2, ed. A. Zoll (Warszawa: Zakamycze, 1999), 570.

206 See i.e. _Kodeks karny. Czę ść szczególna. Komentarz do art. 117-277,_ vol. 2, ed. A. Zoll (Warszawa: Wolters Kluwer, 2013), 827; _Kodeks karny_ , _Część szczególna_ , vol. 2, eds. R. Zawłocki, M. Królikowski (Warszawa: C.H. Beck 2013), 696-697.

207 Zoll, _Kodeks Karny. Część szczególna_ , vol. 2, 571; Warylewski, _Przestępstwa_ , 283.

208 Zoll, _Kodeks Karny. Część szczególna_ , vol. 2, 571-572.

209 See Warylewski, _Przestępstwa_ , 265, 269-270; Also e.g. Bojarski, _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , 550.

210 Supreme Court judgement of 23 November 2010 (Ref. No. IV KK 173/10, _LEX_ No. 667510).

211 _System prawa karnego. Przestępstwa przeciwko dobrom indywidualnym_ , vol. 10, ed. J. Warylewski, (Warszawa: C.H. Beck, 2012), 821-822; Zoll, _Kodeks Karny. Część szczególna_ , vol. 2, 824. Ż Jędrzejewski, "Zgoda dysponenta dobrem a struktura przestępstwa," _Prokuratura i Prawo_ , no. 5 (2008): 36-44.

212 See e.g. §184 clause 2 of the German Criminal Code; as stipulated under the aforementioned provision, a duly authorised custodian of an individual below 18 years of age shall not be accountable for the offence of presenting pornography to such individual (classified in clause 1 item 1) provided that the custodian did not commit a serious breach of his or her custodial duties – _StGB_ , uniform script of 13 November 1998, _Bundesgesetzblatt_ [ _Journal of Law_ ] I S. 3322.

213 Królikowski, Zawłocki, _Kodeks karny. Czę ść szczególna_ , vol. 1, 699, including reference sources quoted.

214 "The Supreme Court believes that the phrase »pornographic content involving violence« used in Art202 §3 PCC shall also comprise the rendering of scenes of violence by actors when tying in with content referenced in the aforementioned legal provision, as well as such scenes generated with the use of various other visualisation techniques." Supreme Court judgement of 23 November 2010 (Ref. No. IV KK 173/10, _LEX_ No. 667510).

215 See e.g. Zoll, _Kodeks Karny. Czę ść szczególna_ , vol. 2, 837-838.

216 Framework Decision of the Council 2004/68/WSiSW of 22 December 2003, Journal of Laws L 013, of 20 January 2004.

217 Contemporarily, conflicts between the freedom of art and safeguarding child sexuality are common in contemporary times; one might claim the existence of supranational tendencies to make a taboo of child sexuality. In February 2008, Finnish police seized the computer and data carriers owned by artist Ulla Karttunen, who had shown _Church of the Whore-Virgin_ ( _Neitsythuorakirkko_ ), an installation focusing on violence against children, in the _Kluuvi_ gallery in Helsinki. The installation comprised printouts of digitally generated and edited scenes of sexually molested children. In May 2008, the artist was sentenced to several months of imprisonment (the sentence was ultimately upheld, but the court waived the execution of punishment). In the autumn of 2009, on the other hand, the Tate Modern bowed out from showing an exhibition of works by Richard Prince who used Gary Gross' nude photographs of the 10-year-old Brooke Shields. Scotland Yard had warned the gallery that they may be faced with charges of violating the law. The Tate had also bowed out of selling the catalogue.

218 A. Adler, "Child Pornography Law," in Atkins, Mintcheva, _Censoring Culture_ , 228-240.

219 For more on the subject, see E. Majewska, "Kolczyk w pępku nastolatki. Ponowoczesna kontrola w społeczen´stwie obrazu. Na marginesie wystawy Jacqueline Livingston," in E. Majewska, _Sztuka jako pozór? Cenzura i inne paradoksy upolitycznienia kultury_ , (Kraków: Ha!art, 2013), 103-122.

220 Art 200b PCC: Anyone publicly propagating or praising behaviour paedophilic in nature shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 2 years.

221 Based on the judgement of the Regional Court in Łódż of 25 July 2012, (Ref. No. IV K620/11, unpublished).

222 "All images reference sexual violence against children; many depict the genitals of children or of an adult male, some images also depict sexual intercourse. Elements tying in with the Catholic church are also shown, i.a. crosses, an aureole, a chalice, a candle. Fragments of notes and drawings rendered as if by the hand of a child appear in the background...", including drawings specifying the child's Christian name and his or her age, e.g. "Robert, 6", "Ula, 4". This is why "works may be interpreted as a form of accusation against paedophiles, as a child's tale of violence...". The expert witness emphasised that in titling his works, the artist had referenced names of locations where minors had been sexually molested by priests, e.g. _The Miraculous Icon of the Madonna of Hl_ - _udno (Sub-Carpathian Province) where the paedophile Catholic priest Stanisl_ - _aw K. prowled_ [Cudowny obraz Matki Boskiej z Hłudna (podkarpackie), gdzie grasował pedofil katolicki ksiądz Stanisław K]. "All titles lucidly prove that the purpose of all paintings is to condemn paedophilia among priests.... The message of these works is drastic..., which is why they may evoke shock, disgust, or rage in viewers; yet, such is their purpose – to point to the phenomenon of paedophilia that in the artist's opinion, a part of the society is turning a blind eye to...."

223 Journal of Laws of 2007 No. 76, item 494.

224 Based on the judgement of the District Court in L-ódż of 6 February 2013 (Ref. No. V Ka1385/12, unpublished).

225 Constitutional Court judgement of 30 October 2006 (Ref. No. P10/06, OTK-A 2006/9/128).

226 Constitutional Court judgement of 6 July 2011 (Ref. No. P 12/09, OTK-A 2011/6/51).

227 Art 212 §1. Anyone who slanders another person, a group of people, a business entity or an organisational unit without the status of a business entity, about conduct, or characteristics that may discredit them in the face of public opinion, or result in a loss of confidence necessary to perform in a given position, occupation or type of activity is liable to a fine, the restriction of liberty §2. Should the perpetrator commit the act stipulated under §1 hereto with the use of mass media, he/she shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 1 year. §3. In case of a sentence involving the offence stipulated under §1 or §2 hereto, the court may order the payment of a fine benefitting the victim, the Polish Red Cross, or another purpose of public benefit duly specified by the victim. §4. Offences stipulated under §1 and §2 shall be prosecuted by private indictment. Art 213 §1: the offence stipulated under Art 212 §1 shall not have been committed, if allegations (not made public) are real. §2. Anyone publicly raising or disseminating real allegations 1) concerning the behaviour of a public official or 2) serving the purpose of a socially justified interest shall not be considered the perpetrator of offences stipulated under Art 212 §1 and §2. Should allegations concern the private or family life of an individual, evidence of truth shall only be brought forward if the purpose of allegations was to prevent threat to human life or health or the corruption of a minor.

228 Art 216 §1. Anyone insulting another person in his/her presence or in his/her absence, yet in public and with intent of the insult reaching the addressee, shall be punishable by a fine or restriction to freedom. §2. Anyone insulting another person with the use of mass media shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 1 year.... §5. Aforementioned offences shall be prosecuted by private indictment.

229 See Budyn-Kulik, Kulik, "Wolność," 233-249.

230 " _Objective criteria shall be decisive in finding whether the perpetrator's specific behaviour was insulting in nature_ ", Zoll, _Kodeks Karny. Część szczególna_ , vol.2, 1003.

231 Sadurski, "Wolność prasy," 139-140.

232 See e.g. Lingens v. Austria, ruling of 8 July 1986, app. no. 9815/82; Oberschlick v. Austria, ruling of 23 May 1991, app. no. 1162/85; in the case of Castells v. Spain, ruling of 23 April 1992, app. no. 11798/85, the court openly emphasised that "the dominant position which the Government occupies makes it necessary for it to display restraint in resorting to criminal proceedings, particularly where other means are available for replying to the unjustified attacks and criticisms of its adversaries or the media."

233 Art 135 §1. Anyone openly assaulting the President of the Republic of Poland shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of no less than 3 months up to 5 years. §2. Anyone publicly insulting the President of the Republic of Poland shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of up to 3 years. Art 136 §1. Anyone openly assaulting the head of a foreign state or an accredited head of a diplomatic mission of such state or a person entitled to similar protection under legislation, agreements, or universally recognised international customs on the territory of the Republic of Poland, shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of no less than 3 months up to 3 years. §2. Anyone openly assaulting (on the territory of the Republic of Poland) a staff member of a diplomatic mission of a foreign state or a consular official of a foreign state in connection with their performance of professional duties, shall be punishable by imprisonment for a term of up to 3 years. §3. Anyone publicly insulting persons stipulated under §1 hereto on the territory of the Republic of Poland shall be punishable by the penalty stipulated under §2 hereto. §4. Anyone publicly insulting persons stipulated under §2 hereto on the territory of the Republic of Poland shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 1 year. Art 226 §1. Anyone insulting a public official or a person assisting him or her in the course of or in connection with the performance of professional duties by such official, shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 1 year. §2. Provisions of Art 222 §2 shall apply _mutatis mutandis_. §3. Anyone publicly insulting or humiliating a constitutional authority of the Republic of Poland shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 2 years.

234 Sadurski, "Wolność prasy,"139.

235 Sadurski, "Wolność prasy,"144-145.

236 Quote from M. Ujma, "I znowu Guma Guar", accessed November 9, 2014, <http://magdalena-ujma.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-znowu-guma-guar.html>

237 Ultimately, pre-trial proceedings were initiated in connection with a suspicion that an offence of insult to religious beliefs had been committed. The regional prosecutor in Bytom issued the following statement: "We compared [the case of the poster – J.D.] with the so-called Gdan´sk case, in which Dorota Nieznalska was convicted for insult to religious beliefs by displaying her visual artwork. As a result, we have decided to initiate proceedings." "Prokurator sprawdzi galerię," _Zycie Bytomskie_ , September 11, 2006. The prosecutor position should be viewed as absurd, given that officials of churches and religious associations are not protected under provisions of Art 196 PCC. Not surprisingly, proceedings were swiftly dismissed.

238 See footnote 56 and e.g. Thorgeirson v. Iceland, ruling of 25 June 1992, app. no. 13778/88.

239 K. Pałka, M. Kućka, "Ochrona przed mową nienawiści – powództwo cywilne czy akt oskarżenia?," in _Mowa nienawiści a wolność sl_ - _owa. Aspekty prawne i spol_ - _eczne_ , eds. A. Bodnar, A. Gliszczyn´ska-Grabias, R. Wieruszewski, M. Wyrzykowski (Warszawa: Wolters Kluwer, 2010), 10.

240 Art 256 PCC: §1. Anyone publicly promoting fascism or any other totalitarian state system, or inciting hatred based on national, ethnic, racial, or religious differences or for reason of a lack of religious denomination, shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 2 years. §2. Anyone producing, preserving or importing, acquiring, storing, holding, presenting, carrying, or transmitting printed material, recordings, or other objects comprising content stipulated under §1 hereto or _constituting a carrier of fascist, communist, or other totalitarian symbolism_ (the excerpt in italics was recognised as unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in their judgement of 10 July 2011 [Ref. No. K 11/10, OTK-A 2011 No. 6 item 60]. In their justification, the Constitutional Court stated that the contested provision is not sufficiently precise for application under criminal law. The provision lost its force within the referenced part as of August 3rd 2011) shall be punishable by penalties identical to those stipulated under §1 hereto. §3. The perpetrator of an unlawful act stipulated under §2 hereto shall not be found guilty of committing a criminal offence if said act had been part of artistic, educational, collection, or scientific activity..... Under Art 257 PCC: Anyone publicly insulting a community or individual for national, ethnic, racial, or religious reasons or for reason of a lack of religious affiliation, shall be punishable by a fine, restricted freedom, or imprisonment for a term of up to 3 years. Provisions of Art 256 and 257 PCC come in for criticism as they fail to safeguard the dignity of persons distinct for reasons of gender identity, sexual orientation, age, health condition (eg. AIDS or drug addiction), disability, or social circumstances. Furthermore, the structure of both provisions – when coupled with the attitude of law enforcement agencies and the judiciary – makes them no more than paper laws in reality. Law enforcement agencies usually fail to recognise even the most insulting or extremely hateful comments as incitement to hatred, classifying them as expressions of opinion. Appeals to derogate these provisions and to introduce safeguards in civil and administrative law with regard to such distinctive features as age, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability, and social circumstances have been filed. See _Przestępstwa nie stwierdzono. Prokuratorzy wobec doniesien´ o publikacjach antysemickich_ , ed. Marek Gumkowski (Warszawa: Otwarta Rzczpospolita, 2006).

241 Grześkowiak, Wiak, _Kodeks karny. Komentarz_ , Legalis 2012, komentarz do art. 256.

242 Despite the undermined justifiability of referencing artistic justification, beliefs and opinions presented herein show considerable sensitivity to the specifics of artistic context. Hence the question: is this not an actual projection of making the immunity of art (of sorts) part of criminal law? – One would have to respond in the negative. Firstly, precautionary principles should always be analysed for areas of public activity vital to the given case, also for areas other than strictly artistic, such as science, traffic, sports, medicine, etc. Secondly, sensitivity to artistic context is no guarantee that all artists will be acquitted in a court trial; on the contrary, the hermeneutics of artworks may reveal content which fulfill the features of crime and result in sentencing.
**III. FROM THE HISTORY OF CENSORSHIP IN POLISH ART AFTER 1989**

**3.1 Preface**

Censorship in the Polish People's Republic (1945–1989) – A Censorship Linkage

The advent of parliamentary democracy in 1989 and the necessary abolition of institutional censorship opened up new horizons for artists. Obviously, creative practice continued to be constrained by provisions of the code of penal, civil and administrative law, yet their application was consequential (repressive), and not preventive, while the liberty-oriented approach of state bodies (genuine compliance with human rights) made such instances uncommon. The democratization of legal regulations provides the possibility to highlight the hitherto transparent, non-judiciary and less obvious factors affecting freedom of speech: apart from the developing new market, institutional and media mechanisms, the significance of the historically conditioned relations of power that form social ways of perceiving reality is also worth underscoring. The watershed year of 1989 did not automatically trigger a mental breakthrough, as the perception of the world was (and continues to be) influenced by mental schemes, habits, social rituals and tastes shaped throughout decades, or even centuries. Originating from the Polish People's Republic (PRL) and earlier periods in history, the visions of art, law, justice, freedom, tolerance, democratic procedures, the role of religion and the Catholic Church actively shape the limits of what can be discussed in the Third Polish Republic and in what ways – these are the main factors that shape the spheres of doxa, heterodoxy and orthodoxy. The key moment in shaping modern societies, nation states and democratic regimes, which occurred in Europe in the 19th century, coincided in Poland with the country's loss of independence – towards the end of the 18th century, Poland became partitioned by three empires: Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary. The period of the Partitions witnessed struggles for the preservation of national identity in which Catholic faith and clergy played a crucial role, whereas the Enlightenment social and economic reforms as well as transformations of political regimes were in the hands of the authorities of the partitioning states, who were hostile to the power of Poles. Only in 1918 did the country manage to regain independence, which was officially confirmed in the Treaty of Versailles, signed the following year. A democratic-liberal system was introduced in the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939), yet authoritarian tendencies gained dominance as a result of the so-called May Coup of 1926. A subsequent partition of the country, this time between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (as a result of signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1939), and the ordeal of WWII was followed by the advent of the Polish People's Republic and allegiance to Moscow. Once again, a significant role was played by the Catholic Church, which – on the one hand – constantly maintained a close-knit relationship with the society, while on the other hand – functioned as a stronghold of resistance to the communist authorities. Therefore, throughout the centuries the understanding of socio-political reality in Poland was subject to the pressure of totalizing binary relations, e.g. partitioning empires – the nation, totalitarianism – freedom, state apparatus – the people, Others – Polish Catholicism; whereas, it was never underpinned by a democratic logic constituted by pluralistic social divisions and antagonisms. This is the main reason why the Enlightenment, liberałdemocratic traditions remain relatively weak in contemporary Poland.

In the Second Polish Republic, the standards of freedom of speech were shaped from the very beginning under pressure exerted on the young state by its hostile neighbours and strong centrifugal tendencies, while the state's political regime began to evolve rather quickly from parliamentary democracy towards authoritarianism, which actually matched the general tendencies in Europe at the time. The law stipulated a system of control of print, publishers were obliged to submit to the authorities a sample copy of the published material prior to release. If the authorities deemed it an infringement of law, in collaboration with the PPO, they could confiscate the material. Initially, censorship was imposed primarily on communist and separatist publications that posed a threat to the existence of the state, yet after the May Coup (1926), supervision of the press became significantly tightened, as it was manifested, amongst other symptoms, by the signing of the so-called "muzzle" decrees by the president in 1927 concerning press laws and the dissemination of false information. Eight years later, the provision ensuring freedom of the press disappeared from the Constitution of 23 April (which only mentioned freedom of speech). In 1938, laws concerning the protection of selected interests of the state and the name of Józef Piłsudski were passed, thus posing danger to freedom of speech. From today's perspective, such regulations appear rather exotic, yet it is noteworthy that the censorship interventions of the state administration were constantly subject to control of independent courts of justice.

It might be said that official preventive censorship existed in the Second Polish Republic in a classic form and embraced politically, religiously and morally inappropriate materials. Subject to special control were printed materials, including fiction literature, while the general conservative character of social relations did not remain without influence on what could be presented at exhibitions. At the same time, reception of art was heavily marked by an attachment to the concept of traditional, conservative, realistic art that bore relation to grand historic and national themes. Avant-garde movements were very weak, and those of Dadaist origins virtually did not exist at all; even the Modernist paradigm struggled to gain presence in visual arts. Art was not particularly favoured by the legislature and courts, it was not perceived as a separate sphere that enjoyed immunity, although artists obviously worked with a sense of such uniqueness. Importantly, the social, religious and political relations in that era, which were far from liberal, and the faintness of critical and contestation approaches in art were a relatively constant characteristic of Polish reality. Such a situation is confirmed by the post-war period – although the problematic of freedom of speech in visual arts in the Polish People's Republic is still awaiting appropriate scholarly examination, we may safely venture the claim that, in this regard, the years of communist enslavement not only – obviously – aggravated the situation, but also rendered it more complex.

Escaping the totalitarian yoke in 1989 was preceded by a unique social mobilization whose active participants, notably, also included visual artists. The imposition of martial law by the Communists on 13 December 1981 suppressed the pro-democratic tendencies that had been brewing for several years with the support of the Catholic Church (with the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity" as their social and political emanation). The authorities sent around ten thousand democratic opposition activists to internment camps, while a further four thousand people, mainly protest leaders and participants, were sentenced to imprisonment, sometimes for many years; more than fifty victims of beatings or shootings lost their lives. Thousands of individuals who engaged in the protests lost their jobs, "Solidarity" was deemed illegal, as were many student associations, artists and intellectuals. The remnants of the Opposition went underground. In April 1982, Warsaw visual artists stated in their address titled _Gl_ - _os który jest milczeniem_ [ _A Voice that Is Silence_ ]: "The border between US and THEM has been categorically set as never before" and appealed for a boycott of official domestic and international exhibitions. At the same time, they raised the postulate of organizing an art circulation in private apartments, beyond the control of the authorities. The protest gained the support of the majority of artists from across the country. Since only a handful of galleries were not boycotted and private apartments could not provide a serious alternative to the gallery circulation, the Church lent the artists a helping hand by making temples available for exhibition purposes. Owing to the boycott, the artists' milieu finally overcame its hitherto ambivalent stance towards the communist regime. Artists not only wanted to escape the control of the GUKPPiW, but they also detached themselves from the state-supported art circulation and thus ceased to lend credibility with their work to the acts of the authorities. The so-called second art circulation (in opposition to the first – official – circulation), which thus came into being, became part of a broader phenomenon of the so-called independent culture, which had been developing underground since the mid-1970s.

Repressions suffered under martial law did not alleviate social tensions, quite the opposite – the bipolar division of power was becoming more and more manifest: democratic opposition and the Church versus Communists. Such socio-political turning points do not favour contestation and critical thinking: the adversary is clearly defined, the antagonized parties have to work towards reinforcing their identity and position, and the conflict usually arises from questions of fundamental importance. Collaboration with the mighty Catholic Church undoubtedly strengthened the democratic opposition, yet – as we shall see – it came at a price that had to be also paid in the sphere of freedom of speech.

The protest staged at that time by the visual arts milieu had a political and ethical, but also an aesthetic character, which resulted both from the requirements of the given moment and from the legacy of the previous decade, dominated by the empty rhetoric of neo-avant-garde experimentation. During the first half of the 1980s, artists began to tap into the aesthetics of 19th century Realism, while the themes of religion, patriotism and independence – hitherto essentially absent – regained currency. That phenomenon was accompanied by a democratization of access to exhibition spaces: works by less talented artists and half-amateurs began to be displayed at churches. Since naïve, nearly festive-like in style and overtly didactic themes began to gain dominance, the quality of the paintings suffered, yet neither the clergy nor the majority of the faithful saw that as a problem. At the same time, works of art that did not meet the expectations of the church-affiliated organizers – particularly those that concerned political and moral appropriateness – were excluded from the exhibitions. Such situations sometimes resulted from interventions of clergymen, while on other occasions their agency was not necessary since a certain type of worldview was sufficiently internalized by the society to operate as an independent force that determined the horizon of freedom of speech. The oppressiveness of that situation came as a consequence of the then current socio-political and cultural context, including, for instance, widespread references to aesthetic and ethical values or numerous moments of patriotic-religious elation in which the category of "unseemliness" gained significance. Let us underline once again, however, that the conservative disposition of the society and its elites did not result from tensions occurring in that very period but had its roots in the profound historical conditions dating back to the era of Partitions or even the period that preceded them – the 1980s merely generated favourable conditions for their particularly powerful emanation.

The bipolar configuration of political and symbolic power also strongly determined the search for alternative avenues of practice – the third way, let us call it the third art circulation, remained in a dialectic entanglement with the two hegemonic centres of power. Such milieus as Łódż-based Strych, Kultura Zrzuty [Chip-In Culture] and Łódż Kaliska, as well as Totart, Luxus, Pomarańczowa Alternatywa [Orange Alternative] consciously played a game with the dominant aesthetics, conventions and functions of the art world. They were inclined to contest the socio-political status quo, escape from exhibition spaces authorized by the two power centres, practice art without art, focus on the event and not the material artefact, Dadaist absurdity and provocations against morality. It was in 1982 that a member of Łódż Kaliska, Adam Rzepecki, created the famous image of Our Lady of Częstochowa with a moustache, featured in March the following year on the cover of the first issue of _Tango_ underground magazine, published by artists from the Strych milieu in Łódż. The cover caused consternation in the underground circles of "Solidarity", yet the work provoked a real artistic scandal – which engaged the Polish authorities already after the fall of communism – nearly twenty years later during the exhibition _Irreligion_ in Brussels (see p. 278). It is noteworthy that despite certain similarities, the third circulation represented a different type of contestation and criticism from the Western art affiliated with socio-political emancipatory movements originating from the 1960s. The problems of authority and freedom were simply configured differently in the Polish People's Republic. For obvious reasons it was difficult to talk at that time about the criticism of market mechanisms and large-scale capital machinations or racial discrimination, while reflection on Feminism, sexual minorities, gender and ecology was virtually non-existent. At the same time, the third circulation did not seem to operate towards analysis or revision of negatively assessed phenomena – it maintained an anarchistic, rather than an analyticałconstructive, profile. Either way, both the second and the third circulation protested in the name of freedom, yet understood it in different ways – from today's perspective the differences between the two circles appear particularly significant. All the differences notwithstanding, it is the niche of the third circulation that I would recognize as a representative of the understanding of freedom that was important for post-Enlightenment Western liberal democracies: personal freedom expressed by an ongoing struggle with existing life patterns, their critical analysis, transgression, change. What emerges as important from this perspective is not only the abolition of institutional censorship, but also the question about the kind of values, vision of freedom, understanding of the individual and group subject, and relations of power that were inherited from the PRL by the Third Polish Republic, determining at the same time the frames of orthodoxy of discourse. Did the contestatory critical values of the third circulation acquire conditions for development and a proper place in the cultural exchange system after 1989 or, quite the reverse, were they recognized as alien – as an intruder that needs to be expelled? This question merits consideration also at the level of legislation and application of the law. We need to emphasize that the law appears here not as a sovereign regulator of social relations, but rather as their product which has a secondary reinforcing impact on them. Therefore – also in the legal sphere – it is not the watershed year of 1989 or the gradual demise of institutional censorship (formally confirmed on 6 June the following year) that matter, but rather the kind of values and content that really filled the newly implemented system of liberal democracy with human rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, as well as detailed political regime solutions. In a nutshell, the advent of democracy did not bring the discussion about freedom to a conclusion, but opened it up, while art originating from the contestation tendencies of the third circulation often found itself at the heart of conflicts.

A stronger emphasis should be placed in this context on the role of the Catholic Church. Beyond doubt, that institution was a stronghold of anti-communist resistance in the PRL, but it held liberty-oriented aspirations only with regard to the struggle with the totalitarian system. Once set in a different context, i.e. the standards of freedom of speech characteristic of liberal democracy, such a freedom-oriented vision changes radically. The conflict that began to emerge in the 1980s between the Church and one part of the artistic milieu had already had its history and it also heralded the events after 1989 at the same time. Censoring artworks, for instance paintings by the Gruppa (see footnote 245), was underpinned primarily by the logic of the exhibition site (temple interiors, requirements of liturgical laws) and, subsequently, by the solemnly religious and patriotic profile of those exhibitions as well as the specific atmosphere of the 1980s. A much more complicated matter to be judged pertains to the activities of the Church aimed at limiting the freedom of artistic expression in the previous decades. What raises particular doubts are the Episcopate's attempts to directly tap into the operations of the PPO, the GUKPPiW and other state administration bodies to censor works, sometimes of outstanding quality, created in the fields of cinematography, theatre and literature.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Church reacted sharply to Jerzy Kawalerowicz's film _Matka Joanna od Aniol_ - _ów_ [ _Mother Joan of the Angels_ ]. In a letter of 13 February 1961 to the Minister of Culture and Art, Tadeusz Galiński, Bishop Zygmunt Choromański wrote on behalf of the Episcopate, amongst other remarks, that Kawalerowicz's work was "an aggressive and provocative anti-religious propaganda", "it ridicules religious practices, ceremonies and church prayers", "aims to disparage monastery life and priesthood" and, to make matters worse, the entire message is conveyed in an attractive artistic form. As the bishop remarks further:

... Film Censorship should not have approved such a film for cinemas, since Art 5 of the Decree as of 5 August 1949 concerning the protection of the freedom of conscience and confession... stipulates a punishment of up to five years of imprisonment for offending religious feelings, and Art 7 §1 stipulates the same punishment for publicly insulting, ridiculing or humiliating groups of people due to their religious affiliation. On behalf of the Episcopate and the Catholic public opinion I submit this ceremonial protest to the Prime Minister and ask for the film to be withdrawn from cinemas.

The letter was sent to the PPO, the GUKPPiW and the Department of Propaganda of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), amongst other addressees. In turn, in a letter of 12 April 1962 to the Minister of Culture, Tadeusz Galiński, Bishop Choromański protested against the theatre play _The History of the Glorious Resurrection of the Lord_ ( _Historyja o chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim_ ) – which he found blasphemous – inspired by a 16th century text by Mikołaj of Wilkowiecko and staged by Kazimierz Dejmek at the National Theatre in Warsaw. The bishop concluded his letter with an appeal to the minister to instruct above all the GUKPPiW that sacrilege cannot be committed with impunity. The letter was sent to the Public Prosecutor General, amongst other addressees. Fortunately, the cabinet of the then First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (KC PZPR), Władysław Gomułka ignored all the complaints. Thus, since the 1960s we have witnessed a paradoxical situation – confronted with very brutal persecutions by the authorities of the PRL, the Church perceived the art which it did not accept as an element of ideological warfare waged by the Communists, and yet it did not hesitate to demand from the communist authorities that they should deploy their extensive apparatus of violence to repress such "inappropriate" art.

The following decade is essentially a separate "mini-epoch", a period when persecution of the Church became somewhat relaxed by the "open-minded and modern" Edward Gierek, who replaced "backward" Gomułka as the First Secretary of KC PZPR after students' protests in 1968 and the massacre of workers in Gdańsk in December 1970 (see p184 n277). The Church maintained an intransigently critical position towards artistic transgressions, including – interestingly enough – also those of a conventionałformal character, for instance pastiches of classic national literary works, and recognized the communist state as an ally in the struggle to prevent cultural and moral transformations. Beyond doubt, the interests of the two otherwise strongly antagonized ideological centres converged in the attitude to corporeality, sex and homosexuality (it is not accidental that "pornography" is a key word in the Episcopate's correspondence with the authorities).

On 7 January 1976, the Secretary of the Episcopate, Bishop Bronisław Dąbrowski noted:

Above all, I submitted to Minister Kąkol [then head of the The Office of Confessional Affairs (USW) – J.D.] a protest against blasphemous publications and spectacles little short of pornography. I offered the examples of Janusz Głowacki's _Raport Piłata_ (Pilate's Report) and _Apocalypsis_ by Grotowski and Różewicz's _White Marriage_. The Minister... believes that they pose threat to the moral health of the Nation. Grotowski's spectacle glorifies homosexuality. Różewicz's play ... is abominable and rotten. There have been interventions at the Ministry of Culture and Art, but the Ministry's patrons, infected by Western tastes, refuse to accept the reservations. ... You have many possibilities to strongly react against those abuses, help us [the Minister continued] in taming avant-gardists with Western inclinations.

One day later, after a conversation with the Secretary of the KC PZPR Stanisław Kania, Bishop Dąbrowski reported: "... I lodged a complaint concerning the operations of censorship, TV and theatres with regard to the dissemination of pornography ( _White Marriage_ , _Apocalypsis cum figuris_ and Głowacki's blasphemies in _Piłata_ ).... In response to pornography and blasphemies [Kania] stated: React sharply to blasphemies in texts and from the pulpit. Lash mercilessly everything pornographic and pansexual. You have the pulpit at your disposal. Address strong messages to those responsible for this state of affairs in the government, we shall be your allies....". Bearing testimony to the importance of the problem for the Church is the fact that Dąbrowski returned to the matter once again in his conversation with Kania on 23 June 1976.

As we can see, the sphere of sexuality remained in the PRL under particularly strong pressure resulting from a linkage of two types of authority – one was dispersed and stemmed from religious customs and orders sustained for centuries by the mighty Catholic Church; whereas, the other adopted the form of severe, official bans imposed by prudish state authorities. For the latter, liberalization of the sphere of sexuality would draw a parallel between the processes occurring since the 1960s in the "rotten" capitalist West, but – above all – that sphere was always (and still is) associated with pleasure and freedom – notions incompatible with the Marxist and Leninist doctrine. The issues of sexuality were repressed so profoundly to the private sphere that they surfaced with difficulty even in official medical discourse (from abortion to contraception to regular _ars amandi_ ), which posed yet another obstacle to changes in the sphere of morality.

The PRL authorities had an ambivalent attitude to protests lodged by the Episcopate. On the one hand, the Communists officially supported the censorship postulates of the bishops; while on the other hand – the necessity of repeated interventions bears testimony to the fact that they were inclined to turn a blind eye to artistic "pornography", so uncomfortable for the Church. In a conversation with Władysław Kania on 7 February 1977, Bishop Dąbrowski emphasized: "So many times have I pointed out pornography and offence to religious feelings in film, theatre, television and the 'Czytelnik' publishing house. We have written to Mr. Tejchma in relation to Terlecki's play _Odpocznij po biegu_ (Rest after the Race) but so far have received no answer". Kania replied: "Please, do not let yourself become discouraged. Write and condemn in sermons, although not the authorities, but the writers, the directors. The party cannot cope with them [it could have coped, of course, if it had deemed it necessary – J.D.], they succumb to Western fashion and receive support from Western artists' circles. We definitely stand against ... Western fashion, in which the artist demonstrates their independence through nudity and offending others".

It is noteworthy that the hitherto studied archival documents do not include any that would in any way confirm the Church's interest in visual arts. The hierarchs either did not notice or ignored morally controversial art practices. As it seems, the communist censorship also did not manifest a great interest in visual arts – yet, this issue requires detailed research. The current state of knowledge indicates that – firstly and as already mentioned – the visual arts milieus rather refrained from addressing political issues until the 1980s, and if exhibitions were ever censored, the grounds were predominantly moral (yet, interestingly, the neo-avant-garde artist Grzegorz Kowalski recalls that when censors intervened in exhibitions regarding "the issues of male genitalia", they justified themselves by evoking good relations with the Church). Secondly, given the limited social impact of this area of creative work, censors demonstrated a lesser interest. Even during the tense situation in the 1980s and the open revolt of the visual arts milieu, the documents of the government and the Security Service (SB) mention little about church-affiliated exhibitions. Of course, Communists took note of the manifestations of visual artists, but were much more interested in other areas of culture, primarily theatre, literature and film. The latter was subject to particularly strict supervision in the people's democracies – according to the famous quote attributed to Lenin: "of all the arts the most important for us is the cinema". What proved more important than exhibitions in the sphere of visual arts in the 1980s were seasonal decorations that accompanied major Church holidays, particularly Christmas nativity scenes and depictions of Easter tombs of Christ – boasting a centuries old tradition in Poland – often created by professional artists. It seems that the reasons where quite prosaic: exhibitions attracted the interest of a limited audience; whereas, religious holiday celebrations gathered thousands of faithful with a very emotional and engaged attitude in front of tombs of Christ and nativity scenes (which usually featured anti-communist undertones). The combination of the importance of religious holidays, whose significance in Polish tradition was (and still is) indisputable, with a simple visual message concerning politics caused much greater concern for the authorities than exhibitions of politically engaged paintings.

The above described events additionally problematize both the attitude of Communists to experimentation in art and the liberty-oriented image of the Church. It turns out that despite their prudishness, the PRL authorities tended to accept avant-garde reinterpretations of the canon and indecent excesses, far-removed from socialist ideals. Such kind of creative work offered various benefits: it provided something of a safety valve that allowed them to alleviate the frustration of the social elites; it lent the regime a modern liberal profile and, at the same time, it nagged the Church. Of course, if the authorities wished to do so, they could also severely punish rebellious artists, as it is exemplified, for instance, by the fate of Janusz Szpotański, who was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in 1968 for the opera _Cisi i gęgacze, czyli bal u prezydenta_ [ _The Quiet Ones and Gagglers, or the President's Ball_ ], which offered a satirical take on the conflict between the revisionist opposition and Gomułka's political regime. In turn, the clergy did not recognize artistic transgressions as a symptom of the evolution of art, but as one of the components of the anti-Church policy of the state and a testimony to the decline in morals in the society. From today's perspective, it is possible to distinguish a certain continuity in the operations of the Catholic Church in the sphere of artistic freedom – regardless of the political situation, it consistently strives to keep a tight rein of Catholic morality and dogmas on the society. Towards this end, the Episcopate, which in fact officially condemned censorship, did not hesitate to make a "pact with the devil" and collaborate with institutions (GUKPPiW, the Public Prosecutor General, the Civic Militia) that repressed its own activity and persecuted the Opposition on a daily basis. Is it possible to imagine an opposite situation in which the Church supports transgression in art, recognizing it as an ally in destabilizing the communist authority? It seems quite unlikely. Insofar as the Church may have wanted to overthrow totalitarian political mechanisms, such intentions did not extend to destabilizing traditional social relations. The moral conservatism of Communists played into the hands of the Church. Notwithstanding the fundamental principles (salvation of the soul), we need to remember that the authority system at the time could skillfully recuperate symptoms of artistic revolt, which ultimately consolidated the dominant social relations instead of undermining them.

A different matter concerned the formałlegal relations between the state and the Church. _Gaudium et spes_ – the most important document of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) – did not exclude the influence of the Church on state legislation, and demanding – within its limits – for instance, repressive or even preventive censorship of content recognized as contrary to the teachings of the Church. At the same time, in the PRL, in order to protect its interests against attacks by Communists, the Episcopate (before and after the council) evoked the principle of separation of the state and the Church expressed in Art 70(2) of the Constitution of 1952. In turn, the Primate of Poland, Stefan Wyszyński, underscored the significance of the principle of the worldview neutrality of the state, yet framing it in a unilateral way:

By its essence, the state is neutral in terms of a worldview. It is an ever more common notion in today's scholarly studies that the contemporary state should not grant any privileges to any philosophical system, ideology and artistic or cultural tendency [note Wyszyński's significant omission of religious systems – J.D.] ...

Evoking the state's separation or neutrality in terms of a worldview was quite useful for the Church in the PRL, since it helped to defend itself against the _cuius regio eius religio_ principle. As we shall see, these principles became inconvenient in the conditions of a democratic state of law, in which the Church – with its basic interests secured – could venture to exert a more active and direct influence on the country. It was already in April 1990 that Bishop Alojzy Orszulik opposed the provision concerning the separation of the Church and the state because of his belief that "the principle serves the implementation of the Marxist doctrine of state's domination over the Church". That was the reason why in the 1990s, during the works on the Constitution of the liberated Poland, the provision concerning the separation of the Church and the state, and potentially concerning the worldview neutrality of the state, was opposed by the Church, and particularly by the political parties who found their political underpinning in the Church. The discussion on the preamble and detailed provisions offered proof of the will to confirm the impact of Catholicism on all key aspects of social life, leaving essentially no religiously indifferent areas.

Given the complicated character of historic processes and social phenomena, we need to emphasize that the year 1989 can be recognized as merely a symbolic breakthrough in the field of the freedom of art or generally understood freedom of expression. It was only the conditions of modern democracy that fully revealed and subjected to debate the factors which for generations had more or less formally delineated the borders of freedom of speech. The Polish vision of freedom was shaped along the categories of struggle for the state's independence and the survival of the nation, and not the emancipation of the individual. In turn, what seemed more important in the reflection on the individual were the categories of honour considered in the spirit of the already mentioned Boziewicz's Code, rather than of the critical work of the mind and conflict with existing life patterns. If we add to that the strong position of the Catholic Church, drawing a parallel between religious and national motifs, restrictive state legislation, low legal awareness of the society, moral and artistic conservatism of the society and the introduction of neoliberal rules of the game to the sphere of culture – only then can we realize the challenges in the field of artistic freedom of art faced by the society and the state in 1989.

Dissolution of the GUKPPiW

On 22 July 1983, the government revoked martial law; on 11 September 1986, amnesty was announced for political prisoners, and the following year witnessed the third pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to Poland, which further consolidated the authority of the Church and the "Solidarity" leader, Lech Wałęsa. At the same time, the centrally planned economy was plunging deeper into crisis. The spring of 1988 saw the outbreak of social protests on a national scale. They were quashed, but anti-communist manifestations were held again in the summer. Despite repressions, the Communists were gradually losing control of the situation in the country that had begun as early as 1980. Ultimately, left with no leeway (with _perestroika_ announced in the USSR by Gorbachev, they could no longer reliably count on an intervention of the Soviet army), the authorities put forward the initiative to collaborate with the Opposition. As a result, 8 February 1989 marked the inauguration of the Round Table talks, whose participants included representatives of the authorities, the democratic opposition and the Church. Nearly two months of proceedings led to reaching an agreement concerning political, social and economic reforms. On 4 June 1989, the first partly democratic parliamentary elections in the Soviet Bloc were held in Poland (65% of seats in the Sejm were reserved for Communists, while the rest was subject to free election; election to the Senate was entirely democratic), which resulted in a landslide victory of the anti-communist opposition. On 12 September, Tadeusz Mazowiecki – long-term opposition activist and collaborator of Lech Wałęsa – formed his government, which embraced all parliamentary forces. The impossible became a reality: the totalitarian system collapsed without a single gunshot.

The Round Table talks did not result in a decision to abolish censorship completely – it was only agreed that the "liberal" version of the law concerning control of publications and public performances would be restored, previously passed on 31 July 1981, during the heroic period of "Solidarity". Although the journalistic milieu urged those in power to completely abolish censorship, politicians seemed to adopt a surprisingly conservative approach to the problem. It is noteworthy that in January 1990, i.e. more than half a year after the change of authorities, the government was deliberating only the initial proposals concerning the abolition of censorship and the reform of the press law. To make matters worse, the content of the draft changes in the law, proposed by the Undersecretary of State in the Office of the Council of Ministers, Jerzy Ciemniewski, was scandalous and could perhaps only be recognized as an example of how the communist period distorted the social vision of a correctly functioning social communication system. One of the oddities of Ciemniewski's draft was that it required the publisher to submit two initial printed copies of a magazine to the PPO, which could withhold dissemination and bring a case to justice within 12 hours. Ciemniewski justified that solution with the necessity to "safeguard the state from crimes committed by the press". The press law from the period of the Partitions and from before the war was evoked for that matter, so the offered solutions originated from authoritarian systems of power. In fact, such a proposal sanctioned preventive censorship, the only difference being that instead of the dissolved GUKPPiW, the press was to be overseen by the PPO (one of the most discredited institutions of the PRL), which would no longer be controlled by the party, but would nevertheless remain in a sphere delineated by laws originating from a totalitarian state. Fortunately, the government withdrew from that proposal and further works concerning a liberal draft authored by MP Barbara Labuda. Yet, Ciemniewski's justification of the abandonment of the government draft could once again raise eyebrows: "We eventually recognized that the establishment of an entire apparatus of public prosecutor's services would require too much organizational work... Yet, the punishment procedure should therefore be all the more severe ...". Thus, it was not the absurdity of the proposed solutions, but potential technical and organizational problems that were said to undermine the draft. What is more, the adopted direction towards liberal solutions was conditioned by the introduction of severe sanctions for potential journalistic abuses targeted at the state, and therefore essentially at the government.

Prior to the complete abolition of censorship by virtue of the Act of 11 April 1990 (which came into force on 6 June), there was also a procedural and jurisdictional confusion as to which offices were entitled to decide about liberating specific areas of access to information. What is more – whether out of habit or legislative imperative of implementing still valid provisions – censors continued to make attempts at attacks, for instance they threatened the editorial board and printers of _Tygodnik Powszechny_ with administrative-penal consequences for failing to submit consecutive issues of the magazine for preliminary control (after the intervention of the GUKPPiW, the editorial board began to submit the issues, but only after dissemination). However, those censorship convulsions could not prevent the system of supervision from eroding, a process that had essentially been snowballing since the Round Table talks by the force of accomplished facts: books, magazines, flyers, posters were freely printed and disseminated in spite of the fact that the law as of 31 July 1981 concerning the control of publications and public performances was still in force. Later, an intensified process of shaking off communist censorship led to the dissolution of even those institutions in charge of supervising disseminated materials that were perfectly acceptable in democratic states, for instance those operating in the field of film classification. Proceeding concurrently was the "decommunization" of the symbolic space: monuments were removed or destroyed (also in a guerrilla fashion), street names were changed, disputes erupted as to the new coat of arms of Poland and the fate of the monumental Palace of Culture and Science, erected by Stalin in Warsaw.

Polish society and its elites accepted without much reflection that the dissolution of institutional censorship was not only a necessary, but also a sufficient condition for ensuring the free circulation of ideas. Obviously, at the juridical and symbolic level, the change was manifest – nobody was required any longer to submit content to formal state-operated control prior to dissemination, and yet: was there indeed a breakthrough? In order to answer this question, not only do we need to consider the obvious – i.e. the changes that occurred – but also approach the problem in a negative manner (according to Foucault's _renversement_ ) and examine what was left. I have already written about the long-term (Braudel's _longue durée_ ) dimension of dispersed relations of power which shaped the social vision of the world for decades or even centuries. Of equal importance in our context is the permanence of certain mechanisms shaping the limits of freedom of speech. In other words, we may ask: are there any points of convergence between the discursive reality in which the GUKPPiW existed and the discursive reality without that body.

The quite widespread belief in a clash in the PRL between the society, primarily journalists, scientists, artists, writers, and officials from the censorship headquarters on Warsaw's Mysia St. – the latter busy removing countless fragments of works and texts by the former deemed inappropriate by the authorities – is a myth. The communist censorship did not consist in one-off preventive control of the circulation of ideas. It was rather a complex and continuous system of relations that shaped desired social behaviour. The social communication system was enmeshed in a network of dependencies in which all interested parties bore responsibility for the final shape of the disseminated content and, at the same time, everybody kept an eye on everybody else – from the heads of the PZPR, dependent on Moscow, to authors, producers, printers, colporteurs and sellers, to the GUKPPiW and its regional branches. The leaders of the PZPR were in charge of the consistency of the delivered message and the party's secretaries were supposed to be addressed by censors should they lack certainty as how to act. Potential criticism of the system was acceptable as long as it was constructive and responsible – as the buzzwords went – which meant that it resulted from care for the PRL and not condemnation of it. That limited permissiveness was dictated by the then current political needs, sometimes arising from social and political tensions in the country. All information published by the press was subject to a particular "truth clause" – one could exercise freedom of speech as long as it served the truthful coverage of phenomena guided by – NOTABLY – the interests of the society and the socialist state, while the provided information was supposed to reinforce the constitutional political regime of the PRL. Provisions of the press law stipulated criminal liability for releasing press publications without authorization, failing to register copying devices, shirking the obligation to subject publications to control or failure to observe a ban on dissemination. The censors who preventively controlled the circulation of ideas where themselves controlled under the repressive system, which meant that the published materials that they had accepted were checked on an ongoing basis within secondary censorship. They were later evaluated with regard to the so-called oversights, which could bear on their professional position and, in extreme cases, expose them to criminal liability. At the same time, the term "censorship" was diligently concealed. The term was not referred to in the name of the GUKPPiW, and the organization's officials were called "counsellors", a word devoid of meaning in the mind of an average citizen. Part of the censorship competences were delegated to other institutions, bearing absolutely no connotations with censorship, such as the Board of Customs, the Main Board of Publications, and the Main Council of Television Film Programmes.

The working system of the GUKPPiW counsellors was diligently planned and discreet. Using sample printed pages with the controlled content, they indicated the questionable words, phrases or sentences in square brackets, but usually refrained from suggesting an appropriate form, leaving the corrections to be made by the author of the original. The abbreviation "ing." (standing for "intervention" in Polish) was inscribed in the upper corner of the page, and a special mark was added at the height of the questionable line. Thus marked, the page was sent to the editorial board or publisher, which made the corrections and sent it back to the GUKPPiW for the so-called secondary control. It was only after that latter control that an official seal with a handwritten personal identification of a counsellor e.g. M 15 (listed later in the imprint) and the annotation "bz" (Polish abbreviation of "without modifications") in the right upper corner was added to the page. According to recommendations, the interventions were supposed to be as limited and as rare as possible, but effectively guide the sense of the texts in a desired direction, and their number had been indeed on the decrease since the 1960s. The remorseful censor Tomasz Strzyżewski underlines that during his 19 months of work for the Cracow branch of the GUKPPiW he made 8-10 interventions, however they consisted in removing fragments that breached economic or military secrecy. A similar phenomenon can also be noticed in the field of visual arts, although no research has been conducted so far. Preserved in the archive of the Bunkier Sztuki Gallery in Cracow, mail correspondence of the institution's management with the local branch of the GUKPPiW (between 1977 and 1990) concerning authorizations of organized exhibitions, printed invitations and posters as well as catalogue texts does not bear any traces of censors' interventions, let alone questioning of an entire text or exhibition idea. Such a situation resulted from a strategy adopted in the communist system of controlling the circulation of ideas, which was based on so-called delegating censorship competences. In other words, the goal was for counsellors to receive materials that did not require corrections. That was why counsellors sought to collaborate with editorial boards and publishers and communicate with relevant individuals prior to publication about what was allowed and what was not. Yet, importantly, the activity of counsellors was the final, but not necessarily the most important element of the censorship mechanism. The stick was one method, while another one was the carrot – interesting, prestigious and lucrative positions, access to sources of funding and permissions to pursue a desired activity were offered to those who demonstrated potential of collaboration with the authorities. As I have already mentioned, Polish art historians essentially agree that the regime had bought the favours of the visual arts milieu, which until the 1980s maintained a passive attitude to the communist authorities. Symposia, plein-airs, studio allocations, academic positions, special shops with artistic materials, the possibility to exhibit or even sell works abroad sufficed to pacify the Polish art world. Since the political "thaw" and the rejection of the Socialist Realist doctrine (1956), the authorities allowed visual artists to engage in formal experimentation as long as they did not address political issues whatsoever. Artists could obviously justify to themselves that their choice of Modernist formal autonomy was a rebellious stance – negation of the ideologized reality, yet that "rebellion" was in fact co-opted by Communists to consolidate and lend credibility to the regime.

To sum up, institutional censorship merely ensured the coordination of uniform content delivered by self-censoring cultural producers – representatives of the media, writers, scholars, artists. The mythical office on Mysia St. was only the tip of the iceberg of the complex system that supervised the discursive sphere. We may say that the most important characteristic of communist censorship was the principle: "good censorship is invisible censorship" (or, more bluntly put, "censorship which is no longer necessary"). This referred not only to hiding institutional control away from the society, but above all to delegating censorship powers, which resulted in – as Michel Foucault would have it – _subject_ ion ( _assujettissement_ ) of cultural producers. The authorities implemented that principle by building collaborations with them, and such collaborations were pursued by means of a prominent system of awards, concealed in the background of the system of repressions and control of effects, the latter functioning merely as the final step. The goal was to prevent a prohibition from gaining a social presence, since such a presence – as Judith Butler proves – leads to a proliferation of the banned content and brings it to social awareness. The society was therefore fed with manipulated materials, selective truth, in order to shape its consciousness in a desired way. As a result, some aspects of life became unimaginable, unthinkable, and therefore could never turn into an object or reflection or desire. Also, the conformism of cultural producers was supposed to eventually evolve in the direction of complete internalization of the desired relations of power – they were also supposed to be embraced by the doxa of the regime.

Understanding those rather not obvious mechanisms actualizes the notion of "censorship" in the context of less formalized mechanisms of shaping the discursive sphere under liberal democratic systems, since the principle of "good censorship is invisible censorship / censorship which is no longer necessary" plays an equally important role in such systems. Despite the formal guarantee of freedom of expression and formal prohibition of preventive institutional censorship, democratic states witness an ongoing struggle for symbolic domination, and thus also for exclusion of various ideologies, worldviews and levels of knowledge from the discursive sphere. Such a situation obviously also characterizes Poland after 1989, a fact that will often become evident on the pages of this book. Already the sheer liberal rhetoric of the abolition of censorship, dominant in the Third Polish Republic, or potentially shifting censorship exclusively to the sphere of penal proscriptions of repressive character, lends support to this claim. For it veils the complex, informal and preventive, sometimes even pre-preventive mechanisms that form the discursive sphere, and the lulling message that it sends seems convincing for the Polish society and its elites. Insofar as the institution of final control of the discursive sphere was abolished, the network of stimuli – "sanctions" and "awards" of various origins, but mostly of an economic character, continues to exert an ongoing impact on what we think, create, read, watch. We may argue that the majority of problematic phenomena are still present, while it is only their intensity and the accompanying rhetoric that has changed under the conditions of parliamentary democracy, and the shifts in the spheres of doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy are perhaps more frequent. Indeed, such reconfigurations gained intensity after 1989, which is exemplified by the emergence and activation of emancipatory feminist and gay movements – phenomena that had lain dormant in the PRL. Poland under communism was bypassed by processes that left a strong mark on democratic societies: the moral revolution of the 1960s, development of Postmodernist theories, ideologies of the New Left, social emancipatory and ecological movements, and accelerated secularization. In Western art, the social and political changes entailed the development of artistic tendencies oriented to subjectification of particular identities, affirmation of diversity, criticism of the relations of power dominant in the society, and social dialogue. In liberated Poland, given the natural erosion of the hegemonic division according to two grand narratives – the communist state versus the patriotic-independence movement – individuals began to follow a similar path, seeking a place for themselves and trying to shape it according to their own convictions, needs and desires. Artists also attempted to shake off the atmosphere of the 1980s, and many of them even began to contest the aspects of life and art that were commonly recognized as natural, neutral, undisputed and obvious. Such activities inevitably provoked a conflict with the part of the society that identified itself with the dominant patriotic-Catholic narrative, sanctified by the victory over communism. It was additionally linked with the understanding of art based either on the idea of Modernist autonomy or on the mythology of the engaged but conservative artistic output of the "second circulation" in the 1980s.

The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the gathered instances of censoring or attempts at censoring art in Poland after 1989 provides the basis for the following periodization of the phenomenon in question:

– 1989–1992 – transition period
– 1993–1998 – formative period
– 1999–2002 – qualitative escalation period (heroic)
– 2003–2007 – quantitative escalation period
– 2007–2010 – stabilization period.

**3.2 Transition Period (1989–1992)**

Characteristics

Sylwester Ambroziak was an outstanding student of the Academy of Fine Arts (ASP) in Warsaw who received several academy awards. For this reason, he was granted the possibility to prominently display his diploma work _Kuszenie św. Antoniego_ [ _Temptation of St. Anthony_ ] in the entrance hall of the Faculty of Sculpture of the ASP. Ambroziak sculpted a demon woman unnaturally bent backwards (in a bridge posture) and clutching the calves of the standing figure of St. Anthony with her hands. The saint is leaning backwards as if he was losing balance or trying to break free from the woman's hands. At the same time, the tongue of the temptress is touching his long penis. St. Anthony's left-hand rests on his eyes, while his straightened right hand is holding a cross which the saint is using to separate himself from the woman bent in front of him. Manifesting Ambroziak's characteristic style, the bodies of the figures display heavily distorted proportions and their anatomies are simplified. The defence of the diploma work was held on 2 June 1989, almost on the eve of the first partly free parliamentary elections – it was untypically short and featured a stormy debate about the work in question: scandal, offence to religious feelings, pornography and obscenity were all mentioned. The diploma committee (Grzegorz Kowalski, Stanisław Kulon – both defended the sculpture, Stanisław Słonina, Gustaw Zemła, Antoni Pastwa, Jan Kucz, Tadeusz L-odziana and Adam Myjak) eventually gave the sculpture the lowest passing grade and ordered that it be moved to the former gym hall, which functioned temporarily as a drawing studio. Ambroziak did not agree to the change of location, but a special team quickly moved the sculpture from the entrance hall to a makeshift storage space and covered it with newspapers. The artist responded by withdrawing the work from the exhibition.

Sylwester Ambroziak, _Temptation of St. Anthony_ [ _Kuszenie św. Antoniego_ ], 1989, painted wood, fur, height 250 cm

Ambroziak's case may be recognized as a symbolic moment in which official censorship was superseded by informal relations of power whose roots lay in the religious-political entanglements of the 1980s. In other words, the liberty-oriented standards of the so-called independent culture, formed in the heroic period of "Solidarity" under the auspices of the Catholic Church, were seamlessly passed on to a liberated Poland, where they began to position themselves as the dominant discourse. The historic roots of the phenomenon were underscored by the supervisor of Ambroziak's diploma, Prof. Grzegorz Kowalski. He recalls that the first time he had faced such pressure was in 1981 during the competition for the monument in honour of the Gdańsk Shipyard workers who perished in 1970. The design submitted by his team was accepted, but never materialized since it did not incorporate the motif of the cross. The monument construction committee disregarded the fact that the symbol was absolutely insignificant in the documentary photograph that served as the inspiration for the design.

Yet, up until 1993, situations in which attempts were made to limit the freedom of artistic expression were rare. In the spring of 1990, the Gdańsk-based publishing house Phantom Press International sought to acquire copyright to Salman Rushdie's _The Satanic Verses_. The planned signing of the contract in Warsaw was cancelled by a person who pretended to be the head of Phantom Press. Earlier, one of the state publishers had already abandoned the plan to release the book. One after another, three translators had refused to translate the book for Phantom Press, while the one who accepted the commission did so under the condition of anonymity. In July 1991, the publisher resigned from printing the book due to threats issued by Islamic fundamentalists and the police's refusal to ensure protection of employees of the publishing house. In 1992, the exhibition _Ars Erotica_ curated by Elżbieta Dzikowska and Wiesława Wierzchowska at the Archaeological Museum in Warsaw fell through. After half a year of curatorial work, the museum director Jan Jaskanis unexpectedly cancelled the project during a meeting with the press. According to journalists, the same day brought the news that a member of the Christian National Union (ZChN) was to become the future Minister of Culture, a fact that led to the museum director panicking. Journalist Janina Paradowska recalled: "A scared official arrived. If he had said it straight that he was afraid of losing his job, everybody would have understood. But he delivered a speech I'd thought I'd never hear again in my life, like during a KC assembly. I'd rather he'd said: someone didn't allow me to do _such an_ exhibition". The context of the Archaeological Museum was supposed to provide an alibi for the "controversial" theme and further distinguish it from pornographic obscenity – the texts in the exhibition catalogue also reiterated that intention. The exhibition eventually opened on 28 January 1994 at the National Museum in Warsaw (MNW). The organizers recall that shortly before the opening, the museum received a telegram from one of the art history professors from the University of Warsaw with a demand "not to open such a scandalous exhibition", and during the show a woman who pretended to be a historic artefact conservator removed Wiktor Gutt's photographic tableau _Krzyż duszy_ , 1986 [ _Cross of the Soul_ ], which comprised photographs of naked women, and destroyed it. The Museum commissioned a replica of the work from the artist and purchased it for its collection.

Other examples of repressions or attempts at blocking artistic statements pertained to rock music and visual culture. Yet, they merit a mention as they anticipated analogous events in the sphere of visual arts.

In August 1992, rockman Kazik Staszewski performed the song _Wal_ - _ęsa oddaj moje 100 milionów_ [ _Wal_ - _ęsa Give Me Back My 100 Million_ ] at the festival in Sopot without prior agreement with the concert hosts and producers from the state television (only the heads of the festival were aware of the repertoire). "It was the only chance to sing that song on television" – said the performer, who also revealed that the Polish Television (TVP) had already recorded it twice, but "some moron censored it" and it had never been broadcast on a national scale. Staszewski also sang a piece whose title _Jeszcze Polska_ [ _Poland Is Not Yet Lost_ ] bore reference to the lyrics of the Polish anthem, while the chorus featured the line that translated into: "What have you done to this land, motherfuckers?". According to the singer, the song was censored by all radio stations. Called forth, President Lech _Wal_ - _ęsa_ told the press that he had no intention to take the matter to court. Yet, rumours behind the festival scenes had it that the festival organizer Andrzej Kowalik was summoned to a meeting with the president on the day after the concert. Paradoxically enough, it was _Wal_ - _ęsa_ – an icon of the struggle for freedom and democracy – who became the main threat to those ideas after becoming president. In December the same year, Staszewski was also interrogated by the PPO concerning the abuse of national symbols. The notification was filed by the ZChN Senator Jan Szafraniec (a future fierce fighter for morality in the media and art, see p. 219) in relation to the song _Jeszcze Polska_ aired in October by Polish Radio Three. The PPO discontinued the case.

What gained broad attention was also the scandal around the song _ZCHN zbliża się_ [ _ZCHN Is Coming_ ] by the band Piersi, based on the melody of the popular religious song _Pan Jezus już się zbliża_ [ _Jesus Is Coming_ ]. In the lyrics of the former song, the leader of the band Paweł Kukiz described an annual pastoral visit of a priest who empties two bottles of vodka and later smashes his Toyota against a fence, while parishioners sigh that "they'll have to give to the collection plate again". The case attracted the involvement of the Episcopate and ZChN, whose politicians demanded that the production of the record be halted and the artists be charged with the offence of insulting religious feelings. After the intervention of one of the deputies of the Democratic Union (UD), the head of the Radio Committee Janusz Zaorski sacked the journalist responsible for broadcasting the song on Polish Radio Three (September 1992). Following protests of the editorial board, the journalist was reinstated, yet the head of the broadcast was dismissed, who was in turn reinstated after interventions by other UD deputies. A ban on airing the song on Polish Radio was also issued. The ZChN spokesman Ryszard Czarnecki notified the PPO about the crime of insult to religious feelings by Kukiz and, on the same occasion, by the Benetton company, whose advertisement distributed in Poland featured a priest kissing a nun. The public prosecutor initiated proceedings against representatives of broadcasters: Polish Radio Three, Eska radio and the record producer Polskie Nagrania. The expert witnesses issued contradictory opinions: priest Prof. Józef Kądziela from the Academy of Theology in Warsaw opined that the use of a religious song melody may be offensive, but he did not address the lyrics; whereas the second expert witness, Prof. Michał Pietrzak from the Institute of History of Law at the Warsaw University, stated otherwise. In April 1993, the PPO discontinued the case due to the unfulfillment of the statutory features of a prohibited act. The entire case found its epilogue in June 1993, when the organizers of the National Festival of Polish Song in Opole did not allow the band Piersi to appear on stage and, at the end of the festival, banned the public announcement of the band receiving a prize awarded by journalists. To justify their decisions, they cited the award regulations, which – as it turned out – did not exist. The hype obviously generated tangible marketing profits – in half a year Piersi had sold 40,000 cassettes with the song, whereas after the outbreak of the scandal the sales had reached a further 60,000 by February 1994. "We owe gratitude for this to the best advertising agency in Poland – ZChN" – said the director of the record label that released the music.

In 1991, _Poznaniak_ weekly (11–12 May 1991) published a photomontage titled _Madonna with Jurek_ , which referred to the image of Our Lady of Częstochowa (see p.212). The face of Our Lady resembled the face of the singer Madonna, whereas Infant Jesus had the facial features of the ZChN deputy Marek Jurek. The deputy sued the weekly for an infringement of personal rights requesting a payment of PLZ 50 million (currency prior to redenomination) for Fundacja Pomocy Młodym (Foundation for Helping the Young) – the sum was later increased to PLZ 500 million – and a printed apology in the magazine. In an interview Jurek stated: "The only form of apology I can imagine is contrition shown to the one who was offended – the Mother of God. And the only form of atonement I can see is closing down the magazine". He also invited the PPO to deal with the "overall activity" of such press titles. The editor-in-chief of _Poznaniak_ explained that the photomontage did not transgress the caricature convention. In 1995, the parties reached a settlement. Criminal proceedings also ran parallel, but were discontinued by the PPO in Poznań in 1993 due to the lack of intention to insult religious feelings.

Summary

During the transition period, the majority of censorship excesses bore relation to the activity of right-wing politicians with several interventions by representatives of the Church. What emerged besides religious limitations were also those imposed on statements critical of politicians. Such criticism resulted from a general situation in the country – the society was growing increasingly disenchanted with the economic transformation and the new political class – conflicted, divided (with 17 political parties in the First Term Sejm in 1991–1993), often ungainly and generally perceived as egoistic and dishonest. As the social costs of neoliberal reforms soared, the illusions of idyllic functioning of democracy and capitalism became shattered, social frustration was on the rise, while a negative attitude (also amongst artists) to the authorities intensified. In turn, the latter defended themselves through attempts to limit freedom of speech. Such an approach mainly characterized President Lech Wałęsa, who – as a typical autocrat – handled criticism very poorly and triggered self-censorship reflexes amongst journalists. A vote of no confidence in the authorities originating from the anti-communist opposition came with the elections on 19 September 1993, called after the prior dissolution of the Sejm by President Wałęsa. The discontented society tapped into "proven" solutions and the elections to the Sejm brought about the victory of post-communist parties: Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) with 20.41% of votes and the Polish People's Party (PSL) with 15.4% of votes. Owing to a new methodology of counting votes, those results secured them respectively 37.2% and 28.7% mandates in the Sejm and allowed them to form a majority government.

The scarcity of instances of constraining artistic freedom during the transition period may have stemmed from the fear of accusations of a return to the totalitarian practices of the PRL – the memory of the GUKPPiW was still vivid enough. Therefore, the marketing value of such actions would have been meagre or they could have even proven destructive for politicians' overall image. Not without significance was also the bulk of the period's social, economic and political problems, which pushed the matters related to culture to the margins. The secular and Church authorities, but also the media, seemed to tolerate artistic excesses, with such controversial exhibitions as _Ogród rozkoszy ziemskich_ [ _The Garden of Earthly Delights_ ] by Grzegorz Klaman (łażnia, Gdańsk, 1992) or _Persewercja mistyczna i róża_ [ _Mystical Perseverance and the Rose_ ], organized in 1992 by the new head of the State Art Gallery in Sopot (PGS), Ryszard Ziarkiewicz, going unnoticed. Amongst other works, the latter show featured the work _Dedications_ by Robert Rumas, which adopted the form of aquaria with immersed figures of Christ; Zbigniew Libera's film _Obrzędy intymne_ [ _Intimate Rites_ ], which depicts the daily routine of caring for his senile grandmother, who is unaware of being filmed; Katarzyna Kozyra's photographs of male nudes, and Jacek Markiewicz's film _Adoracja Chrystusa_ [ _Adoration of Christ_ ], in which the naked artist caresses a medieval crucifix. At the same time, the general market mechanisms and the art market itself (if it is possible at all to talk about an art market in those days) did not operate well enough to exert a determining influence on the field of cultural production (visual arts in particular), while the artists whose careers were only just beginning had little awareness of those mechanisms and therefore made more autonomous creative decisions.

The transition period came to an end in 1992. The end of that year witnessed the beginning of an intensification of repressive activities, which culminated on 29 December when the Sejm passed the law on the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiTV). According to the law, "public radio and television programmes should respect the Christian system of values", and broadcasters "should respect religious feelings of the viewers, particularly with regard to the Christian system of values". The next year, interventions against freedom of expression (not only artistic) became so acute in Poland on a qualitative and quantitative basis that the American organizations Helsinki Watch and Foundation for Free Speech issued a warning report in September. In turn, the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights accused Poland, as one of eight countries, of limiting freedom of speech. The most telling proof of the alarming changes were the difficulties surrounding the screening of Martin Scorsese's _The Last Temptation of Christ_ in Poznań's "Pałacowe" art house cinema. In April 1993, right-wing deputies Marcin Libicki, Marek Jurek, Maciej Srebro and Przemysław Sytek notified the PPO of an alleged crime of insult to religious feelings caused by the screening of Martin Scorsese's film within the film review _Cinema for the Holy Week_. The same day, the city's deputy mayor summoned the director of the cinema's programme board Jacek Jaroszyk. The public prosecutor launched pre-trial proceedings, but did not press any charges. The same film had been presented at the same cinema two years earlier, when it had gone completely unnoticed.

**3.3 Formative Period (1993 – 1998)**

_Pyramid of Animals_

It seems that 1993 may be generally recognized as a symbolic watershed that marked the end of the 1980s era and inaugurated a new epoch (together with a new evolutionary phase of censorship activities). After two failed attempts by the Ministry of Culture to dismiss the director of the Zachęta, Barbara Majewska, she was eventually replaced by Anda Rottenberg. The new director significantly expanded the international profile of the institution's programme and embraced the latest art, including art from Poland, thus consolidating the gallery's position and lending a new dynamics to its projects. The Zachęta began to play host to art with a transgressive edge, which unleashed a nation-wide cultural war at the turn of the new millennium. It was slightly earlier (towards the end of 1992) that łażnia – an important new contemporary art centre – inaugurated its activity in Gdańsk. Around the same time, the CSW ZU confirmed its key role as a Polish institution exhibiting the latest art. Wojciech Krukowski was appointed the head of the CSW ZU in January 1990 and consistently developed the Centre and its programme policy alongside his team, garnering universal acclaim from commentators of the art scene. On 10 December the same year there was the opening of the first survey of young artists titled _Idee poza ideologią. Nowe pokolenie w sztuce polskiej_ [ _Ideas beyond Ideology. The New Generation in Polish Art_ ]. In 1992, the curator Ryszard Ziarkiewicz left the CSW ZU to become head of the PGS in Sopot and already one year later began to publish the _Magazyn Sztuki_ magazine, which took on key importance for the avant-garde tendencies in Polish contemporary art. In 1993, Poland was represented at the Venice Biennale by Mirosław Bałka, and Zbigniew Libera was invited to the accompanying exhibition _Aperto_ (both artists had demonstrated a rather hostile attitude to the art of the first and second circulation in the 1980s and favoured contestation approaches, particularly in the case of Libera). It was a period when diploma works were defended by artists affiliated with the so-called Kowalnia, who later came to be recognized as representatives of the critical tendency in art, a phenomenon of major importance in the 1990s: Jacek Adamas, Paweł Althamer, Jacek Markiewicz, Katarzyna Kozyra, Jacek Karaś (all graduated in 1993), Katarzyna Górna (1994). On 4 June 1993, Katarzyna Kozyra defended her diploma work titled _Pyramid of Animals_. That work sparked a media storm and a dispute about an art piece on a scale that was unprecedented in liberated Poland. It was the first time that the new paradigm of artistic practice trademarked by the new generation of artists had entered the consciousness of an average viewer. It was also the first time when the question had been posed: "Is the artist free to do anything?", an issue that was debated in major mainstream media.

Katarzyna Kozyra, _Pyramid of Animals_ [ _Piramida zwierząt_ ], 1993, stuffed animals: horse, dog, cat, cock, 220×190×120 cm, and film 46 min 49 sec, phot. by J. Gl ´adykowski, courtesy of Zachęta — National Art Gallery

The _Pyramid of Animals_ is an installation that comprises two components: a sculpture (stuffed animals: horse, dog, cat, cock) and a film shot by the artist who documented the process of putting a horse to death and dissecting it. Yet, the diploma supervisor Grzegorz Kowalski advised Kozyra against showing the film during the diploma exam for fear of negative evaluation. The video was ultimately replaced with a leaflet _Pyramid of Animals_ and the work received a B grade from the exam committee. It was the leaflet, and not the film, that also accompanied the sculpture at the exhibition _Ideas beyond Ideology_ at the CSW ZU at the turn of 1994. The video was presented for the first time in 1996 at Jacek Markiewicz's a.r.t. gallery in Płock.

The horse and cock used by the artist were intended for slaughter; the artist bought them and had them killed albeit in a much more humanitarian way than the method used at slaughterhouses, whereas the dog and the cat were found dead. Therefore, Kozyra did not break the law while creating _Pyramid_ , but the work met with an extreme reaction. Already on 18 June, the Board of the Warsaw Chapter of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP) issued a letter of protest (signed by the Deputy Head Joanna Casselius) to the Rector of the ASP in Warsaw, Adam Myjak, in which she expressed her "profound indignation at the fact of accepting Ms. Katarzyna Kozera's diploma work for production [original spelling]". The letter concludes with the rhetorical question: "Along this path, should we soon expect an exhibition of lampshades made of tattooed human skin?" The ZPAP Board also sent a written request for intervention to "Animals", a TVP broadcast devoted to animal rights, with a suggestion that Kozyra had killed the animals single-handedly and the following reservation: "Should the programme 'Animals' become interested in the fact presented by us, we ask for the name of the artist not to be mentioned in public. Presumably, one of the intentions behind her action was the pursuit of attracting attention." A heavily biased coverage of _Pyramid_ aired on "Animals" in June sparked a true scandal and a tide of criticism of the artist flooded in from the press.

Grzegorz Kowalski attempted to come to the defence of Kozyra, while defending himself as well, since he had also come in for harsh criticism as the supervisor of the work. Kowalski sent polemical letters to the editorial boards of different media in which he corrected the distorted facts and patiently explained the sense of the work ( _GW_ refused to publish Kozyra's letter of 20 August and a letter from the art historian Maryla Sitkowska in which she supported the artist). For instance, in the _Życie Warszawy_ daily, Kowalski remarked that "The death of animals killed on an industrial scale is invisible and sanctioned by utilitarian purposes, which has effectively repressed it from consciousness. In turn, the death of an individual animal made visible in an artwork brings it back to the viewer's awareness". Published right next to Kowalski's text was a letter from a reader who urged the Minister of Culture and Minister of Education to strip Kozyra of her diploma and "prevent the ASP employees who allowed that disgrace to happen from any kind of work with children and youth at state institutions". Criticism centred on the artist, the diploma supervisor and the academy – the Ministry of Culture and Art requested an explanation from the rector, who had to shorten his holiday. The ministry suggested that he should consider "specifying the principles of the freedom of artistic expression" at the ASP. In _Gazeta Gdańska_ , the artist Teresa Szydłowska opined that "the rector of the ASP in Warsaw, the supervisor and the maker of the work are all dead as artists".

Various milieus protested, yet – notably – the fiercest criticism came from the ZPAP circle, whose members accused Kozyra of lacking originality, willingness to use the scandal as a cover-up for her poor competences and to gain fame through provocation as well as killing for the sake of decoration. Condemnation was almost always accompanied by (consciously or unconsciously?) distorted facts. For instance, the Board of the Warsaw Chapter of the ZPAP wrote in a letter to the Minister of Culture: "In the annex [to the diploma], the artist describes how she personally looked for those animals, cared for them in order to murder them single-handedly one day, disembowel and stuff their bodies and use them in her diploma work". A journalist Beata Maciejewska rightly remarked that "those letters can obviously be explained by the need to defend morality, tradition, the purity of arts which, after all, are called fine arts. However, one may also recognize them not as a defence, but as an attack, while their real goal may have been neither lofty morality nor even traditional art and an attachment to tradition in general, but a downright prosaic struggle waged by artists of the older generation for their own interests and position". According to the journalist, after 1989 the collaboration between artists from creative unions such as the ZPAP and the authorities was disturbed; not only did benefits for the former dry up, but also independent curators entered the scene, people from outside the established milieu became heads of artistic institutions and a new generation of artists emerged who tapped into modern non-traditional media and regarded art in terms of "contestation, and not affirmation of reality". Beyond doubt, the attack on _Pyramid_ and the conflicts surrounding institutions (e.g. CSW ZU, Zachęta, PGS or the BWA centres across the country) were at the forefront of the struggle waged at the time for symbolic power in the art world – institutional domination and the related right to define such notions as "artist" and "art".

Voices in defence of Kozyra were in the minority. The most complex and objective coverage of Kozyra's work (production process, search for animals, motivations, personal situation) and of the making of the reportage for the "Animals" programme was published in _GW_ by Irena Morawska. It was the art historian quoted in her text, Waldemar Baraniewski, who aptly remarked that the scandal resulted from the lack of understanding of contemporary art and the absence of artistic critique that should mediate between the artist and an average art viewer. Indeed, professional critique woke up too late, but discerned the most important aspects of the reception of the work. Paweł Leszkowicz emphasized the necessity not to apply aesthetic criteria in the assessment of the work which was interventional and criticized the social reality. In turn, upon juxtaposing _Animal Pyramid_ with _Mother and Child Divided_ by Damien Hirst (1993), Bożena Czubak remarked that _Pyramid_ was not a critical, but rather a "very personal", work. The author emphasized the relation between the artist and the creative process – which she considered crucial for Kozyra's installation – that would bear witness to keeping the world at a distance and concentration on individual experiences. According to Czubak, such a withdrawn approach was characteristic of the "young art" of the era – absorbed by inner dilemmas and reluctant to comment on the socio-political reality. Such restraint was said to result from the memory of Socialist Realism and "non-artistic factors driving culture" in the 1980s.

I believe that Czubak came close to the truth. The beginning of work on _Animal Pyramid_ should be traced back to the artistic exercise titled _What Does the Dead Man's Glassy Eye See?_ , assigned by Grzegorz Kowalski to some of his students, including Kozyra. The quote from the poem _King the Spirit_ by the Polish national bard Juliusz Słowacki was an invitation to eschatological reflection, which is the very prism through which we should view Kozyra's work. _Animal Pyramid_ had a very private character and cannot be detached from the artist struggle with cancer and the death of her teacher and close friend Jerzy Stajuda in March 1993. The artist worked obsessively on _Pyramid_ , absorbed by the vision of the feeling of death considered in rather universal and metaphysical categories, and not with regard to criticism of particular social phenomena. The problem of social hypocrisy (tacit consent to slaughtering animals for utilitarian purposes) emerged only in a secondary way at the time of creating the work and became visible as if in a negative image, as it were. What mattered at first was the personal tension generated in the creative process during which animals were used for artistic purposes – and therefore purposes traditionally related to a non-utilitarian, autonomous sphere. Reflection on the social practices concerning the treatment of animals came only later – also in the role of a moral alibi. As the strident media criticism of the artist, the supervisor and the Academy intensified, this aspect was thrown into sharper relief and explored more profoundly, especially in Kowalski's statements, and it went on to become the dominant interpretation of the work. Yet, in an interview given to Artur Żmijewski on 6 October 1996, Kozyra stated that the image of a "pro-ecological mother of the harmed" was only an official version, "essentially, I don't know what attracts me to destroyed bodies, to the morgue. Perhaps it's the willingness to consciously observe old age and death ...". _Pyramid_ is therefore an _in transitu_ work, as it were, and it acquired its critical edge gradually in order to eventually become the symbol of an emerging new tendency in Polish art. It was only the later work by Kozyra and the artists of her generation that became interventionist and demystifying in a more conscious way. To paraphrase Hal Foster, one may say that Kozyra did not appear immediately as "Kozyra" and critical art as "critical art" – the current status of the artist and _Pyramid_ resulted from a _post factum_ reaction to artistic practices as well as theoretical and institutional reception. The artistic value of such works began to be assessed not according to the Modernist categories of form and novelty, but the social response resulting from a certain, usually inconvenient, diagnosis of reality given by the artist.

The scandal clearly demonstrated that the social perception of the role and position of art was marked by a certain ambivalence. Art was seen as an uncanny and sublime sphere of beauty that soars high above the mundane aspects of everyday life, nearly inaccessible to an average mortal. Such elevation of art also testified to its weakness, locking it amidst rosy clouds illuminated by the setting sun or ominous yet equally beautiful cumulonimbi. As Majka Decker wrote, between the dilemmas "is it ethical to kill a horse to make a handbag?" and "is it ethical to kill a horse to make a sculpture?" only the former receives a positive answer, since art is not associated with any vital need. What also escaped attention was the fact that the manner of posing a question or diagnosing a problem by the artist is itself part of the message, which generates a semantic added value (or an added value that escapes meaning and discursivity) – getting a slaughter animal killed, revealing that process and exhibiting the carcass as a work of art (both given the real activity of the artist and the powerful impact of a non-aestheticized image) is not the same as creating a cycle of oil paintings devoted to the topic, night-time eschatological contemplations or verbally accusing the society of hypocrisy in its treatment of animals. Kozyra laid bare and restored a repressed or deliberately overlooked shameful social fact and the related ethical double standards, "the ongoing animal holocaust" that happens just as "the moral imperative of respect for their life is promoted at the same time". She did not do it from an external position of a moralizing preacher, but from the level of collaboration. The effects of such a transgression – based on depiction (naturalistic image of a transgressive touch of life), and not on re-presentation (depiction through an imposing visual convention that aesthetically softens the reception of transgression) as is the case in traditional art – were discredited, and with time they came to be censored. I believe that the powerful effect and the importance of the critical artistic current emerging in Polish art resulted not only from the fact that its artefacts were embedded in everyday life, but above all from a reduction of the aesthetic appeal and limiting the distance that is otherwise built by the artistic form. At the same time, the imperative of aesthetic mediation that prevailed in the society undoubtedly pushed art towards Modernist autonomy, thus blocking the potential of its interventionist social impact here and now. The implementation of new artistic codes in Poland required time, and they ultimately came to be adopted in scholarship and criticism only at the turn of the millennia, as it seems. It does not mean, of course, that they became fully accepted by the society. Not only the lower, but also the dominant classes that possess high educational and economic capital demonstrate a rather limited proclivity for symbolic risk. As Pierre Bourdieu remarked, such social groups manifest a tendency to operate in the sphere of legitimate culture, akin to school culture, and to subordinate their investments to established values. They do not accept works of art that go beyond the aesthetic canon of the past, thus contributing to the conservative institutional hierarchization of cultural goods. The avant-garde – understood as a field of production that is limited and uncanonized by the education process – can be rejected without risking disgrace. In Poland, even those intellectual elites that should favour contestation and avant-garde experimentation in art demonstrated reserve to such approaches, which resulted from age-old tradition, generational experiences and the related manners of understanding artistic work.

Yet, the aspect of the discussed case that is the most important for our present considerations is the fact that the debate on _Animal Pyramid_ was the first in the Third Polish Republic to concern the limits of freedom of expression in art. Kozyra's work was denied an artistic status by principle; transgression was broadly rejected as a creative method and artists' attempts to perform such gestures were negated, yet the question of the immunity of art constantly recurred. It is noteworthy that the first attempts to censor visual arts in the Third Polish Republic (and the first artistic scandal) were not unleashed by the media or politicians, but by the creative milieus themselves. It was the interventions of the Warsaw Chapter of the ZPAP – as resolute as they were malicious, I would say – that created the hype around the work on TVP, that invited media polemics and made demands for the borders of artistic creation to be rigidly determined (let us also not forget that Kozyra received condemnation from several women artists in the press). At the same time, the media disputes revealed their ruthless character. Most statements distorted the facts and operated with rhetorical abuses – importantly, it was always against the artist; it was her, and not her work, that became the object of the public trial. As we know, once social clichés are consolidated by the media, they are hard to change later, and therefore Kozyra, her work and her most recent oeuvre in general were left quite wounded by that confrontation. The polemics always clearly manifested the lack of understanding, and above all the lack of adequate language and theoretical background to bring the artistic phenomena emerging from the new reality closer to the public. Let us add that those phenomena more than any others necessitated an analytical discursive approach and a certain methodological awareness. Still, it is difficult to wonder at the reaction of the society when the majority of critics also gave proof of indolence, as it is best exemplified by artistic criticism in _GW_ – the liberal left-wing opinion-forming daily newspaper with the broadest readership in the Third Polish Republic. A brief analysis of this issue affords a better understanding of the state of artistic awareness of Polish society and its elites.

_Gazeta Wyborcza_ on Art

In the early years of _GW_ , the vast majority of reviews of visual arts events commented on exhibitions of traditional drawing, painting and sculpture by post-war classics or perhaps the generation that debuted in the 1960s and 1970s. It was only in 1993, on the occasion of the Venice Biennale, that names of younger artists began to receive mentions in the newspaper: Zbigniew Libera (Aperto) and Mirosław Bałka (Polish Pavilion), yet the perspective of the _GW_ publicists on their work was highly revealing (see further remarks). Most attention was definitely paid to events in the capital city and artists affiliated with the milieu of the Warsaw ASP. Relatively popular were shows that summarized and commemorated the PRL era, especially the heroic decade of the 1980s. When the critical tendency began to make its presence felt in Polish art after 1993, it was rejected essentially by all cultural publicists of _GW_ (Dorota Jarecka – head critic of the newspaper, Michał Cichy, Monika Kuc, Mirosław Ratajczak and particularly Andrzej Osęka), who reproached it for a lack of originality, emptiness, provocativeness and trickery.

At the beginning of 1993, still before the _Animal Pyramid_ scandal, the artistic practice of Mirosław Bałka became an object of discussions in _GW_. In the text _Nie o Bałce_ [Not about Bałka] from March 1993, Michał Cichy commented on the exhibition _37,1_ at the Foksal Gallery and rebuked the artist for the lack of clarity regarding biographical references in his work, whose formal component essentially did not matter and could just as well be replaced with anything else without detriment to the content and the general message. The author also revealed the scale of his comparisons (Mozart's sonata) and dropped the hint that Bałka "will be the only official representative of Polish art sponsored by the state at the Biennial [in Venice – J.D.]". Noticeable in his text, the 19th century imperative of narrative legibility, naive biographism and lack of understanding for the complexity of the artwork's reception and the viewer's role in shaping its meanings met with a reply from art historian Andrzej Przywara. In his text _Niezrozumienie_ [ _Miscomprehension_ ], having presented an exegesis of the work, Przywara aptly remarked: "A more general reflection comes to mind: a humanist faces contemporary art helplessly. What remains is the question: why?". Touched by that criticism, Cichy attempted a retort in the text _Zażenowanie_ [Embarrassment], published next to Przywara, and provided an indirect answer to the posed question. Cichy's text revealed the naked truth – the Polish viewer, even though educated in the humanities, was completely unprepared for an encounter with contemporary art and relied exclusively on Modernist formal categories as a reference point, demonstrating no knowledge whatsoever of the most recent international art and a lack of openness and flexibility in the field of visual arts.

A category which the _GW_ critics very frequently put to use was the opposition between originality and the lack thereof, where the latter did not even consist of referring to specific, already existing works, but was in the very gesture of transgression. Despite obvious borrowings, paintings by Polish Postimpressionists or their modern-day heirs were never deemed unoriginal; whereas, references to Marcel Duchamp, Dadaists, Surrealists, and Neo-Avant-garde were inevitably judged as lacking "originality". Paradigmatic examples of such argumentation can be found in texts by Andrzej Osęka, but also by Dorota Jarecka and Monika Kuc – for instance, the latter author wrote in a review of Zbigniew Libera's exhibition in April 1993:

... as for the understanding of the work of art, Libera does not go beyond the statement made by the American Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth that art is what we call art. But as we already know today, such an approach does not open up new territories, but leads to hermeticism and a decline of art. What should also be considered by the contemporary installation-makers... is the question: where do their continuations of Duchamp's idea lead? Libera does not create copies of ready-mades, nevertheless such works as _Basen_ [ _Bedpan_ ] and _Kaczka_ [ _Urine Bottle_ ] feature references to the famed urinal ... What is the sense – after more than 80 years – of referring to Duchamp's gesture?

That incapability of looking at artistic facts "here and now" and retrospective shifts of context performed in order to squeeze art into the scheme of linear evolution towards the better and the new offered the possibility to label the then current art as an empty gesture, which obviously had an extremely detrimental impact on its social reception. Visual arts were reduced to the so-called good sculpture and good painting, and they were supposed to serve the goal of aesthetic contemplation, and not problematization – let alone engaged commentary – of reality. The newspaper's critics understood the notion of 'politically' in an anachronistically narrow way limited to the sphere of dialogue with the institutionalized authorities and made no use whatsoever of Western theoretical reflection on art, in which an emancipatory and critical thread were so powerfully developed. Even the work of Andres Serrano, so well recognized in this respect, was deprived by _GW_ of its subversive potential and political edge. In his review of Serrano's exhibition at the CSW ZU (February 1994), Wojciech Cesar ski devoted himself entirely to the aesthetic contemplation of the artist's pieces:

Large, colourful, carefully composed, tastefully framed ... Serrano's photographs are, above all, beautiful photographs. This is actually the reason why they are such a pleasure to view ... exclusively for their purely visual beauty. Yet, they do not stir any emotions nor compel reflection encouraged by the titles. And if someone would like to learn from the works about what Serrano supports and what he fights with, they will find out absolutely nothing. ... the only value of Serrano's photographs is purely aesthetic.

It therefore comes as no surprise that such an approach to the exhibition allowed Cesar ski to formulate the carefree conclusion: "We should therefore thank the directors of the Centre for offering us an opportunity to discover another famed and fashionable contemporary artist. We should also express astonishment, however, that by removing from the exhibition the scandalous photograph _Piss Christ_ (a reproduction was published in the catalogue), they treated seriously the ideological halo that accompanies Serrano's work".

The conservative vision of art and type of criticism was maintained by _GW_ essentially until the turn of the millennia. Amongst several dozen articles devoted to visual arts published in the main edition throughout one year (according to rough estimations, there could be around 70 such articles – little more than one per week), only a tiny minority addressed the phenomena of more recent experimental or engaged art, while texts that sought to praise or explain such artistic practices – if they were published at all – appeared in local editions or were penned by polemicists of the newspaper's critics. An unquestionably noteworthy example of such a polemic was an exchange of opinions between Andrzej Osęka and Maryla Musidłowska. Osęka's mocking article about the exhibition _Sensation_ at the Royal Academy of Art met with a cutting reply from Musidłowska, who also underscored the educational consequences of _GW_ 's publicism.

Osęka writes his analyses in a cabaret style; the critic chooses a very narrow aspect of the investigated realm and mocks it in curt words. ... What Osęka writes, without a background devoid of prejudice, smacks of obscurantism. From the [mistaken – J.D.] translation of the exhibition title ..., to descriptions of works strikingly reminiscent of fascist comments on pieces shown at the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937. ... I only pity _Gazeta_ [ _Wyborcza_ ], which promotes such critical obscurantism, and the readers, whose minds it infiltrates.

Such a conservative approach to visual arts came across as strange insofar as _GW_ consistently, sometimes even importunately, supported an anti-conservative pro-modernization ideology, adjusting the contents of specific issues of the newspaper to a given socio-political situation and agitation needs (crosses in public institutions, Church support for political parties, Church reclaiming its properties, Concordat, Constitution, religion lessons at schools, debates on abortion in the parliament and contraception, pornography, sexual education at schools, homosexuality). Such a situation could be understood as a sign that the left-wing liberal elites, perhaps akin to the previous communist authorities and the Church as their opponent, disregarded visual arts and their potential role in social disputes. Yet, the generational experience of the secular intellectual elites from the democratic opposition, represented by _GW_ , bore too strong ties to an understanding of art that was conservative, Modernist or burdened with historical obligations. What is more, such a notion of art could hardly accommodate the experience of visual arts, which were systematically pushed to the margins in Polish history. Not entirely clear was also the attitude of the elites to freedom of expression, considered rather as a value of secondary importance, ancillary to other values and rigorously regulated by the so-called harm principle (each freedom should be limited by the state in a situation in which its exercise infringes on the justified interests of others). Bearing in mind the historically conditioned sensitivity to the cultivation of traditional aesthetic values, refined taste, ethos and the simultaneous absence of counter-cultural, emancipatory, critical traditions (Polish revolt was essentially anti-totalitarian), such harm occurred with almost every attempt to challenge the status quo. Moralizing, or condemnation and depreciation immediately followed.

It seems that _GW,_ as unquestionably the most opinion-forming (and the most popular) press title in the 1990s, contributed to the consolidation of the Modernist understanding of art, dominant in Poland, and the depreciation of other creative paradigms. With time, that situation aggravated tensions and antagonisms, and thus had a significant impact on the perception of freedom of artistic expression. Not only did art critics from _GW_ indicate the borders of what could be said and shown, but – more importantly – what could be understood. As a result of their helplessness or malevolence, they failed to make the codes of contemporary art more accessible to the society, which led to contemporary art's primary exclusion from the sphere of communication and situated it beyond the protocols of understanding. Laying the blame for the entire situation on a single medium, however influential, would be a gross misunderstanding. Yet, the problem with _GW_ had a special character insofar as the selection of publicists, the manner of constructing the newspaper's message and the "Solidarity", liberty-oriented and intellectual roots of the title compelled a sense of an objective, multi-faceted content, supported by statements from people considered as specialists and intellectual authorities. Criticism formulated by such a milieu had an entirely different gravity and persuasive power from, for instance, criticism by publicists of the _Życie_ daily, who also mercilessly attacked the latest art, but whose explicit identification with the conservative part of the political scene deprived them of an aura of carefully balanced opinions and objectivity. As a matter of fact, until the end of the 1990s the traditional divisions into the left and the right wing, liberals and conservatives, had little impact on the views on visual arts and freedom of expression, as it is shown, for instance, by – sometimes embarrassing – texts on the latest art in the post-communist _Trybuna_ daily. It needs to be underscored that the entire debate about contemporary art pursued in non-professional (and sometimes even in professional) media left a lot to be desired.

Anti- _Antibodies_

It seems that the exhibition _Antibodies_ (CSW ZU, 7 July – 13 August 1995), which problematized various aspects of the sphere of corporeality and sexuality, could sit comfortably within the general left-wing liberal agenda of _GW_. It was the first group manifestation of artists representing the critical art tendency (Robert Rumas – who also curated the show, Paweł Althamer, Jarosław Bartołowicz, Piotr Jaros, Grzegorz Klaman, Katarzyna Kozyra, Konrad Kuzyszyn, Zbigniew Libera, Grzegorz Sztwiertnia, Piotr Wyrzykowski, Alicja Żebrowska). Instead of harnessing that artistic proposition for their ideological struggle, the newspaper's critics slammed the exhibition in their reviews.

In the Warsaw local edition of _GW_ , _Gazeta Stołeczna_ , Monika Kuc wrote: "... it sometimes happens that obsession gives rise to true art, but in this case there are no works that would match the greatness of Van Gogh, and not only because artists today speak the language of anti-art. And if we assume that it is nothing else but an artistic pose and fashion for 'antibodies', in such case their unoriginality is striking". Andrzej Osęka, in turn, wrote about "utmost banality", "importunate effort to shock, offend feelings, violate sanctities", adding that the artists participating in the exhibition "produced pitiful horrors" – secondary to the horrors shown in the world. Dorota Jarecka emphasized that "nobody wants to be drawn into the game proposed by the artists. So they risk the worst: leniency and a bit of malice". In a reply, under the meaningful title _Impotencja krytyki_ [ _The Impotence of Critique_ ], the assistant of the exhibition curator Ewa Gorządek wrote: "Instead of working with artists, trying to clarify what these 'other aspects' of contemporary visual language are and what they consist of", the critics only ever repeat that "contemporary art is stupid", while art critic Ewa Mikina aptly remarked in the same issue of _GW_ that the lack of competent analyses and the schematic reception "in one of the most opinion-forming newspapers in the country merely antagonizes the sides of a potential discussion".

Therefore, it is not true that the exhibition, as one of the publicists argued, did not stir up an anticipated scandal "because nobody feels like having disputes anymore about what the artist is free to do"., but equally untrue is also the censorship legend of the exhibition – there were never any direct interventions into the show, although the CSW ZU received a letter of protest from the Polish Red Cross (PCK) against the use of the red cross and red crescent symbols in Kozyra's work _Więzy krwi_ [ _Blood Ties_ ], while the director of the institution Wojciech Krukowski hesitated whether to exhibit Alicja Zebrowska's piece _Grzech pierworodny_ [ _Original Sin_ ]. Ewa Gorządek underlines that the show featured all works selected by the curator, and the ones that later travelled to the exhibition _Kiev Art Meeting. New Art from Poland, Ukraine, Russia_ ( _Antibodies_ formed part of an international project) were completely independently chosen by Ukrainian curator Walery Sacharuk. It was only in Kiev that acts of censorship were committed, yet they did not pertain to the Polish section of the show.

However, the antagonisms surrounding the latest art gradually became aggravated. Artists began to frame their work to an ever greater extent as a confrontation with manifold aspects of the social order. Art critic Małgorzata Lisiewicz on the one hand discerned in _Antibodies_ the cult of individualism stemming from the persistence of the Romantic myth of the genius and an attitude of isolation, while on the other hand, she remarked that "art bears testimony to the emerging need of speaking out loud about the maladies that trouble us ... and disturb our conservative mentality: the problem of religion and the Church (Katarzyna Kozyra), a woman's place in the Polish contemporary era (Alicja Żebrowska), the problem of "the Other" in our consciousness (Robert Rumas), the human being within systems of power (Grzegorz Klaman), the complexity and relativity of our self-identification (Piotr Wyrzykowski)...". All those topics clustered in the sphere of corporeality, which beyond doubt became the key topic for the critical artists of the 1990s.

Part of that sphere was also the question of AIDS. The disease remains an important social issue until the present day, but it does not cause such horror and aggression in Poland anymore as was the case at the end of the 20th century. Artists responded to various AIDS-related fears in the exhibition _Me and AIDS_ , inaugurated on 9 January 1996 at the gallery of the "Stolica" cinema in Warsaw. The show was created by Grzegorz Kowalski, Katarzyna Kozyra and Artur Żmijewski, and featured thirteen artists. Many works consisted in direct explorations of nudity and corporeality, including motifs of homosexuality, and Jacek Markiewicz turned himself into a work of art by awaiting the viewers in a dark room-like space. Already one day after the opening, the exhibition was closed by the director of the cinema, who justified it with "the good of the institution under his leadership". He believed that many works could prove to be shocking, especially for younger viewers, while the cinema profited mainly from morning film screenings for school groups. According to the director, it would have been absurd to veil the works on such occasions, which the artists did not also want to allow. He accused them of not having informed him about the character of the show and failing to prepare appropriate information for the viewers. Grzegorz Kowalski underlines, however, that the director had been aware of the exhibition concept and the main problem was caused by the protests of the technical staff appalled by the veristic nude sculpture _David_ (1994) by Krzysztof Malec. The exhibition _Ja i AIDS_ [ _Me and AIDS_ ] was transferred to Jacek Markiewicz's a.r.t. Gallery in Płock and was later presented at the Wieża Ciśnień in Bydgoszcz and at the Wyspa Gallery in Gdańsk.

It is a matter for reflection if the exhibition organizers should have invested more efforts in alleviating the potential shock amongst random viewers, especially youth (through warnings, appropriate arrangement of the presented works, descriptions or a guide constantly present in the exhibition space), the more so that the venue was a gallery only by name – the pieces were simply displayed in a cinema entrance hall. We need to remember, however, that much less attention was paid to the educational layers of exhibitions in those times than is the case nowadays. It was the third exhibition by the artists in that institution and the first time when such problems had emerged. During the opening of the first such show, _Na pięknej łące/puszczam w kosmos/seryjne białe stolce_ [ _On a Beautiful Meadow I am Getting Rid of a Series of White Stools in Outer Space_ ] (May 1994), the programme director of the cinema stated to the participants: "Your installation should not pose a threat to the life and health of the viewers – but it is free to offend the sense of aesthetics and good taste".

From Spontaneous Reaction to Cold Calculation

One of the main issues in Poland was the conflict around preserving the so-called Christian values as the foundations of social life, championed with particular aggression by those political parties whose agendas addressed the teachings of the Catholic Church. More and more visible, at the same time, was the anxiety amongst organizers of cultural events that could fail to meet the taste of some politicians.

Yet, despite a rise in religious symbolic violence, the question of Polish Catholicism enjoyed little interest amongst artists, while topics related to religion appeared only indirectly, for instance within the discourse that shaped attitudes to the body and sex. In the 1990s, Polish Catholicism, especially in its folk variation, was explored virtually only by Robert Rumas. The presentation of his work _Termofory_ [ _Hot Water Bottles_ ] in Gdańsk's Long Market in May 1994 went down in the Polish art history. The piece consisted of massive sacks made of transparent plastic and filled with water, under which the artist situated considerably-sized plaster figures of Christ and Virgin Mary. Within a dozen or so minutes after installing the work in Long Market, outraged passers-by tore the sacks apart and staged a procession to transport the "rescued' figures to a nearby church. Rumas argues that the work marked "an attempt to touch the living tissue of the city. It was on that tissue – the street, cobblestones – that I place the hot water bottles, which are usually used to cover painful wounds. And between the two there were holy figures – living religious tissue". The artist anticipated a violent reaction of the passers-by. His work was not so much censored, but rather physically attacked – this iconoclastic gesture had a specific character, however, and was not motivated by the willingness to destroy the artwork (it is likely that the majority of those who intervened were not even aware of the artistic context of the display), but rather by the desire to rescue the sculptures from underneath the sacks filled with water – sculptures that embodied the original holy figures in the eyes of the passers-by.

Such spontaneous, grassroots – civic, one could say – acts aimed at restricting access to the work by means of protests, demonstrations and even iconoclastic interventions were to be frequently staged in the future. Yet, what was to prove significantly more frequent and threatening for freedom of artistic expression were informal activities pursued by institutions. They resulted from fear of various consequences experienced by the heads of cultural institutions (e.g., dismissal, funding cuts, criminal lawsuit) and adopted a systemic and habitual character in the situation of a particular intensification of the politicałideological struggle. A striking example of such tendencies came with the activity of the director of the CSW ZU, Wojciech Krukowski.

According to curator Aneta Szyłak, talks were held at least since 1993 – after the presentation of Grzegorz Klaman's _Emblematy_ [ _Emblems_ ] at the PGS in Sopot – with director Krukowski about exhibiting the said work at the CSW ZU. Amongst other elements, the piece comprised three glass containers filled with formalin in which anatomical specimens were immersed (for instance, a brain was situated in a container in the shape of Greek cross). At the opening of _Antibodies_ (1995), Krukowski allegedly stated in a private conversation with Szyłak that the work offended his religious feelings. "It was the first time that an argument of that sort had been used in a conversation about art. It was a motivation revealed _post factum_ , as it were, because Krukowski had previously refused to organize the exhibition or delayed making a final decision although his curatorial team expressed interest in the display".

In turn, July 1994 witnessed a controversy around a retrospective exhibition by American artist Andres Serrano, organized by CSW ZU curator Milada ślizińska. Aware of the controversial profile of the undertaking, Slizińska undertook an immense effort – as she recalls – in order to finance the show entirely from non-public funds. On loan from Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, Serrano's works were supposed to travel to Magazin 4 in Bregenz and Moderna galerija in Ljubljana after the Warsaw exhibition. Both of those foreign venues presented all photographs from the exhibition created by the curator, whereas at the CSW ZU, director Krukowski did not agree to the display of the most famed work, _Piss Christ_ , a colour photograph of a crucifix immersed in a yellow liquid, which – as the artist declared – was his urine. Slizińska's suggestion to show the work behind a veil met with a point-blank refusal of the director, who issued the curator with a reprimand for failing to accept the decision without further discussions. Krukowski later explained that he had not ordered that work at all and had never considered the possibility of displaying it. The piece arrived in Poland only because it was added by the carrier to the transport for the exhibition planned after the show at the CSW ZU. Yet, ślizińska claims that such statements were never made, as Krukowski did not take particular interest in the process of organizing the exhibition and made his decision only after the works arrived in Warsaw.

Regardless of the course of events, what occurred was a preventive blocking of the presentation of the work, and it does not matter significantly if the decision was taken at the preparation stage or during the installation of the exhibition. In 2001, Krukowski explained: "So far, there hasn't been anything that I wanted to show but didn't show. I show whatever I'm able to defend. When something contradicts my understanding of decency and sense, I will refuse to show it because I wouldn't be able to justify it. That was the case with _Piss Christ_ by Andres Serrano". However, the institution's director did not resist publishing a reproduction of Serrano's work in the exhibition catalogue. Depriving the Polish viewer of the opportunity to encounter one of the most famed pieces in global art of the turn of the 1990s (defended by many recognized art critics and scholars) for entirely subjective reasons proved to be a very controversial decision.

In reality, however, Krukowski had to mind his steps not only to keep his position, but also to safeguard the institution, whose fate – particularly in the 1990s – was uncertain. Curator at the CSW ZU, Marek Gożdziewski, remembers those times as a period of permanent threat posed particularly by politicians who often "tampered" with the institution. Strong pressure also made itself felt from the milieus affiliated with the ZPAP and the establishment officials and artists who disapproved of contemporary art. Particularly unfavourable to the CSW ZU was Kazimierz Dejmek – Minister of Culture from the peasants' party PSL between 1993 and 1996, who reduced the institution's budget, thus forcing Krukowski to seek private sponsorship. A relatively safe exhibition policy thus became necessary in order not to discourage potential sponsors. Krukowski also strove to secure the seat of the CSW ZU and therefore demanded from consecutive ministers that the Ujazdowski Castle should become the property of the institution. Yet another problem was posed by the threat of losing the status of an entity subordinated to the Ministry of Culture, and becoming an institution controlled by the local self-government, which would lead to provincialization of the venue and a greater dependence on the centres of political authority. The threat of such degradation emerged towards the end of the 1990s during the period of the development and implementation of the self-government reform. For all the above reasons, throughout his many-year term of office (1990–2009), the director acted with caution and prevented the exhibitions from being overly confrontational.

The Morphology of a Scandal. Scandal as a "stimulacrum"

An artistic provocation that emanated a similar character to the work by Andres Serrano was staged by the ł ódż-based artist Krzysztof Kuszej, who was supposed to present his paintings at the Museum of Cinematography in ł ódż in November 1994 within a closed scholarly session _Sztuka i erotyka_ [ _Art and Eroticism_ ], organized by the Association of Art Historians. One of Kuszej's paintings depicted the Virgin Mary nude from the waist down and hugging Baby Jesus, while another work featured three men with machine guns, one of whom was urinating on a painting of Our Lady of Cz _ę_ stochowa and another one was attacking a woman standing beside him. Kuszej received financial support from the culture department of the Provincial Office and the Municipal Office for the exhibition and the catalogue, respectively PLZ 3 and 2 million. According to the spokesman of the provincial governor, Kuszej "presented slides which contained erotic imagery, but not pornography. There was no reason not to give him money. We agreed to make the Museum of Cinematography available for the exhibition". However, the planned show never happened – Provincial Governor Andrzej Pęczak (SLD) and Mayor Marek Czekalski (UW) jointly notified the PPO in ł ódż about the crime of insult to religious feelings and propagation of pornography and also withdrew their financial support for the already printed catalogue, which included printed information about the sponsors. Kuszej explained in vain that he was referring to the then current situation in former Yugoslavia; the artist had to cover the costs of printing out of his own pocket. In 1995, the PPO discontinued the proceedings as neither the exhibition catalogue nor the exhibition itself had been made available to the public. According to an art historian expert witness, the paintings represented an artistic tendency that attacked universally accepted cultural conventions (e.g. Andres Serrano) and were not pornographic, since the artwork was not founded on commercial, but on artistic, principles.

According to the information I have gathered, it was the first instance after 1989 when proceedings had been launched by the public prosecutor against a visual artist charged with insult to religious feelings and propagation of pornography. It is noteworthy that the expert witness confirmed the artistic character of the incriminated content and excluded their pornographic character on those grounds; at the same time, by situating the works in the canon of contemporary art, he emphasized the artist's right to transgression.

Kuszej's case did not gain broader visibility outside of łódż and there was not reaction on the part of the society, the clergy, nor the media, apart from local daily newspapers. A completely different course was taken by the case of the cover of the _Wprost_ weekly (21 August 1994) which depicted Our Lady of Częstochowa and Christ Child, both wearing gas masks. An inscription to their left read: "Pilgrimages '94: A Roaming Fortress", which continued below: "Death in the Air. Norms Exceeded 120 Times". The cover triggered a protest by the prior of the Jasna Góra Monastery, who addressed a letter to the editor-in-chief of _Wprost_ , Marek Król, in which he demanded an apology or else threatened to take the matter to court. Król rebutted the charges: "The symbol used on the cover is not Prior's property. My feelings are offended by the tragedy of people living in a polluted environment, including the tragedy of children who never live to be born for this reason. The combination of the image of Our Lady and a gas mask is a powerful stimulus. However, we used it for a serious reason in order to compel reflection on important problems". The weekly received condemnation from the Episcopate; the journalists received death threats as well as threats of a bomb attack at the headquarters of the magazine. After the proceedings concerning an insult to religious feelings were discontinued by the PPO in Poznań (around 600 notifications of a suspected criminal offence were lodged in Poznań alone), two people lodged applications to the ECHR

The juxtaposition of the cases of Kuszej and _Wprost_ weekly demonstrates that no unambiguous relation exists between the scale of the infringement of norms and the force of reaction (incidentally, the _Wprost_ case, as well as the Serrano case from several months before, could actually contribute in a certain way to the creation of Kuszej's paintings, which were painted already after the scandal around the magazine's cover). Insofar as the public prosecutor assessed both cases from the perspective of the fulfilment of the statutory features of the criminal offence of insult to religious feelings, the social and legal repercussions were incomparably more powerful in the case of _Wprost_ weekly. The magazine's editorial board demonstrated a rather irreverent approach to the holy image, yet at the general level, the cover seemed to express concern – the photomontage showed that the levels of air pollution were so high that even the Virgin Mary and Child could feel threatened and should receive protection. What mattered for the weekly, of course, was the marketing potential of the transgression, yet the editors also tapped into the medium of the magazine cover to draw attention to an urgent social problem that compelled practical action, emphasizing in a certain way that prayer alone was not enough.

For the sake of comparison: one of Kuszej's paintings bore a direct reference to the sexuality of Virgin Mary, while the other depicted a drastic act of defilement (urinating on the most sacred icon of Polish Catholics), and yet the only reaction came from officials who were primarily concerned about being mentioned in the catalogue as sponsors of the project. At the same time, the officials denied the paintings the status of works of art. The spokesperson of the Mayor of łódż remarked: "I am a very tolerant person, artistic scandal is sometimes desired, but what Mr. Kuszej did certainly had nothing in common with art", and emphasized that "the paintings were even worse than Our Lady in a gas mask on the cover of _Wprost_ ".

Transgression is a necessary condition for a scandal to erupt, yet it is not a sufficient condition, although one may of course anticipate that, for instance, a mix of corporeality and religion will provoke resistance and trigger an explosion. Yet, we should reflect on whether it is really the artwork itself that serves as the site of transgression. As we shall see further, various political and cultural turning points may witness scandałprovoking transgressions "installed" in everything and everywhere, while their intensification does not manifest a linear character, which belies the often expressed conviction that we are inevitably heading for a greater freedom and openness, while works that enter the canon will gradually lose their potential to provoke violent reactions and become safe. Although – as David Freedberg argues – images inevitably trigger a bodily reaction, in fact they do not always stir up controversies, as the latter lie dormant in the viewers and make themselves manifest with varied force in different situations (frequently provoked by political activists who thus aptly build a discourse aimed at sustaining desired social relations or throwing in a red herring). It is the viewer who sets artefacts in a semantic motion by locating, transforming and consolidating their meanings – therefore, it not only matters what we show, but also how, where, to whom and when.

What is needed for a reaction to occur is, of course, contact with the work. It may be direct, which grants key importance to the manner of distributing the image, its visibility. The wider the reach and availability of the image (visibility), the greater the probability of a scandal and the broader the scale of the outrage (what matters is, for instance, the differentiation between the gallery space and the open public space, a work hanging on the wall and its reproduction published in a catalogue; even the categories of size matter). Scandal is partly a function of qualitative contexts: a different reaction may be triggered, for instance, by a presentation of the work at a provincial gallery and at a national museum; it is different in the case of an exhibition in Poland and a show abroad under the banner of "Polish art"; likewise, a situation of an unknown artist is different from that of a celebrity. In practice, an encounter with the work usually has an indirect character, which lends significance to the manner of mediation, e.g. the type of medium (nation-wide TV, local TV, specialist newspaper, mainstream press, scholarly study), the size and technical quality of the image and, above all, the manner of constructing the message (titles, headings, leads, their relations with visual materials, manner of editing, types of comments – desire to provoke negative emotions, distorted facts, content-related analysis of the artefact in question). It is sometimes even difficult to mention indirect contact, since protests may be staged not against a work, but simply to support a certain specific idea – some of the witnesses who testified against Dorota Nieznalska did not have the slightest idea about the form of the incriminated work. It is noteworthy that the participation of the media in stirring up a contemporary scandal is a necessary element, since only the media are able to spread the controversies geographically, extend their lifespan and provoke social reactions. It does not matter whether the media are the first to raise alarm or are themselves attracted by the fuss – both variants ultimately lead to the production of (violent) discourse: news, coverage, comments, polemics, support or condemnation, prophesying, moralizing, etc. There may be different causes behind the initial fuss that leads to the eruption of a scandal, for instance genuine outrage and desire to protect the borders transgressed by the work in the viewer's opinion, but also marketing – a cynical game played in order to gain fame, following, readers, electorate and/or money. The scale of a scandal is a resultant of the above described components, but also other factors can be enumerated, for instance the general socio-political situation, which heavily influences the reception of art at times when cultural conflicts intensify, or the fatigue of the public opinion with a given topic (the multiplicity and repeatability of similar events usually deaden the emotions and media resonance for a certain time). All these factors lead to the conclusion that scandal cannot be characterized in an unambiguous way. It is a phantom phenomenon, which enters the work from outside and usually depends on the occurrence of unpredictable variables and their even more unpredictable configurations. In other words, even a scandal that is designed and desired may prove to be a washout and it is worth bearing this in mind.

Scandal affords the work a broader visibility in the social awareness and offers an opportunity to liberate it from the elitist confinement of the art world. It is, however, a double-edged sword, since scandal significantly affects the social perception of art. It usually deforms the artefact by building a specific vision of it and of the artist, where such a _simulacrum_ (understood as the creation of a media reality unrelated to the professional "real" interpretation codes and manners of reading the work, characteristic of the appropriate interpretive community) at the same time becomes a "stimulacrum", which serves to additionally cause outrage and usually leads to censorship. Yet, the desired goal is completely the opposite: the "stimulacrum" character of a message should be replaced with a media fact that bears reference to serious interpretations of the work and is embedded in the realm of the art world, which would offer the possibility of transforming sensation into "sens-ation", i.e. into a fact that creatively stimulates the senses and compels critical thinking that makes sense. It is easier said than done, however, since it is the very "stimulacrum" and sensation, and not "sens-ation", that sit comfortably in the logic of journalism – in such conditions, artistic transgressions appropriated by the media do not play their own game, as it were, and usually lose their critical potential. Yet, the most important aspect of the scandal for us is that it originates from an impression of challenging the borders that determine what is acceptable, and the protest and condemnation (let alone the willingness to restore the status quo) that it inherently includes may build strong pressure that affects creative processes and creative policies of exhibitions (self-censorship).

Returning to the cases of _Wprost_ and Kuszej – the Virgin Mary and Child in gas masks "looked at" passers-by from almost every news stand, while the paintings by the unknown artist, although incomparably more iconoclastic, did not essentially gain any presence amongst people and therefore failed to attract a social response. Similar mechanisms were at play in the case of _Animal Pyramid_ – the work garnered the interest of a few representatives of the artistic milieu until television lent it visibility and unleashed a nation-wide storm.

"Of all the arts the most important for us is the cinema"

It seems that when attempts are made to censor theatrically released films, something more than sheer "visibility" is at stake. An important factor may also consist in the fear of the powerful impact of cinema – its potential to create universally shared visions, the sense of reality and, drawing on Hans Belting's thought, the experience of oneself as the true locus of images.

In the summer of 1993, the cinema distributor Silesia attempted to block the distribution of the film _Uprowadzenie Agaty_ [ _The Kidnapping of Agata_ ] directed by Marek Piwowski prior to parliamentary elections. The film is based on a true story – the elopement of Monika, the teenage daughter of the Deputy Marshal of the Sejm, Andrzej Kern, with Maciej Malisiewicz, whom she had met at a disco. Maciej's mother, a candidate to the Senate, threatened Piwowski with a lawsuit already before the premiere should the film disgrace her family (but she refrained from taking any legal action having watched it). At the same time, the Metropolitan Curia of Warsaw refused to grant the producer consent to shooting on the premises of the archdiocese churches. The justification issued by the Curia was surprising insofar as it bore testimony to the lack of distance to cinematic fiction, which was associated in a disturbingly naive way with real events, expecting a moralizing punch line and a happy ending. Yet, a true film scandal was still yet to come.

Immediately before the premiere of Antonia Bird's film _Priest_ in mid-September 1995, the Public Prosecutor General received a notification of intention to commit a criminal act by the distributor of the film, the company Solopan – the document underlined that the film contained content of pornographic character, mocked priesthood and offended religious feelings of Catholics by insulting the Catholic Church. Protests against the film were joined by many Catholic organizations, including even the more liberal representatives of the Episcopate. What raised concern was the statement by the spokesperson of the Minister of Justice Andrzej Cubała, who announced that although the public prosecutor could not impose a ban, should they recognize the distribution of the film as a crime, they could seize it as evidence. In turn, the spokesperson of the regional prosecutor's office in Warsaw Ryszard Kuciński was right to remark that "there was no regulation in place that would allow it. Such a formal ban can be imposed only by a court of justice".

Neither before nor afterwards did any film, even _The Last Temptation of Christ_ by Martin Scorsese, spark such violent reactions. It is the more so striking that Bird's film precisely addressed the real problems of priesthood (homosexuality amongst priests, precisely speaking) rather than directly engaging with Catholic dogmas. That disproportion could have a number of reasons: Scorsese's work screened in Poland without publicity and only at niche cinemas, while its premiere coincided with the greatest social and economic transformations in the country, when the society had more urgent problems to face than keeping an eye on inappropriate films. It is also likely that the vision of homosexual priests struck many Catholics in a more direct way than the heretic, yet difficult and intellectually demanding, vision of Christ's life. Solopan received letters and telephone calls with threats, several cinemas hired security, numerous protests were organized in front of buildings in which _Priest_ screened. Symptomatically, the hype contributed to an increased interest in the film; head of Solopan Jacek Szumlas said: "In this exceptional case we are not organizing a ceremonial premiere with champagne, as it would be inappropriate. We are not advertising the film. ... Calls from cinemas are simply pouring in. If we wanted, we could make 50 copies instead of 10". There are many reasons to suspect that the scandal was sparked by the distributor himself, who staged an unofficial publicity campaign within which he skillfully triggered and then stoked controversies, thus building an immense interest in Bird's film.

In December 1996, the public prosecutor in Warsaw discontinued the proceedings, although one of the six opinions issued by expert witnesses recognized the film as pornographic, while three expert witnesses opined that the film may offend religious feelings. Since around 120,000 notifications of a criminal act were lodged with regard to the film, the PPO needed to request a special government subsidy to cover the costs of informing all addressees about the discontinuation of proceedings.

A similar scandal surrounded Miloš Forman's controversial film _The People vs. Larry Flynt_ , whose Polish cinema premiere was planned on 28 February 1997. Insofar as the film itself did not stir up extraordinary emotions, the poster that advertised it on the streets met with a sharp reaction as it featured a man against the backdrop of woman's lap in a crucifixion pose. The PPO received a total of 1500 notifications of criminal offence of insult to religious feelings lodged by individuals, social and Catholic organizations, member of the KRRiTV Jan Szafraniec and representatives of the Church authorities. After the discontinuation of proceedings in 1998, the Regional Prosecutor's Office resumed them as a result of lodged complaints and filed charges against Jerzy J., director of the Syrena Entertainment Group company, which operated as the film's distributor, and the company's advertising specialist Aneta S. The charges concerned the fact that by considering the possibility of offending religious feelings through the distribution of the poster of _The People vs. Larry Flynt_ and accepting that possibility (the prosecutor therefore assumed conceivable intent) as well as having the possibility to select a different poster, they publicly insulted an object of Christian religious cult and thus offended religious feelings. The public prosecutor requested opinions from several expert witnesses, amongst them an expert in religious studies, film studies, a sociologist, an artist, and a graphic artist. Most of them confirmed an abuse of religious content in the film poster. According to one of the expert witnesses, insulting religious feelings formed part of the strategy of the Polish film distributor, who wanted to consciously tap into religious provocation and repeat the effect of the advertising campaign around the film _Priest_ from 1995. The trial could not eventually conclude before the prosecution was time barred, and therefore the end of June 2007 witnessed the legally binding termination of proceedings as the action became statute barred. A similar incredible inertia of the Polish judiciary was also to become manifest during the trials of Dorota Nieznalska and Henryk Dederko.

Although the artistic status of the incriminated poster is subject to discussion and, at least in this specific case, it should be treated as an advertisement rather than a work of art (given the manner of distribution and display, its function and the lack of discussion concerning the author), it is noteworthy that the case of the poster of Forman's film marked the first criminal lawsuit initiated in Poland after 1989 that pertained to an element of visual culture from the borderland of art.

Circle the Wagons, Start Acting

We may presume that the poster for Forman's film became one of the main reasons behind the intervention by the Mayor of Cracow, Józef Lassota, who in 1997 announced his intention to form a special committee tasked with considering motions concerning the removal of immoral promotional materials. The committee would react to complaints lodged by citizens and decide on removing indecent advertisements from buildings belonging to the municipality. Beyond doubt, the new body could also have a say in matters concerning the display of art in open public spaces. The mayor envisaged that the committee would comprise the municipal secretary and representatives of the municipal council (selected e.g. by the Family Committee of the City Council) and the metropolitan Curia ( _sic!_ ). Explaining his idea, Lassota failed to avoid oxymorons: in his opinion, the participation of a representative of the Curia would enhance the credibility and reliability of the verdicts issued by the committee; negatively evaluated posters could still be displayed on the walls of private houses (yet the mayor expressed hope that such "dissonances" would be avoided); he also promised that agencies that distributed "immoral posters" would not face problems in signing contracts with the municipality.

The formative period offered the possibility to observe the emergence of various initiatives, moderated by lower-rank politicians, aimed at controlling the communication sphere, both in the media as well as in the field of art and visual culture. The stake was to mobilise public opinion and political party activists against liberal decisions of the PPO or central administration. As in many other areas, a breakthrough came in 1993.

In April that year, members of the ZChN planned the establishment of a special intervention office to record instances of offence to religious feelings, as they believed that state bodies were failing to react properly to the widespread insults to the feelings of Catholics. It was already in May that the members of the party from Poznań noted in the _White Paper_ initiated by Deputy Maciej Srebro, the instances of Scorsese's _The Last Temptation of Christ_ , the television broadcast _Big Zbig Show_ 344 and Mirosława Dołęgowska-Wysocka's book – an important novelty as literature had hitherto been virtually untouchable – under the telling title _Sekrety spod sutanny_ _czyli Kościół '93: Wł adza, sex, pieniądze_ [ _Secrets Under the Cassock or the Church '93: Power, Sex, Money_ ]. In June 1995, the ZChN activists in Greater Poland announced the establishment of a local division of the Association for the Protection of Radio and Television Audiences (SORT).

The SORT was founded in 1994 in Białystok upon the initiative of Jan Szafraniec – a Catholic activist and senator in 1991–1993, 2001–2005 and 2005–2007, initially representing the ZChN and later the LPR; member of the KRRiTV in 1993–1999, where he gained a reputation as a strict guardian of morality who strove to introduce a ban on depictions of brutal scenes, pornography and violence on television. The goal pursued by the SORT consisted in exercising control over content published in mass media. Members of the association exerted pressure on the media which – as they believed – aired biased broadcasts, infringed on the rules of morality and personal dignity, depicted violence and rape, threatened the dignity of the family, religious and national feelings or broadcasted other content recognised as antisocial. The foundation of the association's activities was the mail correspondence received from viewers, who sent more than 60 thousand letters by the end of 1997. The SORT made one of its interventions in 1995, addressing the Public Prosecutor General with regard to the film _Priest_ and reported already before its premiere that Bird's motion picture "features content of a pornographic and exhibitionistic character, depicts deviations from which the society should be protected". At the same time, the association lodged a notification of an attempted criminal offence of spreading pornography and insult to religious feelings by those who broadcasted the film. As the Head of the SORT Ryszard Bender claimed in 1996, although the association had not managed to impose a complete ban on screening the film, it forced the Solopan company to raise the age rating from 15 to 18 years.

As it will be discussed further, Szafraniec himself as a senator made numerous interventions on the central administration level regarding infringements on Christian and national values committed by artists and the media, demanding from state bodies and institutions that such acts be curbed. The combination of social and parliamentary activity likens Szafraniec to American conservative senator Jesse Helms and Reverend Donald Wildmon, the key figures of American culture wars from the turn of the 1990s and main adversaries of Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Karen Finnley and David Wojnarowicż The SORT members were aware of the activity of analogous social organisations in the United States and Western Europe.

Attempts to interfere with freedom of expression pursued by parliamentary or government politicians mostly concerned broadly publicised cases unrelated to art. The main goal consisted in exercising control over public television and radio, and potentially also in the instances when the medium (e.g. theatrically released film) or mass communication broadcast guaranteed a broad reach. In mid-1994, parliamentarians attempted to establish a special council to control the press, which would have been unprecedented in democratic states. Apart from that, on several occasions the central administration officials tried to control the heads of exhibition institutions, such as the Zachęta Gallery and the CSW ZU, in order to adjust their programme profiles to their visions and needs.

Councillors Strike

The formative period confirmed the key role of local milieus in shaping the freedom of artistic expression. It became a tradition that the majority of interventions were made by self-government politicians who, especially after the self-government reform of 1998, gained a genuine influence on the operations of cultural institutions and also had a better insight into the repertoires of cinemas, theatres, galleries and museums, while their censorship activity attracted the attention of the local electorate.

An example of such activity came with a speech delivered by the right-wing Confederation of Independent Poland (KPN) councillor Andrzej Rux during the proceedings of the Committee for Culture and Science of the Municipal Council in Poznań in April 1996. Exhibited at the Arsenał Municipal Gallery was a work by Belgian artist Jean-Marie Gheerardijn that depicted flies on a chain forming a rosary. The discussion between the councillors featured several threads that were to regularly recur in debates concerning the freedom of artistic expression in Poland. The most important issue was the source of funding for controversial art – Rux accused the Director of Arsenał, Mariusz Rosiak, of using public money to offend the viewers and demanded that the work be removed from view; he also used the occasion to underline that Catholics were a majority in Poland. The question of public funding was to definitely become the one that most often appears in disputes over controversial art (the argument of cutting public funding for art unaccepted by the majority is not unique to Poland and may appear in every country governed by democratic mechanisms). The hypostasised taxpayer figure, forced to pay for obscene/blasphemous/offensive art firstly suggests the existence of a universal model of social taste that determines what can and what should not be financed with public money. Secondly, it usually combines a religiously, and therefore irrationally, motivated attack with the rational sphere of financial decisions, which offers the possibility to gain support of non-believers who are indifferent to art or attached to traditional artistic paradigms. Given the high level of difficulty and the controversial character of many contemporary artworks, as well as the universal lack of background for their reception, highlighting financial issues is an effective way of excluding such pieces from the public sphere. Lastly, the fiscal argument allows the censors to disguise their true nature, as it were. It results from the fact that censors disappear from sight by dissolving in an abstract mass of taxpayers and the equally abstract notion of the common good; what is more, their argumentation appears permissive: "of course, it is possible to show works by Gheerardijn, Nieznalska, Kozyra, etc." Yet, the "but not from my taxes" condition attached to such argumentation is burdened with serious threats and – as we will see – those who invoke it do not always comply with it themselves. We know from experience, of course, that private sponsors, suggested as an alternative source of funding, are reluctant to support controversial, transgressive, avant-garde artistic undertakings as such projects usually maintain a niche profile and therefore do not guarantee a return on investment in marketing terms. In turn, if their reach extends beyond a narrow circle of viewers, which usually happens through a scandal, it can taint the image of the sponsors, i.e. their personal rights. As Naomi Klein remarks, the corporate image policy is officially underpinned by a strong legalistic and pro-family message, and therefore potential private sponsors will rather shy away from supporting artworks that infringe upon "universally accepted principles of community life". Conservative politicians know all-too-well that artists who create such art effectively have a very limited leeway and will rather not survive without state patronage – such situation is a typical instance of delegating censorship competences that consists in leaving cultural producers with a choice between pursuing creative work that complies with the vision of the authorities and resignation from artistic practice. No censorship is officially involved, and yet we know that certain fields of art will either shrink significantly or cease to exist at all due to self-censorship – the form of censorship that is the most difficult to objectively grasp and the most insidious.

Therefore - as Pierre Bourdieu would put it - the heteronomies of the political and economic field undermine the autonomy of the field of art, incapacitating public art institutions and severely restricting viewers' access to questioned artefacts. Beyond doubt, public funding on the one hand and independence from current political configurations on the other hand are the conditions of appropriate functioning of the field of art, and throughout the last 150 years its autonomy facilitated creation of art that is nowadays recognised as the most valuable.

Another question that made itself manifest in the Poznań dispute was the debate concerning the right to provocation in art. Head of the Committee, Janusz Pazder, attempted to outline the limits of artistic freedom more broadly: "Andrzej, you are an art historian and you know the role played by provocation in art". Supporting Rux, Przemysław Aleksandrowicz from KPN rejected such arguments: "please spare me the talk about the limits of freedom in art and that kind of rubbish". We need to underline, however, that the conservative rejection of the privilege of artistic expression differs from its liberal negation (presented in this book), since the former presumes the preservation of restrictive limits of freedom of expression, whereas the latter presumes their absorption, as it were, by expanding the scope of freedom of expression in general.

An equally frequent motif of debates on contemporary art is found in the suggestion that artists insult Christians and thus discriminate against them. Judaism was initially mentioned for that matter, as it was in Poznań, and since the beginning of the 21st century also Islam (Rux: "If those dead flies formed the Star of David, the embassies of our country in the West would see Molotov cocktails hurled at them").

It is noteworthy that towards the end of the 1990s analogies were less frequently drawn between the then current attempts to limit freedom of expression and communist censorship (the committee expert Wojciech Jaraczewski: "Does Mr Rux want a Municipal Censorship Department to be formed?"). With time, the spectre of the GUKPPiW ceased to haunt and it was easier to bid farewell to its fading memory. The initial soft pressure exerted by politicians (the Poznań committee decided to refrain from putting pressure on the gallery director and limited its actions to sending the minutes of its proceedings to him and the Mayor of Poznań) in the course of time was to be superseded by direct threats of financial, disciplinary or penal sanctions.

A missing element of the Poznań debate was the sacramental phrase "this is not art", which appeared, however, in an interpellation submitted by the right-wing councillor Anna Musialska on 22 September 1996 "concerning the exhibition _Kobieta o kobiecie_ [ _Woman on Woman_ ] at the Galeria Bielska BWA between 20 September and 30 October 1996". Symptomatically, the interpellation began with the words: "The exhibition has a provocative character. Although they were created using the techniques of visual arts, the majority of the works are not art". Discrediting the ontological status of the works on display, the councillor challenged the rationale behind their public presentation on the one hand, while on the other hand – removed them from the artistic context which bestows upon them a certain rank and usually offers a protective shield.

It is noteworthy that the hitherto discussed instances of censorship or attempts at censoring art primarily concerned works that violated religious taboos, most often tainted by juxtapositions with the sphere of carnality or sexuality. Yet, the moral sphere itself is usually strongly determined by rules and prohibitions of a religious nature, and therefore artistic activities that address this sphere very often touch upon the religiously determined vision of the world and expose themselves to protests staged by believers. The question is not limited exclusively to the directly understood problematic of nudity, sex or pornography, but also to the views on sexual identity, gender, anti-discrimination policy and the vision of family.

By lodging her interpellation, Councillor Musialska primarily intended to protect her own, Catholic vision of a thus understood sphere of morality. What also emerged were the patriotic-national motifs, which are often connected with this sphere in Poland. Mixing religious and national motifs and situating them at an equal level with regard to identity: being a Pole (necessarily characterised as "true") means being Catholic, aggravates the conflict of a purely religious character, which also becomes a dispute about Polish identity as well as the past and the future of the nation. Viewing the problem from such a perspective, which is characteristic of culture wars, lends additional legitimacy to the potential engagement of the authorities or the PPO as the representatives of the state, which – from the right-wing perspective – means the nation. Poland sees frequent attempts to impose a narrow ethnic meaning of the term "nation", instead of viewing it in civic terms. Such tendency was made manifest by disputes concerning the wording of the preamble to the Constitution of 1997. Given the dominance of conservative social relations, conservative tradition and state mythology, such an understanding may bring about an entire array of exclusions – not only ethnic or racial, but also with regard to one's attitude to religion, the role of women, choice of the family model, sexual preferences, history and, last but not least, one's attitude to art, aesthetics and iconography.

The exhibition _Woman on Woman_ featured works by 25 Polish women artists. Musialska underlined that the presented pieces negated such values as family and religion, mocked religious symbols, depicted homosexuality, employed disability to represent the opposition between "good and evil", and after all – as Musialska argued – "woman has an identity, an identity of the mother, daughter, schoolgirl, teacher, national and social mission, a national and religious identity". In her opinion, the exhibition "offends humanity by robbing women of dignity by showing women without identity and with complexes". For that reason, the councillor demanded summing up the costs of "the organisation of the exhibition _Woman on Woman_ and organising next year – under the same organisational and financial conditions as now, but on an artistic level – an exhibition that would have an educational value".

Presented in the exhibition, Katarzyna Kozyra'a work _Więzy krwi_ [ _Blood Ties_ – see..] provoked the members of the coalition of right-wing parties Catholic Action in Bielsko-Biała to address an open letter to the BWA director Małgorzata Kubica-Bilska, in which they protested against "contemptible use of religious symbols" and "carefree use of the cross as a backdrop for a naked model and situating the symbol amongst cabbage heads. ... The symbol is protected by law as are all other confessions in Poland, for instance Islam, whose symbol – the crescent – is treated in an analogous manner to the cross in the work in question".

Katarzyna Kozyra, _Blood Ties ies_ [ _Wi˛ezy krwi_ ], 1995, colour photography, courtesy of Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation

The protest also concerned the text by Małgorzata Lisiewicz about Kozyra's piece published in the exhibition catalogue. According to the signatories of the letter, links between Catholicism as well as evil and violence against women formulated by Lisiewicz were false and offensive. Signatures began to be collected in front of churches under the petition to close the Galeria Bielska BWA. Press reviews and mentions about the exhibition often revealed derisive or mocking undertones.

Corporations Strike

A case that escapes the hitherto discussed rationalisation of limiting the freedom of artistic expression (religion, morality) is Zbigniew Libera's work _Lego. Obóz koncentracyjny_ [ _Lego. Concentration Camp_ ]. In 1997, the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was curated by Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski, who proposed a joint presentation of works by Zofia Kulik, Zbigniew Libera and Oskar Hansen (the Biennale was held under the theme: "Future, Present, Past"). In his concept, Kulik and Libera played the roles of critics of, respectively, political and neoliberal totalitarianism, while Hansen appeared as somewhat of a mediator, indicating the way out of the impasse. Beside his _Urządzenia korekcyjne_ [ _Corrective Devices_ ], Libera was to present the work _Lego. Concentration Camp_ (both from 1996), yet the curator rather quickly withdrew from that idea. According to Wojciechowski, Libera's piece "did not yet have established meanings, but only a drastic, provocative aura". What most fascinated the curator amongst the range of possible interpretations was the "sense of a polemic with modern technological rationality and symbolic strategies of the neoliberal free market that was developing in Poland at the time". Yet, that interpretation came to be dangerously veiled by references to the Holocaust (which Wojciechowski – as he emphasises himself – should have foreseen). The curator also underlines that he did not want to come to terms with Libera's declared willingness to trigger "an unspecified symbolic tension, or even shock". Wojciechowski believed that such strategies of expression "are not conducive to profound reflection on the darkest side of the 20th century nor the criticism of the insidiousness of mass culture, but instead dangerously approach advertising strategies, commercial market games". Libera's work started to dominate the entire exhibition and, at the same time, destroyed the intricate message of the show. Wojciechowski emphasises that it was for those reasons that he decided to remove the piece. He offered the artist the possibility to replace _Lego. Concentration Camp_ with a different work and present the original piece in the catalogue. Libera rejected that offer and withdrew from collaboration altogether – Poland was ultimately represented only by Zofia Kulik. Libera has a different perspective on Wojciechowski's decision: he believes that the curator resigned from _Lego. Concentration Camp_ for fear that exhibiting the work could "be used by certain circles of New York Jews to accuse Poland of anti-Semitism". In connection with this case, Anda Rottenberg mentions political pressure exerted on the curator, particularly by the then Minister of Culture. What all the perspectives involved in the case had in common was the fear of (differently understood) consequences of the rather evident interpretation that linked the work to the Holocaust.

Distinguishing three themes on which acts of censorship focussed in Poland: religion, corporeality and history, Izabela Kowalczyk included the case of _Lego. Concentration Camp_ in the latter sphere. If we indeed accept the version that Libera's work was not shown at the Biennale due to political pressure, then the tripartite differentiation proposed by Kowalczyk appears as insufficiently complex to embrace that particular act of censorship, whose character was much more multi-layered. The direct reasons behind censorship were, firstly, the questions of the image – avoiding accusations of anti-Semitism in a situation when Poland was universally regarded as an anti-Semitic country, and, secondly, pragmatism – good diplomatic relations with Israel and various Jewish lobbies. The image of the state and international bilateral relations are influenced by history, yet in the case of _Lego_ it is difficult to talk about a dispute concerning a vision of history – we should rather foreground the sensitivity to the Holocaust survivors and their descendants. The trivialising juxtaposition of a toy and a concentration camp affected the feelings, and therefore the personal rights (concerning primarily the memory of their dearly departed), of many people. Besides, the artist's point of departure did not consist in historiographic disputes, but in the very "here and now": the violence that hides underneath the shiny surface of consumer culture as well as the forms of individual and collective memory, and – perhaps more importantly – post-memory. I believe that the immediate reason behind censorship (let us repeat – if we accept the version about pressure placed on the curator) could be plain political pragmatism, while the censors found the feelings (personal rights) of the viewers more important than the question of history, which merely provided a remote background. It is noteworthy that the concentration camp toy sets created by Libera do not refer directly to Auschwitz, Dachau, or other Nazi death camps. The box number 6772 may indeed feature the characteristic sign above the entrance gate at Auschwitz, but, by contrast, the small box number 6742 directly depicts a Soviet tormentor. In turn, the barracks, towers, fences and types of human behaviour depicted on other boxes can be universally related to death factories scattered on the territory stretching from Bosnia to Kolyma, and they do not refer necessarily to German death camps. Such a universal interpretation is confirmed in a certain way by the artist himself. On the other hand, the visual _clichés_ that govern our thinking inevitably link the work with WWII, while the characteristic sterile-geometrical style of camps made of Lego bricks brings to mind stereotypical German traits, such as _Ordnung_ , systematicness, precision and planning.

Returning to the events of 1997: if the reactions of Jewish milieus was ever feared, it proved largely unjustified. The Jewish Museum in New York purchased one of the three sets already before the Venice Biennale, and showed it later in 2002 – albeit not without controversy – at the famous exhibition _Mirroring Evil_. The real threat to the work and the artist came from an entirely different direction.

In a subversive spirit, _Lego. Concentration Camp_ not only shows the violence that looms in "innocent" and, at the same time, perfectly rationalised artefacts of popular culture, but also pursues a form of insidious critique of the insidious operations of the system governed by capital at the detriment of the society. It is noteworthy that Libera presented his sets as part of the Lego System series without removing the Der Grüne Punkt trademark from the boxes, which testifies to the use of recycling by the producer (is it ever possible to release oneself from the mechanisms of enslavement in which money earned by corporate employees are spent on satisfying artificial needs created by corporations?). These diagnoses, which the interpretation of the work suggests, undoubtedly affect the image of the Lego company, but they were not the trigger that elicited its reaction. Since the Polish branch of the company provided the artist with bricks within a project organised by the CSW ZU (all elements originated from original sets), the artist placed the inscription: "This work of Zbigniew Libera has been sponsored by Lego" on each box, reflecting the actual situation. It seems that it was this information, combined with an evident violation of the taboo surrounding the concentration camp and the automatic associations with the Holocaust, that particularly affected the image of the company which built its position on the archetypes of carefree children's fun and innocent fairy-tale imagination. Insofar as the premiere exhibition of _Lego_ at the CSW ZU in Warsaw in 1996 passed rather unnoticed, the publicity around the presentation of the work in Copenhagen one year later stimulated the company to act. A Polish law firm hired by Lego strove to force Libera to sign a written commitment within a few days not to exhibit the work. The artist was close to consenting, but received help from the Danish gallery that represented him, whose lawyer undertook negotiations. Concurrently, after the initial negative press reviews in Denmark (where Lego is treated as a national treasure), the work gained more and more defenders. Ultimately, under the pressure of the Danish public opinion, the company officially abandoned its claims.

More or less around the same time, another gigantic corporation trotted out the biggest legal guns in order to pacify rebellious creative work. The film festival _Czł owiek w zagrożeniu_ [ _Man in Danger_ ] in łódż (October 1997) witnessed the first attempt at a legal blocking of the screening of the docudrama _Witajcie w życiu!_ [ _Welcome to Life!_ ] by Henryk Dederko upon request to secure the claim (Art 755 of the Code of Civil Procedure). The film was devoted to the sectarian mechanisms of the functioning of the Amway corporations, "psychological techniques that destroy human autonomy and leave many distributors in need of psychological help after working for the company". As Dederko remarked after many years, "According to the company, not only did the film express negative criticism, but also committed blasphemy. They have a religious approach to what they do. ... Someone who judges them critically from outside commits an act of blasphemy. This is the state in which they keep their believers". Despite Amway's interventions, Dederko's film screened at the festival and was even honoured with the Grand Prix. Yet, already in October, the Provincial Court in Warsaw prohibited the TVP from broadcasting it. Moreover, Amway's lawyers and two distributors of the company's products filed as many as five lawsuits against the director, Contra Studio as the producer and the TVP as the copyright owner: three civil, one criminal and one in a Board for Petty Offence (BPO). The claims pertained among others to libel and distribution of false information, particularly with regard to the data according to which 95% of Amway's profits are seized by a mere 0.2% of distributors from the highest echelons in the corporate hierarchy, as well as dramatised scenes that implied Amway's use of brainwashing techniques. In turn, the American company Network Twenty-One successfully sued the producer of the film and the TVP for infringement of copyright as they violated the integrality of the training materials created by the firm for Amway's distributors.

It was a real juridical tornado. The attack launched by Amway on the freedom of artistic expression and expression in general (apart from the artistic aspects, we also need to note the cognitive values of the film and the social significance of the addressed problems) was one of the most brutal in the history of the Third Polish Republic both in terms of the number and the diverse range of the deployed legal means, one of which consisted in an unprecedented blocking of access to the material for more than a dozen years. Obviously, the so called "Streisand effect" came into work and the interest in the "forbidden fruit" grew exponentially. Pirate copies of _Welcome to Life!_ sold at marketplaces are said to have been costlier than the world cinema mega-blockbuster of the time, _Titanic_ , and the advent of the Internet soon brought about the possibility of easily finding and downloading digitised versions of Dederko's work.

The scandalously protracted Amway lawsuit against Contra Studio and the TVP, which made it to the docket of the Supreme Court in 2006, finally came to an end at the end of March 2014. The Court of Appeal in Warsaw upheld the verdict of the District Court in Warsaw as of December 2012 in the scope in which it imposed a ban on showing the film with false data concerning the corporation's revenue structure. Yet, it overruled the obligation to publish apologies in two newspapers, which had been imposed on the producer.

Both those cases – _Lego. Concentration Camp_ and _Welcome to Life_ – were the first "American style" proceedings so to speak, in which gigantic corporations could tap into nearly unlimited funds to make use of diverse legal means against individuals in order to protect the company image and, consequently, its profits. Both works revealed the real nature of the commodities sold by the involved corporations, yet there was a significant difference between their modes of operation – after all, the Danish company acted with more restraint. Although Libera's work violated the firm's personal rights, it did so in a veiled way, tapping into the concerns sparked by the gruesome reference to concentration camps and the instability of meanings and allusions. Lego was quick to calculate that it would be better off withdrawing from the dispute and silencing the media hype around the case than waging battles in a field strongly protected by the aura of high-brow art – the more so that Libera's work had a relatively low harmful potential: despite broad media coverage, it operated mainly in the elitist sphere of visual arts exhibited at galleries. What also could matter was the fact that two of the three sets of bricks had already been sold and thus beyond the artist's control.

Amway, in turn, made an all-out attack. Still, it had more to lose and more difficult opponents to fight with – apart from the artist, there was also the TVP, a giant legal entity, as the film copyright owner. The board of Amway knew all-too-well that the hard-hitting publicistic message of the film could reach millions of television viewers, thus warning them in time against the sectarian illusion of guaranteed profit and a bright future. Such a situation would result in the company's immense losses as the Polish market appeared particularly promising (perhaps not even in terms of the demographic potential, but primarily due to the life frustration and naivety that were easy to harness in an era of neoliberal reforms that were pushing millions of people into poverty). At the same time, it is noteworthy that the scale of repressions employed by Amway provoked social resistance and gave the film an alternative life in the "second circulation" (Amway's use of preventive censorship would justify a _mutatis mutandis_ reference to the censorship from the PRL era).

Institutional Context

The appointment of Anda Rottenberg as the director of the Zachęta in 1993 immediately sparked protests of a part of the ZPAP milieu, which anticipated that it would entail its further marginalisation. In April 1994, directors of two associations formed after the dissolution of the ZPAP under martial law – Andrzej Skoczylas (Association of Polish Painters and Graphic Artists - ZPAMiG) and Jan Frycz (Association of Sculptors – ZAR) complained in letters to the Minister of Culture Kazimierz Dejmek that since 1989 their milieus had no say with regard to the exhibition programme of the Zachęta Gallery, CSW ZU and the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko. Those complaints resulted in an obligation placed by the Deputy Minister Michał Jagiełło on Rottenberg to organise a discussion about the gallery programme and invite guests selected by himself. As journalists remarked, it was a cause for concern that "after general complaints from two neo-associations, which apparently count on restoring the previous order, the heads of the Ministry of Culture and Art organise somewhat of a public trial of the previously accepted programme of the Zachęta". Skoczylas and Frycz wanted to make use of the fact that directors of exhibition institutions governed by the state authorities (e.g. national museums and galleries) or by self-government authorities (e.g. the so-called municipal galleries) were (and still are) appointed in Poland by virtue of the decision by, respectively, the Minister of Culture and city mayors. At the time, they could appoint directors either on the basis of the opinion of creative associations or by organising a competition whose results were not binding. However, Skoczylas and Frycz did not manage to undermine Rottenberg's position on that occasion, but in February 1996, more than half a year before the end of her term of office, Deputy Minister Jagiełło decided not to extend the contract and to organise a new competition for the office of the Zachęta's director. That decision sparked protests amongst a vast part of the artistic milieu. According to Jagiełło, the Zachęta devoted too much attention to the "forward-thinking tendency", and not enough to Academism, which the politician understood, for instance, as the work of Magdalena Abakanowicż He wanted the Zachęta to present "solid meat in the academic sense". It was the CSW ZU, he believed, that should show new and debatable phenomena, which was why Richard Serra's exhibition should have taken place at the CSW ZU, and the exhibition of works by Abakanowicz – at the Zachęta, and not the other way round. Such a view was shared also by Minster Kazimierz Dejmek. Anda Rottenberg was eventually re-appointed as the director of the Zachęta by the next Minister of Culture Zdzisław Podkański six months after emerging victorious from the competition.

Minister Dejmek clearly preferred centrally managed culture. For instance, he attempted to pressurise the CSW ZU into showing works by specific artists, such as kitschy paintings by Wojciech Siudmak, while threatening Krukowski on that occasion with removing him from his office. The independent and ambitious programme of the CSW ZU was evidently not appreciated by officials, and therefore they tried different ways to challenge the position of that institution, for instance by cutting its budget and forcing it to cancel international exhibitions, and even invested efforts towards dissolving the CSW ZU.

Institutions from outside the centre were also facing problems. Towards the end of 1994, the Mayor of Sopot, Jan Kozłowski dismissed the director of the PGS, Ryszard Ziarkiewicz, who had transformed a declining BWA branch into a dynamic avant-garde art centre. In 1992, the venue hosted the legendary exhibitions _Perseweracja mistyczna i róża_ [ _Mystical Perseverance and The Rose_ ], which witnessed the first steps in the individual careers of Rumas, Markiewicz and Kozyra, and one year later Grzegorz Klaman showed his anatomical preparations of human organs in the exhibition _Monumenty_ [ _Monuments_ ] there. As of 1st January 1994, the gallery became subordinated to the Municipal Office, which aggravated the attacks launched on Ziarkiewicz by the local ZPAP milieu, who felt marginalised by the PGS director. Although Ziarkiewicz committed to organising one exhibition of the ZPAP artists a year, the members of the association demanded that the local authorities organise a competition to select a new director. Apart from the accusations of disregarding the milieu and letting gallery spaces, they also challenged Ziarkiewicz for presenting art "fashionable in the first half of the 1980s", while ignoring "phenomena related to the circle of Postmodernist thought". It seems that it was a carefully considered manoeuvre of the ZPAP members, who thus offered the municipal authorities a reason to officially dismiss Ziarkiewicz for failing to keep up-to-date with the latest trends.

The meagre budgets of cultural institutions of the period provoked personal reshuffles as directors took risky financial decisions to keep the activity of their institutions at a certain level. As a result of exceeding the severely cut budget of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódż, Jaromir Jedliński lost his director's position although his content-related activity received much acclaim from experts. Yet, it seems that the change had a symbolic character. The Deputy Provincial Governor Marian L-abędzki emphasised that Jedliński was dismissed because of overspending, but also added that the director "preferred contemporary art", treated his museum as an exceptional institution and believed that "art was more precious than gold".

Summary

The "formative period" featured a relatively modest number of censorship interventions. Moreover, controversies sparked by presentations of works, perhaps apart from _Animal Pyramid_ and the film _Priest_ , attracted limited media attention (it is probably not insignificant that left-wing parties of post-communist origins were in power during the years 1992–1997). Yet, it was that very period which revealed or shaped nearly all the phenomena that were to come to affect the scope of artistic freedom, such as criminal and civil law proceedings; institutional weakness of artistic milieus; lack of prestige – contemporary art did not manage to gain an important position in the Polish cultural landscape; unclear rules of selecting directors of art institutions; lack of stable funding for these institutions and their dependence on the whims of local politicians; pressure placed by politicians of various ranks on directors of art centres and the resulting self-censorship; lack of orientation in the latest arts and art criticism demonstrated by journalists who played an immense role in shaping the society's vision of art; typical figures of speech that served to depreciate and delegitimise avant-garde artistic practice; social initiatives of an institutionalised character targeted against engaged art; but also spontaneous reactions, protests, demonstrations, and even acts of iconoclasm; fear of the influences of the Church experienced by all political parties, including the post-communist ones (in their case it was obviously not motivated by a religious conversion, although such instances may also have happened, but by the fact that any kind of stronger criticism of the Church on their part could bring about accusations of a return to the methods from the PRL).

Representatives of the Church demonstrated a relative restraint in their activities towards limiting the freedom of expression, but the same cannot be said about right-wing politicians, particularly at the local level. The pursuit of censorship was rationalised above all with religious and moral reasons, but also, as we have seen, the heteronomy of the political field made itself manifest through the ambitions to shape the exhibition programmes of the most prestigious institutions in the country. It was the first time that corporations had become active which did not hesitate to employ even the most restrictive legal means against artists in order to protect their image. At the same time, forces operating in the art world reached stabilisation as the scene's most important entities – the two consecrating institutions, the Zachęta and the CSW ZU – became dominated by milieus that promoted new art, including art that with time came to be known as "critical"; it was the representatives of this tendency that became the symbols of the Polish art scene of the 1990s. When in 1998 the English curator Nigel Warwick was working on the exhibition _W tym szczególnym momencie_ ( _At the Time of Writing_ ), a subjective survey of Polish art of the 1990s, he called Kozyra and Libera "the mother and the father" of young Polish art. The same year, on the occasion of a presentation of Polish art of the 1980s from the Zachęta collection, Dorota Jarecka remarked:

The problem is that there is not a single venue in Poland that could engage in a polemic with this vision of contemporary art [represented by the Zachęta – J.D.]. For the Centre for Contemporary Art represents similar tastes and policies of incorporating alternative and avant-garde art into its circulation. Artists can feel safe – they will surely be noticed. But at the same time, all institutions are slowly becoming similar and there is currently no serious force that could oppose the image of contemporary art that they are building.

It was also the formative period that shaped the legal foundations of the freedom of expression in Poland. In October 1997, the new Constitution of the Republic of Poland (enacted 2 April) entered into force. Art 73 of the Constitution guaranteed the freedom of artistic creation to everyone, and Art 54 stipulated that the freedom to express opinions, to acquire and disseminate information shall be ensured to everyone. However, works on the Constitution were turbulent and subject to strong pressure of the Catholic Church.

Apart from being the foundational legal act that regulates the basic rules according to which the state functions, the Constitution also offers guidelines as to the foundations of the state's functioning that are external to codified law. This is the role of the Preamble, amongst other sections, which in the Polish Constitution indicates the fideistic and non-fideistic sources of values that provide the foundations of the state. Such a universal formulation of the preamble provoked the discontent of the Catholic Church due to the lack of an unequivocal reference to God. The Church consistently maintained a position that stood in stark contrast to the basic rule of equality of rights and obligations of all individuals as well as religious and ideological organisations, and succeeded to some extent in pushing through regulations that questioned the secular character of the state.

During the work on the Constitution, the right-wing parties consistently rejected the provision concerning the separation of the Church from the state or, potentially, concerning its religious and ideological neutrality, arguing that it was artificial in a country "with an overwhelming Catholic majority" and insinuating that it had a communist-fascist provenance. Ultimately, Art 25(4) explicitly distinguished the Catholic Church as the only entity in the otherwise collectively defined category of churches and religious associations, while Art 25(2) and (3) were included in the principles of the political system in Chapter I of the Constitution in a wording that makes it impossible to unequivocally define the model of relations between the state and religious associations, thus introducing a certain freedom of interpretation. Particular controversies were provoked by Art 25(2), in which the concept of the state's ideological neutrality was abandoned in favour of a new, and therefore unclear, provision concerning the impartiality of the public authorities with regard to religious, ideological and philosophical views. Lawyers draw radically different conclusions from the content of this provision – some of them infer the principle of the separation of the state from the Church, whereas others – the principle of joint activity of the two entities. The influence of the Catholic Church is also manifest in the key provision of Art 53 of the Constitution (Chapter II: _The Freedoms, Rightsand Obligations of Persons and Citizens_). It is supposed to ensure the freedom of conscience and confession, but in fact protects "the freedom of conscience and religion", which – as it is remarked – is, firstly, a new form (alien to the Polish legal tradition and international law), secondly – it is incomplete (as it may lead to the conclusion that views other than religious are not subject to protection), and thirdly – it is ambiguous (it provokes doctrinal disputes). In turn, in order to prevent the emancipatory pursuits of sexual minorities, Art 18 of the Constitution stipulates that marriage is a union of a man and a woman.

A new criminal code was passed one year before the Constitution. Unfortunately – as already mentioned – many of its provisions (some of them of communist origins) may be recognised as overly intrusive in the sphere of the freedom of expression (e.g. Art 133, 135 §2, 137, 196, 212, 216, 226). These provisions are in force until the present day, and only some of them have been relaxed.

To conclude, it is noteworthy that the mid-1990s witnessed the emergence of the Internet in the social consciousness, a phenomenon that was to change contemporary culture in many respects by radically increasing the speed and accessibility of information flow and by broadening the possibilities of a free exchange of information. Emancipatory hopes were invested in the Internet on the one hand, as it was seen as an egalitarian and free space of social interaction, whereas on the other hand – given the emergence of a considerable amount of controversial content (such as racism, anti-Semitism, paedophilia, pornography), it almost immediately invited attempts to subject that sphere to control and restrictions. At the same time, the modes of its functioning were gradually determined by the interests of private corporations.

**3.4 Qualitative Escalation Period – Heroic (1999–2002)**

The "Pyramidal" Misunderstanding Continues

October 1998 witnessed the first three-level self-government elections that crowned a plethora of reforms aimed at decentralising the country and activating local communities (some previously state-run entities, including many art galleries, began to be managed by local self-government authorities). The elections were held at the levels of the province (voivodeship), _powiat_ (county) and _gmina_ (commune). Contrary to predictions, it was the coalition of right-wing parties Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) that emerged victorious, defeating the SLD and the Freedom Union (UW) (at the provincial level the AWS gained 40% of votes and the SLD – 38.5%). It was also the AWS that had won the parliamentary elections the previous year (with 33.83% of votes) and, in coalition with the UW (13.37%), it removed post-Communists (27,1%) from power.

Beside the first three years after regaining independence, the year 1998 may be recognised as one of the most liberal in the Third Polish Republic, yet the conservative turn in the election preferences of Poles that occurred at that time led during the next four years to a struggle for domination over the symbolic sphere (art, or more broadly – culture and image) in which a key role was played by AWS activists. The self-government reform of 1998 offered local politicians a broader influence on cultural institutions subordinated to them, yet disputes about art also moved to the national level. The change of the name of the Ministry of Culture and Art to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 1999 reflected a shift in the priorities of the state's cultural policy. At the same time, never before and never afterwards in Polish history were visual arts and censorship so heavily discussed: controversies around art engaged almost the entire country, from professional magazines, to the mainstream media, viewers, the Episcopate, the parliament, ministers, to the President. Yet, the reasons behind that interest were dubious and events sometimes took a grotesque course, while polemics and social relations could acquire an aggressive, even dangerous, form.

The best illustration of the scale of conservative reaction at the time is the conflict around the CSW łażnia in Gdańsk. On 4 March 1999, the gallery opened an exhibition of works by Katarzyna Kozyra, with _Animal Pyramid_ featured among the pieces on display. On 9 March, representatives of the Society for the Protection of Animals (TOZ) burst into the show and called the police. Wojciech Muża, secretary of the Main Board of the TOZ stated: "... the object of our outrage is not the installation itself, but rather the video tape with a film that depicts particularly brutal scenes of slaughter and then dissection of a horse's carcass. Such scenes may inspire others to commit a crime".

The attack launched by the TOZ came as a major surprise; only several months before Dorota Jarecka had written in her review of the exhibition _Fragment Kolekcji 3_ [ _Collection Fragment 3_ ] at the Zachęta:

The exhibition has an impressive beginning. _Animal Pyramid_ ... stands on a platform on the first floor opposite the 19th century _Gladiator_ statue by Pius Weloński, which stretches out its stone hand towards it from the landing. I do not know if it is intended, but there is an irony to it. _Gladiator_ , a sculpture that responded to the tastes of the Zachęta's conservative audience of the last century points at _Pyramid_ with its finger: now, you will be the emblem of the new times .... Introducing _Pyramid_ to the Zachęta turns the sculpture that only a few years ago provoked passionate ideological disputes into a museum artefact, thus closing a certain chapter in Polish art, so to speak.

In this context, the commentary by Bożena Czubak, curator of the exhibition at łażnia came as no surprise: "A substantive discussion about this work took place six years ago. The work has been shown at several major exhibitions. Nowhere were the police called in. I think that the society is seeking to advertise itself at the expense of our institution. Its representatives were not talking to us, but to the cameras".

Muża filed a notification of a crime. Quoting the law on the protection of animals from 1997, he justified that "showing the death of a horse is inhumane and strips the animal of its dignity", the film "may provide instructions for satanists", and he demanded that law enforcement agencies confiscate the video tape. The horse was put to death in 1993, when a regulation by President Mościcki as of 22 March 1928 was in force. That law stipulated a punishment of up to one year of imprisonment for killing or torturing animals, but at the same time, the prosecution of such offence was time barred after five years. Therefore, it was not the production of the work that was subject to legal assessment in 1999, but potentially its display, which was the reason why the notification to the BPO was not filed against the artist, but against the director of łażnia, Aneta Szyłak. Muża announced that the TOZ would participate in the proceedings as a subsidiary prosecutor and would also seek to block Kozyra's exhibition at the Venice Biennale, where the artist was supposed to represent Poland.

The _Pyramid_ case marked the first proceedings of a quasi-criminal nature against a director of a cultural institution concerning the pursued artistic programme. During the proceedings at the BPO, Szyłak argued that the process of killing depicted in the film – something we prefer to be unaware of – had a rather discouraging, and not encouraging, effect with regard to killing animals. On 12 April 2000, Szyłak was acquitted because the head of the BPO believed that she had not committed the offence on purpose. The head declared that the exhibition at the łażnia conveyed an important social message which was wrongly interpreted by the members of the TOŻ Several days later, the TOZ appealed to the regional court in Gdańsk. Muża chose a desperate step and evoked in his appeal "an infringement of both Christian and universal moral principles". He also added that the film "causes a profound damage to the psyche of children and youth who view it ... and leads to an intensification of aggressive conduct towards animals and people, including satanist conduct". The opportunistic reference to Christian values and satanist fear-mongering proved ineffective, and yet it was symptomatic of the atmosphere of that time.

Yet, it was not the activity of the TOZ that posed the most serious threat to the L-ażnia. In December 1992, as a result of the efforts of a narrow group of local artists gathered around the Wyspa Gallery, the building of the municipal bathhouse in Gdańsk was transformed into an alternative visual arts centre. L-ażnia soon gained a reputation as one of the most dynamic and ambitious Polish venues devoted to contemporary art, and, owing to the persistence of curator Aneta Szyłak and artist Grzegorz Klaman, on 1 June 1998, after nearly four years of efforts the city founded the L-ażnia Centre for Contemporary Art. The institution was initially financed from the municipal budget and the funds of the Provincial Office, yet after the self-government reform it began to operate solely under the auspices of the Gdańsk Municipal Office. Thus, councillors gained tangible possibilities of influence on the Centre and the AWS in Gdańsk, which had a majority in the city council, and indeed put the gallery's activities under ever more attentive scrutiny.

After Kozyra's exhibition, on 15 April the L-ażnia hosted the opening of Grzegorz Klaman's exhibition _Anatrophy_ with photograms depicting anatomical specimens: fragments of human corpses and embryos. Towards the end of April, more than a dozen AWS councillors attacked the institution demanding that the funding for the gallery be withdrawn; as one of them argued: "if you show such art for your own money, then everything is all right, but when the society pays for it, we need to react. We need to show the L-ażnia a red card". [in 1999, the gallery received PLN 627,000, i.e. ca USD 200,000 from the city; Kozyra's exhibition cost PLN 19,000]. Commenting on the protests triggered by his works, Klaman remarked that at the exhibition _Monumenty_ ( _Monuments_ ) at the PGS in Sopot, in which he presented real specimens, the exhibition garnered favourable opinions instead of protests. It is noteworthy that the artist received the specimens from the Medical Academy, yet the institution refused to make them available for the exhibition at the L-ażnia, probably due to concerns caused by the uproar around the gallery. As a result of media pressure (officially: "out of care for the good image of the AWS") the councillors chose not to file a motion regarding a budget cut. Yet, the L-ażnia was about to get into real trouble only two years later.

AWS v. AMS

In September and October 1996, Katarzyna Kozyra's work _Więzy krwi_ ( _Blood Ties_ ) was shown at the exhibition _Kobieta o kobiecie_ ( _Woman on Woman_ ) at the Galeria Bielska BWA, which sparked protests of the local milieu of the Catholic Action. The same work in a modified version (in which the artist resigned from depictions of a naked woman in the most "provocative" pose and non-paraphrased symbols of a red crescent and red cross) was to be presented as _Blood Ties II_ with the AMS Outdoor Gallery as of 17 May 1999. The gallery was an interesting exhibition initiative in public space run by the Poznań-based AMS (Art Marketing Syndicate) company, which was in possession of nearly 10 thousand advertising panels across the country (more than 1200 in Warsaw alone). With such an extensive network of billboards at its disposal, the firm – as it declared – felt responsible for the aesthetics of urban spaces, and therefore wanted to serve the communities by using the presented works to address important social problems. At the same time, the initiative was supposed to disseminate the most interesting projects by young Polish artists. The gallery's activity (limited to major Polish cities) was inaugurated in July 1998. New works appeared every two months simultaneously across Poland. _Blood Ties_ was presented as the fifth work in the cycle and was planned to appear on 400 billboards in total.

First, Mayors of Gdańsk Paweł Adamowicz and Gdynia Wojciech Szczurek requested that the AMS resign from installing the billboards because of Pope John Paul II's visit, and the company agreed. It then turned out that the AMS completely excluded Rzeszów from the action. According to Lechosław Olszewski from the AMS, "There were no available billboards", but when pressed by the journalist, he added: "I cannot tell you the truth. ... this work is controversial to such an extent that we didn't want to move heaven and earth for it in Rzeszów." Later, on 15 May, _GW_ published a brief note under the telling title _Znów prowokacja. Skandalistka Kozyra dla Kosowa_ [ _Provocation Again. Scandalmonger Kozyra for Kosovo_ ], which announced the presentation of the work on street billboards. The text called _Blood Ties_ "controversial social advertising" and indicated that "the work has already caused an uproar: representatives of the Church are protesting [which was not true – J.D.], the Mayor of Gdańsk prohibited its public display" (the note was accompanied by a photograph of a fragment of the work shown upside down). A media-political avalanche began. On the same day, the AWS Deputy from Gdańsk, Antoni Szymański, sent a fax to the head of the AMS with a request to resign from installing the poster. Szymański underlined that the "emblems" used by Kozyra were restricted for specific valued organisations; his argumentation was supported by the board of the PCK, which once again opposed a presentation of the work. The Deputy even addressed the ambassadors of Pakistan, Palestine and Syria asking for their opinions. The first admitted that "such activities by artists are good, but when they involve religious symbols, they cannot cross the border of disrespect for faith ..."; the ambassador of Palestine said: "I like the work, although it does not conform to our religion. The idea that inspires the artist is very good. I am also against war and therefore we are taking no steps to stop this exhibition". Szymański was simultaneously checking if the AMS was being financed from public funds. He believed that it was unacceptable for his "child playing in kindergarten and his neighbour's daughter coming back from the First Communion to see the body of a naked woman situated head down on the cross". In turn, the AWS Councillor Czesław Nowak recognised in a straightforward way that "the figure of a naked woman hanging upside down on the cross" was a satanist motif. On 17 May 1999, the Provincial Governor of L-ódż, Michał Kasiński (AWS), notified the PPO about the posters, requesting that action be taken in order to prevent the crime of insult to religious feelings of Christians and Muslims.

Members of the Catholic clergy approached by newspapers were equally sceptical, but the Episcopate did not issue any official statements. Although it seems that there was no situation in which the display of _Blood Ties_ would be accepted by a large part of the Polish society, the protests were additionally fuelled by the upcoming pilgrimage of John Paul II, the longest in history (5–17 June). Bishop of Poznań Marek Jędraszewski remarked: "It is a profanation that insults the symbols and thereby insults all of us. And the fact that it happens three weeks before the visit of the Holy Father compels my question: who is this supposed to serve and for with whose money has it been created?".

Marek Krajewski from the AMS initially tried to defend _Blood Ties_ : "We are not abusing these symbols. We are protesting against their abuse". "Criticising Kasia [Kozyra] and us reveals gaps in education: many people do not understand the language used by contemporary art". He also guaranteed that the billboards would not appear in the vicinity of churches, schools, hospitals and on the Pope's planned itineraries, and later reduced the duration of the display to two weeks to finish ahead of the Pope's arrival. Yet, on 17 May Krajewski ultimately surrendered and announced that the company would refrain from installing new posters, and those already on display would be covered in an appropriate way; the artist agreed to the censorship of her work. Already on 19 May the press began to publish images of posters with bands covering the bodies of naked women. Mutilated in this way, the work unexpectedly acquired a more meaningful, or even dramatic, expression.

Katarzyna Kozyra, _Blood Ties ies_ [ _Wi˛ezy krwi_ ], 1999, censored presentation with the AMS Outdoor Gallery, courtesy of Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation

The way in which the AMS handled the case was obviously guided by the logic of the market. It goes without saying that business entities care about their image as one of the main elements that they use to attract clients, and it is equally obvious that activity in the field of art may form part of the image. It offers an opportunity, for instance, to lend credibility to the company, improve its reputation, turn public attention away from problematic activities and neutralise criticism, gain fame and increase visibility, yet it may also backfire. The ease with which the AMS agreed to far-reaching concessions was undoubtedly a consequence of its image policy. The cumulation of negative emotions and protests around Kozyra's work could affect the social perception of the AMS and fuel negative attitudes amongst its business partners and local authorities – the opinion of the latter being particularly significant as it is the self-government authorities that decide on making urban spaces available for advertising. Therefore, the activity such as that pursued by the AMS can be adequately described as sponsoring, involving a barter exchange of benefits, rather than patronage, which consists in disinterested support.

The case of _Blood ties_ confirmed the immense significance of the manner of exhibiting and disseminating the work. Although councillors could notify the PPO about the offence of insult to religious feelings already during the gallery display in Bielsko-Biała (let us remember that it was also shown in an original, more controversial, version in 1995 at the CSW ZU in Warsaw and at galleries in Płock and Gdańsk), law enforcement bodies were employed only on the occasion of the street display. The AMS was not even helped by the affiliation of the display with the Congress of the International Association of Art Critics AICA, held at the turn of June in Warsaw and Cracow. Blocking the presentation was the Mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, who considered it insignificant if the protest concerned an advertisement or an artwork – he underlined that he was not interfering with "the artistic vision, as proved by the fact that Katarzyna Kozyra exhibits her works at public institutions". He also admitted that, speaking as a private person, he would not wish to view the work in the streets". Yet, in spite of Adamowicz's declarations, it was already a time when art had ceased to be safe, even at a gallery.

Once again, the key role of the media – in this case _GW_ – in stirring up controversy came to the fore. Such scandals lead to a semantic "formatting" of the work; few people attempt a deeper insight into its sense and usually stop at the level of stereotypical understanding of its most visually and symbolically powerful elements. A different matter is whether a street display on billboards affords a proper perception of such difficult works as _Blood Ties_. Beyond doubt, Kozyra's work was rather controversial and, contrary to what art critic Izabela Kowalczyk wrote, it had a complicated visual structure and symbolic layer, for instance the mysterious juxtaposition of cabbage heads and cauliflower with the allusively represented symbols of two humanitarian institutions and, at the same time, two great monotheistic religions. Also far from obvious is the relation between these elements and the figures of nude models: Katarzyna Kozyra and her disabled sister, who are actually – when viewed briefly – could be mistaken for being the same person, while the deformation of the lower part of the lower limb of the artist's sister appears as an effect of foreshortening (resulting from folding the leg) rather than as a disability. Moreover, the interpretation of references to the then situation in the Balkans is possible only when the work is accompanied by a discursive context. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that a superficial perception of the piece – natural on the street – without the support of a verbal commentary activated the game of the most obvious meanings: cross – crescent – humanitarian organisations – religious symbols – naked women – vegetable field. From there, it was only one step away from negative reactions and a nervous search for appropriate legal hooks, which actually could be found in an unexpected abundance – from the offence in Art 196 PCC and a petty offence in Art 141 of the code of petty offences (CPO), through to violation of personal rights of private and legal persons, to violation of the law on the trademarks of charities. The spokesperson of the Episcopate, priest Adam Schulz stated that the poster "does not convey the artist's intentions, while it also abuses the symbols of two great religions in a distasteful manner, demonstrating the lack of the sense of culture and sensitivity". Few were interested in the difficult problems addressed by Kozyra and a more detailed analysis of the visuality of the work. The juxtaposition of the sacred (religious symbols) and the profane (naked body) proved powerful enough to hamper further reflection and potential debate, it also fuelled aggression and provoked attempts – still unsuccessful at that point – to employ legal means.

The scandal surrounding the AMS billboards must have stayed in the memory of politicians because when a display of four billboards with works by Katarzyna Kozyra, Alicja Żebrowska, Jacek Staniszewski and Paweł Kruk was planned in Poznań's Old Market Square in April 2000 within the photographic biennial _Krystalizacje_ [ _Crystallisations_ ], municipal officials went into panic. Apart from _Blood Ties_ , the other works were utterly innocent; nevertheless, the Deputy Head of the Urban Planning and Architecture Department of the Municipal Office in Poznań, Tadeusz Jurga, did not authorise the installation of any billboards, since they could "be detrimental to the state of the environment and cultural assets". His colleague Krzysztof Bartkowiak was more honest: "... in the city centre we do not want advertisements or scandalous posters by Ms. Kozyra, which are not universally tolerated".

In 1999, tension was building up, mainly in relation to Kozyra's works. _Blood Ties_ were censored, but it was _łażnia męska_ [ _Men's Bathhouse_ ] that aroused the most powerful emotions, additionally stoked, beyond doubt, by the publicly funded presentation of the film in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The film begins with a depiction of Kozyra disguised as a man (with added facial and body hair and a rubber penis), after which we enter the male section of the Gellert bathhouse in Budapest, where the artist records naked and unaware men on camera hidden under her towel. What proved particularly controversial was the fragment showing Kozyra changing sex. Press comments published at the time (even those theoretically favourable) revealed that after ten years of democracy, Polish publicists still could not handle (or did not want to handle) the reception of contemporary art. At the same time, it is worth emphasising an immense media interest attracted by the artist: Kozyra was covered in professional press, main opinion-forming newspapers and periodicals, right-wing press, local newspapers, but also women's magazines such as _Marie Claire_ and _Pani_. A large number of those texts outdid the criticism of _Animal Pyramid_ from six years before in terms of the expressed contempt, or even aggression; for instance, the Secretary of the Main Board of the ZPAP, Stanisław Tabisz, called the work "shit" in two texts; suggestions were made once again that the artist was mentally ill, there were even proposals to introduce caning as a punishment for artists. Characteristically, since _Men's Bathhouse_ was awarded an honourable mention at the Venice Biennale and the two parts of the _Bathhouse_ project were exhibited at the CSW ZU (11 December 1999–13 February 2000), the uproar began to fade and reviews, although they still tossed around the words "scandalmonger" and "scandal", had a rather favourable character. In 2000, the artist was nominated by many readers of the lifestyle magazine _Twój Styl_ to the Woman of the Year title.

It is noteworthy that neither the first version of _Bathhouse_ (1997), in which Kozyra spied on women at Gellert, nor the Men's Bathhouse ever triggered any legal restrictions, although the recorded persons who could be recognised could pursue the protection of their right to dignity – particularly the right to privacy and image (in Poland on the basis of Art 23 and 24 of the Civil Code, and in terms of the image, also Art 81 of Copyrights and Affiliated Rights). According to Kozyra, problems began only after a Hungarian journalist recorded the first _Bathhouse_ on camera at the Zachęta and later showed the footage to bathhouse employees, taking photographs of them "as they clutched their heads in disbelief and outrage". The journalist later published the photographs in a local newspaper, where he also wrote that the artist wanted to ridicule Hungarian women in the eyes of Poles. As Kozyra states, he later "withdrew from everything". The inactivity of the wronged parties probably resulted from the fact that the _Bathhouse_ series was not presented in Hungary for a long time. In turn, Kozyra must have been aware of the illegality of her act (violation of the right to image is so blatant here that it is difficult to presume unintentional illegal activity). After the revision of the PCC by virtue of the act of 5 November 2009, it would also be possible to launch criminal proceedings in analogous cases on the basis of Art 191a PCC upon the motion of the wronged party (the recorded person), which provides grounds to suspect that similar works are highly unlikely to be created nowadays.

Expert in cultural studies Jacek Zydorowicz suggests that Kozyra did not drastically transgress the norms as the naked persons were in a public space, "in which being looked at is obvious". I do not agree with this judgement. Firstly, the film _Bathhouse_ shows that women performing their ablutions feel at ease with each other and the cultural relation between the viewer (position of power) and the viewed (subject to the power of the gaze) is at least partly suspended; capturing the moment "when one looks but not views" is actually one of the main values of Kozyra's work. Secondly, there is a difference not only between looking and viewing, but also between viewing and voyeurism or recording; a recorded image of an unaware person may become available worldwide in the Internet era. Thirdly and finally, Zydorowicz is wrong to ignore the difference between the specific intimate character of a bathhouse (even public) and the atmosphere and conventions of behaviour on the street, for instance. It is beyond doubt that the creation of both works by Kozyra – very good in my opinion – entailed a drastic violation of ethical and legal norms. In order to prevent it, the material should be edited in a way that would make it impossible to identify specific people, yet such a solution seems extremely difficult for technical reasons. Another way could consist in blurring the faces, yet that would introduce a certain semantic surplus, since, for instance, a person whose face becomes blurred in a media coverage is typically associated with a criminal or someone charged with a crime. It seems that such a type of intervention would significantly alter the sense of the work and, at the same time, reduce the power of expression of the precisely constructed and very consistent artwork. We are therefore faced with an unsolvable conflict, which as recognised by Piotr Piotrowski, who asked: "... to what extent is it possible to reveal the politics of the gaze, to deconstruct it, to analyse the meanings of the representation of the body without violating the privacy of the body?". The art historian defended Kozyra's work – not in ethical, but in critical and political categories, indicating that by recording naked people the artist had situated herself in the media "news culture". There is no doubt that without transgression (also in legal terms) Kozyra would not have been able to achieve as powerful an effect as she did through candid shots.

(a, b) Katarzyna Kozyra, _Men's Bathhouse_ [ _L´ażnia m˛eska_ ], 1999, video installation (stilll image), courtesy of Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation

(a, b) Katarzyna Kozyra, _Bathhouse_ , 1997, video instalation (still image), courtesy of Katarzyna Kozyra Foundation

How To Train Curators

The ever more frequent and brutal interventions of right-wing politicians began to bring about effects as self-censorship started to be practiced in many art exhibition venues. Significantly, on 10 March 1999, one day after the notorious intervention of the TOZ in the CSW łażnia, the Director of the Baltic Sea Culture Centre (NCK) in Gdańsk, Maciej Nowak, cancelled the opening of the exhibition of Rafał Ewertowski's works titled _Wystawa malarstwa_ [ _Painting Exhibition_ ] planned on 12 March. The artist transformed the NCK gallery into something of a studio in which he presented a series of paintings whose titles bore reference to canonical masterpieces [e.g. _The Anatomy Lesson of Dr NicolaesTulp_, _The Arnolfini Marriage_ ], but which depicted erotic scenes that delivered a commentary on stereotypes in art and human behaviour. Nowak was frank about the reasons behind his decision: "... as a director of the institution, I bear the consequences related to the image of the company and responsibility for what I show to the viewers. ... My decision results from care about the influence of the exhibition on the image of the NCK and, of course, from a certain fear". At the same time, the director admitted that he did not recognise Ewertowski's works as pornographic. The paintings could ultimately be viewed at a private show. It is noteworthy that if the decision to organise a private viewing resulted from an interpretation of the provisions of the criminal code regarding pornography, then such a reaction was exaggerated. Warnings about the presentation of pornographic materials displayed in the exhibition space and an age limit of 15 would have sufficed to protect the organisers against legal consequences. Yet, we do not know – and this seems to be the key factor – if it would have protected them against politicians.

As for the liability of insulting religious feelings, even an appropriate warning would not offer a sufficient guarantee of criminal indemnity. Teresa Gołda-Sowicka seemed to have been aware of that while curating the July exhibition _Wystawa sztuki Bielsko-Bia_ ł _a 2000_ [ _Art Exhibition Bielsko-Biała 2000_ ] at the local BWA. The show gathered works of more than one hundred local artists, yet the curator chose not to display three paintings by Grzegorz Madej: _św. Sebastian_ [ _St. Sebastian_ ], _Leda_ and _Duch, a zarazem ciało_ [ _Spirit, and Flesh at the Same Time_ ]. Painted in a _fin de siècle_ style, the works featured, respectively, a male nude pierced with arrows, an angel copulating with a female, and a sitting woman with an aureole and a naked woman on her knees, akin to a pieta. According to the painter, the BWA feared a pact in the municipal council – local politicians had already given proof of their interest in exhibitions at the gallery; it is also noteworthy that the AWS enjoyed better results in the self-government election in the Lesser Poland Province than anywhere else in the country: 47.3%. Indeed, the relations between the municipal authorities and the BWA in Bielsko-Biała were always far from simple, a fact that was to lead to censorship of works in the future. Yet, the curator denied it: "I'm not afraid of a pact. I was only thinking about the people whose religious feelings might be insulted", while she also symptomatically added that "unfortunately article 196 PCC does exist". Madej underlined that as an artist he had the right to address any topic and formulate it according to his own ideas, and that he took responsibility for his own art, he was not willing to show different works instead and ultimately exhibited empty frames.

Interestingly enough, the organisers published a reproduction of _Leda_ in the exhibition catalogue, considering that the situation was different from the painting hanging on the wall in a public exhibition, and therefore they followed the steps of the Director of the CSW ZU, Wojciech Krukowski, who did not display Andres Serrano's _Piss Christ_ , but authorised the publication of a reproduction in the exhibition catalogue. This approach confirms that it was not the availability of the image that was the most important for censors, but its "visibility" and, thus, its real "presence", so to speak, in public space – it was a means of limiting the scope of the image's immediate effect and taming its power. Yet, it is also noteworthy that censorship of books triggers particularly bad associations and memories in the Polish tradition.

The above described events bore relation to a review of works by lesser known artists at a gallery that could be easily dominated by provincial politicians without the risk of attracting media attention beyond local press. In the case of Zofia Kulik's exhibition _Od Syberii do Cyberii_ [ _From Syberia to Cyberia_ ] at the National Museum in Poznań (MNP), the rank of the event and institution was entirely different, and yet the same mechanisms were at play as in the case of the BWA in Bielsko-Biała. A mad, moral panic caused by the political context led the director of the Museum, Konstanty Kalinowski, to prohibit the display of Kulik's work titled _I dom, i muzeum_ [ _Both Home and Museum_ ]. The director's intervention was a serious one as the installation had a site-specific character (it was a bespoke design for the then main hall of the MNP), and therefore an act of preventive censorship rendered it completely impossible for the viewers to directly encounter the work, while the photographic documentation was not able to convey its essence given the spatial character of the piece.

As the exhibition curator Piotr Piotrowski described, Kulik's installations comprised two parts:

an obelisk standing in the centre of the monumental museum hall with works hanging on the walls, [fourteen] close-up images of male genitalia, photographed fragments of sculptures from the Hermitage collection in Saint Petersburg. The photographs had a very aesthetic, even refined, character. Precisely speaking, those were indirect images taken from a video film shot at the Hermitage and then printed out. Situated underneath and photographed using the same technique were the original captions of sculptures in three language versions ... The images were hung along two side walls of the monumental hall and provided a certain antithesis of the neutral architectural frieze situated in the upper sections of the walls.

(a, b) Zofia Kulik, _Both Home and Museum_ [ _I dom, i muzeum_ ], 1999, phot. by Ryszard Rau, archive of The Institute of Art History, UAM Poznan´

The installation, devoid of the photograms, could only be viewed on Sunday, 23 May. The artist chose not to show a fragment of her work and on Monday the plinth was disassembled. The Deputy Director of the MNP, Andrzej Woziński, underlined that "the exhibition scenario never mentioned close-up images of male pubic areas. We only found out about it during the installation of the exhibition, and therefore the agreement was not kept". Piotr Piotrowski explained that Zofia Kulik's work had evolved and attempted to negotiate: "I spent two hours trying to convince Director Kalinowski that the photographs were not obscene, all in vain. He argued that the hall was not an isolated museum space and provided a passage for people (including schoolchildren) who wished to view the permanent exhibition, and Zofia Kulik's work may offend them. He proposed to move it to a different hall. We did not agree as the installation had been composed for the hall interior and exhibiting it in a different place made no sense". Eventually, the artist and the exhibition curator sent a letter of protest to the director.

Fighting for their rights, Piotrowski and Kulik attempted to stir up media hype around the case, whose traces can be found in press articles. Yet, no such traces were left in the case of the untimely closing of Jacek Markiewicz's exhibition _Aneta II_ (March 2000) by the director of the CSW ZU in Warsaw, Wojciech Krukowski, or his preventive censorship of the exhibition of Japanese art _Gendai. Współczesna sztuka Japonii. Pomiędzy ciałem i przestrzenią_ [ _Gendai. Japanese Contemporary Art. Between the Body and Space_ , 7 October – 3 December 2000]. The details of the latter exhibition can be found only in a text by Adam Mazur, who commented on the event as follows:

... if an institution that exhibits art chooses to present works by an artist, it should be convinced that what it shows is art, and not pornography. The lack of such a conviction in the case of _Gendai_ led to several major inconsistencies: Why are some of Araki's works missing? (And those that, as obvious fragments of a certain whole, would depict the "moments" or "penises and penetrations".) Why are works in display incomplete, deficient, and does the artist himself know about it? Why are some photographs situated in half-light, which makes it difficult to view them? Who made the arbitrary choices and decided that a penis with a snail [sic!] is "decent" enough, while this and that is not? ... It seems that someone must have put some underwear on the exhibition, whose patrons include PM Buzek and Minister Ujazdowski.

It is noteworthy that Mazur drew a sharp distinction between art and pornography, associating with the former term the purifying qualities that counter the negative qualities of the latter term. Krukowski once again nipped the threat in the bud – he preferred to introduce preventive censorship-based alterations in the exhibition and expose himself to criticism from the arts' circle rather than irritating AWS politicians or provoking a real scandal (perhaps even on an international scale) in case Araki's works were removed during the exhibition. Araki generally had bad luck in Poland – during his exhibition at the private Starmach Gallery in Cracow in the autumn of 2002, the gallery owner removed one of the photographs upon his own initiative: "It featured a couple carrying a figure of Our Lady. The neighbouring photographs abounded with naked people. I was afraid that such a context would cause outrage. ... we attached a card reading 'attention, dangerous content' to invitations to Araki's opening. As you can imagine, it only attracted more people".

Panic was rising from one month to another, sweeping through large and small centres. On 1 December 2000, the BWA in Zielona Góra opened the exhibition _Polonia-Słubice_ by Hubert Czerepok and Ryszard Górecki. The former artist showed the video _Zapis mszy odprawionej za pomyślnośc wystawy_ [ _Record of a Mass Offered to the Success of the Exhibition_ ], and the latter – a cycle of erotic works _Art, Love, Success, Dead_ (2000). According to the head of the gallery, Wojciech Kozłowski, on 5 December, "a columnist in a local newspaper suggests that the exhibition has a provocative character", on 6 December Kozłowski notices that the images are covered with paper, "a summoned employee explains that his Catholic consciousness could not bear the co-existence of a mass and such drawings on a single territory". Eventually, one week after the opening, the director decided to remove the work from the exhibition. It happened after he received a phone call from the priest who had celebrated the mass requested and filmed by Czerepok (the clergyman had previously agreed to recording and exhibiting the footage at the gallery). The priest was concerned about the presentation of Górecki's erotic works beside Czerepok's video. He announced that if Kozłowski failed to remove the video from the exhibition, he would file a lawsuit. At the same time, he did not agree to removing Górecki's works and leaving the film. The priest explained himself – as Czerepok reported – "that he was under pressure from above (from the bishop) and from below (from the faithful), he would have nothing against the show himself, he knows that artists have the right to express their convictions". Prior to the exhibition opening, the artists had invited the priest to view it and make corrections if necessary, yet he did not manage to do it either before or after the opening, and eventually did not see the exhibition at all.

At the beginning of July 2001, only half of around two hundred works by Roland Topor were shown at the Palace of the Arts in Cracow (officially due to "limited spatial capacity"), and a warning banner was hung on the building: "For adults only". What is more, the work _Polish Landscape_ , which depicted a cross in-between a woman's spread legs, was removed from the exhibition right before the opening. The exhibition had already toured many cities; apart from Cracow, only in Wrocław was the said work missing from the display. Yet, as it is usual in such cases, the piece was reproduced in the catalogue. The curator of the exhibition Przemysław Paszkowski stated: "The exhibition was censored downright. What is more, everything began in a conspiracy, there was no opening, no invitations... First the image was hanging, the next moment I was told to remove it. I had no choice...". In turn, Kazimierz Witek, Head of the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts in Cracow, organiser of the exhibition in that city, declared: "It is our bandit's law, we exhibit what we want. And as much as we can. The Palace of the Arts is an autonomous institution". He did not exclude the possibility of organising a private viewing of _Polish Landscape_ provided that a list of viewers was drawn up beforehand.

Several months later, Dorota Nieznalska's monographic exhibition at the Arsenał Gallery in Białystok featured the first act of censorship of the work _Pasja_ ( _Passion_ , for description of the work see p. 306). Upon request of the gallery director Monika Szewczyk, the artist covered the photograph of a penis attached to the cross with a sheet of paper. Szewczyk was afraid to show _Passion_ because the exhibitions were under observation of right-wing councillors. The director had already experienced problems caused by the exhibition _Relaks_ [ _Relax_ ] in May. Presented in that show, were a series of photographs by Zbigniew Rogalski which depicted the artist "in the company" of objects of everyday use with female names outraged Councillor Józef Racewicż When the councillor read in _Kurier Poranny_ (21 May 2001) that Rogalski "shows his meetings with Angela, Monika, Małgosia, Ewa in public spaces and an intimate encounter with a tiny Iza, the above mentioned 'women' being radio sets and a sewing machine", he submitted an interpellation to the municipal authorities in which he demanded that the funding for the gallery be cut (in 2000, it was around PLN 800,000 – ca USD 200,000). According to the councillor, Rogalski's photographs that depict an "encounter with a tiny Iza" were paedophilic. At the same time, the councillor admitted that he had not seen the exhibition and did not intend to do so. As a result of the interpellation, the Municipal Board requested an explanation from the director.

In June 2002, during the 18th International Poster Biennale in Warsaw (4 June – 29 September 2002), Director of the Poster Museum at Wilanów, Maria Kurpik, had two awarded works removed from the exhibition. In his poster _Henri. In Homage to Toulouse-Lautrec_ , Alain Le Quernec from France (gold medal in the category of cultural posters) depicted the painter's crippled body against a bright red background in a crucifixion pose with an inscription HENRI above him. In turn, in her work _ICON 2000_ (gold medal in the debut category), Dominika Różańska transformed the image of the Virgin and Child by replacing the figures with coca-cola bottles and adding an aureole to the larger figure (analogous to the Madonna). The director's intervention was said to have been caused by a complaint from a person who deemed the posters offensive to their religious feelings.

Even an aura of a noble, scholarly institution and the academic immunity of place sanctioned by law and custom did not offer a sense of safety. In November 2002 works were underway at the Zakręt students' gallery operated by the Institute of History of Art (IHS) at the University of Warsaw on the exhibition _Wypisz/wymaluj_ [ _Spitting Image_ ], which featured the Twożywo group. One of the presented works was the banner _IHS. Tworzenie jest miłością_ [ _IHS. Creation Is Love_ ], which merged the Christological symbol with the acronym for the Institute. The banner was supposed to hang on the Institute's facade, but was eventually not installed. As the exhibition curator Marcin Krasny wrote:

The authorities of the Institute of Art History decided not to show the work ... for fear of consequences that the institution could suffer from the university authorities, which in turn could get into the bad books of the municipal authorities, which in turn... And so on. ... The system of piled connections turns any attempt to do something into a mere Don Quixotery, especially for the people who manage such a marginal – let's put it bluntly – institution as the IHS. Could they do anything else? No. And therefore there is nothing to wonder about. Thus, the Twożywo group, whose goal consists of sending its messages into public space, was only allowed to present its work inside the building. ... The project will be shown, yet the artists decided that the manner of display would bear certain symptoms of sabotage. Leaflets will be distributed at the opening – postcards with a reproduction of the work" [the group also included information about the censorship act in the postcards – J.D.].

However, the then lecturer at the IHS, Prof. Waldemar Baraniewski underlines that the decision to hang the banner was not at all within the competency of the heads of the IHS, but rested with the Chancellor of the University of Warsaw, and it was he who refused to authorise the display of the work on the facade. In other words, the Institute's authorities should not be accused of censoring the exhibition, but, potentially, of failing to revolt against the decision of the university's authorities. Yet, the version of events according to which the then heads of the IHS were the villain had already acquired a media life of its own.

Bearing testimony to the importance of the status of the organiser and exhibiting institution was the project _Sexxx_ (25–29 November 2001) initiated by Katarzyna Górna. A group of 20 artists, mainly those affiliated with the so-called Kowalnia (see footnote 290) exhibited provocative works at Górna's and Kozyra's studio in Inżynierska St., and yet the show went unnoticed by the media and politicians. In this case, potential censors were deprived of main footholds: a state institution, public money and permanently employed staff; the short severałday-long duration of the exhibition was also an important factor.

Rationalisations of limitations of the freedom of artistic expression originating from spheres other than the so-called Christian values were rare, although the mechanism of dependence of cultural institutions on political decision-makers functioned each time in the same way. An example came with the preventive censorship of Rafał Jakubowicz's exhibition in 2002. Director of the Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań, Wojciech Makowiecki, cancelled the exhibition opening planned on 4 September – the show was to feature an installation titled _Arbeitsdisziplin_. The work comprised a lightbox and postcards (published in 2002 by the ON gallery affiliated with the ASP in Poznań). The postcards showed the Volskwagen factory in Poznań photographed from behind its barbed wire fence, while the looped film depicted an armed guard walking along the same fence and patrolling the factory premises.

Rafa´l Jakubowicz, _Arbeitsdisziplin_ , 2002, postcard, 10×15 cm, courtesy of Rafa´l Jakubowicz

Concerned about associations with the company's inglorious history under the Third Reich, representatives of Volkswagen appealed to Mayor Ryszard Grobelny. Under the influence of their pressure, the then Rector of the ASP, Prof. Włodzimierz Dreszer, demanded from Jakubowicz (employee of the Academy) that the logo of the ON gallery be removed from the postcards. Mayor Grobelny explained that he had only asked the rector about the origins of the postcard, yet he underlined that Volkswagen was the biggest investor in the city and therefore a postcard that made it look bad was inappropriate. Soon afterwards, Makowiecki cancelled the exhibition and blamed the artist, who had allegedly delivered the work too late. Jakubowicz and authors of a letter of support for the artist – art historian Piotr Piotrowski, artist Jarosław Kozłowski and curator Jaromir Jedliński – denied it and underlined that the opening of the exhibition was prevented by the visit of a Volkswagen's board member at the gallery, the threat of legal action for the non-authorised use of the VW logo, as well as fear of the reaction of the municipal authorities and sponsors.

(a, b) Rafa´l Jakubowicz, _Arbeitsdisziplin_ , 2002, film (still images), courtesy of Rafa´l Jakubowicz

_Arbeitsdisziplin_ was eventually shown on 20 September at the Rozbrat squat in Poznań – Volkswagen did not react, which may mean that the company deemed any action unfavourable for its image. Akin to the case of Libera's work _Lego. Concentration Camp_ , the harmful impact of a work displayed in the confines of a gallery was far weaker than the media coverage of a potential lawsuit, in which the artist would be presented as the victim; reproduced as an illustration of such texts, the work would acquire a new meaning, while contributing to a significantly increased interest in the company's inglorious history and the modern-day working conditions at its factory. What appeared puzzling in the entire case was the attitude of the authorities of the art academy, whose traditional role should consist in stimulating independent critical thinking and supporting artistic practice, however inconvenient it might be.

Regardless of the manner of justifying interventions in the freedom of artistic expression, the array of potential repressions against employees in the cultural sector and artists was broad – from sanctions stemming from the criminal code (e.g. provisions that penalise insult to religious feelings or dissemination of pornography), to those stemming from the civil code (e.g. provisions that protect personal rights and trademarks), to less spectacular, but very effective funding cuts, dismissals or even dissolving of institutions. In the following part of the book we will examine how and when those sanctions were used against those who refused to surrender to pressure.

The Ninth Hour of The Daring

Since Kozyra's exhibition in the spring of 1999, the conflict surrounding the CSW łażnia in Gdańsk was growing more and more tense. Despite pressure mounted by the AWS councillors, head of the gallery Aneta Szyłak was consistently implementing a programme focussed on presenting the latest engaged arts. On 26 April 2001, the Municipal Board of Gdańsk attempted to impose an artistic council on łażnia, which would have a say regarding the use of fixed assets, finance, programme, investment tasks, imposing internal regulations as well as appointing and dismissing the chief director (a stimulus to undertake such actions came from Minister of Culture Kazimierz Ujazdowski, who two months earlier announced the establishment of programme boards for the CSW ZU and Zachęta due to conflicts surrounding those institutions - see further in the text). The act of the Board was blocked by the Culture Commission, but as early as 5 June the Municipal Board managed to dismiss Szyłak from her office, quoting alleged financial mishandling. In August, Małgorzata Lisiewicz was appointed the director of łażnia. After six months of proceedings, the Regional Accounting Chamber did not confirm allegations against the former director, but she was not restored to her office.

The dismissal of Aneta Szyłak formed part of a broader phenomenon that struck employees of various ranks working at many art exhibition institutions at that time, including the head of the Zachęta in Warsaw, Anda Rottenberg. From 1993, she had been consistently pursuing a programme focused on presentations of international and Polish art of the 20th century in which traditional media formed a mere part of the displays. In November 2000, the Zachęta opened Piotr Uklański's exhibition _Naziści_ [ _The Nazis_ – on the work see p. 93]. Two weeks after the opening, on 17 November, actor Daniel Olbrychski accompanied by a crew of TVP reporters smuggled a sabre under his coat into the building and used it to destroy five photographs: his own image from Claude Lelouch's film _Les uns at les autres_ as well as the portraits of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Polish actors Jan Englert, Bogusław Linda, Stanisław Mikulski.

Report from Olbrychski's attack aired the very same day in the main news broadcast of the Polish Television "Wiadomości". TVP journalist Jacek Balcar described the circumstances of the entire event: "At the editorial board meeting the previous day we decided to ask all Polish actors whose portraits were displayed in the show what they thought about the exhibition. My assistant arranged a Friday meeting with ... Daniel Olbrychski". Yet, instead of talking to the journalists, the actor entered the gallery, refused to leave his coat in the cloakroom and ran upstairs in order to commit the act of destruction; he later left the gallery building amid a brawl accompanied by guards.

(a b c) Piotr Uklan´ski, _The Nazis_ [ _Nazis ´ci_ ], 1998, demaged photo instalation, courtesy of Piotr Uklanski

Explaining his act, Olbrychski underlined that he only played an orchestra director in Lelouch's film, whereas the lack of commentary to the photos made the artist's intention unclear:

This exhibition gives children a mindfuck. How could Ms Rottenberg organise such a detrimental show? I will sue her for the unlawful use of my face. Because, after all, faces are all we have. Of course, I reacted so strongly in order to attract media attention. ... I cut the photos of the artists who allowed me to do it. Mikulski told me that this exhibition offended him. Belmondo asked for an intervention in a telephone conversation. My only regret is that an innocent man was fired – the ticket office employee. My intention is to accuse Ms Rottenberg also of persecuting that poor man.

The exhibition _The Nazis_ was not insured, and after the incident there was no company that wanted to insure it or else demanded exorbitant sums. In the United States, the value of the work was estimated at 60 thousand dollars. Exhibition curator Adam Szymczyk underscored the complexity and high cost of technologies used to produce the piece; he also confirmed that all copyright issues had been cleared.

Uklański initially decided that the installation would be shown until the end of the exhibition (3 December) despite the damage. Yet, Minister of Culture, Kazimierz Ujazdowski (AWS), supported the celebrities and demanded that a commentary be added to the display in order to explain its sense, he went so far as to postulate semantic disambiguation of the works. Neither the artist nor the curator agreed and they decided to withdraw the work from the exhibition before the end of the show.

Olbrychski's attack was covered by all newspapers, it even became a topic of discussions amongst politicians, and the atmosphere around art grew more and more tense. Only 10% of Poles viewed the actor's action negatively. In the "Pod napięciem" broadcast aired on 19 November by the private television station TVN, 7095 of the viewers who took part in the poll sided with the actor; whereas 1117 sided with the Zachęta. Olbrychski's gesture was supported by many representatives of Polish culture, especially actors (as well as Jean-Paul Belmondo himself). The response from the other side of the barricade was not as spectacular – the destruction of the work of art was condemned in a letter by a dozen or so artists and art historians. _GW_ reported that the editorial board received aggressive telephones and letters targeted against Anda Rottenberg.

Rottenberg filed a notification of a crime committed by Olbrychski. On 21 November, the police presented "Daniel O." with a charge of property damage. The actor pleaded guilty and explained that he wanted to draw attention to the senselessness of the exhibition and protest against the unlawful use of his image. At the beginning of February 2001, the Zachęta withdrew the application against the actor from the PPO because Olbrychski had committed to covering the cost of the damage. A settlement was concluded in agreement with Piotr Uklański.

A particularly striking aspect of the polemics related to Uklański's work and Olbrychski's behaviour was the lack of understanding of the mechanisms of contemporary art even amongst educated people involved in creative practices. Disavowal of the artistic status of the work came surprisingly easily (it probably would have been otherwise if the images were painted), as well as the literal approach to the artefact and thoughtless acceptance of the simple relation between the signifier (title) and the signified (artefact), without attempts to gain a deeper insight into the structure of the work. At the same time, the work was not complicated and, as Olbrychski himself unguardedly confirmed, high school students had no problems with understanding it.

Equally surprising were the historicałpatriotic motifs that became involved in the entire case. By referring to the myth of the swashbuckling nobleman Andrzej Kmicic – the protagonist of Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel _Potop_ [ _The Deluge_ ], which is immensely popular in Poland – the actor managed to mitigate and cushion the vandalistic aspect of his act. Olbrychski presented himself to the society as a nobleman who, according to Sienkiewicz's vision, loved his Fatherland above everything else. Now, after more than three centuries of lethargy, he once again reached for his cold steel in order to protect his honour tarnished by nihilistic pseudo-artists occupying Polish galleries. The myth of Kmicic probably became combined here with the reverence with which Poles surround grand historical and patriotic art.

The echoes of Olbrychski's action did not even fade for good when the Zachęta was shook by yet another millennial scandal. Right before the opening of a jubilee exhibition on the occasion of 100 years of the Zachęta, planned on 15 December, the media sniffed out a scandal. According to a report in _GW_ and on Radio Plus, followed by the Polish Press Agency (PAP), there was the information that Maurizio Cattelan's work _La nona ora_ [ _The Ninth Hour_ ], which was to form part of the exhibition, comprised a sculpture of John Paul II crushed by a meteor and a video with a copulating couple. Cattelan's piece was presented in such a form in London in the exhibition _Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art_ , which provided the grounds to expect that it would be displayed in the same way in Poland. Yet, – as _GW_ corrected – only Cattelan's sculpture was to be shown at the Zachęta, without the video which was a separate work, independent from the sculpture. Yet, both the PAP and Radio Plus accused _GW_ of misrepresenting their coverages, which the newspaper's editorial board admitted. As editor Tadeusz Sobolewski explained "the editorial error resulted from working in a rush. ... Our only intention was to neutralise the atmosphere of a scandal whipped up by the media prior to the exhibition opening at the Zachęta". It therefore turned out that while _GW_ wanted to prevent a scandal, the newspaper in fact contributed to it.

Several days after the opening of the jubilee exhibition, two interventions into the show occurred which were unauthorised by the gallery. First, the controversial right-wing journalist Wojciech Cejrowski attempted to cover the Pope's figure with a white sheet; and later Deputy Witold Tomczak rushed in behind the protective barriers and removed the "meteor" from the Pope's figure, as a result of which its left leg fell off. His action was assisted by Deputy Halina Nowina-Konopczyna, both representatives of the Porozumienie Polskie Deputies' Group. The sculpture had to be withdrawn from the exhibition. Tomczak left a letter by the work at the Zachęta (significantly, dated 14 December, i.e. prior to the exhibition opening) to Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek, Minister of Culture Kazimierz Ujazdowski and Minister of Justice Lech Kaczyński. The letter featured motifs regularly evoked by adversaries of contemporary art: funding from taxpayers' money, negating the artistic status of the work, demands of closing the exhibition, dismissing the director and launching criminal proceedings concerning an insult to religious feelings. Yet, a new thread also emerged – the accusation of the exhibition's "anti-Polonism" was strengthened with anti-Semitic undertones. Deputy Tomczak deplored that "Anda Rottenberg does not want to actualise her 'controversial' ideas in Israel, for the money of Israeli taxpayers. As the first 'artwork', she could, for instance, show at the Israel Museum a lying figure of the Chief Rabbi crushed by Stalin's or Yasser Arafat's foot, or else with a crown of Muhammad's temple". Ninety one right-wing parliamentarians demanded Rottenberg's dismissal, threatening to withdraw funding for the gallery should the Minister of Culture fail to meet their demand. One of the addressees of Tomczak's letter, Lech Kaczyński, distanced himself from its content: "I have not received that letter and I can see no reason to launch an investigation regarding an insult to religious feelings. Deputy Tomczak's letter is stupid and anti-Semitic, and I do not identify with this language, but I have to admit that the activities of Ms Rottenberg as the director of the national gallery are controversial. Yet, her alleged origins do not matter at all in this case, and it does not matter if taxes for the gallery's funding are paid mainly by Catholics." Rottenberg was also defended by the Board of the Polish Section of AICA and President of the Association of Art Historians, Prof. Maria Poprzęcka. Deputies of the Opposition filed motions to the ethics committee of the Sejm to penalise Tomczak and Nowina-Konopczyna for propagating anti-Semitic views and destroying the sculpture. Following an extremely stormy debate, the committee rejected the motions.

In an interview for _GW_ on 27 December, Anda Rottenberg admitted that when she had commissioned Harald Szeemann to curate the exhibition one year earlier, she was not aware of the planned exhibition scenario, but later – anticipating that Cattelan's sculpture "is not a work for Poland" – she tried to dissuade the Swiss curator from including it in the show.

"Listen, Cattelan is not Polish", to which he replies: "But the Pope is". He could not imagine saying anything about Poland without referring to the Pope. ... His attitude was an attitude of every author – he does not like being censored.

Although before the exhibition opening, Szeemann tactically interpreted Cattelan's work in a reactionary spirit, his curatorial decision in fact gave the work a critical and polemical dimension. That situation was aptly characterised by Piotr Piotrowski a few years later:

Organising an exhibition of Polish art [Szeemann] wanted to show something that would touch and disturb "Polish visuality". Because he did not find anything appropriate to this task in the history of Polish art, he reached for Cattelan's _The Ninth Hour_ ... I am quite certain that he was interested in Poles' sensitivity to the image of the Pope, who has become a key cult figure in the Polish imagination. In the piece, John Paul II does not stand on a pedestal, does not gaze on us from up above, and is not heroic; just the opposite, he lies on the ground and, in addition, appears to be crushed by a meteor. This was visually shocking. One could walk very close to the figure of the Pope, virtually stumbling upon it.

Yet, as Piotrowski underlines, "the Poles ... showed themselves completely incapable of discussing and analysing their visual relationship to the Pope...".

In this context, it is noteworthy that people who were completely aware of the critical message of Cattelan's sculpture and – or perhaps above all – the critical manner of its display, initially attempted to tactically conceal that aspect. The understanding officially promoted by Szeemann (the Pope is overwhelmed by the decline of spirituality symbolised by the meteorite) was accepted without reservations by _GW_ critic Dorota Jarecka, and that was also the interpretation officially embraced by Rottenberg, who quoted for that matter the name of the chaplain of creative milieus Wiesław Niewęgłowski. When in January 2001, ninety one deputies of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland demanded Rottenberg's dismissal, a group of art historians and curators remarked in a letter to the Minister of Culture and national heritage (published in _GW_ , 21 January 2001) that, apart from Szeemann, Cattelan's installation was also commented on by representatives of the Catholic Church as well as art critics and historians, who agreed in pointing out "the sense of the sculpture which consists in portrayal of the Pope as a martyr of our times". It seems that this kind of rather Janus-faced exegesis – against the intentions of its authors – not only failed to help the artist, the curator, the director and the exhibition, but also undermined the credibility of critics and, more broadly, engaged contemporary art. It was confirmed several months later by Jarecka herself, who wrote that proposing such an argumentation equalled treating the viewers like children. Conservative milieus knew all-too-well that two interpretations existed, one of which – they wrote – was meant for the Polish viewer, whereas the other for viewers in the West.

On 13 February, Minister Ujazdowski made a decision concerning a change in the statutes and the establishment of programme boards of the Zachęta and the CSW ZU, which, according to the ministry's declarations, were not supposed to "intervene", but merely "evaluate" and "opine". Thus, yet another scandal erupted when the minister's decision sparked a protest of the Board of the Polish Section of AICA, part of the artistic milieu, as well as amongst UW politicians. The minister ultimately did not appoint the new programme boards. His other idea on how to seize control of the Zachęta consisted of the project of merging it with the MNW, which would leave the niche CSW ZU as the only venue of artistic experimentation in the capital city, yet that initiative also fortunately fell through. At the beginning of July 2001, Ujazdowski resigned from his office. After the events in 2000, the management of the Zachęta decided to accompany exhibitions with brief information notes concerning the interpretation of works or warnings that a given piece may be perceived as drastic. Already in 2000, the PPO wanted to charge Deputy Tomczak with a crime and asked the Sejm to waive his immunity. However, the Rules and Deputies' Affairs Committee deemed the motion groundless.

When Minister Ujadowski promised Anda Rottenberg the position of the plenipotentiary for the construction of the Museum of Contemporary Art in exchange for her resignation from the director's office at the Zachęta, she accepted the offer and stepped down at the beginning of March 2001. Yet, she was ultimately not appointed the plenipotentiary. The change of decision was said to have been caused by one of her interviews in which she made a statement that undermined the dignity of the minister's office and mutual trust. On 7 July, Minister Ujazdowski signed the nomination of Agnieszka Morawińska as the director of the Zachęta. The new head announced that the institution's exhibition policy would see no revolution. After a control conducted by the Ministry of Culture in September 2001, a notification was filed to the PPO concerning a crime committed by Rottenberg, who was accused of making purchases for the gallery that violated the public procurement act, amongst other offences. The PPO did not confirm these accusations.

Shortly after the conflict around the Zachęta came to an end, on 5 October 2001, the exhibition _Irreligia. Morfologia nie-sacrum w sztuce polskiej_ [ _Irreligion. The Morphology of the Non-Sacred in Polish Art_ ] opened in Brussels. It was initiated and organised by Wodek Majewski, who ran the Atelier 340 gallery in Brussels, and curator of the Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture (Królikarnia Palace, Division of the MNW), Kazimierz Piotrowski. The title of the exhibition was a play on the words "irrationality" and "religion". According to Kazimierz Piotrowski, the exhibition was to showcase the modernisation heritage of Poland and "correct in a certain way the opinion, widespread in the West, that Poland as a country was particularly subordinated to orthodox Catholicism", yet he underlined that it was not an anti-religious manifestation. The curator emphasised that an irreligious stance consisted of posing questions about the foundations of the religious doctrine, which were the cultural bonds of an individual, and not in questioning transcendence (as in atheism). Therefore, the aim of the exhibition was to analyse the stances in Polish culture that engaged in a polemic with the dogmatic system – religion inevitably generates such irreligious motifs (unruly, non-canonical, sometimes aggressive towards the sacred).

The curatorial concept of the considerably sized exhibition (ca 150 works by 41 artists) was rather complex. The pieces were displayed at the Atelier 340 gallery and in two churches, including the Notre-Dame de Lourdes used for religious purposes, as well as on the courtyard of the city hall in Brussels. The show ran concurrently with the Europalia Poland festival, yet the Polish authorities did not agree to include it in the festival's structure. Although the premises of the exhibition concept could have been considered provocative by Catholics, nobody predicted a media and political storm that Majewski's and Piotrowski's initiative would come to unleash.

In Poland, two works were considered as the most offensive: the image of Our Lady of Częstochowa with an added drawn-on moustache by Adam Rzepecki and Marek Sobczyk's painting _Biczowanie Chrystusa [The Flagellation of Christ],_ which depicted two men, one of them dressed in a striped camp uniform, flagellating Christ, while holding the whips in a way that could also be perceived as an act of urinating. Controversies also arose amongst the Belgians. The works were not new (created respectively 19 and 14 years earlier) and relatively well-known. Sobczyk's piece, and especially Rzepecki's work, originated from the contestation-driven tendency of the "third way" of the 1980s. Although works of that kind met with distrust during that decade or were even removed from exhibitions, nobody (not even the Church) in that heated period called for the prosecution of artists. It was only under the conditions of the formally free circulation of ideas that the conflict about symbolic power acquired violent forms.

The first reaction came from Pauline Fathers from the Jasna Góra Monastery, who underlined in a letter written specifically concerning the case that they expect "an appropriate reaction of the state and church authorities to the events that represent an unpardonable infringement and breaking of the law and moral principles". On 18 November, during a holy mass at the Brussels cathedral, Cardinal Józef Glemp condemned the exhibition _Irreligion_ as an insult to religious feeling: "It is not the first time that offended and ignored people are made to believe that they do not understand art. If a moustache is drawn on someone's image on a street poster, it is considered an act of vandalism. If it is done on a revered painting, which is brought into a gallery, then it becomes art, over which one has to slobber, and those who refuse to do this are considered boors". On 30 November, the Polish Episcopate protested against blasphemous exhibitions of scandalmongers, but did not enumerate any specific show. In turn, the Polish embassy in Brussels issued a statement in which it underlined that " forming an opinion about social and religious relations in Poland on the basis of this exhibitions may lead to conclusions that are as false as the image of Polish art conveyed through works exhibited by Wodek Majewski". Strong protests against the exhibition came from part of the society, the milieus of the Polish diaspora as well as right-wing politicians, who demanded penal sanctions for the organisers of the show and even holding liable the heads of Polish exhibition institutions who collaborated with them. In a statement addressed to the newly appointed Minister of Culture in the new left-wing government Andrzej Celiński (SLD), Senator Jan Szafraniec (LPR) remarked that "when in one of the countries the press published blasphemous words addressed at the prophet of Islam, five perpetrators — journalists — were arrested and threatened with the death penalty! There may be different views on such a sanction, but I admire the desperate defence of religious values recognised for centuries". In reply to the statements by Senator Szafraniec and former Senator Krystyna Czuba, Celiński stated that the ministry would not act as a censor of private creative work and would not review the presentation of Polish artists at the exhibition _Irreligion_ in Brussels. He also underlined that the ministry would not engage in any initiatives that could offend the feelings of believers, regardless of their confession. Addressing Czuba, the minister also remarked that her Poland "is to be governed by the rule of censorship of creative thought and superficiality in the evaluation of the work of human spirit and mind. In my Poland, tolerance for otherness and the right to unconstrained expression are fundamental values. ... Narrowing the attitudes of tolerance to behaviours that do not arouse opposition seems to have a quite shallow justification".

As a result of the scandal, In November Kazimierz Piotrowski was dismissed from his curator position at the Królikarnia. He explained: "I was organising the exhibition as a private person, but without my consent my name was printed on the invitations with a note that I was affiliated with the National Museum in Warsaw. It was too late to change and print a new run. I think a mere explanation would suffice, but there were so many protests and pressure that I submitted my resignation". Towards the end of November, Piotrowski was interrogated with regard to the exhibition by the PPO and the Polish ambassador in Brussels requested that Majewski remove from the exhibition the works that "attacked Catholicism", but Majewski refused to do so. Then, guided by fear, the Director of the MNW Ferdynand Ruszczyc asked the head of Atelier 340 to immediately withdraw from the exhibition, the works that belonged to the museum (amongst them Sobczyk's painting) and send them back to the country. In January 2002, Majewski decided to extend the exhibition until 3 February.

Rzepecki's Our Lady with a moustache stirred particularly strong emotions. The image was available as a postcard also at the CSW ZU bookshop, which landed Director Krukowski in trouble with the PPO. As he recalled: "Some social or parochial agent noticed that and the word was spread... ... Also the Solidarity Labour Union of Mazovia Region came in to scold us. Solidarity was also suing me". That period "was supposed to witness manifestations, but there were not enough people, so they would come, sit and disperse".

Problems also struck the Wyspa Gallery, established in 1985 and run by Grzegorz Klaman in Gdańsk. That niche, yet important, centre of avant-garde art was initially affiliated with the State Higher School of Visual Arts (PWSSP) in Gdańsk (renamed to ASP in 1996), and later used the space in Chlebnicka St., which belonged to the Gdańsk academy. In January 2001, the municipality withdrew its modest help for the gallery, and the academy was planning to commercially let the exhibition space as of October 2001. For a longer while, Klaman, assisted by the graduate from his studio Dorota Nieznalska, ran the gallery pro bono publico. Yet, real problems began only in January the following year, when yet another "millennial" contemporary art scandal broke out around Dorota Nieznalska's exhibition titled _Passion_ (see p.109) presented at Wyspa. LPR Deputies Gertruda Szumska and Rafał Strąk with a group of supporters stormed into the exhibition, which had already been closed and disassembled, demanding to see the work and later notified the PPO about an offence of insult to religious feelings committed by Nieznalska. In April, the public prosecutor filed an indictment against the artist to the court. In turn, on 29 January 2002, by virtue of a decision of the Senate of the academy, Wyspa lost its space (10 members of the Senate voted for closing the gallery, 5 abstained from voting, 1 was against). The Pro-Rector of the ASP, Prof. Sławoj Ostrowski, stated that the reasons behind closing Wyspa included both financial difficulties and the hype around Nieznalska's _Passion_ : "... we have grown a bit tired of Mr Grzegorz Klaman. _Passion_ was a mediocre artistic achievement, and it was the academy that incurred the odium for that petty scandal, which essentially should have been incurred by Mr Klaman as the head of the gallery". Although Nieznalska's case found its culmination and finale only in the following years, its roots should be viewed in connection with the "heroic period". The accusation levelled at the artist crowned the chain of nation-wide scandals initiated by Olbrychski's attack on _The Nazis_. With the public prosecutor's and later court proceedings, Nieznalska took from Katarzyna Kozyra, the media role of chief scandalmonger.

The developments at the Zachęta and Wyspa showed that the accusations of shocking for the sake of fame made by the opponents of critical art could just as well be levelled at themselves. Deputies Tomczak and Nowina-Konopczyna fully embraced the lesson of Olbrychski and put it into practice in political activity, while Deputies Str _ą_ k and Szumska, and later also several other politicians, attempted to follow in their footsteps. An e-mail sent after the "invasion" of Wyspa from the address of the Gdańsk LPR Councillor Grzegorz Sielatycki, one of the main persons offended by Nieznalska, read: "The action achieved its goal, Wyspa gallery was closed down. ... It was not bad media-wise, TVN, TVP, all newspapers and a radio station from Gdańsk. ... I gave an interview to TVP Gdańsk (we'll see if it airs). Not bad media-wise, but it would have been better if we had vandalised the exhibition". Indeed, the names of the real and would-be iconoclasts hit the headlines for a while, but went down in history of the latest art rather than joining the ranks of Polish statesmen. Perhaps art and its power of embodiment satisfied the politicians' desire to have a visible yet weak enemy. In an abstract discursive world, ideas become blurred, words evaporate at a glance, while the work of art provocatively lasts and, what is more, it has the ability to "bite back" (albeit in a non-threatening way). Given its institutional and autonomous affiliation, art, as opposed to non-artistic image, guarantees a response, and response leads to a dispute and media scandal. Right-wing politicians sensed all-too-well that the field of art was, on the one hand, a collection of easy, visible targets (which were at the same time rather indifferent to their potential electorate); while on the other hand – a collection that was sufficiently heavily guarded by the representatives of the art world that its violation (breaking the taboo of art) guaranteed a broad resonance.
From Empathy to Iconoclasm

As aforementioned, the extraordinarily acute social, political, and legal reactions to Nieznalska's exhibition cannot be considered in isolation from a series of artistic scandals, contemporaneous disputes concerning the _Irreligion_ exhibition in particular. In the case of the latter, catholic communities found themselves rather restrained in terms of manoeuvre – the event had been organised in a private gallery abroad, with the use of Belgian funds, and principally with endorsement by the Belgian Church. Consequently, catholic community representatives proceeded to lash out blindly, demanding that the new left-wing government issue diplomatic notes and apply sanctions to _Irreligion_ 's organisers, even to heads of artwork-lending institutions. The government was neither especially keen to oblige nor had the legal instruments required; the situation carried further complications tying in with the international context of the dispute, which began reverberating throughout the capital of Belgium, and, importantly, of the EU, a community Poland was aspiring to at the time. It does seem that a sense of helplessness, accompanied by tension – specific and incessantly fuelled by the media – relating to a sequence of controversial cultural events, and iconoclastic precedents at the Zachęta gallery, all became factors contributing to the ultimate result: a violent attack on a small niche gallery with academic affiliations, and its fledgling artist. Another barrier, on this particular occasion a judiciary one, was crossed during the conflict concerning the exhibition at the Wyspa gallery venue.

Given such context, Olbrychski's precedent antics at the Zachęta gallery took on breakthrough significance, as confirmed by the afore-described events of Czerepok and Górecki's exhibition at Zielona Góra's BWA. Several days after the actor's assault, an employee of the Zielona Góra gallery made an unauthorised decision to cover Górecki's works which "his catholic conscience found intolerable". Olbrychski sent out a message, spurring others on, showing that the taboo of the gallery-temple may be broken, his deed applauded by the media and society alike. After that, anyone could become the knight Kmicic, any limitations strictly personal.

Notably, while neither Olbrychski's nor deputy Tomczak's campaigns had much in common with censorship, they resulted in indubitable restraint to freedom of expression, and – primarily – to the freedom to enjoy the products of culture: artefacts had to be removed from exhibitions, audiences denied the opportunity of becoming acquainted with them. Concurrently, albeit both developments yielded an outcome of artworks having been destroyed, they were unquestionably distinct in qualitative terms. Olbrychski's case was a media show, an act of aggression and of revenge on an artist, an institution, and – importantly – on an artwork "projecting" a message of accusation. The actor' used his sabre symbolically to slash an artwork (film stills jointly titled _The Nazis_ ) rather than his own image, the artwork having appropriated his "thespian mask". Consequently, Olbrychski destroyed an artefact as well as his cinematographic alter ego. "Lelouche had me play a mere orchestra director," he emphasised, as if infused with the need to elucidate why he had donned a German uniform at all. It seems that in consulting his assault with other actors, Belmondo included, not only did Olbrychski justify his iconoclastic deed in advance; albeit unconsciously, he also sought support from his "accessories in crime" – actors who had also played the parts of Nazis. It is noteworthy that all photographs were cropped to resemble passport photographs, the frieze bringing a visual list of the _Most Wanted_ to mind. The _Most Wanted_ phrase is efficient in conveying the semantic ambivalence of work: on the one hand, it showcases celebrities whom millions desire, on the other – it references "accomplices" to the act of creating an alluring image of evil. Concurrently, Olbrychski ostensibly failed to note or comprehend ontological transitions, having consigned the cinematographic _signifiant_ – indeed, along with Uklański's simulacrum parasitic to said _signifiant_ – to the order of the real. In doing so, the actor confirmed the power of images, that selfsame power the artist himself had been paradoxically cautioning against in his work.

Conversely, deputy Tomczak was not aggressive; on the contrary, he wished to extend care to the papal image, or rather to rescue "John Paul II" himself – to ease his misery, to remove (literally) the rock weighing him (the Holy Father) down, and to allow him to stand tall, shake the dust off, cease being the o b j e c t on view, and begin viewing his Homeland and Nation himself again. The vital importance of such perception is proven by the fact that several days before Tomczak's gesture, Cejrowski had attempted to conceal the sculpture from visitors - by obscuring the work with a sheet he had in essence been saving "John Paul II" from voyeuristic humiliation the "pope" himself could not have protected himself against. Crushed with a meteorite, "John Paul II" could not even return the glances of audiences viewing him from above. Concurrently, both Olbrychski and Tomczak succeeded in shifting artefacts into the background, and replacing them with their own "visibility". While the works themselves were discussed but briefly, the Kmicic slashing and Tomczak having freed the "pope" from under the meteorite – rather extensively, in a paradoxical consequence of a largely unconscious process of "aestheticising" both gestures which morphed into performance form (the actor having even received an invitation to hold art meetings in Piotrków Trybunalski). It might well be said that while Szeemann politicised art with his exhibition, Tomczak aestheticised politics in his own idiosyncratic manner whilst radically politicising Olbrychski's gesture: behold, the deputies of Porozumienie Polskie [Polish Concord], arm in arm with the famous knight Kmicic, combating the debauched artists and their promoters.

Tomczak's (and Cejrowski's) gestures deserve a more profound analysis, one I would like to infer against two backgrounds, the symbolic and the physiological, in both cases propped upon theories developed by David Freedberg. _The Power of Images'_ author examines that which resides beneath layers of education and/or class consciousness in a quest for the fundamental level of responding to images, any context or our intellectual aspirations notwithstanding. Freedberg disregards the notion of art while focusing on the image – or, potentially, its history – as such. He specifically declares battle on the conviction that "in an artwork, we overcome the responses which the material or subject matter most readily precipitate" – in his belief that the category of "art" imposes tyranny, as it were, on our mindset, thus neutralising any reaction to images. The American researcher appeals for the distinction between reality and reality rendered by a work of art, said distinction typical for western metaphysics, to be overcome.

Freedberg emphasises that images are sufficiently "alive" to evoke desire, revulsion, grief, etc., the power of images remaining in opposition to our rational notions of visual forms which are, after all, inanimate. Consequently, anxiety is forged, leading in turn to a need to control the power of the image. Once an image touches on too intimate a part of ourselves, we are reluctant to admit that it works. Using a topos or commonplace as a prop, we repress or sublimate our response, pretending not to have observed the "life" of images. Their power can also be eliminated through censorship, or through the destruction of an image, a palpable movement according to Freedberg.It is commonly believed that elision (fusion) of image and prototype will only apply to the uneducated, the insane, or children – whereas Freedberg believes that even intellectually sophisticated individuals regard images well-nigh as if living persons, conferring actual presence upon them. The use of measures augmenting the realism of images, a gesture we unquestionably contended with in the case of Cattelan's naturalist sculpture, emphatically facilitates the fusion of the image and prototype: metaphor gradually erodes in favour of a transferred reality which sometimes becomes present and actual. Consequently, to follow Freedberg's reasoning, regarding Tomczak and Cejrowski's gestures exclusively as symbołrelated would not reveal the truth about their actions.

While images are inert and lifeless, once we enliven them with our gaze, our responses are almost identical to the responses that would arise with actual human beings. Emotions of empathic involvement in what a viewer sees in the work may comprise the "comprehension" of sensations experienced by the represented "others", or a sense of inner imitation, of simulating the behaviour of "others" as observed in pictures and sculptures. While such conflicting tension will prompt censors and iconoclasts into action, it may also inflame such individuals as deputy Tomczak who had no intention of defacing the artwork – his only wish was to "help" the person who through the sculpture became present and actual for him.

As remarked by Freedberg i Vittorio Gallese, bodily empathetic response to an artefact (image) is rooted in neurology. The discovery of mirror neurons allows better comprehension of the ties between an image and the emotion it elicits. These neurons are activated at the pre-cognitive level, when action is performed, as well as when it is merely observed. This permits an explanation of the sensation of empathetic involvement in movement rendered in images. Mirror neurons engage in the process of comprehending the "intent" behind a rendered action. Physical responses to images are located in those parts of the body which would actually participate in particular physical activities. The resulting sensation might thus be one of "emulating" gestures and motions rendered on an image.

"The integrity of the sensorimotor system is also crucial for the recognition of emotions displayed by others because it supports the reconstruction of what it would feel like to be in a particular emotion by means of simulation of the related body state". In an observer of images eliciting strong responses, such as fear, revulsion, or part, the brain – in a state of simulation – reproduces the somatic condition observed or implied by the image, precisely as if the observer's body were present within. According to the authors, there is ample proof to confirm activation of the same emotional circuits in observers as in the observed "others", particularly in the case of expressions, regardless of whether physiognomic or involving the entire body. This explains why spectators grasp emotions depicted or suggested by artworks. When observing two people touching each other in an image, our ventral premotor cortex is activated as if our own body were subject to touch. The same areas of the brain are activated in the observer and the observed.

Tomczak (and Cejrowski) initially applied elision by superimposing the person of John Paul II upon the sculpture which is obviously nothing peculiar, an occurrence – according to Freedberg – we could all relate to. Nonetheless, the extent of said elision and related empathy proved somewhat disquieting: the deputy must have literally sensed what actual John Paul II would have felt when crushed with a meteorite; having fused the pope's person and Catellan's work into one, he rushed in to rescue the "pope". While Tomczak had evidently defaced the sculpture instead of "helping" it, the response of his mirror neurons to having ripped off "the Holy Father's" leg when removing the rock remains unknown.

The Case of Nieznalska

The case of Dorota Nieznalska, a young artist and graduate of the Gdańsk Academy of Fine Arts (degree artwork completed in 1999, in Prof. Grzegorz Klaman's intermedia studio), was one of defining moments in Polish art history after 1989, and one of major significance to the field of freedom of artistic expression.

Since 1998, Nieznalska had been working with Klaman in operating the alternative _Wyspa_ Gallery. On 14 December 2001, the artist's exhibition opened at the selfsame location, showing the work _Passion_. As aforementioned, while in the autumn of 2001 the work was censored by the _Arsenal_ Gallery in Białystok, _Wyspa_ showed the work explicitly – the niche gallery affiliated with the Academy of Fine Arts offered a sense of independence far greater than Białystok's largest exhibition salon, closely scrutinised by politicians. The exhibition proceeded without turbulence, the artist – present at the gallery at the time – victim to no attacks. She claimed that her work had been well-received, and despite the occasional voice of outrage there were no outright protests, only discussions. Problems began in the wake of Anna Urbańczyk's article _Pasja kontrowersyjna_ [ _Controversial Passion_ ] published on 17 January in the Gdańsk edition of the _GW_ , which closed with the following passage:

Genitals are spread across the entire surface. No wonder the realisation is upsetting – it may and does offend religious feelings. "This was definitely not my objective!", Dorota Nieznalska explains. "My work was intended to remind viewers that Christ had been crucified in the nude, his nakedness serving the purpose of humiliation." – Is that sufficient motivation? I am by no means an excessively religious person, yet I regard the image of a penis on a cross as distasteful, to put it mildly....

The paper's editors accompanied Urbańczyk's article with a brief survey held, as importantly underlined, among recognised authorities. Jerzy Krechowicz, rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, refused to comment on the exhibition (several days later, he did, however, issue a related statement in _GW_ , reviling the show in terms of ethics and aesthetics alike), merely declaring that "Wyspa's agenda was not to his liking". Chairman of the Gdańsk Association of Sculptors Stanisław Szwechowicz announced that judging by the description itself he knew he would have no intention of viewing the exhibition, "this is no art, no thorough sculpture workmanship, even. Such realisations serve nothing more than the purpose of shocking audiences and self-promotion." According to the chairman of the Gdańsk Chapter of the ZPAP Krzysztof Izdebski, "art requires a purpose, a message.... I find no such thing in the description of Dorota Nieznalska's most recent realisation". Grzegorz Klaman said he had no qualms in showing Nieznalska's work at the Wyspa venue, as "Dorota follows her artistic pursuits by exploring issues of sexuality and religion – furthermore, the cross featured in her Passion is not a standard crucifix, it is the Polish Red Cross symbol." Father Krzysztof Niedałtowski, chaplain of art communities, admitted he had not intended to visit the gallery; as if aware of the journalists' risky game, he added, "I cannot understand why you are reporting on an exhibition which has closed, anyway" (it was actually open to the public for another three days).

Ostensibly, unfavourable reviews notwithstanding, subsequent reactions were triggered by the large photograph illustrating the editorial and showing the penis-bearing cross placed centrally in the foreground rather than by the text itself. The caption, reading "Dorota Nieznalska's scandalous work", could have definitely conveyed the contemporaneous response to the artwork, without precedent in Polish art. The subject was swiftly seized by the private television broadcaster TVN, who shot footage of the exhibition on the same day. Albeit the gallery was already closed to the public, Nieznalska and Klaman received journalists, the artist giving an interview. The misrepresented cut of the footage (a classic "stimulacrum" – see Section 3.3.5) showing just the cross with genitals blurred out by the makers, was broadcast on 17 January in the main daily edition of _Fakty_ (news programme), prompting an avalanche of media comments and social response. As early as 19 January, the PPO received the first notification of Nieznalska, the manager of the gallery, and the "programme broadcaster" having committed the insult to religious feelings. On 21 January, LPR deputies Gertruda Szumska and Robert Str _ą_ k, accompanied by a number of other individuals, arrived at the gallery – yet the exhibition had already been closed to the public, the installation disassembled and prepared for transportation. Since the artist refused to show the cross, a scuffle ensued. On the following day, Szumska and Str _ą_ k notified the PPO that an offence had been committed under Art 196 PCC. None of the notifying parties had seen the installation in person. Notably, in an effort to further legitimise their actions, deputies referenced rector Krechowicz's comment in the GW; witness Czesław Szumski, interviewed as part of the resulting investigation, furthermore emphasised in his testimony that "Academy authorities did not approve of that art". Krechowicz himself confirmed his explicitly unfavourable opinion of the Passion before the prosecutor.

Nieznalska herself, interviewed by the prosecutor as a suspect, "did not admit to the charge of blasphemy.... This was her interpretation of the cross she primarily regards as a religious symbol, the symbol of suffering, but also of the Polish Red Cross. She did not expect such public response despite her conviction that the cross is a religious symbol. She engages in critical art, exploring a difficult and controversial subject in her works". On 12 April, the PPO filed an indictment against Dorota Alicja Nieznalska with the District Court in Gdańsk on charges of "offending the religious beliefs of various individuals during the period of 14 December 2001 until 21 January 2002 in Gdańsk by insulting an object of religious cult in public during an exhibition titled _Passion_ held at the Wyspa Progress Gallery, having placed male genitals centrally on a metal cross, i.e. of a criminal offence under Art 196 PCC".

Nieznalska's indictment caused quite an uproar, neither Nieznalska herself nor journalists having ultimately expected such development; furthermore, it seems that few (if any) fully grasped the consequences of a criminal trial. On 26 March, in their evening news ( _Fakty_ ), TVN aired a piece on the investigation in the _Passion_ case, concealing not only the artwork, but the artist's face as well. "They turned me into a criminal – criminals have their faces blurred," was Nieznalska's comment. Meanwhile, prosecution had entered the _in personam_ stage – and while one cannot help feeling that TVN's behaviour had been spiteful, they had admittedly acted _lege artis_.

LPR representatives and followers appeared at the trial on the first appointed date (September 2002), under the leadership of Gertruda Szumska. They saw the occasion as an opportunity to manifest their nationalist and catholic beliefs: they carried banners, and hung a Polish flag on a telescopic fishing rod. While the press had remained rather detached in their many editorials concerning the work itself, they regarded bringing the artist to trial as exceedingly repressive. Art critic Izabela Kowalczyk published an outraged piece in the _Trybuna_ daily; additionally, she issued an open letter protesting the artist's indictment, signed by over 200 persons. In the letter and article alike, Kowalczyk offered a brief interpretation of the artwork, in all probability seeking confirmation of the artist's innocence with a proper explanation of her work.

Ever since the early days of the turmoil, voices of condemnation (or even aggression) were audible in conservative and extreme right-wing communities. _GW_ 's art critic Andrzej Osęka, on the other hand, well-known for his conservative views on art, while unfavourable in his opinion of the value of Nieznalska's work, expressed support for the principle of artistic freedom, deplored the political facets of the case and the self-interest manifested by LPR deputies, and emphasised the ambiguity of the cross as a symbol. In the same issue, _GW_ published Piotr Zaremba's column critical of Nieznalska and the contemporary art. In contrast to Osęka, Zaremba argued in favour of more restrictive boundaries to the freedom of expression. The political dimension of the indictment as highlighted by Osęka seems to be a vital aspect of the case – this had been a time of right-wing communities (publicists and politicians alike) stepping up their assaults on contemporary art. Nieznalska herself also regarded the whole case as a political game, correctly noticing the inherent connection between its religious and nationalist tropes. The latter conferred a further dynamic upon the case, carrying the dispute over from the field of humanities sociology of religion, theology, art history, aesthetics – to one much more political in nature. By removing the gap between a religious symbol and the intangible and unequivocal concept of a nation, LPR politicians added to the weight of the case: this was no longer a dispute with a young and unknown artist concerning a controversial artwork she showed in a niche gallery; this became a dispute concerning Polish identity (given the imminent referendum regarding Polish accession to the European Union). Notably, the ecclesial hierarchy remained detached from the entire case, as duly pointed out by Nieznalska's lawyer in his concluding statement: "Church leaders have uttered not a single word of criticism concerning _Passion_. It seems that the shepherds are calm but the sheepfold is baa'ing. And deputies and local councillors are the most eager to speak out".

In his concluding statement of 15 July 2003, the prosecutor motioned for "the defendant to be found guilty as charged, and sentenced to a fine of PLN 2,000 [ca. USD 500]". The subsidiary prosecutor motioned for "the defendant to be found guilty as charged, and sentenced to 6 months of limitation of liberty based on non-compensatory work to be performed with Caritas as the beneficiary." The defender motioned for acquittal, as did the defendant in her concluding statement. On 18 July 2003, the District Court in Gdańsk, 4th Criminal Division, the chamber sitting with District Court Assessor Tomasz Zieliński as chairman, and Edmund Piosik and Jerzy Gardzielewski as the jury, found the defendant guilty as charged, sentencing her to 6 months of limitation of liberty based on non-compensatory, controlled, community work of 20 hours per month (i.e. more harshly than motioned for by the prosecutor), and ordering her to cover all costs of the trial proceedings. Upon hearing the ruling, LPR followers present in the courtroom applauded; Grzegorz Klaman, seated in a back row, shouted, "Shame on you!!!".

The conviction, while not final, came as a shock not only to Nieznalska herself, but also to a considerable part of the art community; it also prompted a nation-wide debate on an unprecedented scale: journalists, publicists, art critics and historians, academics representing a variety of fields, artists, film and theatrical directors (Gorzów Wielkopolski's Kreatury theatre staged a play telling the story of the trial), lawyers, the clergy, and hundreds of newspaper readers and web users discussed the artistic status and role of the artwork, the artist's attitude, role of contemporary art, justifiability of the indictment and ruling, boundaries of artistic freedom, the role of scandal, political implications of the case, and the condition of Polish democracy. Given the context, the results of sample surveys concerning the public response to Nieznalska's conviction, commissioned by the _Rzeczpospolita_ daily and held several days after the conviction, seem exceptionally remarkable. It transpired that despite extensive media coverage, 61% of respondents had not heard of the artist's case over the previous few days. Ostensibly, such poor knowledge of the case could suggest that society has little concern for public events in general, and visual arts in particular. Of those who had heard of the case, 51% believed Nieznalska had not offended the religious feelings of Poles, with 66% declaring that she had been wrongly convicted.

Three basic positions were identifiable in the media debate ensuing in the wake of the conviction: firstly, firm approval of the sentence and condemnation of the artwork; secondly, condemnation of the sentence and approval of the artwork; thirdly, a middle-of-the-road stance to the effect of condemning the conviction while refuting any artistic value of the work, or even the term "art" as applicable thereto. The latter had been most commonly present in the media, and very frequent amongst representatives of the art world – assorted artists, art critics and historians, as well as non-conservative politicians. Yet the second position seems particularly interesting, given its immanent ties to an entire spectrum of defence tactics. The immunity of art and canonic, intentional, and cultural depreciation tactics were referenced most frequently, the alienation defence alluded to more rarely. Attempts at explaining the sense of the work, indicating its multiple meanings and superficiality of interpretations accusing the artist of blasphemy was a kind of mutation of intentional tactic. The absence of a formalist tactic was understandable – references to form tended to be used as an argument against Nieznalska's work. However, the negligence of the First Amendment defense (art as much as some other spheres of discourse should enjoy the greatest extent of freedom possible) is less comprehensible and thus meaningful.

Defence of the Artist

Nieznalska's supporters frequently referred to the **canon** of art history, pointing to universally acceptable precedents to her work. Michelangelo – backed by five hundred years of well-known tradition – proved to be the most popular reference. Nieznalska had actually been referencing Michelangelo herself \- needless to say, in doing so she was driven by the overwhelming aura of the Renaissance genius' name rather than by any lack of modesty, said aura having lost little (if any) of its force since the times when Giorgio Vasari had succumbed to it, with Veronese as the first tester of its expiatory power.

Andrzej Osęka was the author of the most expansive canonic argumentation – yet this art critic's specific "charm" in writing about contemporary art could have actually done Nieznalska more harm than good. The critic referenced the Risen Christ from the Santa Maria sopra Minerva Church in Rome – Michelangelo's marble sculpture (1520) portraying Christ with his cross and uncovered genitalia (some time later, the statue was given a gunmetal loincloth). Osęka further recalled that Christ had been represented in the nude on multiple Renaissance crucifixes (by Michelozzo, Desiderio, Giuliano da Sangallo) as well as in Michelangelo's _Last Judgment_ in the Sistine Chapel, a move deeply justified in theological terms and alluding to the complete incarnation of the Son of God. Nudity "was also interpreted as man's return – through Redemption – to his condition preceding original sin". Nonetheless, Osęka follows the argument by adding that he had an opportunity of conversing with Nieznalska, and in doing so told her that "I believe her _Passion_ to be a work far less profound or subtle than Michelangelo's sculpture, which, after all, is also a blend of sacrum and sexual characteristics. The Renaissance artist depicted sanctity and nudity through expression and harmony of the entire figure, while Nieznalska placed a photograph of enormous genitals – and nothing else – on a sacred symbol, yielding an effect both intrusive and primitive. Yet all she committed was an artistic error, not a crime". The critic could not (would not?) comprehend that such decontextualising juxtapositions applying a single measure to two separate creative paradigms serve to affirm receptive schemes rooted in pre-avant-garde art, inducing (rather than assuaging) criticism, or even provoking outright aggression as a result.

Critic and art historian Paweł Leszkowicz showed far greater sensitivity in employing canonic tactics; not only did he list _Passion_ as part of Christian iconography – he also emphasised the abundance of representations of naked martyrs as well as the daring nature of theological debates regarding the symbolic function of the Saviour's genitalia. In using such references, the critic attempted to highlight the naturalness of such artistic inspirations, as it were. Regrettably, his text was published by the niche quarterly "Res Publica Nowa", while Osęka's pieces appeared in a periodical exceeding half a million in circulation, and reaching a diverse population.

In referencing the canon, journalist Piotr Kuncewicz underscored another issue: the volatility in appraising the canon's orthodoxy. "Michelangelo painted Christ naked in the Sistine Chapel; with subsequent changes to sensitivity, Jesus was clothed. And yet in Victorian times, prehistoric earth paintings in England were deprived of their genitals. Reinstated, with shame, some time later". Małgorzata Lisiewicz, in turn, references Bernini's _Ecstasy of Saint Theresa_ , a "baroque sculpture explicitly erotic in expression", yet also a manifestation of intense religious commitment. Commentators also pointed to the long-standing tradition of art provocation, duly recorded in Polish and international art history.

Andrzej Rodziński, former rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow and fervent critic of Nieznalska's work, himself a master of juxtapositional manoeuvring, also emphasised the over-simplifying misuse of canonic interpretation:

Someone might argue that Michelangelo had been rectified as well, and that history of art is rich in examples of phenomena both scandalous and objectionable. True. Yet painting a moustache onto Mona Lisa is different to painting a moustache onto the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. The horror of Christ's body in paintings by Grünewald or Massaccio is different to visual manifestation of an artist copulating with a crucifix. Polemics, or war waged on tradition or aesthetic manner, is different to insulting or riding roughshod over religious feelings.

In a sense, Rodziński was correct: not only did blending assorted artistic traditions (the Renaissance, the modernist, the avant-garde) in canonic defence not facilitate the process of assessing the situation – it actually placed Nieznalska in quite a predicament. Osęka's afore-quoted remark is an unsurpassed example. In point of fact, when contrasting Grünewald with Markiewicz (falsely describing copulation with a crucifix with regard to a work by the latter), Rodziński himself did not intend to nuance the historical context or creative paradigm; his only purpose was to depreciate contemporary artistic stance (significantly, Rodziński did not refer to Caravaggio's _Death of the Virgin_ , for example). Notably, the intention behind the majority of precedents referenced in canonic defence was to demonstrate a mastery of form, which veiled, justified, or mitigated potential moral or theological unorthodoxy. In critical art movement – and thus in Nieznalska's oeuvre as well – accents are distributed otherwise. Universally valued technical abilities fade into the background, aestheticising seen as an out-and-out defect allowing the viewer to evade key critical reflection. In other words, the application of canonic defence requires – primarily – an awareness of creative traditions' complexity, and – secondly – the skilful employment of individual examples to mirror the circumstances at hand. In Nieznalska's case, these conditions were usually not met.

**Intentional tactic** was equally recurrent, **its** variety including deliberations with regard to the work's semantics – once Nieznalska's opponents proved certain meanings to be observable, such proof gave rise to assumptions that she was aware of them as well; and if she was, their use became evidence of wilfulness in creating an offensive artwork. The artist herself kept repeating ad nauseam – in interviews and in court alike – that she had had no intention of offending anyone, the argument particularly accentuated by Nieznalska's defence attorney Wojciech Cieślak; his dazzling references to art countertypes notwithstanding, the lawyer had grounds to assume that dismantling the subjective side of the act would be of vital importance to the artist's acquittal. In Cieślak's opinion, the following simple syllogism espoused by the prosecution, and chiefly by the court, was the single most unjust element of the verdict: "Everyone is aware of the number of Catholics in Poland, and that a combination of the cross and genitals will surely insult their feelings, because that is evident. And since that is evident, the artist must have predicted it as well. Whereas the fact," Cieślak continued, "that the artist claims that she had no intention of insulting these feelings in any way, that she was convincing in presenting the idea behind her work, and that she frequently points to the ambiguity of the symbol she had employed... – was in no way persuasive to the court".

Nieznalska's opponents, however, emphasised that the artist's assertions and her defence's clarifications were rather unreliable; of all observers, Rodziński made the most explicit comment, and not without malice: "It is true that the word 'passion' stands for zeal or fervour, and we all know what 'fly into a passion' means. Nonetheless, once the term 'passion' is applied in linkage with the symbol of a cross, I will never believe any elucidation that the original intent involved a traffic intersection rather than the cross and passion, and that 'passion' was to denote a card game for one rather than Christ's ordeal – even should such elucidation be offered by the most sophisticated analysts of today's art. I believe... that if someone in Poland decides to hold a gallery display of a cross whose form includes the photograph of a penis – that person should be sufficiently imaginative to be aware of such decision's social consequences."

Since the artist's assorted comments suggested her knowledge of the fact that her work could be received as offensive, it seems that the category of conceivable intent (her intention had not been to insult, yet she predicted and accepted such reaction) would be the most appropriate legal classification of her circumstances.

The time of the ruling (the European Union accession referendum was held in June 2003, Poland joined the Union in May 2004) was particularly conducive to Nieznalska's defenders applying **cultural depreciation tactic**. Publicist Stanisław Podemski of the Polityka left-wing weekly became the forerunner with his erroneous description of the ruling practice of the Court in Strasbourg, which had allegedly been extending preferential treatment to artistic expression." Art historian Piotr Piotrowski adopted such line of argument as well – referring to the ECHR, he highlighted the supposed democratic states' acquiescence of the right to blasphemy. Director of the Zachęta Gallery Agnieszka Morawińska (quoted jointly with Piotrowski) said, "While exhibitions across the world have been shut down for reasons of public morality, I am not aware of a situation of such developments ending up in court since the times of Oscar Wilde" (actually, the count of such cases reaches dozens, if not hundreds). Publicist Tomasz Piątek argued that "Judge Zieliński's scandalous verdict is a disgrace for Poland. Not only in the eyes of the world or of Europe which we are supposedly aiming to join". Comments suggesting a "distinctiveness" of the Polish trial against standards typical for democratic states and for Strasbourg adjudicature were copious, the argument used predominantly in assorted letters, pleas, and appeals.

Yet all polemists were outclassed by GW journalist Robert Sołtyk and his article titled _Europa przyjrzy się_ " _Pasji"_ [ _Europe Will Inspect 'Passion'_ ]. The specific rhetoric, understatements and allusions leave the reader under an impression that behold! The EU commissioners, spurred into action by the dawdlings of backward Judge Zieliński have fixed their eyes on Poland, the Land of Ignorance, and will finally proceed to civilise her. Already in his opening words, Sołtyk emphasised that Nieznalska's conviction elicited "an avalanche of questions from western journalists" in Brussels. While representatives of the Union, appearing somewhat perplexed, diplomatically refrained from commenting on the matter (the customary stock phrase concerning the freedom of expression as the "fundamental freedom of the European Union" can hardly be considered a comment), Sołtyk's piece suggested that an intervention is just a matter of time. The author continued to underscore potential options of appealing to international courts – yet it remains unexplained why the institutions he listed included the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, an agency with no jurisdiction to resolve such disputes even in case of the Union's member states. Concurrently, he neglected to mention that should the judicial path in Poland be exhausted, Nieznalska's chances to win before the ECHR are an illusion. In closing, Sołtyk emphasised that Nieznalska's case might "force Brussels to take action", to prevent Poland from joining the European Union or hinder her accession at the very least, and more importantly, to rupture the European system of personal rights and freedoms under construction at the time, as the verdict in question does not conform to Art 13 and 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights under design.

Notably, the judgment in Nieznalska's case was no precedent against the backdrop of domestic court rulings across member states, nor did it contradict the ruling practice of the Court in Strasbourg, whereas Brussels had and has no competence to form the content of Art 196 PCC, or any competence to order Judge Zieliński to take any action. Subsequently, the principal notions of Sołtyk's article were unreflectively and in negligence of any nuance reproduced by other media. It does seem that the _GW_ -adopted tactic of wagging Brussels finger could have done more harm than good, if only by leaving readers under an impression that upon joining the European Union, Poland would have to relinquish such vital aspects of state sovereignty as judicial independence and competence to decide on criminal legislative provisions.

In April 2004, immediately prior to the ruling of the court of appeal, Prof. Simonetta Lux of the Contemporary Art History Faculty of the La Sapienza University in Rome expressed a stern opinion. Excerpts from her letter follow:

I am... filled with anger and outrage – the reason being that in the face of commonly available information and knowledge, in the face of awareness and irrefutability of democratic values, in the face of expressions of solidarity cosmopolitan in nature, we are confronted with the arrogance of politicians and courts in their service engaging in shameless acts of censorship considered unacceptable in the West and across United democratic Europe.... How can a State considering itself democratic and yet failing to respect the freedom of expression or freedom of art join the European Union on 1 May 2004? Perhaps Poland should be reminded that Art and creative activities are internationally recognised as sacrosanct. Venues of producing and exhibiting art are likewise considered sacrosanct.... The freedom of creating symbols and emblems of art is protected on equal footing to any religion, as their nature is one of cultural 'testimony' and 'archetype'. Said freedom has been accepted in philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and history-and-art fields across the civilised world: from the times of Dante Alighieri to those of Erwin Panofsky, Umberto Eco, and Catherine Millet.... By the power of my authority and office, I hereby declare that no criminal law may be applicable with regard to an artwork or the creative process, both acknowledged as sacrosanct.

The admonition was naïve and incompetent, which also made it impertinent. It was a blatant display of deficiency in knowledge – not only of Italian law and circumstances, but also of the ECHR's adjudicature, and – lamentably – of the history of art.

Additionally, the debate involved simplified forms of **alienation defence** , typically limited to statements to the effect of art having the right to provoke or scandalise. It goes without saying that from the artistic viewpoint, alienation defence was of vital importance – by making an artefact part of appropriate avant-garde hermeneutics, it reinstated its proper ontological status, entrenching it within a canon of similar and recognised works. Yet no extended reflection was attempted concerning the distribution of educational capital, or any form of knowledge allowing to decode related artworks. In polemicising with such arguments, Nieznalska's opponents usually referred to the harm principle, emphasising that nobody has the right to insult other subjects.

Yet arguments referencing **immunity of art** proved to be most popular with Nieznalska's defenders (according to criminal law classification: art countertype). Elements of such rhetoric were also visible in cultural depreciation tactic, wherein it was frequently underscored that art enjoys unrestrained freedom "in the West", and Poland should similarly seek such a solution. Attorney Wojciech Cieślak representing Nieznalska was the actual tone-setter: basing on a legal opinion by Prof. Jarosław Warylewski, (see Section 2.4.4), he argued during trial to exclude the unlawfulness of Nieznalska's act on the grounds of its artistic nature. Immediately upon the artist being charged by the prosecution, her defence attorney emphasised in an interview that "the job of criminal law, prosecution, or the judiciary is not to appraise the viewers' aesthetic experience in encounter with a work of art".

Multiple commentators reiterated the argument on a regular basis, bluntly or less so; for example, _Trybuna's_ publicist Przemysław Szubartowicz wrote: "a work of art, or actually any artistic expression may only be subject to aesthetic judgment – under no circumstances may such judgment be legal." When testifying in court, Aneta Szyłak emphasised that even if Nieznalska "engaged, according to some, in blasphemy, she did not run down to church to do so. She remained in a gallery, which propounds a parenthesis of sorts to artists and their activity" (thus highlighting a location-related immunity, as it were). Grzegorz Klaman and – unsurprisingly – Nieznalska herself both opted for art countertype. According to the artist, "art is perpetually innocent, it carries no tangible threat, it can be accepted or rejected. Violence and true evil are a presence amongst humans".

Rockman Zbigniew Hołdys sang a song of hysteria and inspiration:

This justice forgot one thing: no court in the world has been granted the divine right to judge people for the creative capacity of their minds, for their defiant thinking, for their words, images, expression, or sound; or the right to sentence people for their feelings, for a smile or lack thereof, for their capacity to love – for the gifts of breathing and sleeping, attributes we are entitled to in equal measure to the mind's creative capacity. We cannot be forbidden to breathe. This is a message we must deliver loud and clear to judges, censors, artists, and the entire society. If we fail to stand in defence of Dorota Nieznalska today – tomorrow our art will become no more than some work commissioned by a justice in Gdańsk – it will become nothing of importance.

Hołdys seemed to be placing the mind's abstract creative capacity beyond culture, within a zone permitting life itself – in a semblance of breathing and sleep – and yet in transgression of physiology, as such capacity was to be subject to divine appraisal only. The musician thus engaged in a long-standing tradition of metonymic displacement: in sacralising the creative capacity of the mind, he indirectly sacralised its produce, and, manifestly, all authors thereof. Consequently, the act of violating the sacrosanct taboo of an artwork and its creator itself became the ultimate act of transgression, a stunning blow, unspeakable blasphemy.

Such belief, frequently and somewhat naively expressed by Nieznalska's defenders – to the effect of art and other areas of life being subject to different assessment standards, of art eluding criminal law or law in general, of art remaining a free realm non-artists only have scopic access to whereas its reach over non-artists is unrestrained – was in all probability an argument the opposing side found the easiest to defy. Nieznalska's opponents, if recognising the role of immunity in art at all, negated _Passion's_ artistic status as such. Yet the prevalent belief undermined the concept of such institution in general, the position shared even by the artist's supporters. Jan Tomasz Lipski wrote: "a rule whereby artistic activities are to be assessed in terms of art only is enormously risky. Critics have abandoned the old-fashioned credence of an artist as an artwork creator a long time ago. Today, the reverse is true: a work of art is something created and proclaimed as art by an artist. I see no reason why artists should be exempt from laws protecting religious feelings." According to father Adam Boniecki, the work-related public debate should take place in court, as "the issue borders on the area of law.... Anyone engaging in risky public activity, artists included, has to account for consequences. Were it not for the threat of a verdict, the weight or temperature of the discussion would not have reached their current levels". Piotr Zaremba remarked in turn that when supporting immunity of art, "one should admit to an intent of dividing citizens into two groups unequal before the law.... Anyone willing to provoke, insult, or outrage should take a modicum of risk into account.... Meanwhile, artists wish to provoke while demanding total impunity...". Maciej łętowski observed that "the law has seen cases of the perpetrator not facing responsibility despite having committed a crime. There is crime without punishment when a minor or insane individual is brought before the court. The artist Nieznalska is no longer a minor – hence her followers demand that she be issued nutcase papers". Conversely, Przemysław Wielgosz seemed to be drawing conclusions from łętowski's remark: "prerogatives... have always had their price. The artist can bounce around to his – or her – heart's content, as long as he – or she – does not venture beyond the citizen-erected ghetto. In effect, art is condemned to alienation, paralysing all critique. Ripped out of its social and historical context, all it becomes is a more or less controversial performance, entertainment for more sophisticated audiences. The saddest thing about Nieznalska's case is that her defenders' strategy became part of the logic of ghettoising art".

All five publicists touched upon multiple matters of critical importance to the concept of artistic immunity, the first patently involving the discretionary scope of the term "artistic" as a designate. As aforementioned, once artists abandoned their modernist autonomy and Duchamp proved that anything can be art, the aesthetic sphere – highly subjective and conditioned with particular factors as it is – was condemned to arbitrariness stabilised by institutional factors only. Such accidentality, previously unknown to artistic classification, is accompanied by exclusivity: socially speaking, a very narrow group of authors and artistic technocrats get to decide whether a given "something" can be classified as high art. In the art world, this group is competent in transgression, and in the artistic sacralisation thereof. Under such circumstances, referring to abstract immunity of art is tantamount to acquiescence to a considerable degree of uncertainty in social relations, linked to non-democratic and informal mechanisms organising the art world. Professor Marian Filar – an expert in criminal law – was correct in pointing out that "being an artist does not mean that one is relieved of responsibility for all crimes. Everyone in Poland is equal before the law, no artist is above it". Secondly, that world of art – as father Boniecki remarked – engages in "risky public business", an activity I would be inclined to comprehend as artists openly and directly engaging in social praxis with its full aspect array: moral, religious, social, aesthetic, economic, or – par excellence – political. Consequently, opinions of the kind voiced by curator Zofia Watrak are both false and hinting at hypocrisy: "judging an artwork in court leads to confusion resulting from a mix-up of two orders: human life in society, and artistic activity". Furthermore, the judiciary do not, as numerous commentators suggested, judge any artwork in terms of its artistic merit, but in terms of the features of a criminal offence. Referencing a work of art as such is required to the extent of necessary determination of said work's senses entangled in a context involving the author, setting and manner of presentation, creative strategy, and communication code. In other words, the court will examine the artistry of a statement in terms of communication specificity rather than of aesthetic classification. The concept of "arts" may further be vital to the process of determining any possible transgression of the precautionary rules when handling a given good. Fourthly, the style elected by artistic immunity supporters when talking about artists does occasionally resemble a rhetoric employed for purposes of the insane – persons inhabiting "a different world", wherein all social standards are suspended and drawing consequences is neither possible nor required, as the individuals in question are in need of special care (immunity for the insane). Fifthly and finally, while artistic immunity would definitely secure greater freedom of expression for authors (and authors only), such licence would serve to alienate art from society to an even greater extent, neutralise the importance of artistic gestures, and – to add insult to injury – trigger particular hostility towards a privileged group amongst those deprived of such privileges.

Critique was also pointed at the immunity of a place concept, tying in with art galleries. According to Rodziński, "... galleries do not operate on the planet Mars... After all, a gallery is not ex-territorial, and showing e.g. objects mocking... religious symbols or people on its premises goes well beyond a formal game". "Once [a work] is shown, its public life begins – be it with regard to two or thousands of viewers". While Rodziński was correct in noting the public role of exhibition institutions, his manifested indifference with regard to the form of presentation is actually tantamount to a censorship-based dictate of the dissatisfied, who – not exposed to any contact with the work – would be inclined to remove it from all space. We would do well to bear in mind that the number of the disgruntled as well as the levels of their dissatisfaction, aggression, intellect and sensitivity are often extremely diverse and unpredictable.

Notably, the artist lost in mainstream media. The community of art – and more broadly: of culture – was deeply divided, while the one of law basically kept its silence. The public was not in any major way exposed to any competent or constructive debate concerning Art 196 PCC (vital to the whole case), or the importance of constitutionally protected freedom of expression. Politicians having used the case for their internal games – that was a given: the lack of solidarity in the artistic community, however, could be a reason for concern. Numerous creators agreed with the court ruling – yet insult to their religious feelings was in all probability less of a factor than their negative attitude to avant-garde artistic paradigm. A conflict concerning competencies in defining art and the role of an artist became evident – regrettably, criminal law was perceived in this conflict as something akin to an ally. Modernist art tradition was also very strong amongst the majority of journalists and academics. Importantly, the latter did not see the issue as a test for the freedom of expression or democracy: they seemed not to notice that such values are of fundamental importance to the context of their activity and to all public life. While the judgment itself incited resistance in some, the work itself was rather discredited than criticised, or neglected altogether – a phenomenon visible even in professional periodicals.

Interpretations of _Passion_

Basically, interpretations of _Passion_ were only attempted at the time by two critics and art historians who had studied under Prof. Piotr Piotrowski of the Institute of Art History, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań: Paweł Leszkowicz, and Izabela Kowalczyk. In his paper _Niebezpieczne związki zmęskim ciałem_ [ _Dangerous Liaisons with the Male Body_ ] published before the court ruling publication, Leszkowicz put _Passion_ in the context of the artist's entire oeuvre, emphasising the consistency of her explorations. He noted that _Passion_ is a portrait of male masochism. "Grimaces [of a man exercising – J.D.] speak of effort while portraying pain and suffering. In an attempt to emphasise the ritual of suffering tying in with efforts to achieve desired physical shape blending masculinity with force, the artist introduced a hanging cross with a photograph of male genitals into exhibition space.... Suffering, masculinity, nakedness and the cross have thus been made part of a single symbolic line of conjunction". Nieznalska followed the trope aware of "paschal iconography in the history of art, filled to the brim with thousands of naked martyrs", and of "theological debates focusing on the symbolic function of the Saviour's genitals as a symbol of his humanity...". This is why the artist decided to

confer religious context upon contemporary suffering in times when 'painful' physical ideals have become a religion in themselves. Nieznalska's installation is more critical of the destructive nature of these norms than of Catholic symbolism, the former a mere addition to the commentary concerning masculine exercise in modern gyms where salvation is sought in 'sculpting' the body.... This is a form of suffering the male shown in the film condemns himself to voluntarily, realising his desires along cultural gender patterns.... At an individual level, this is a masochistic – or rather sado-masochistic – relationship with oneself.

The critic went on to remark:

... In _Passion_ , the photograph of genitals upon a cross associates the purpose of suffering with sexuality, with reaching a state of sexual potency, with the phallic nature of a tense and inflated male body. The ordeal of exercising yields 'muscular erection', physical shape standing for power and domination; an equally important objective is to turn oneself into an object of erotic desire, a fulfilled role model of masculinity. Yet the artist sees the ultimate purpose of exercise – of masculinity in training – in a desire to dominate. In psychoanalysis, the phallic symbol represents power; while symbolic in meaning, one would be hard-pressed to separate it from male sexuality.

In the final section of his piece, Leszkowicz emphasises that Polish prudery is deeply rooted in communist times. Male genitals were "aesthetically considered obscene and revolting; politically speaking, they were subversive in unveiling power, phallic foundations of domination, the gender substrate of totalitarism". In comparing the censoring of Zofia Kulik's _Both Home and Museum_ (see p.258) with the case of _Passion_ , Leszkowicz remarks that in related activities, the penis metaphorically became a part of the artists' bodies, "and thus has to be severed to reconstruct the correct order of religious and psychoanalytical ABC of the difference between genders. ... The punishment of symbolic castration befell both artists and their works, also with intent to incite fear in other usurpers...". The critic believes such punishment could have been avoided in one of three scenarios: firstly, in "deviating from the post-communist... vision of male genitals, e.g. by revisiting the... Christian affirmation of the wholeness of Christ's body..."; secondly, in "recalling the liberating quality of the sense of humour, and abandoning the murderous rhetoric of punishment, gravity and insult with regard to artistic fiction displayed in settings intended for artistic fiction"; and thirdly, in recognising the freedom of artistic expression (the most fundamental and obvious condition, which questions any assessment of the quality or message of art in criminal law terms).

Izabela Kowalczyk opened her piece _Sztuka wobec przemocy, przemoc wobec sztuki_ [ _Art in the Face of Violence, Violence in the Face of Art_ ] by outlining relations between art and reality. "It is an obvious statement: that in order to comprehend art, one cannot perceive what one sees verbatim". She then proceeded to analyse the artist's earlier works, emphasising that Nieznalska is consistent in pointing to "masculinity canons requiring men to remain masculine, whatever the cost: violence against others (primarily women), or aggression towards one's own body". _Passion_ definitely falls in the line of such works as a piece depicting exercise in the role of a road to becoming "masculine", if not outright "super-masculine". The artist showed that the road to masculinity may become a passion, and that masculinity may be forged in compliance with repressive cultural patterns. "Notably, two models of life, tradition (Catholicism) and consumerism, remain in clash in Poland. Against such backdrop, 'masculinity' seems something almost impossible to achieve, an ideal tying in with the definitions of an ordeal, of sacrificing one's own life; on the other hand, it becomes a role model primarily associated with physical force... This is why Nieznalska's work references the symbol of a cross as well as an image of exercise in gym settings, the penis represented as _pars pro toto_ of masculinity."

According to Kowalczyk, the ambiguity of the work, also _Battle of Tannenberg_ an attack on a number of myths, makes it rather intricate in reception. The critic observes that "religion is gradually falling under rules applicable to consumption culture (the process of 'attracting' a client/ congregation member following similar principles), whereas religion itself as well as its attributes are being employed in consumption culture... This is how the work portrays consumption culture as a slowly-developing new 'religion', with the gym, for example, carrying the capacity to become a 'temple'". Probably as the only _Passion_ commentator, Kowalczyk rehabilitated the piece in aesthetic terms as well: "the work has been very well designed – I am referring to the design of the cross – a cold, spikey, hard form contrasted with the image of masculinity – the warm colour of flesh, the flaccidity of the penis. ... the image of the phallus is always sensitive as the most vulnerable part of a man's body; when uncovered, it becomes proof of his weakness contrasted with the desired image of a male body – muscled and hard..., developed in a process Nieznalska shows on film".

In summarising the court case, Kowalczyk noted: "the greatest absurdity of all ... involves the fact of putting an artist on trial, an artist protected by constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, after all..." The ruling "places the artist on equal footing to criminals", "humiliating" her, raising associations with Salman Rushdie's case, and pushing the country in a religious direction. It further attacks viewers and their "right to receive art, to independent assessment, and to freedom of interpretation".

Neither Leszkowicz nor Kowalczyk attempted any valuation of the piece – from their comments, we will not learn whether they thought the work to be wonderful, good, mediocre, or poor. It seems that both were fully aware of the gravity of the situation, feeling responsible not only for the freedom of speech, but also for the artist's sense of dignity and the work itself: _pars pro toto_ of the contemporaneous situation of contemporary art, its critical option in particular. In responding to a questionnaire of the _Kresy_ quarterly, Leszkowicz was direct: "the greatest mistake a critic can commit is to make comments such as 'I do not believe this to be good art, or art at all, but I definitely oppose censorship.' This is unethical, kicking someone when they're weak and down, which happens to currently be the exact position of an artist facing charges in Poland".

Kowalczyk was correct in emphasising that the piece is intricate in reception, turning out to be problematic for the artist herself. Some observers accused Nieznalska of being unaware of what she had created, and unable to convincingly clarify her intentions or the meaning of the work.

Let us recall that in a memorable article by Anna Urbańczyk, the artist explained that she had intended to use the work to emphasise that "Christ was crucified naked, unclothing an act designed to humiliate."In another interview, Nieznalska claimed that Passion is an expression of her compassion for "people who have to descend into a smelly basement, push steroids and press – having yielded to pressure", whereas the objective of using the photographs of genitals on the cross was to underscore the "absurdity of elevating one's own body, own masculinity to the role of a sacrum". On the other hand, during the first hearing of September 2002, she admitted that in criticising the conscious misery of a man exercising in the gym "she used the cross as the traditional symbol of suffering". In trial on 16 November 2004, the artist blended the two motives of sacrum and of torment: "...The paschal theme was employed purposely as a context for affliction: in history of art, the male body was traditionally used in connection with Christ and his cross. Yet my work primarily involves a criticism of masculinity, of carnality contemporarily perceived as a sacrum. It was not intended as criticism of a Catholic symbol". Subsequent interpretation motives originally outlined in the course of the investigation (Polish Red Cross reference) were developed during testimony in court on 19 January 2005: "... the work concerns a cultural model of masculinity and the perception of one's own body as a sacrum, which is why I referenced the cross". Yet the artist "also considered the image of the Polish Red Cross, equałarmed and referring the idea behind the work as well", "as the cross is also the symbol of care, as it were", its purpose to connote the artist's empathy for men exercising in the gym. Nieznalska further confirmed that she consciously referenced Christian symbolism but remained unconcerned when showing the work, "as the piece does not relate to religion, and the cross was not an object of religious cult" (yet she did mention her apprehension in earlier interviews, see below). She wanted the cross "to remain a mere symbolic reference to suffering, and not depict a cross of the church at all". "...My purpose was not to provoke associations with a given cross. It was only a form resembling a cross".

Such hesitant exegeses by the artist – not necessarily mutually exclusive, by the way – might well be explained with the pressure of circumstances: every word could bring her closer to (or distance her from) a conviction. Concurrently, an artist does not have to employ stable meanings or indeed strive for their stability; there is no obstacle for his or her creative strategy to comprise ambiguity, suspension, uncertainty, wandering, or conditions in between. Such thinking may well be identified in the _Passion's_ structure. Nieznalska's comments seem to prove that non-typical proportions of the cross – the Latin cross having been replaced with a quasi-Greek one, its vertical beam longer than the horizontal by ca. 13% - were a consequence of her quest for a form retaining Christian connotations while rendering them non-evident and distant. According to Kowalczyk, while in creating her work the artist "had to be aware of its impact", it goes without saying that said impact would have been even greater had the cross retained its pure Latin form. In a simile to the ambiguity of the work's title, the hybridism of the cross proliferated interpretation motives and deconstructed semantic unambiguity while offering additional options of defending the piece, such as Polish Red Cross symbol referencing. In contrast to her court testimony of 26 November 2004, Nieznalska admitted in interviews that she had had concerns at the stage of creating the work already, the viewers' fierce reactions having been programmed into the piece, as it were: when audiences visiting the gallery did not protest, Nieznalska claimed Klaman "was disappointed. He kept joking: 'Is it that feeble? Had you hung a photo of an erection on the cross, that would have been something'".

Issues of interpreting an artwork and the author's intentions are enormously complicated – even more so, they become rather specific in case of multiple critical art works wherein prompting shock, abhorrence, or outright insult remains a key component of the piece. Nonetheless, this is usually the point of departure rather than the target in perception of art: in a process of exploring meanings, we move from original provocative associations to a stage of mitigating shock by applying different elements of the artefact. Attempts to handle shock are designed to open our minds to new meanings; once experienced, shock helps us reveal things previously inaccessible in the work itself (and in our lives). We may also remain in uneasy cognitive suspension (alienation) – as if something had come to an end, leaving us unable to fill the resulting emptiness with alternative content. Anxiety in experiencing a work of art is triggered by transgression and/or the subversive use of components (objects, concepts, images) accompanying us in daily life – yet a displacement of meanings, chiefly by contextual change, divulges the complexity of their social functioning.

The problem with the reception of this kind of art is that for competence reasons, not everyone has the capacity to progress to further exposure stages, the latter occasionally an option only for professionals or regular visitors to modern art galleries. Much also depends on personal traits, openness of the mind, propensity to risk, cognitive angst, cultural capital, etc.

In the case of _Passion_ , the vast majority of commentators – even if supporting the work itself – admitted that the cross component was insulting in nature; yet the accompanying film was of key importance in developing the very sense of the work; once the focus involved the cross only, the artwork itself remained incomprehensible, both the viewer and (importantly) the artist, as it were, left with an impression of failure. In the context of all polemics and disputes, it seems that in the reception of _Passion_ , proceeding from one element to the next was far from easy, as the cross – in its linkage with genitals – became a form of great visual and symbolic force of utter domination over the film. Many viewers, deeply affected by the sight of the cross, forsook the other part of the work, the piece itself going off the grid altogether as a result. For example, as publicist Tomasz Piątek curiously wrote,

The entire ideology [macho culture critique – J.D.] employed by some to defend Nieznalska is of no interest to me at all – whereas the image of a penis on the cross does impress me. It impresses me strongly. The impression is indeed akin to offence. And yet what do we expect of art? Impressions, chiefly, impressions pushing the boundaries of our endurance and imagination. The artist's job is to show us things we could not have thought of were it not for him (or her).... The risk of insulting someone's tender mercies remains indissoluble from practicing art.

It goes without saying that one has to account for the fact that after 20 January 2002, basically nobody – apart from the justice who reconsidered the case in the regional court – has seen the installation live, all appraisal based on press photographs (I myself am also using third persons' accounts). Yet I would be inclined to risk a thesis that the aforementioned asymmetry of power between the two components of the piece appear to be one of its two fundamental flaws. While Pi _ą_ tek had been capable of drawing positive conclusions for himself, persons less proficient in experiencing contemporary art, less open-minded, or more sensitive to religious references and attached to traditional concepts of good taste were basically left with nothing but a sense of visual and cultural shock. And that was the greatest group of viewers – and the largest interpretative community. The other flaw I myself observe in _Passion_ involves another asymmetry between the issue touched upon by Nieznalska (the subculture of men sacrificing their energy, time, and health to bodybuilding) and means used in its critique. Even if we accept the marginal, after all, gym subculture as a metonymy of masculinity, such masculinity thus takes on rather specific contextual meaning – one few males yield to, I daresay. A niche phenomenon of actual interest to few was commented on with the use of a transgressive melange of universal and potent symbols, derived from the strongly disconnected fields of religion and sexuality. It does seem that said disproportion might have dissuaded multiple viewers, making them comment on the work and its related meanings as suggested by the artist in an overtly indulgent manner.

Another interpretation-related issue, though not necessarily a flaw, involved the ease with which the piece could have evoked alternative interpretations, occasionally blasphemous in the extreme. For example: placing a penis in a spot typically reserved for the crucified Christ gives rise to the very offensive "prick – Saviour" relation; in the context of the film, the martyr's sacrifice on the cross appears to be as senseless as the "sacrifice" of "yokels" torturing themselves in gyms, stupid scowls and all. Such unquestionably offensive interpretation seems to be much more blatant than its reverse, wherein the artist could have attempted to restore true religious sacrum to her work, replaced in contemporary popular culture with a cult of the body and of specifically interpreted masculinity.

The work might also be a reference to the artist's own biography, pointing to a repeatedly accentuated fear of her family-persecuting tyrant father, and to Nieznalska being baptised at the age of thirteen under family pressure. From such vantage point, Catholic religion – in its patriarchal nature and capacity for symbolic violence – could well be tied to physical violence via the accompanying film. Catholicism – or, more broadly, Christianity – could be comprehended as a religion facilitating/validating the mental and physical enslavement of women by stronger men, if only by the factual rather than doctrinal requirement of persisting in a pathological marriage. The paschal motive would thus tie in with female suffering; conversely, the term "passion" could stand in as a synonym for "flying into passion", a phenomenon accompanying household violence. Additionally, any interpretation of the work could involve a powerful erotic subtext, provoked by exposing the penis inasmuch as by a body builder's facial expression, implying physical effort as well as sexual bliss; such interpretation of both plans is yet again redolent of Catholic patriarchate, which – facilitating symbolic and physical violence – could also smooth men's way to satisfying their sexual "passions".

Even if unconscious, the option of engaging in a perilous and controversial cognitive experience introduces an element hinting at anxiety. We sense that the presence of _Passion_ permits access to usually repressed, blocked associations or intuitions (the interpretations I have suggested by no means exhausting all options of producing further meanings; that is simply not possible). I believe that the disquieting, not entirely sayable side of the work (as correctly observed by Tomasz Piątek, as it were) is considerably more intriguing that narratives suggested by the artist. Most polemists have officially remained at a fundamental and fragmentary level of reading; yet it seems that a specific undefined apprehension triggered by the piece could have been key to their vehement reactions. Who knows – a fear of the unsaid and unsayable could have become the fundamental reason for charging and sentencing the artist by the court of the first instance.

On the other hand, the community defending Nieznalska and undermining the probably most fundamental and universal sense of blasphemy, insult, or distaste, did not appreciate (or wished to deny) the power of the image. In doing so, they de-legitimised a certain type of reception which cannot be refused affixation within the visual structure of the work, frankness, or severity. As aforementioned, the visual force of the cross delineated a certain weakness of _Passion_. The shock induced in many was so forceful that it yielded _aesthetic vertigo_ , to use a term coined by Alison Young, causing blockage of interpretative irony and resulting in the work being rejected in its entirety. Such persons, often as not unused to the zone of high culture, entered it on their own terms. Experience teaches us that such "field of honour" encounters rarely carry accord potential, parties usually firmly entrenched on their chosen positions.

Accompanying Events

In informal terms, Nieznalska's guilty verdict of July 2003 produced a hangover effect in the Polish art world. Forms of support included an exhibition to be held at the w Bałtycka Galeria Sztuki Współczesnej Baszta Czarownic [Witches' Tower Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art] in Słupsk, the town which had elected Robert Strąk – trial ringleader and prosecution's witness – member of parliament, and where auxiliary prosecutor Tomasz Pączek was a police academy instructor. The exhibition was to comprise works constituting the artist's commentary regarding restrictions to her freedom of expression: a film recording of the trial, photographs and an audio installation developed in co-operation with a professional musician and specially designed for Witches' Tower purposes. Inviting Nieznalska was definitely a confrontational decision on behalf of the gallery's director Władysław Każmierczak, its chief purpose appearing to have been that of restoring the somewhat enfeebled prestige of the Polish art world; lamentably, the "show of force" ended in failure. Deputy Str _ą_ k threatened to form civic patrols to picket the gallery, record any anti-religious content, and photograph visitors. He further demanded that Pomeranian Province Marshal Jan Kozłowski vet the exhibition (the gallery being funded in part by the Marshal's Office); should any religious motives be displayed, LPR would demand that the local government disallow the exhibition. Kozłowski responded: "To me this is not art, this is provocation. Yet I am no censor. This is a matter to be resolved by the director of the institution organising the exhibition, and I refuse to interfere". Strąk further secured the support of the local clergy who intervened at the Municipal Authority, and of Poor Clare sisters who held nocturnal vigils for the intention of Nieznalska's conversion. Despite all assurances that he would not yield to pressure, Każmierczak unexpectedly cancelled the exhibition's opening scheduled for 7 November. Some time later, he admitted that "the scale of religious emotion induced became a harbinger of social conflict, the unimaginable extent of which we were neither prepared for nor immune to". Strąk was triumphant: "Thanks to LPR, the people will not be offended. The taxpayer dime will go to the poor, not to art insulting religious feelings of ninety percent of the society". The embittered artist said, "The gallery director's decision came as a shock. Nobody gave me a chance to show something new". Simultaneously, the gallery was audited by the Regional Accounting Chamber. "They found nothing they could pin to us, but the authorities still reduced our annual budget by 40%" Każmierczak said.

Słupsk's left-wing Mayor Maciej Kobyliński tried to take advantage of the political scuffle by suggesting to Nieznalska that the exhibition be transferred to the city hall. "I cannot agree to the Deputy deciding what people can and can't view... I will take a look at Nieznalska's works myself, and if they do not include anything resembling _Passion_ , I will have nothing against showing them in the city hall. My objection arises from the fact that the city hall is a public place, where the artist's works could be seen also by people who would not choose to see her exhibition".

The behaviour of both Pomeranian politicians – the province Marshal and President of Słupsk – was distinctive in its particular ambiguity. The declared openness of the former was somewhat restricted, as proven by his deprecating comment concerning Nieznalska's oeuvre, sufficiently potent to awaken the vigilance of the Witches' Tower director, in turn dependent on the Marshal's Office. Conversely, Kobyliński's libertarian and anti-censorship avowals were limited in nature, making them incredible and revealing their carefully calculated political nature.

It appears that panic – well-concealed by a disguise of openness – set in amongst other Polish public galleries as well (the artist herself participating in exhibitions in Berlin, Sweden, and New York at the time). Pestered by the Życie Warszawy daily for a commentary, directors and curators of leading Warsaw institutions – the Zachęta and Foksal galleries and CSW ZU – were not ruling out the option of showing Nieznalska's works, albeit postponing any actual date for a largely unspecified term; concurrently, specific exhibition proposals kept coming in from private galleries. Immediately after the Słupsk exhibition had been cancelled, Jacek Kołodziejski – young curator and artist from Ostrów Wielkopolski – dared challenge Nieznalska's opponents, suggesting that she transfer the would-be Słupsk show to his private gallery – Data; the event was titled Czarownica RP (Witch of the Polish Republic). Kołodziejski declared, "I am not afraid of any pressure – this is a private institution with its own budget." Shortly thereafter, the Ostrów Prosecution Office received a letter wherein all local parish priests "motioned for a prohibition to show Dorota Nieznalska's exhibition anywhere in the city of Ostrów". On 21 November, the owner of the premises housing Kołodziejski's gallery gave him notice terminating the lease: "I cannot imagine such exhibition to be organised under my roof, if only for reasons of Ms. Nieznalska's reputation.... I am not playing censor here, but this is my right". When Kołodziejski tried to hold a conference in Ostrów in March 2004 to explain his intentions, municipal institutions were unanimous in refusing him a venue.

Following these two spectacular defeats, yet still before year-end 2003, Nieznalska recalls to have been phoned by someone representing the left-wing _Polityka_ weekly with a proposal to hold a major retrospect exhibition at the periodical's editorial seat in February 2004. Nonetheless, immediately before the opening, Polityka's editor-in-chief Jerzy Baczyński decided to watch a video forming part of the show – specifically a documentary showing the reading of the court sentence, the artist having included two captions: title – "...in the Name of the Republic of Poland...", final subtitle – "Ite, missa est..." Having watched the video, Baczyński refused to show it; since the artist turned the modification down, the organisers cancelled the exhibition claiming they did not want to mix politics with art.

On 7 October 2004, Nieznalska's first individual exhibition since her guilty verdict opened at a private underground club-cum-gallery – the Le Madame in Warsaw (in 2006, the city's right-wing authorities shut the ideologically inconvenient club down along with its gallery). In December, the artist participated in a large collective controversial exhibition curated by Kazimierz Piotrowski, titled _Neuropa, Inc._ – _sztuka wobec korporacyjnego przejmowania miejsc publicznej ekspresji_ [ _Art Confronted with Corporate Seizure of Public Expression Settings_ ].

One week before _Neuropa_ opened, Nieznalska's first court hearing was held by the court reconsidering the case. Only a few media reported on the issue. Controversies seemed to have moved from the press to the courtroom – around thirty people appeared at the trial, some with rosaries and crucifixes; yet the court ordered all such objects to be removed from sight, perceiving such manifestations as attempts to exert pressure on the judiciary panel. Furthermore, many members of the audience came forward as aggrieved in the case. Over one hundred persons, multiple journalists included, showed up on the date of the subsequent hearing (19 January 2005). The effect was caused by Gertruda Szumska's campaign: she appealed to "all Poles true to the Church and homeland to attend the court trial in defence of the cross offended by Nieznalska" in the ultra-Catholic _Nasz Dziennik_ daily. Aneta Szyłak and Zbigniew Hołdys issued a counter-appeal, imploring all the artist's friends to appear in court. Upon the defendant entering the courtroom, insults were shouted; a brawl ensued between her opponents and defenders (the latter a minority). During Nieznalska's testimony, two women pointed crucifixes at her, arms outstretched. The judge ordered them to leave the courtroom, upon which one took his photograph – the judge ordered her to be detained. Those who did not fit in the courtroom sang religious songs and prayed loudly in the hallway. The judge had to call a halt to proceedings and summon the judiciary police. After the hearing adjourned, over ten police officers guarded Nieznalska leaving the courtroom. "Leaving the courtroom, where I am to a certain extent safeguarded by judiciary dignity, and out into the hallway where these women are lying in wait, is a critical moment. All senses alert. I'm afraid they will somehow hurt me. Police or no police, I'm watching my six. I feel an adrenalin rush, and rage. The crowd sees me as a scapegoat. They are off-loading all their frustrations and issues onto me. I feel humiliated".

9 February became something of a skirmish set-up for the artist's opponents and supporters. The concerned vice-president of the court in Gdańsk approved speciałpurpose security procedures: all entries were screened by the police, also upon entering the courtroom, approved admittance numbers limited to sixty people (including twenty journalists) – special entry pass holders only. Zieloni 2004 (Greens 2004) party members appeared at the court entrance, some with mouths taped shut in protest. Small Green party pickets protesting censorship in art were simultaneously held in Warsaw, Katowice, Poznań, and Białystok. The party's campaigns, poor public response notwithstanding, were the most comprehensive and consistent manifestations of support for Nieznalska and freedom of art in general at the time. The two camps kept confronting each other on subsequent hearings.

At the turn of April and May, the vice-president of the Regional Court ordered Nieznalska's trial to be sped up, yet one hearing after another was struck off the docket for assorted reasons. Grotesque situations developed: for example, a case concerning a dangerous gang was adjourned as police officers had to guard an empty courtroom booked for Nieznalska. Problems also ensued with regard to the appointment of an expert witness in art; a considerable part of the academic community had commented on the case publicly and could thus no longer be considered unbiased, while judiciary-listed experts refused to provide an opinion (which was the chief reason for not a single hearing being held over the period of 27 October 2007 until 13 May 2009).

The confrontational climate warmed publicists up to a certain extent, the occasional article attacking Nieznalska in particular and contemporary art in general still published, yet the trickle of comments was slowly petering out. After reconsidering the case in the first instance, the court acquitted the artist on 4 June 2009 (on the twentieth anniversary of reintroducing democracy into Poland). Observers breathed a sigh of relief, and another in the wake of her final acquittal of 4 March 2010 at the district court (after the prosecution's appeal). When the verdict became final and valid after 8 years of trial, nobody could recall Gertruda Szumska or Robert Strąk any more, their party losing all leverage in the political arena, their speciality of art gallery "forays" nothing but a misty memory.

Nieznalska's case brought a climax to a dispute of several years in the field of art; and yet the Polish artistic world was not ready for such a trial at all, the overall situation an astonishment to its representatives who – as the artist herself – found themselves in over their heads. Initial LPR actions were seen as something of a laughable bumpkin act, their report to prosecution authorities as an attack with little chance of success; furthermore, criminal trial consequences were not quite grasped either. Reactions to charges were relatively calm, occasionally even seen as a lesson taught to an "unruly" artist. Only the first court hearing in September of 2002 stirred any real racket, albeit even then voices supporting Nieznalska were not always convincing, interest fading from hearing to hearing, as if nobody had ever considered the guilty verdict option. Meanwhile, victims and the prosecution kept overcoming one symbolic barrier after another. The conviction came as a true shock; only then did all the errors and negligence draw any real attention, insufficient support for the artist a key factor, as proven by journalism choices of the _GW_ , a left-wing liberal daily after all. The somewhat unfortunate piece published by the paper's Gdańsk branch had first kindled the scandal, subsequent publications reflective of a considerably ambivalent approach to the matter. It was yet again proven that Polish left-wing liberal elites and a major part of culture representatives had failed to appreciate avant-garde art, and the importance of freedom of expression into the bargain.

The feeble support for the artist was often as not shaky as to its merit. Key defence formats – canonic, cultural depreciation, and artistic immunity tactics – left a lot to be wished for. Paradoxically, an analysis of the latter line of defence prevalent in the media yielded a conclusion that the artist's opponents were actually the ones coming up with more exciting arguments, provoking deeper reflection on contemporary art, its social reception and freedom of expression. They were also the first to notice the key issue of Art 196 PCC and its use in Polish law. In light of its contents, vagueness of objective features, ways of juridical thinking, and the specificity of critical art – neither the original charges nor the subsequent first-instance conviction had been entirely devoid of certain legal grounds. And yet post-communists in power at the time failed to make any liberal changes to the letter of law, whereas case commentators did not consider Nieznalska's issue from any broader freedom of expression perspective or in relation to the more specific factors, i.e. criminal law provisions (using platitudes in their stead). While Tomasz Piątek did quote from Pier Paolo Passolini: "Everyone is entitled to full freedom of expression, even if not belonging to the untouchable artistic caste, while an artist should not be forced to choose between a masterpiece or jail", he failed to draw any real conclusions, proceeding to focus on the caste-based interests of artists. Passolini, tried for disseminating pornography in film and acquitted pursuant to Art 529 of the Italian Criminal Code which stipulates the countertype of artistic expression, conveyed in the extreme what Polish leftist and liberal intellectuals failed to utter: artistic immunity makes no sense, one needs to fight for a possibly broad freedom of any expression raising key social issues.

It is concurrently noteworthy that defence of art founded on constitutional protection of freedom of speech, with negligence of the social value or importance of an artwork, facilitates over-interpretation and demonising of pieces by transgressive artists. Consequently, social tolerance for artistic experimentation diminishes, while self-censorship at public and private galleries intensifies. Also in Nieznalska's case, the very concept of avant-garde art or the work itself played no positive role in media rhetoric – no attempts made to explain or appreciate their meaning, they merely became a negative point of reference. Without an intellectual support structure or help from diverse communities, art will remain an eternal victim of social or political crises.

Offensive on Other Frontlines

During a period of quantitative escalation, attempts to censor art were an expression of broader right-wing community offensive. Since 1997, AWS had been in governmental coalition with the UW; in 1998, AWS won the local elections, which - in the wake of the local government reform – translated into actual local influence, also in the field of culture. In the year 2000, political domination allowed right-wing officials to attempt introducing stricter pornography laws in the PCC. Andrzej Osęka wrote:

Deputies opposing the ban they believed to be ineffective alongside a series of draconian penalties, encountered a violent and exalted attack unleashed by the ban's supporters. Zdzisław Pupa (AWS): 'War for Poland is underway, of moral rather than military dimensions. Let the prime minister declare whether he is for or against pornography'.... When vice-minister of justice Janusz Niemcewicz remarked that 'a clause referring to bodily organs would ridicule the code in courtrooms', AWS deputies proceeded to collect signatures supporting a motion to dismiss him.

Interestingly, in contrast to earlier works on the new Constitution, right-wing parliamentarians did not mind references to communist law in this case. In a magnificent illustration of the force of the conservative shift, a senate expert pointed to the communist 1969 Criminal Code as a model piece of legislation. He further proceeded to praise 19th century criminal codes of the partitioning states as "protecting the public good, i.e. morality and modesty", while describing the PCC as "actually introducing sexual freedom". On 3 March 2000, the Parliament amended Art 202 §1 PCC to read as follows: "Whoever disseminates pornographic content, magazines, printed matter, or images in particular, shall be subject to a fine, restriction of freedom, or imprisonment for a period not exceeding 2 years". This was a revisiting of communist law, which had prohibited the dissemination of pornography in any form. On 27 March, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski (SLD), vetoed the proposal of the Sejm; authors of the project did not have a sufficient majority to reject Kwaśniewski's veto; consequently, Art 202 remained unchanged in its original freedom-conducive form (see p. 128).

Ever since the jubilee exhibition at the Zachęta gallery in 2000, centrałlevel politicians became decidedly more active with regard to the freedom of expression issue. They intervened at galleries (Zachęta, Wyspa, CSW ZU), and penned letters, petitions, and queries to the government. These measures of pressure were occasionally effective, as proven by the dismissal of Anda Rottenberg or degradation of Kazimierz Piotrowski. Legislative initiatives were attempted as well. On 3 March, on authorisation by several dozen right-wing members of parliament, Deputy Zbigniew Ziobro filed a draft amendment to the PCC, including a more severe content of Art 196.

Senator Jan Szafraniec proved to be particularly active in the parliamentarian community in terms of the freedom of expression issue, operating on a number of front lines simultaneously: the central and local, the parliamentary and public. After a term of office with the KRRiTV, he was re-elected to the Sejm in 2001, this time with the LPR. In response to artistic "antics", the senator dispatched demands and queries to state agency representatives. Some, as in case of a statement addressing Prof. Andrzej Zoll, Ombudsman, with regard to him taking a stand "in the face of increasingly frequent symbol desecration and growing number of acts of insult to religious feelings", were something akin to "summae of injustice" allegedly suffered by Catholics over a number of years at the hands of the art world. On 19 January 2002, inspired by developments at Gdańsk's Wyspa gallery, Szafraniec appointed a Polish Crusade to Defend the Nation's Spiritual Values in Białystok. This was a grass root informal initiative to defend values contained in the Decalogue and Gospel. According to the senator, these values had been "sullied and muddied" by "scandalous" contemporary art, and no debate concerning artistic freedom boundaries would be tolerable: "I represent Matthew's let your 'Yes', be 'Yes', and your 'No', 'No', for whatever is more than these is from the evil one. I have even had thoughts of introducing moral censorship..."

"Dickart" – or the Press on Contemporary Art

The years 1998-2002 were a period of the most acrimonious press polemics. The conservative Zycie was the unquestioned polemic ringleader, having published dozens of articles by assorted authors usually ruthless in attacking contemporary art (with similar rhetoric obviously applied in a variety of other periodicals). _GW_ (the chief left wing liberal medium) did not alter its publication strategy, frequently adjoining competent analyses with comments by accidental individuals making unsophisticated and unprofessional statements concerning art phenomena. The ambiguous position is best illustrated by a 2002 observation by Tadeusz Sobolewski, the periodical's film reviewer:

... we have recently published critics' opinions _Battle of Tannenberg_ in defence of a certain artist who showed a photograph of genitals on a cross and a shot of a man exercising in the gym, conjoining both – as those interpreting her claim – with an issue of domineering masculinity. The press defended the artist's freedom in a wish to prevent her being punished for insult to religious feelings. Meanwhile, many of us journalists were left with a sense of distaste – that in the name of the just cause of freedom and tolerance, we are all yielding to some form of blackmail and defending simple nonsense. In defending freedom, we have actually gagged ourselves in an incapacity to offer unrestricted assessment of an incriminated artwork. Exactly as in times of 'socialist realism' and its 'vicious ideological battle'" [notably, Sobolewski did not mention the artist he wrote of by name].

Yet after the year 2000, _GW_ reviewers – perhaps with the exception of Andrzej Osęka – became much more liberal and open to new trends in art and related critique (in general, Polish media began experiencing a gradual overlap of contemporary art attitudes with ideological division).

Contemporary art journalism produced a whole string of more or less sophisticated tactics and rhetorical devices, the occasional foray into Aesopian language included, to depreciate such art:

1)Fatalism with regard to the future:

–following a show of Katarzyna Kozyra's _Men's Bathhouse_ : "What next – a broadcast from the lavatory as a symbol of mankind's subordination to the digestive tract?" (R. Warta, M. Załuski, "Sztuka szczeka na człowieka," _Nowości_ , February 11, 2000).

2)Irony:

–commentary to a show of the _Men's Bathhouse_ at the Venice Biennale: "Just a couple of words of explanation for ignoramuses totally incapable of recognising eavesdropping on naked guys as... great art..." (BZ, "Czym Polska zachwyci uczestników weneckiego Biennale?," _Trybuna_ , May 26, 1999); a photograph of Katarzyna Kozyra's uncovered breasts from the film _Men's Bathhouse_ was placed beneath the title, ironic in itself.

3)Slurs:

–on _Men's Bathhouse_ : "... openly and with insolent self-confidence, I hereby notify the frequently stupefied contemporary art viewers that this is no more than rubbish and a common piece of sh... with no talent or panache" (S. Tabisz, "Snobistyczny amok," Życie, June 24, 1999).

4)Misinformation – distortions or understatements:

–"At the 'Irreligion' exhibition in Brussels, an artist put a moustache on the Mother of God" (A. Pawlak, "Masturbacja w Zachęcie," _Newsweek_ _Polska_ , December 29, 2002).

5)Linguistic nuances:

–the use of the "so-called" phrase and quotation marks to cast doubt on the meaning and sense of an employed term: "I would like... to make Readers aware of the 'pragmatic' absurdity of the so-called 'competition-based' procedure of selecting a Polish representative for the Venice Biennale" (S. Tabisz, "Snobistyczny amok," Życie, June 24, 1999).

–highlighting alleged respect/ particular distance by employing courtesy titles ("Mr.", "Ms."): "Next to Annie Sprinkle and Shigeko Kubota, Messrs. Wójcik, Nieznalska and Kozyra are demure ladies from the Marian Sodality" (A. Pawlak, "Masturbacja w Zachęcie," _Newsweek Polska_ , December 29, 2002).

6)Refusing to refer to certain works and authors as works of art and artists, respectively:

–"It has turned out yet again that 'scandalising art' is a great way to build a career. I am using quotation marks on purpose, as in reality this is no art and no scandal..." (R. Legutko, "Dama z fallusem," Życie, June 21, 1999).

7)Suggesting that certain works and their authors are of no consequence and will soon be forgotten, despite media acclamation:

–"Nothing will remain of the majority of works presented at the _Antibodies_ exhibition. They will go the way of the woolly mammoth" (R. Warta, "Tożsamośc golasa," _Nowości_ , August 4, 1995).

8)Avoiding names of authors described in published pieces.

9)The use of juxtapositions, including verbałvisual ones (text and photography), with intent to depreciate an artwork or artist and set the reader against the phenomenon described:

–the title _Masturbation at Zachęta Gallery_ , photograph of Dorota Nieznalska below with _Passion_ installation penis across from her face (S. Pawlak, "Masturbacja w Zachęcie," _Newsweek Polska_ , December 29, 2002). Shots showing Nieznalska's face close to photographs of the penis from the installation became a perverse attraction in multiple press materials.

–absurd juxtapositions with intent to manipulate the reader's emotions and beliefs, such as this commentary on _Men's Bathhouse_ : "If I tile my loo with mirrors I will stare into in circumstances even the royalty manage alone – will I then be experiencing art? Will I see the reflected image – as our silver-tongued critics are wont to say – 'of the full essence of humanity entangled in fin de siècle dilemmas?'" (Ż Górniak, "Sukces z gumy," _Trybuna Opolska_ , June 25, 1999).

10) Decontextualisation: applying criteria relevant to other art paradigms in avant-garde art appraisal:

–"I told her [Nieznalska] then that I believe her _Passion_ to be a work far less profound or subtle than Michelangelo's sculpture, which, after all, is also a blend of sacrum and sexual characteristics" (A. Osęka, "Policja moralności," _GW_ , November 18, 2002).

11) Implying artists to be driven by impure intentions, self-interest in particular, e.g. in a will to scandalise with intent to gain publicity and commercial success:

–"Nobody really cares about art, everyone is after fame and the resulting bucks" (S. Pawlak, "Masturbacja w Zachęcie," _Newsweek Polska_ , December 29, 2002).

12) Delegitimising art's discoursive background – artistic critique and art history – which consequently facilitates the process of depreciating the entire field of contemporary art:

–"... we hereby present excerpts from theoretical writings by 'new socialist realism ideologist' Piotr Piotrowski" (C. Michalski, "Gomułka nowoczesności," Życie, February 1, 2001).

13) Avoiding debate concerning the artefact itself and its potential meanings, shifting the burden onto the abstract – such as morality of art, defence of religious feelings, or utilitarian issues, e.g. funding art from the public purse.

Albeit such discoursive measures are no direct interference with freedom of artistic expression, they do serve to form public imagery of contemporary art and instigate a certain related climate; they prompt scandal and may exert pressure upon exhibition institutions and decision-makers, especially those with money, as well as upon artists themselves, including any choices they might make. Richard Burt openly writes of the critique's censorship role in the sense of it delegitimising certain discourses while legitimising others. Critique is productive in nature in the sense of establishing hierarchies, then striving to preserve them.

Pierre Bourdieu analysed the way mass media (TV in particular) operate, including their impact on other areas of culture. He believes the structural compulsion of the journalistic field to have been successful in capturing all fields of cultural production. At the same time journalism, in itself a field, has been strongly subordinated to market pressures, and thus applying pressures of power relations to other fields it is subject of. Consequently, what we are dealing with here is a network of heteronymies. The importance of the issue – as Bourdieu remarks – lies in the following: firstly, "even though they occupy an inferior, dominated position in the fields of cultural production, journalists exercise a very particular form of domination, since they control the means of public expression. They control, in effect, public existence, one's ability to be recognized as a _public figure_...", secondly – there exists a fundamental contradiction between conditions allowing the creation of avant-garde art (and other hermetic fields of art or science) and "conditions for transmission of its products". Media, television in particular, subordinate to economic pressures far greater than other fields of cultural production, have carried that contradiction to the extreme. The vast majority of society is not interested in matters of real importance, and furthermore, nobody is willing to listen to or watch elaborate and lengthy explications (not that they would usually be competent enough to do so). Which is why – driven by audience rating guidance – the media have a propensity to reach for sensational news or unusual information ( _scoops_ ), or to confer such form upon ordinary events. Unimportant news targeting everyone (form Latin _omnibus_ ) is broadcast as well. Analyses, on the other hand, are entrusted to a permanent team of experts ( _fast-thinkers_ ), skilled in following a certain structure to form the viewers' beliefs concerning a specific phenomenon, though not necessarily in a knowledgeable manner. Other journalists catch on, and by using the same logic – immanent to the journalistic field – reproduce the homogenic discourse in a "game of mirrors". This is also how the media work to develop mindsets, mythologies, and universal languages of art description; this is how they assess and flesh out rankings. Particularly critical assessments may impose evaluative principles on cultural products.

As Bourdieu observes, journalists tend to perceive mediocre works as avant-garde while discrediting avant-garde art in the name of common sense, a phenomenon most audiences – importantly – identify themselves with. That selfsame common sense of the majority is crucial to audience ratings, i.e. commercial performance. Through journalistic processing, common sense is then forged into a "semblance of intellectual authority", reinforcing the spontaneous inclination of certain categories of consumers to _allodoxia_ by the distance separating such consumers from the "»center of cultural values« and by their self-interested propensity to hide from themselves the limits of their own capacities of appropriation" (the logic of self-delusion). This may affect art itself as practically non-existent publicly without mainstream media: mass media have monopolised the producer-mass audience interface. Meanwhile, art cannot be subject to the pressures of majority voting; yielding to such majority, but also to e.g. managerisation (letting oneself be driven by profit, efficiency in management, attempts to fit within grant mechanisms, etc. results in the destruction of a certain barrier at the very outset – a barrier protecting the world of art from heteronymies. Bourdieu proposes two options of acting to secure the autonomy of the field: expanding the autonomy by withdrawing even deeper into the ivory tower (in conformity to the so-called Zhdanov effect), or quitting it with intent to impose the achievements and victories that withdrawing into the tower had made possible.

In Poland, one might identify a specific format wherein the reign of the journalistic field is revealed. The usual pattern would begin with a manipulated, "stimulacral" piece on art in local media (newspapers, mostly), upon which the news is appropriated by subsequent media, countrywide media included. Social pressure grows. Collective and occasionally aggressive exultation arises, usually mustered by political centres or in turn mobilising such centres – politicians will appear wherever the media operate (the influence of the journalistic field over the political). The logic of revenge kicks in, the exhibition or artwork duly removed; alternately, threats of cuts to gallery funding or personal and legal threats are made. Journalists, initially cast as abettors, as it were, take the stand as moralists once attempts at censorship become apparent, and proceed to elaborate on violation to the freedom of expression. Interestingly, I have never known any Polish journalist to approach artistic expression as an emanation of the selfsame freedom of expression that constitutes the foundation of his or her of work – it appears that in this community, freedom of expression is considered somewhat sacrosanct, with exclusive rights.

In neutralising discourses specific to the field of art (and not only art), the media cause a work of art to be cast into a rather unfriendly environment of shallow and express news. The inequality of parties, dissimilarity of language and of logic all result in artefact re-description (semantic supplement cladding): the artefact begins featuring affixed information, imagery, and mental stereotypes, all hugely difficult to shed. Yet not only artworks fall victim to such developments: the community is an injured party as well. Journalists produce the phantasm of an artist – as such in general and individual authors in particular – the bourgeois, Catholic, Polish society ought to be protected from.

The Field of Art – the Battlefield

While critics of the Polish art scene of the 1990s were the most brutal and harmful, they were by far not the only ones. Regardless of the culture clash, assorted factions of the art community cast accusations of being marginalised – if not outright censored – by the curatorship and gallery establishment. Such conflicts are nothing peculiar, constituting an immanent feature of each social field operating in Bourdieu's theory as a "specific system of objective relations functioning as alliances and/or conflicts, competition and/or co-operation between socially defined positions, fundamentally independent of the physical existence of agents occupying them". Apart from the years-long and traditional conflict regarding BWA's with local artist communities (chiefly members of the anachronistic ZPAP), voices alleging the discrimination of neo-avant-garde artists of the 1960s and 1970s and of certain representatives of the third art circulation of the 1980s were heard. According to Jerzy Truszkowski (himself an artist hailing from the third art circulation) who petitioned for certain names to be re-introduced to art audiences, the CSW ZU:

engages in preventive censorship by not allowing works by Andrzej Partum, Przemysław Kwiek or Zbyszek Trzeciakowski to enter the realm of public awareness.... Przemysław Kwiek, a key precursor of contemporary artwork comprehension, has not had any major retrospect exhibition in any institution appointed to safeguard the oeuvre of Polish contemporary art. His 2004 exhibitions at the Kronika gallery in Bytom, Bielska Gallery in Bielsko-Biała and Museum of the Lubuski Region in Zielona Góra are not tantamount to a conclusion that he does not continue to be subject to unwritten preventive censorship. Polish artistic life remains under centralised dictatorship, only Warsaw officials holding the money and the people deciding as to an artist's existence in public awareness through exhibitions, purchases for collection purposes, articles in weekly and daily periodicals, and TV programmes.

According to Truszkowski, the embargo extended to exhibiting as well as purchasing artworks.

As reported by the online _Raster_ magazine, Truszkowski – with his incessant critique of CSW ZU – was to suffer "vengeance" at the hands of director Krukowski, including removal of his artworks from the Centre's collection. Years later, Zbigniew Libera also protested against CSW's contemporaneous policies. In 2010, the artist officially accused the Centre of his monographic exhibition planned for 2001 being "destroyed" by director Krukowski "as a result of censorship stratagems around his art and the institution's fear of the seditious nature of said art", which resulted in any major shows of the artist's work having been blocked for over ten years. CSW representatives were adamant in denying such version of events. They claimed that Libera attempted to build up a "heroic legend" for himself by making comments injurious to their institution, whereas in truth he himself had been to blame: despite multiple requests, he had never submitted any detailed project concept or technical data permitting his show to be held.

Truszkowski's accusations as to the marginalisation of certain groups of artists also concerned books and authors of importance to Polish history of art: Izabela Kowalczyk – _Niebezpieczne związki sztuki z ciałem_ [ _Dangerous Liaisons between Art and the Body_ (2002)], Wojciech Włodarczyk – _Sztuka polska 1918–2000_ [ _Polish Art 1918-2000_ (2000)], and Piotr Piotrowski – _Znaczenia modernizmu_ [ _Meanings of Modernism_ (1999)].

One would be hard-pressed to seriously assume that artists listed by Truszkowski were informally and universally blacklisted by exhibiting institutions. While in some cases, the negligence of these artists by galleries could have arisen from personal arrangements, effects of the system's objective operability or even of knowledge deficiencies were rather to blame: Truszkowski was correct in pointing to the contemporaneous shortcomings in research concerning Polish art. And yet connecting the lack of such research with some kind of top-down conspiracy is illegitimate: it had rather been caused by inherent failure of academic and institutionałcum-exhibition structures responsible for filling white spaces in the history of Polish art. The specificity of these artists' oeuvre might have been another factor contributing to something akin to their exclusion: strongly rooted in socialist Poland's context, it referenced particular conditions distinct from those of the Third Polish Republic. Such works – polluted by memories of the recently rejected totalitarian system – had to yield, if for a time only, to a wish to expose new paradigms of expression reflecting a new political and social reality. One might also shine a light on the media employed by "excluded" artists – performance, mostly – which (in its pure form at least) remained in the background in the 1990s, not only in artistic life (performance art is fundamentally recognised as niche in nature), but also in contemporaneous avant-garde explorations, and even in research. Concurrently, only international academic reflection of the late 1990s yielded a critical discourse on performance art, wherein documentation is rehabilitated as a fully-fledged medium mediating performative activities and the necessary condition of cultural status being conferred upon the same. In other words, Polish exhibition institutions of the time were not ready to accept the challenge of the archival re-construction of performance art, of its documentary re-presentation. At the given historical moment, all these factors, contributing to structural and objective properties of the field of art and often elusive, could well have caused the oeuvre of certain artists not to seem attractive to exhibition institutions, audiences, or even scholars.

Actually, Truszkowski – to a certain degree by chance – highlighted the rarely raised issue of objective power relations in the world of art, which tend to translate into personal choices of artists, curators, and viewers. According to head of the BWA in Bielsko-Biała Agata Smalcerz:

A gallery's interest comprises its strong position in the world of art, and local decision-makers respecting that position. This in turn relates closely to i.a. the gallery's ranking in opinion-forming communities, whereas rankings tie in with famous names appearing at the gallery, of artists and curators alike. Poland has a set of proven names of working for well-known galleries and curating vital exhibitions. Often as not, the artist matters more than the work shown or its artistic value.... Recurrent themes and tired arrangements are replicated over and over, an impressive set of names is the main thing.

In its aspect concerning the consecrating force of certain institutions (Warsaw institutions obviously recognised as such in Poland), this diagnosis might be superimposed over the one by Truszkowski, while also indicative of the manner of creating a homogeneity of demand and supply in the field – the sphere of objective and subjective exclusions. It suggests that centres of lesser symbolic potential have a tendency to think in categories formed at larger locations, central ones in particular, subject to certain international hierarchisation themselves. Paraphrasing Bourdieu, it might well be said that this is a kind of "game of gallery mirrors": certain things are "pushed on viewers because they are pushed on producers, and they are pushed on producers by competition with other producers". Such a model is subsequently used as a foundation to assess the given centre and individual galleries, conferring credibility upon the latter before public and private money-holders. Furthermore, the mechanisms in question have considerable influence on artists, especially those trying to make a name for themselves: failing to adapt to tendencies currently promoted by the "headquarters" carries a risk of being excluded from the main exhibition trend, which has obvious economic consequences. As duly noted by a pedagogue of many years Prof. Grzegorz Kowalski, when it comes to students, these mechanisms are much more important in contemporary Poland than they were in the late 1980s or 1990s. Any given institution loses its dominant position once its capacity to transform surrounding space diminishes, and once it is no longer a mover and shaker in terms of laying out the related rules of the game – which is exactly what happened after 1989 to ZPAP and all the endeavours it sponsored. In that sense – as Truszkowski suggests – if the head of the Warsaw-based CSW ZU (an unquestionably centrally-located representative of the Polish art field until the early 21st century) had been reluctant to show certain artists – whatever the reason, personal or merit-based – such circumstances would have become an indirect obstacle to exhibitions at other lesser centres, or such shows would have become less important, in turn hindering and delaying the consecration of individual artists.

Employing certain similarities between the field of art and the journalistic field as described by Bourdieu it might well be declared that curators (and critics, to a lesser extent) resemble anchorpersons, whereas artists are similar to reporters and field journalists: they collect story material. Notably, the process of creating, selecting, presenting and describing said material is only free in theory; in reality, curators and artists alike create the field inasmuch as being its pre-censored product. Exhibitions comprise works selected for their merit of being seen as dominant in the fields of power, fashion, and ideology – which is also what authors adjust to. The entire picture also carries positive (peer recognition, approving reviews, symbolic and economic position improvement) as well as negative sanctions (peer criticism or indifference, loss of symbolic potential, media oblivion, deteriorating commercial position). The field's homogeneity is further strengthened by a unity of education represented by persons with the strongest position in the field of art, and the related fellowship of perception and appraisal. While journalism chiefly caters to petty bourgeoisie taste (audience ratings), the field of art appreciates opposition to values represented by said class or to bourgeois in general, who are also a set of potential art buyers and indirect art field funders thanks to their taxes. On the one hand, such circumstances are fertile ground for conflict and scandal – an occasionally favourable development for cultural producers (improved recognisability, peer acclamation, improved market value of an artwork) – yet on the other, they are conducive to the greatly perilous heteronomy of the political field, or to negative reactions on behalf of private sponsors.

In order for institutions of culture to receive operational funding without any major problems, they must learn to fit within a certain middling image, at best dynamic, yet not exceedingly controversial. This facilitates the process of acquiring funds from political headquarters (back to the necessity of accounting for opinions of authorities dependent on the "average voter and taxpayer") and external sources, corporate sponsors in particular (companies are reluctant to support controversial exhibitions or institutions with a thorny image). Furthermore, it is considerably easier to raise money for media blockbusters offering image advantages to power centres and sponsors than for ambitious niche productions – which yields an effect of "festivalising" culture, and introducing quasi-corporate operating rules. Securing grant money is an option as well, which in turn carries the need of adjusting projects to grant requirements. Nonetheless, there is always the threat of efficient fundraising becoming a pretext for reducing guaranteed public money: why finance an institution nicely managing on its own? Dependence on such mechanisms turns cultural institution staff into bureaucrats and technocrats – municipal or state officials – or into PR men and managers relying on sponsors. Their intrinsic role of intellectuals is visibly shrinking; their independent, critical, and creative thinking; their self-sufficiency and capacity for resistance should be the main guarantee of the field's autonomy. The entire situation blatantly affects artistic production: in order to develop and retain the market value of their works and royalties, artists have to exhibit – and thus fit within the averaged-out needs of institutions of culture, dependent on both public and private funders.

The domination of curators – themselves subject to pressures of the aforementioned power relations – a phenomenon increasingly visible in Poland since the early 1990s, was criticised by Zbigniew Warpechowski, neo-avant-garde and (I know – it sounds as an oxymoron) conservative artist of the 1970s. He sees todays curators as

THE GREATEST THREAT TO ART [capital letters follow the original text], to the independence of artists, to creative spirit, to properly comprehended creative freedom.... Acting as 'controllers and carers', their purpose is to please the authorities, the sponsor, to achieve propaganda success, and to remain in accord with the 'current... dominant ideology', that is political correctness in general, and assorted 'collective chauvinisms' in the specific. Curators are wholly dependent on political authorities and opinion-forming centres, on domestic and international ideological trends and on social requirements, 'while waving their banners of freedom wherever and whenever they can,... they are on the lookout for whoever and whatever that freedom may be categorically refused to... .

According to Warpechowski,

the strategic advantage of leftists in the media, in culture, not only mass culture, under leadership of loud intellectuals with an unconcealed ambition to exclude everyone else, all this has caused artists to focus on nibbling at the Church and Catholic religion", and also on other correctness slogans: feminism, tolerance (for self), sexual minorities, gender, "anti-Semitism", through to creative freedom and artistic ethics. "All bestsellers". Socialist realism has been replaced with soft socialist realism, "primitive repression with political correctness". Many artists have joined the trend out of cold calculation, in the knowledge that this is a dominating trend, whereas "any public involvement of artists is self-righteousness in pure hypocrisy, their wish being to form part of the elite, after all". Left-wing party machine thinking "has forced the majority of artistic life participants down into a stigmatised opposition of no consequence,... unable to secure a media existence."

These are typical accusations aimed at artistic institutions, voiced in Poland by artists identifying themselves with conservative ideology. Importantly, however, Warpechowski has a sense of solitude and uncertainty as an artist in his own community:

I find the issue problematic for a specific reason: while enthusiasts of the leftist option can enjoy a sense of being medially safeguarded by a string of newspapers and magazines, artists cherishing their creative and political independence cannot count on any critical professional protection. The right-wing side of the Polish political arena offers no active, dynamic, or creative contribution to our cultural life..., while displaying a conservative or blatantly negative attitude to contemporaneity. No wonder young artists seek left-wing tutelage or condemn themselves to media oblivion. I find ostentatious displays of ignorance, contempt or hostility towards 20th-century art apparent in patriotically inclined printed matter particularly embarrassing, as they represent the side I identify myself with... . Authors of such commentaries, far from being experts in the field of art, usually reference several, no more than around a dozen examples of facts hardly recognisable as artistic, visible only due to their obscene or blasphemous nature... .

Indeed, the right wing (not in the sense of individuals identifying themselves with that particular outlook, but rather of an abstract idea or political programme) tend not to be interested in contemporary art. There is no exhibitions revealing right-wing or conservative nature of works presented, and of contemporary art galleries capable of offering an exhibition programme targeting the dissemination of patriotism or of Christian values. There is also a deficit of critique with capacity for knowledgeable and nuanced polemics with the left-wing option, or focus on promoting conservative beliefs in contemporary art especially this employing new media and unbound with the modernist imperative of form. Warpechowski further emphasises that Catholic Church representatives remain disinterested in contemporary art. Such general shortage of a positive artistic programme comes as a surprise, given the right-wing option's oversensitivity to selected aspects of visual culture, and the traditional connections between religion and art.

One might well agree with Warpechowski that some – especially leading – institutions are dominated by left-wing discourse and that economic conditions have influence over artistic choices, not to mention the fact that potential symptoms of creation inconvenient to the art establishment may be or actually are eliminated from exhibitions. Notably, however, should right-wing communities be truly interested in taking action, they could unquestionably create an art circulation system alternative to the dominant one, and gather – then, potentially educate – authors and audiences alike. It seems that such developments could sooner or later bring about public institution programme changes more to Warpechowski's wishes.

Recapitulation Time

At the time of the Zachęta conflict (2000/2001), the Życie daily published suggestions of artists having violated a truce, caused a breakdown of the consensus developed in the mid-nineties, and instigated a cold war breakout between liberals (the so-called progressive camp) and Catholic conservatists. In all actuality, this was an unintended compliment for involved artists – their activity could have finally prompted real social outcome. Having seized the cold war trope, in March 2001 Zbigniew Libera organised an exhibition titled _Zimna wojna sztuki ze społeczeństwem_ [ _Cold War of Art with Society_ ] at the CSW łażnia. Its premise involved manifestation by critical artists (including Jacek Markiewicz, Robert Rumas, Artur Żmijewski and Alicja Żebrowska) whose works having been attacked by media, if not outright censored. The exhibition was accompanied by a specific text

Libera had compiled with the use of around twenty (mostly right-wing) press articles, featuring key accusations targeting critical artists: avant-garde oeuvre strands rooted in Enlightenment ideology have been dissociated from the concept of Beauty and directed at social change by deconstructing traditional values, decency, and collective taboos. And yet most artists have nothing to say, which is why they engage in a continuous quest for conflict – they stimulate scandal and gain publicity, while the artwork's market value increases. Another scandal is that their works are shown in state-owned galleries on the tax dime as art, while not being art at all.

Libera's textual patchwork was one of the many summaries in the art world, the mood having been set by the turn of the millenniums. Three exhibitions are particularly noteworthy: _Scena 2000. Ogólnopolska wystawa sztuki_ [ _Scene 2000. The All-Polish Art Exhibition_ ] at CSW ZU (December 2000 – January 2001, curators: Ewa Gorządek, Stach Szabłowski); _Na wolności/w końcu. Sztuka Polska po 1989 roku_ [ _Free/At Last. Post-1989 Polish Art_ ] at Królikarnia, Warsaw, and the National Museum, Szczecin (April – June 2001, curators: Dorota Monkiewicz, Dirk Tauber); _Niebezpiczne związki sztuki z ciałem_ [ _Dangerous Liaisons between Art and the Body_ ] at Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań (19 April – 12 May 2002, curator: Izabela Kowalczyk).

The _Free/At Last_ exhibition comprised the oeuvre of over ten artists (critical art representatives, mostly) recognised as evocative for post-1989 Polish art. The exhibition was held under the auspices of the minister for science, research and art of Baden-Württemberg Klaus von Troth, and Polish Minister of Culture Kazimierz Ujazdowski. Paradoxically, the catalogue foreword penned by the latter could also be seen as a summary of sorts – it contained a veiled critique of exhibited artists in referencing arguments customarily used by conservative communities (Ujazdowski happens to be a representative of): "Some artists are aided by values and symbols successfully defended in difficult times. Others are seized with passion for destroying previous hierarchies. Still others, possibly driven by too great a faith in the inexhaustible potential of provocation, have become hostages to fashion and time. This exhibition highlights all these attitudes, allowing viewers to appraise art by themselves". The show, originally presented at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden (November 2000), was designed for the purposes of a German audience – yet Polish reviewers emphasised that this in itself is insufficient as justification for the one-sided and customary name and work selection. Furthermore, critics were more and more frequently affected by a sense of surfeit and weariness: "Even the media, until recently enthusiastically supporting taboo breaking, appear to be worn out by the mediocrity of scandalous artist hopefuls".

Izabela Kolwalczyk's exhibition _Dangerous Liaisons between Art and the Body_ held at Poznań's Arsenał was received with far greater enthusiasm, potentially arising from the fact that controversial artworks were shown at a local rather than central location, but also from a more reflective approach to critical art by a curator who was also a recognised expert of the genre. Typically, _GW_ assumed an ambivalent position with regard to the exhibition without abandoning a provocative pitch in its reviews. Arsenał director Wojciech Makowiecki's response came as no surprise: "»Gazeta Wyborcza's« policy is rather peculiar: on the one hand, it publishes reliable press information on upcoming cultural events in town..., and comments on them patronisingly on the other". Notably, this was immediately after Nieznalska had been indicted (12 March) – consequently, the name of the exhibition itself or _GW_ 's review title ( _Ryzykowne więzi_ – _Risky Connections_ ) had not been exaggerated at all; and politicians showed interest in the display indeed. LPR councillors commented on the exhibition for the ultra-Catholic _Nasz Dziennik_ daily, the article's author closing his deliberations with an ominous sentence: "Right-wing councillors are in no doubt that shutting »Arsenał« down and re-allocating the gallery's funding for purposes of the Museum of the June 1956 Events in Poznań [workers' 1956 anti-government protests in Poznań, violently suppressed by Communists – J.D.], for example, would be the most rational solution of all".

Regardless of the reviewers' personal attitude to critical art, the critical art fatigue effect became obvious yet again, related comments overtly hinting at "monoculture" (major collective exhibitions of contemporaneous art were limited to 20 or 30 names at the most, those linked to the critical trend most pronounced in the media). Commentators underscored that critical artists and their works have misplaced their power to provoke or ask questions, a phenomenon sensed by exhibition curators as well: Monkiewicz accentuated that her exhibition was the final opportunity to view the works before they become "museified", Kowalczyk musing on the general weariness accompanying critical art exhibitions. Such tedium effect amongst audiences and critics alike was understandable in that – if Wojciech Makowiecki is to be trusted – in the second half of the 1990s, approximately 10% of all exhibitions showed critical art, around 70% of all art show-related media publications focusing thereon as well.

And yet circumstances began changing, as duly proven by such young art exhibitions as the afore-mentioned Scene 2000. Commentators believed that the new generation of artists (born in socialist Poland, but brought up in the cheesy days of democracy and capitalism in their toddler stage) rejected the brutal directness of means of expression and aggressive social reality-related commentaries typical for the 1990s: their world outlook reflection took on a gentler and more ironic dimension, touching upon banal daily life trifles (visual culture in particular), often as not shown – a well-nigh unthinkable notion several years before – with paint on canvas. The visible "painting shift" amongst young Polish artists was an unquestionable match for contemporaneous international tendencies.

Emerging trends swiftly dubbed "pop-banalism" were based upon two founding myths: Julita Wójcik's _Obieranie ziemniaków_ [ _Peeling Potatoes_ ] action (12 February 2001, Zachęta), and 1996-2001 activities of the Cracow-based group ładnie (Rafał Bujnowski, Marek Firek, Marcin Maciejowski, Wilhelm Sasnal, Józef "Kurosawa" Tomczyk). Consequently, new art was basically disinterested in transgression, and did not test social tolerance boundaries in the vein of critical artists – yet the "critical art to banalism transition" should be taken with a grain of salt, as should any watershed or taxonomy in art history. Never has critical art – or indeed pop-banalism – been exhaustive to Polish artists' proposal; neither have we experienced a turning point clearly separating one trend from the other: certain critical elements may be successfully identified in Wójcik's activities or in paintings by the group ładnie; and involved art classics did not withdraw from involvement, and young artists (e.g. Dorota Nieznalska) joining them.

As it turned out, a blend of the most banal daily life components with high art was sufficient to provoke social resistance. Wójcik's performance – the artist peeling potatoes while wearing an apron – prompted a wave of verbal mockery as well as aggression. The confrontation of a simple, unpretentious activity engaged in at every home (usually by women) with para-temple interiors of a national gallery proved unpalatable to multiple journalists and audiences, _stimulacral_ media pressure affecting the artist herself: Wójcik recalls that in the wake of the performance, her image turned negative; she even felt castigated in some situations. Ruthless criticism of Wójcik coincided with the censorship of Marek Firek's works forming part of a ładnie group exhibition at the Sektor I gallery, Katowice. Former minister of culture Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa (director of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra at the time) was outraged by a "collage comprising photographs of sexual acts from Firek's private collection and a series of images based on instructions of tampon use". Wnuk-Nazarowa notified municipal officials of the "issue", and the director of the Municipal Authority's Department of Culture asked the Górnośląskie Cultural Centre director to "deal with the matter on the q.t." "... The exhibition was closed for a short time, a car dispatched to Cracow to collect further works by Marek Firek. Shortly thereafter, they replaced the ones on display which had infuriated the ex-minister and city officials". Wilhelm Sasnal, on the other hand, the most well-known of all ładnie group members, while having never attempted to conceal his political involvement, differed from critical artists in exploring the traditional "soft" media of painting or drawing, which usually serves to assuage an artwork's confrontational nature. And yet when in the autumn of 2001 he created a mural paraphrasing Art Spiegelman's famous graphic novel _Maus_ on the wall of the BWA in Bielsko-Biała as part of the _Zawody Malarskie_ [ _Painter [dis]Appointments_ ] exhibition, the work survived for a few months only. Sasnal paraphrased page 157 of the novel (showing Władek Spiegelman and his wife – denounced to the Gestapo by blackmailers – walking across Bielsko-Biała, the location of their family textile business), erasing figures and leaving speech balloons only. Sasnal had originally planned to place the mural on the wall of the Museum of Technology and Textile Industry – former factory premises – but was refused. This is why he painted his work on the back wall of the BWA, erected in 1960 at the site of a synagogue destroyed by Germans during the war. While the mural was to remain on display until the exhibition closed (i.e. until year-end 2001), the gallery's management decided to make it permanent. A neo-fascist symbol someone marked the mural up with attracted the attention of local councillors, and the work was ultimately removed in May 2002 upon written instruction by the town's mayor.

Julita Wójcik, _Peeling Potatoes_ [ _Obieranie ziemniaków_ ], 2001, courtesy of Zachęta — National Art Gallery

Changes to artistic paradigms concurred with vital institutional conversions. The marginalisation of curators promoting critical art (Rottenberg, Szyłak, Klaman, Kazimierz Piotrowski), which indubitably weakened the related trend, was but one element of the phenomenon. Another involved the arrival of new dynamic private institutions to the art scene – the Foksal Gallery Foundation or Raster, for instance – which proceeded to develop a counterbalance for such critical art bastions as the CSWs in Warsaw and Gdańsk, and (to a lesser extent) Zachęta Gallery, and introduce Polish art to international salons via paths other than state-funded. In November 2002, co-founder of the Foksal Gallery Foundation Adam Szymczyk came out victorious in competing for the position of director of the Kunsthalle in Basel, a leading European gallery.

While private galleries were not exposed to the budgetary, personal, or programme pressure by public officials that public institutions had to put up with, they were affected by the free market's heteronomy. Its rules are as simple as they are pitiless: one has to sell to survive; one has to find buyers to sell. And it goes without saying that it is much easier to find buyers for Sasnal's paintings (his canvases not having struck the skyrocketing price range yet) than for works by Alicja Żebrowska or Dorota Nieznalska. The focal point went beyond the pleasure derived from form or an artefact's technical capacity for displaying it "over the living room mantelpiece" (how does one hang an installation or video, both central to the art of the 1990s, on a wall?), and centred on the message as well. There is no doubt that few amateurs of the trangressive and iconoclastic can be found in the conservative Polish society.

Two other heteronomies threatening the field of art – the journalistic and the political – became visible during the period. _Stimulacrally_ , the media kindled and upheld the majority of artistic scandals by distorting information concerning works, artists and curators, and setting public opinion against them. Politicians (of the local level in particular) were forced to react to such dictum in line with the logic of their field: driven by a need to protect their actual and potential constituents against the debauched world of art, they became increasingly aggressive in interfering with the programming and staffing of public galleries. The tendency, on the rise since the 1998 local government reform, would become even more forceful in later years (see below). Katarzyna Kozyra's oeuvre set off the most heated media emotions; in 2002, Dorota Nieznalska became the "first scandalmonger of the Third Polish Republic"; notably, however, Julita Wójcik was crowned the _interrex_ in 2001 by peeling potatoes at Zachęta. In actuality, I should have written that she was crowned the _interregina_ – art created by men, though recognised as controversial as well, did not incite the kind of hatred directed at women. Could it be that the swathe of aesthetic dispute also veiled a fear of violation to traditional gender roles and identities? The symbolic burden carried by women seems greater; the archetype of the mother (the one who gives life), for example, could have intensified the fierceness of censorship reactions to works wherein female artists raised the subject of death (Kozyra). Pressure became equally ferocious once they breached the boundaries of biological gender in their artwork by employing images of the penis (Kozyra, Kulik, Nieznalska). Julita Wójcik wearing an apron and peeling potatoes, on the other hand, apparently remained in accord with gender stereotypes; yet many believed Zachęta's shrine-like interiors to be an inappropriate setting for this kind of performances.

The _Sturm und Drang_ period in Polish art was slowly coming to an end – lamentably, the Polish art world failed to draw conclusions, remaining an easy target for politicians. Its representatives' activities showed a deficit in developing the tiniest seeds of any community system. Gestures of solidarity with persecuted galleries or artists were few and far apart (at least until Nieznalska's indictment), uncoordinated, and occasionally problematic, as in the case of the tactical yet naïve attempt to enforce a reactive interpretation of Cattelan's sculpture. The Gdańsk łażnia's case was equally symptomatic: in the wake of Aneta Szyłak's dismissal by local politicians, the art community proceeded to hold a competition to identify her successor, thus conferring credibility on the political chutzpah. Circumstances were triply ambiguous: firstly, the competition's formula was closed, allowing its proceedings to be moulded at will; secondly, even visual artists' and sculptors' trade unions rather conservative and adverse to łażnia, as well as the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk refrained from appointing representatives to the competition's jury in a wish to avoid accusations of partiality; thirdly, the jury's membership featured no łażnia community representatives, municipal officials and the City Council's department of culture employees having been joined by a strong Warsaw faction: Anda Rottenberg, Wojciech Krukowski, and Monika Małkowska.

Such fragmentation and community egoism of sorts both served to undermine the myth of social sensitivity or the left-wing nature of the art world. Apparently, no shared ideals (left-wing postulates, freedom of expression, of creation, of enjoying the products of culture) managed to forge stronger bonds amongst artists, curators, critics, or academics, which would have otherwise allowed them effective defiance of political attacks. Given Polish specificity, any defence of particular beliefs, behaviours, or images required visible ideological kinship, however loosely formed. Even more so, an image, a vision could have become the factor allowing the community to form, survive, and counter assaults – whereas persons "living off images", or "controlling images" frequently preferred to conceal rather than use them as shared points of reference. Concurrently, a clandestine battle for position and symbolic domination prevailed, even in "sub-fields" of the field of art. Pierre Bourdieu and Hans Haacke emphasised that despite strong particular interests typical for the artistic world, American creative communities managed to self-mobilise for purposes of defending their own during the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Comparable circumstances in Poland blatantly did not suffice to develop a joint position. The submissiveness of curators and directors, mutual animosities, art critics' and historians' scheming, and lack of co-operation within the community and with selected political, legal, or academic circles, all relegated the art world to the rank of a whipping boy, and would produce many more problems in the future.

**3.5. Times of Quantitative Escalation (2003–2007)**

"Operation Arsenał"

The year 2002 brought no breakthrough to freedom of expression, despite a considerable increase in the number of censorship interventions (on religious and moral grounds in particular). While LPR members continued to follow their gallery-centred censoring mission of involvement, art-related disputes were losing their nationwide nature. In other words: the issues, attitudes and discussions of previous years persisted – but the process itself changed. Ostensibly, after the millennium scandals and Nieznalska's conviction in July 2003, antagonists of involved art uttered their final word on the matter (on a never previously recorded scale of contemporaneous media reactions). Though polemic was abundant, it became local, flaring between parties directly concerned. In the wake of the _Sturm und Drang_ period, the society and media alike seemed to have grown tired of the topic of transgression and censorship in art. Simultaneously, a number of new hot spots began flickering, e.g. crusades against the homosexual community increasingly flagrant in manifesting their presence, history-oriented politics, or the return of censorship of any critique targeting those in government.

While Nieznalska's case came to a climax in 2003 (in its non-final conviction), it ought to be linked to a string of artistic scandals of the previous period. Białystok events were much more typical for the quantitative escalation era. The originally "reticent" censorship interventions at the Arsenał Municipal Gallery (see p.223 and p.262) morphed into an open war waged by local right-wing politicians on contemporary art. Local government elections in the autumn of 2002 brought a breakthrough: right-wing parties gained hegemony in the City Council.

On 17 February 2003, the City Council's culture committee convened a special session at the Arsenał, an exhibition of works by Katarzyna Korzeniecka (photograph prints of naked women and men on cloth) having become the direct cue for the councillors' attention. LPR councillors, some viewing a contemporary art exhibition for the first time, reacted to Korzeniecka's works with outrage. Councillor and catechist Katarzyna Dec, 28, filed a motion supported by the majority of committee members, to reduce the gallery's budget by a massive 20%. Such cut would have left Arsenał with funds to cover premises- and payroll-related expenses only. LPR councillor Beata Antypiuk used arguments typical for such circumstances: "... Undressing young people is unacceptable – it borders on pornography. My constituents did not elect me so that I could now allow PLN 1 million [ca. USD 250,000, the gallery's approximate budget at the time – J.D.] to be spent on demoralisation. [...] An art gallery should show beauty, not demoralisation. But this gallery promotes rusty sheet metal, lino, piles of sand." Antypiuk further attempted to take advantage of the fact that in 2002, grant funds had comprised 30% of the gallery's budget: "Since they managed to raise funds, they'll manage in the future as well", "ideally, they should be privatised". At the end of the day, the City Council rejected the culture committee's motion.

LPR's "Operation Arsenał" hit its highest point with a conflict involving Piotr Kurka's installation _Dostałem pieska_ [ _I Got a Doggy]_ shown as part of the _Pies w sztuce polskiej_ [ _Dog in Polish Art_ ] exhibition. Opening on 7 November 2003, the show was to continue for one month. The disputed work was a metal box resembling a doghouse or cottage, its interior viewable from both sides through the windows of a magnifying glass, a toy dog on one side, figures of priests cut out of an old snapshot on the other. The piece prompted councillor Antypiuk's objections: "The installation insults my religious feelings. At the far end of this doghouse, where we can expect to see a dog's tail, we see miniature mobile figures of Catholic priests. Had the author placed images of his friends there, for example, I wouldn't have had anything against this. But it is unacceptable to place priests representing the Catholic Church in such context". The councillor wrote a letter to Białystok's right-wing president Ryszard Tur, demanding that action be taken on the matter. On 19 November, the president visited the exhibition and suggested that the work be removed from display, which Arsenał's director Monika Szewczyk duly did (both Antypiuk and Tur later claimed that she had acted upon her autonomous decision). On 21 November, Kurka withdrew all his other Arsenał exhibits in protest, remaining artists following suit (painter Marek Sobczyk was not among them – fearing critique, Szewczyk had pulled his painting _Ja – Ksiądz z Kretynem_ [ _I – the Priest with a Cretin_ ] from the exhibition before it opened). The exhibition finally closed on 25 November. One day earlier, left-wing councillors demanded in a special statement that the City Council file an objection with regard to Antypiuk's recurring action.

(a, b) Piotr Kurka, _I Got a Doggy_ [ _Dosta´lem pieska_ ], 2003, instalation, phot. by Maciej Zaniewski

Her back against the wall, the gallery's director struggled to weave between politicians and artists. When Marcin Maciejowski wanted to hang a portrait of Beata Antypiuk next to Robert Strąk and Witold Tomczak's portraits at his Dziupla/ Schlupfloch/ Stash exhibition (May 2004), Szewczyk asked him to remove the image of the councillor. According to Szewczyk, "The gallery focuses on art, and we do not want it to feature an image drawing attention away from the exhibition and towards other matters, such as politics. We should talk about whether the exhibition is good or less so, rather than focus on the sense of placing the image of a public figure in the gallery". The argument was far from convincing. The director attempted to cover her concern regarding the councillor's reaction by referring to the autonomy of art in the case of an artist who had been consistent in displaying involved attitudes in his work. At the end of the day, Maciejowski showed a portrait of Witold Tomczak only.

LPR deputy Andrzej Fedorowicz's iconoclastic gesture crowned the Arsenał-related fracas of over three years. On 2 September 2004, the deputy – assisted by senator Jan Szafraniec, chairman of the Białystok City Council Edward łuczycki, and the crew of the Polish TV local branch – entered an exhibition of works by young Poznań artists titled www.kałucki.free.art.pl, and used a ballpoint pen to scrawl on a section of installation wrrr.pl (2004) by Radek Szlaga, student of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. The work defaced by the deputy referenced the Dog in Polish Art show which had closed one year before: a dog cage made of wooden boards nailed together, placed in a room with walls hung with quasi-pornographic images, some parts as if painted over by censors; the cage featured a plaque reading:

SHEPHERD
SUPERVISION
[CENSORUS
ALL-POLUS]
– beast
– no stroking

(a, b) Radek Szlaga, _wrrr.pl_ (detail), 2004, acrilic on canvas, 260×80 cm, courtesy of Radek Szlaga

The deputy, particularly outraged by the term "All-Polus", crossed the word out with his ballpoint pen. Fedorowicz believes that in this context, the intent of the term was to insult the idea of all-Polishness rather than All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska), LPR's support youth organisation. Concurrently, LPR activists appealed to president Ryszard Tur for a reaction to impieties offered for public view by the gallery.

Szlaga notified authorities that an offence had been committed. In justifying his deed, Fedorowicz referenced countertypes of legitimate self-defence and the state of necessity. In May 2005, the Białystok prosecution authority applied for immunity to be waived for Fedorowicz, but minister of justice Andrzej Kalwas repealed the decision. Proceedings were suspended until the deputy's immunity expired, then dismissed due to insignificant social harmfulness.

The force applied by LPR in attacking the Białystok gallery began declining: a conflict born of the climactic period of a nationwide art war was losing its marketing sense, both parties (and audiences as compulsory witnesses) in all probability rather exhausted. Yet while defacing Szlaga's work, Fedorowicz announced, "When we take over during the next term, that lady [Szewczyk – J.D.] will end up where she belongs, and Arsenał will be showing real Polish art. Foreign too, but real". The menacing proclamation did not stand a chance: while LPR had formed a governing coalition with Samoobrona (Self-Defence) and PiS as of 2005, they lost the 2006 local elections miserably across the country. In Białystok, 2.16% of voters supported Fedorowicz running for mayor of the city; Antypiuk remained in office as one of the two LPR councillors with 604 of 16,249 votes. She managed to beat more prominent candidates from her party – who knows, she may owe her re-election to the war waged on contemporary art.

The epic of Białystok was the most spectacular, complex, and – as it were – effective (medium-term, at least) post-heroic period attempt to suppress artistic freedom. Harassed by LPR, the gallery's director acquiesced multiple and doubtful compromises – while the helplessness of the Polish art world confronted with the occasionally grotesque behaviour of local councillors was striking. The censorship of Piotr Kurka's work, absurdity of charges pressed by the councillor, and submissiveness of the city's mayor were particularly astonishing. In an outraged letter to the mayor of Białystok, exhibition curator Marek Wasilewski emphasised the lack of any grounds for accusing Kurka of insulting religious feelings. And yet the curator's open letter, modest protests by SLD councillors and local youth, or even the unprecedented (albeit one might wonder if well-considered, since ultimately to Antypiuk's satisfaction) withdrawal of artists from the exhibition could hardly be seen as sufficient reaction to LPR's censorship practices. Such a flagrant violation of fundamental human freedoms, and a single councillor blackmailing a serious gallery, valued artists, and extensive audiences should have induced a joint and supportive counter-reaction by exhibiting institutions, universities, media, politicians, and – last but not least – the viewers, regardless of their personal opinions regarding the work itself. Had many communities taken a shared position, Antypiuk could have been halted; yet despite the lesson of Nieznalska's case, nothing of the sort happened. Voices of support for the gallery were few across Poland. In such context, Grzegorz Drozd, Alicja łukasiak, Ewa Gorza _˛_ dek and Stach Szabłowski organising an exhibition titled _Stan wojenny_ [ _Martial Law_ ] on 13 December at Zmiana Organizacji Ruchu, an independent gallery in Warsaw, was no more than a symbolic gesture. The show comprised works by 20 artists, most of whom were under scrutiny at the time. While potentially vital to the art community, such events were of no interest to councillor Antypiuk, and could not in any way influence Arsenał or director Szewczyk's circumstances. For a good few years, phobias of a schoolteacher were the deciding factor in what could be placed on view in a city of 300,000 people.

Similarly to Szewczyk in Białystok, Wojciech Krukowski of Warsaw's CSW ZU remained consistent in trying not to annoy the powers that be. In the second half of February 2003, the press reported on a conflict between him and American photographer Nan Goldin following the introduction of an age restriction (18 or over) for visitors to her _Devil's Playground_ exhibition, which included several pictures of naked women and of hetero- and homosexual couples kissing. Krukowski allegedly introduced the age restriction immediately before the exhibition's opening, and unbeknownst to Goldin: "We will place a board in front of the entrance, informing visitors that the exhibition is suitable for adult viewers only... as in the case of films for audiences 18 or over, although limits have even been recently raised to 21" [Poland does not have a film age classification board – J.D.]. During a press conference, the artist emphasised that "no such restrictions applied even in Catholic Spain, Portugal, Italy (where the Pope resides, after all), or France. ... it is important to me that teenagers in particular see my photographs. These restrictions have been introduced against my intentions.... Nowhere in the world and never have I been asked so many times if I am aware that there will be problems with my photos. ... I refused to remove any pictures from the show". Goldin further denied any restrictions having been consulted with her in advance. Conversely, Krukowski explained that since his institution receives ministerial and/or municipal funding, he is obliged to comply with exhibition-related legal provisions. Ultimately, the lowest age limit was set at 16, younger visitors allowed upon parental/ guardian consent - the solution staying with accordance to the Polish law (should we at all consider Nan Goldin's exhibition as pornographic in nature).

According to CSW ZU deputy director Jarosław Suchan, Goldin had caused the uproar herself by making somewhat untruthful comments concerning Krukowski's actions: "Director Krukowski warned the artist at least twice that such decision might be made, and passed it on to her three days before the exhibition opened". As it turned out, Krukowski anticipated actual developments: in March, minister of culture Waldemar Dąbrowski was forced to respond to LPR deputy Stanisław Papież and his interpellation regarding "the dissemination of pornographic content as illustrated by the exhibition of Nan Goldin's photographs at the CSW ZU in Warsaw".

A League of Their Own

Conformist decisions made by heads of cultural establishments – especially in smaller centres, where one does not get to discuss anything with ministers but rather with councillors, their education a thing of chance, their knowledge of art rather limited – allowed them to keep their positions (possibly even save their institutions as such). Simultaneously, such decisions undermined institutional credibility, reinforcing the effectiveness of right-wing aggressors' actions and provoking them into ever greater brutality. The LPR deputy had filed a parliamentary question concerning Nan Goldin's exhibition for the sole reason of having become aware of the media scandal Krukowski had triggered by pushing excessive limits upon access to the show (the law was less restrictive). Yet even Szewczyk's preventive measure of withdrawing Sobczyk's painting did not protect the _Dog in Polish Art_ exhibition from being shut down; councillor Antypiuk continued her quest for "slighting sights" until identifying one she found sufficient.

In times of quantitative escalation, members of LPR and other right-wing factions across the country began operating in a semblance of their mates from Białystok, interventions occasionally verging on the absurd. In April 2003, the Wrocław BWA was holding an exhibition titled _Entuzjazm sztuki_ [ _Enthusiasm of Art_ ], comprising works by Ryszard Wożniak (former member of the Gruppa – see p.162 n245) – a simultaneous presentation of images, an installation, and action. All gallery walls were painted national colours, forming a white-and-red backdrop for presented pieces, the horizon at eye level. The artist used one room, which held several dozen works (bringing a studio to mind), to show one painting at a time "live", changing it daily at the same time. Consequently, Wożniak presented a total of 22 works. Additionally, works from the 1980s, powerful in expression and exploiting national and religious symbols, were placed in a separate space. Albeit all canvases were historical in nature and known to viewers already, organisers placed the following message in front of the respective doorway: "Please be advised that the paintings presented in this area are considered controversial. Since it is not our intent to injure the feelings of art viewers or visitors to the exhibition, we suggest that these works be viewed by adults under their own responsibility only." The exhibition provoked several pickets organised by national movements and LPR, the most aggressive one tying in with Kazimierz Piotrowski's speech on the _Irreligion_ exhibition in Brussels, delivered at the time of BWA holding the Enthusiasm show. Picketers chanted i.a. "Wożniak, go to Brussels!"; they also organised a leaflet campaign appealing for defence of the unborn and votes against Poland's accession to the EU. They further notified the prosecutor's office of an offence having been committed by the artist and gallery personnel, said notification signed by 300 persons. Wożniak was summoned to the police station, and spent several hours answering questions asked – as he recalls – "by a police officer with an M.A. in art history, fairly competent in the field of art".

Several months later in Poznań, LPR members protested against an installation by painter Leon Tarasewicz, which was to be unveiled on 20 September in the portico of the Grand Theatre. The artist adorned portico columns with horizontal yellow-and-green stripes. Poznań LPR activist Adam Kuż said, "Installation is a word I associate with plumbing, not art"; his party colleague Przemysław Piasta declared, "We don't want this, because it is ugly. The opera has been disfigured by taxpayers' money". On 21 October, project organisers were issued a permit by the city's historical monument conservator to extend the installation show term – yet the following day they received a letter from the Grand Theatre director Sławomir Pietras, ordering them to remove the installation at once. Pietras explained to journalists, "I keep getting phone calls from people who no longer want to view Tarasewicż I cannot push it. The purpose of a visit to an opera building is to see an opera, not controversial installations....". Yet again, the Polish intellectual elites' attitude to visual arts was revealed, usually vacillating between indifference and incomprehension – or disregard and contempt.

LPR member attacks did not leave out the most attractive target, marketing-wise: Zachęta Gallery. On 13 February 2004, the _W norweskim lesie. Norweska sztuka ostatniej dekady_ [ _In Norwegian Woods. Norwegian Art of the Last Decade_ ] exhibition opened at Zachęta. Chairman of LPR Headquarters Sylwester Chruszcz submitted a statement to the media, protesting against two works by Borre Larsen: _Pomocna dłoń_ [ _Helping Hand_ ] and _Wybacz mi_ [ _Forgive Me_ ]. _Helping Hand_ shows a 15-centimetre figure of Christ, his hands entwined in wool from a ball placed nearby; _Forgive Me_ portrays an identical Christ standing next to a shattered Holy Virgin figurine. Chruszcz intervened with exhibition sponsors, inflating his protest's importance by writing a letter to the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway in Poland. He issued a threat of notifying the prosecution authority of a criminal offence having been committed unless figurines were removed instantly. Figurines were not removed – consequently, LPR took legal measures, yet according to the prosecution the features of a prohibited act had not been fulfilled.

Furthermore, LPR held a distinctly belated intervention concerning an exhibition of contemporary Czech and Slovak art: _Shadows of Humor_ , shown at the BWA Awangarda in Wrocław (7 April – 28 May 2006). Two weeks after the exhibition's opening, the presentation having been viewed by over two and a half thousand people, LPR members attacked the _Super start_ sculpture by Kunst Fu and Kamera Skura groups. Created for purposes of the Venice Biennale of one year before, the work showed gymnast rings caught in the pose of the crucified Christ. The sculpture had prompted protests in Catholic Slovakia some time before, its safety secured only after a bishop had interceded; in Poland, no bishop attempted to defend the work.

Action taken by LPR – and by councillor Antypiuk in particular – divulged the community's helplessness. Without political support structures, legal assistances, press, academia etc., the art world stands no chance in direct conflict with politicians – yet at the time, it could not even afford a meaningful gesture of solidarity with the oppressed. When mid-2004, art critic and performer łukasz Guzek proposed that galleries be tagged with a slogan "This exhibition is not intended for members or supporters of the Polish Families League" employing a red symbol referencing the one used on TV to tag items for adults only, numerous gallery managers and curators ignored the idea. Head of the ZPAP Toruń chapter Jerzy Brzuskiewicz said, "Such moves are equally ridiculous to moves by some politicians". According to Maria Dziedziniewicz – who ran Wrocław's M gallery under ZPAP patronage – "such demonstration was superfluous... . I believe artists have minds, thus self-censorship instincts, of their own...". The author of this astonishing declaration thus revealed her comprehension of the creative process, or potential development of co-operation with an exhibiting institution: according to Dziedziniewicz, any artist with a wish to exhibit should abandon his/ her beliefs and adapt to current political expectations.

Jerzy Hanusek of the Otwarta Pracownia [Open Studio] in Cracow understood Guzek's campaign differently: "The sticker was placed by someone from the outside. I didn't remove it, as our gallery is a space of free opinion exchange. Had someone used a sticker saying our gallery sucks, I wouldn't have removed it either". He also admitted that "councillor Maciej Twaróg has already announced he would be taking a closer look at publicly funded subsidies. Yet everyone is welcome at 'Otwarta Pracownia', including LPR activists", unless their intent would be to interfere with the exhibition.. Nonetheless, since he did not remove the sticker, the circumstances of the gallery – which had received PLN 90,000 (ca. USD 25,000) from city funds over a period of three years – became rather difficult. In all probability, this is why Hanusek tried to explain the situation at hand, his attitude, and the gallery's profile in a special letter to _GW_. Among others, he wrote that the sticker "allowed 'Otwarta Pracownia's' name to make it all the way to _GW_ 's national edition, something unprecedented over ten years of intense artistic activity. TV crews swarmed in, yelling: where's the sticker, where's the sticker. Art is not enough for media to get interested, they need scandal. It is both depressing and significant". Paradoxically, while the gallery's programme remained in polemic with transgressive art, media publicity turned it into its _stimulacral_ agency.

When head of Wrocław's Galeria Miejska [City Gallery] Teresa Kukuła announced to _GW_ mid-January 2005 that she would be joining the campaign, LPR reacted promptly. Party activists demanded that the mayor of Wrocław dismiss the manager of the gallery (as reporting to the local government) on disciplinary grounds, to "prevent a person in public office from manifesting her private antipathies and phobias targeting a part of the society". In response, the mayor's spokesman underscored that "a disciplinary talk was held with the manager of the gallery. Yet the city will not operate its staffing policies to LPR orders".

In January 2005, LPR countered Guzek's idea by organising a campaign involving party activists tagging galleries with two types of stickers: one with a smiley sun and a "Children-friendly exhibition" inscription, the other with the sun crossed out with a red line and captioned "Children-unfriendly exhibition". The campaign affected the _Paweł Althamer zachęca_ [ _Paweł Althamer Gives Cheer_ ] show, Zachęta (26 February – 28 March 2005), and Henry Darger's _Okropności wojny_ [ _Disasters of War_ ] exhibition, CSW ZU (8 February – 28 March 2005). In Althamer's case, films showing the artist under the influence of hallucinogenic substances were considered a menace; with regard to the American artist's exhibition, politicians pointed to "excess display of nudity and superfluous aggression, and offence to symbols"; they also filed objections concerning works from CSW's permanent exhibition: pieces by Katarzyna Kozyra, Artur Żmijewski, Katarzyna Górna, Zuzanna Janin, and Oleg Kulik, "their only artistic »value« involving foul nakedness and human intimacy stripped to the bone".

Hanusek was correct in emphasising that he did not want to deprive anyone in advance of the right to visit the gallery he was running – in this aspect, Guzek's campaign was problematic, yet at the time, the art world featured no other counteraction with comprehensive aspirations. It was apparent that some artists and curators attached to creative paradigms other than the critical accepted censorship of their competition, going as far as to recognise it as an expression of something akin to justice, an official or semi-official act confirming the exactness of their own aesthetic preferences. There was a shortage of a sense of common good: freedom of expression in general, and of creative expression in particular. The art world was not the only one failing to even discern the issue; elites followed suit – when Władysław Każmierczak was seeking support for Nieznalska's exhibition planned for the autumn of 2003, politicians Marek Borowski (SLD) and Władysław Frasyniuk (UW) were the only ones of the list of 300 politicians, artists, and intellectuals, who replied to his emails. The left-wing Zieloni 2004 party were attempting to organise a support campaign for the artist at the time – yet their initiative, while important, enjoyed little public response (see p.319).

Even low-key community resistance symptoms were rare – and as it turned out, they could have been extremely efficient. In early 2005, the XX1 gallery in Warsaw forming part of the Mazovia Region Centre for Culture and Arts opened the _Dzien´ Matki_ [ _Mother's Day_ ] exhibition (13 January – 19 February), exploring mother and maternity archetypes. The show included i.a. works by Anna Baumgart ( _Bombowniczka_ – _Bombress_ ) and Monika Mamzeta ( _Jak dorosnę, będę dziewicą – When I Grow up, I'll Be a Virgin_ ); the Sędzia Główny group staged a morally bold performance during the exhibition's opening. Exhibition curator Agnieszka Rayzacher recalls that several gentlemen, heads shaved bald, arrived immediately before the opening, and began aggressively commenting on the works on display; the tense situation was resolved by the gallery's manager Ryszard ługowski, who promptly opened the exhibition. Several days later, pressured by LPR, the Mazovia Centre's authorities decided to close the gallery on the pretext of electric installation repairs. While the need for repairs had been notified several days earlier by ługowski himself, he had no idea that his move would be misused by officials as a ploy to shut down an inconvenient exhibition. In response to the act of censorship, Rayzacher – assisted by editorial teams of such periodicals as _Obieg_ , _Artmix_ and _Krytyka Polityczna_ – launched her "call the gallery" campaign (dozens of people were calling the Mazovia Centre, asking when the exhibition would reopen); concurrently, ługowski began negotiating with his superiors, who ultimately reopened the show two days later. This time, LPR politicians acted anonymously, using the guise of administrative concern for the gallery's technical condition. This was a major novelty: before, they had always attempted to publicise their censorship activities in an effort to gain political ground.

Several months later, _Mother's Day_ was shown at the Polish Institute in Budapest (8 July – 2 September 2005), yet the Institute's management refused permission to show Mamzeta's _When I Grow up, I'll Be a Virgin_ , arguing that the work could insult someone's religious feelings or aggravate a ministerial official visiting the institution. Rayzacher and Mamzeta wore T-shirts with the censored work printed across the chest – the Institute's director pretended not to see the provocation.

A Definite NO! to Homosexuals

Polish society may well be considered prudish (public morality changes tend to be slow in Poland), its attitude to carnality, nakedness, and sex incessantly formed by Catholic views and beliefs particularly restrictive in the field of homosexuality. Activities in gay communities became more pronounced only in the early 21st century: in a quest for their rights, they began manifesting their presence in the public sphere ever more distinctly. Such gay community activation obviously did not mean the issue had not existed before. In actuality, a type of permanent censorship had been blocking the public presence and visibility of homosexuals. While the Lambda Association supporting sexual minorities was registered as early as February 1990, mainstream media raised homosexuality-related themes only in passing, Gay Pride Days organised since 1998 initially held in close spaces. In a reference to Pierre Bourdieu, it might well be said that post-2000, a transition took place from the sphere of doxa (sexual minorities are marginal and do not exist socially, the public being largely unaware of their existence) to heterodox discourse (the minority appearing in the public sphere, articulating their needs, and proceeding to fight for their rights).

Iwona Zielińska's analysis of 2004-2007 press reports suggests that after having joined the EU in 2004, Poland became a breeding ground for moral panic triggered by the growing activity of gay organisations. In light of the experience with artistic activities raising homosexual tropes, one might well risk a statement that panic had reared its head at least one year earlier. After all, warnings of "impending moral turpitude from Brussels" formed part of right-wing anti-Union campaigns.

Karolina Bregul ´a, _Let Them see Us_ [ _Niech nas zobacza_ ˛], 2003, courtesy Karolina Bregul ´a and The Campaign Against Homophobia

In March 2003, the _Niech nas zobaczą_ [ _Let Them see Us_ ] campaign kicked off in Warsaw (thereafter also in other large Polish cities), the project initiated by artist Karolina Breguła and co-ordinated by the Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (Campaign Against Homophobia) organisation formed in 2001. The exhibition and visual campaign in Warsaw, Cracow, Gdańsk and Sosnowiec were co-funded by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and embassies of Sweden and of the Netherlands. Breguła photographed 30 same-sex couples looking as if just encountered in the street – people standing against cityscape backgrounds, smiling, holding hands, all images entirely de-sexualised, safe, something of a fit for the regular hetereosexual couples normative. Photographs were to be displayed on carriers commercially owned by AMS (the artist had originally planned life-sized photos to be placed at bus or tram stops, at pedestrian eye level – yet the concept was abandoned as unfeasible due to high risk of vandalism). Ultimately, AMS withdrew from the project altogether – for reasons of changes to corporate image strategy, as explained by company representatives. AMS was replaced by Cityboard Media; although its assigned billboards were placed at considerable height and on urban outskirts, destruction incidents were recurrent. Breguła's campaign was criticised by mayors of Cracow (Jacek Majchrowski, SLD) and Warsaw (Lech Kaczyński, PiS). At the end of the day, the exhibition planned for three months was only shown for around a week, Cityboard Media following in AMS' footsteps and withdrawing from the project.

The poster action was supplemented by a tour show of galleries in a number of Polish cities. In Cracow, the project was to be displayed in April 2003 – yet in the wake of protests by LPR and All-Polish Youth three days prior to its opening, the Cracovian ZPAP chapter pulled out of the exhibition. In a special statement, the Association explained that gallery manager Agnieszka Szpala had signed an agreement with Campaign Against Homophobia "without consulting with the Chapter's Board. In view of the photographs' poor artistic quality and the Board's findings concerning a change to the gallery's activities, tying in with a shift towards more efficient artwork sales, the Board decided not to exhibit the show in the Association's gallery". Despite attacks by LPR politicians, the privately owned Burzym & Wolff Gallery located at the Lubomirski Palace, świętego Jana No. 15, was sufficiently bold to take over – yet the building's administrator demanded that the exhibition be shut down instantly; upon refusal, the gallery's lease contract was terminated.

This was already the second act of repression against a private exhibition institution attempting to oppose a political smear campaign against contemporary art. The slogan publicised by conservative communities: "Freedom of creation and exhibition? – Yes, for private funds" – occasionally proved to be no more than a cliché; yet it was obviously safer to operate below the official radar. Artist Karol Radziszewski decided to "privatise" his exhibition space in toto – his proprietary _Pedały_ [ _Faggots_ ] exhibition (21 June – 5 July 2006) described by Joanna Sokołowska in a review as "the first artistic coming-out of such frankness" was held in a private flat in Warsaw district. As the reviewer rightly observed, "The leaflet accompanying the project reads i.a. that »the artist eagerly forsakes safe gallery settings«. In actuality, the exact reverse is true; galleries became risky spaces exposed to censorship, private apartments offering safe, niche, tame territory...". _Faggots_ coincided with curator Sarmen Baglarian organising a show of young provocative art at six flats in Warsaw, which led Dorota Jarecka as far as to offer a diagnosis (rather detached from reality) of an independent art world taking shape in Poland.

It goes without saying that Poland's accession to the EU in 2004 could have activated artists and curators interested in homosexual themes. Yet Paweł Leszkowicz's optimism seemed somewhat premature, regardless of the curator having successfully organised the _Miłośc i demokracja_ [ _Love and Democracy_ ] exhibition at Poznań's Stary Browar as part of the Art Poznań fair (May 2005). Leszkowicz emphasised: "I showed pieces by censored artists as well as amorous and erotic themes transcending conventional heterosexual identity.... The exhibition was purposely organised in opposition to the moral revolution [postulated by PiS, in government at the time – J.D.], yet in the name of ethics of freedom and equality.... I could finally use Polish art and institutions as foundations to organise an exhibition which had been a utopian project, recurrent in my texts since time immemorial – yet it had seemed to me that it would never be possible to hold it in Poland". Leszkowicz further called for closer co-operation between artists and diverse circles (politicians, business, media, law) to the end of expanding the scope of civic freedoms, freedom of artistic expression included. In all probability, business had not been listed by chance – ostensibly, the exhibition, courageous at the time, could not have been held, or would have been interrupted by right-wing communities, were it not for the guardianship secured by Grażyna Kulczyk – richest Polish woman and owner of Stary Browar (enormous shopping mall with cultural aspirations – a town within a town, as it were). Obviously – something Leszkowicz was fully aware of – such allies may swiftly turn into adversaries (suffice to mention issues with Libera's _Lego. Concentration Camp_ , terminate co-operation (as in case of AMS, Cityboard Media, and Breguła), or censor the artist (as in case of AMS and Kozyra, or the _Spojrzenia_ [ _Views_ ] Deutsche Bank Foundation Award at Zachęta).

In revisiting the theme of homosexuality in art, it ought to be highlighted that no environment or patronage warranted the full safety of related works, as duly proven by further problems with Breguła's project. In the second half of May 2006, the _Let Them See Us_ exhibition was displayed in the hallways of the Collegium Polonicum college in Słubice, complete with posters submitted for the _Moje życie – moja decyzja_ [ _My Life – My Decision_ ] competition organised by the Federation for Women and Family Planning (Nieznalska one of the award winners, an honourable mention). Posters explored issues of rights to reliable sexual education, contraception, and pregnancy termination. In a letter of protest to the Collegium's principal, professor Stanisław Lorenc, member of the university's teaching staff professor Wojciech Stankowski threatened to resign as a lecturer with immediate effect unless all works were removed. The principal's initial response was to take the exhibition down – yet upon intervention by professor Gesine Schwan, rector of the nearby European University Viadrina, he decided to move it to a tiny gallery adjacent to the Collegium Polonicum's courtyard.

One year after problems with Breguła's show, LPR politicians decided to block the _Kultura dla tolerancji_ [ _Culture for Tolerance_ ] festival in Cracow (6 May - 9 2004). They demanded that Jagiellonian University authorities withdraw from providing premises for festival debates, and that the city's officials cancel their permit for the event, including a march in defence of equality rights for homosexuals and photographic exhibition at Bunkier Sztuki. The exhibition was cancelled: Mayor of Cracow Jacek Majchrowski unofficially suggested this solution to the gallery's management. Furthermore, the mayor allegedly announced that municipal authorities would work to amend statutes of cultural institutions reporting to the city, said amendments yielding an option of interfering with their projects in terms of artistic quality or potential public controversy. Mayor Majchrowski's policy was an excellent example of how in Polish conditions, party membership did not translate into belief or ideological identity. His left-wing and post-communist roots notwithstanding, in terms of morality Majchrowski walked hand in hand with the extreme right-wing LPR.

Anti-gay protests occasionally took on astonishing form. In February 2007, Sławomira Raczyńska published an article on shunga, Japanese erotic art, in _Gazeta Malarzy i Poetów_ , a periodical with a circulation of 400 printed by Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań. The piece was illustrated with two renderings of homosexual acts derived from contemporary manga. Councillor Krzysztof Mączkowski (PiS) protested against the publication, arguing that such deliberations are best engaged in at the authors' own expense. He further asked, "Why should art dwell on intimate subjects at all?".

Mączkowski's intervention was rather specific in nature. While exhibitions were a regular attack target, images considered unseemly when on display at art shows prompted less emotional reactions once published in catalogues. Text, in turn, triggered less controversy than accompanying visual material.

National Symbols – History-oriented Politics – History

The safeguarding of religious and moral spheres (most frequent reasons for restriction or attempted restriction to freedom of artistic expression) notwithstanding, controversy concerning national symbols, previously rather rare, became more visible in the 21st century.

Precedents included issues of early 2001, and concerned Artur Żmijewski's _KRWP_ (see footnote 408), and the closing of the Fun Gun exhibition immediately after it opened at the Wrocław Military Museum in the Arsenal building. Originally, the exhibition was to close only to accommodate a banquet held at the Museum to celebrate the opening of a new seat of the Archaeological Museum (in the adjacent wing), yet the works were never returned to their original location. Arsenal's manager Jerzy Zarawski made such decision: "these... works included a piece I saw as a desecration of the Polish emblem" (specifically, _Orzeł może zabic_ [ _The Eagle Can Kill_ ] by Krzysztof Wałaszek – the artist had bought a straw emblem at a fair, painted its background purple, and added the title). The manager referenced the law on the emblem, colours, and anthem of the Republic of Poland, alongside opinions of Arsenal's doormen, who had seen the eagle and were of similar opinion. He further added that this was art with a capital "S" rather than a capital "A".

National symbołrelated controversies stepped up in 2004, basically in relation to a single work (notably, in February that year, the Sejm passed the Polish National Flag Day celebrated on 2 May). On 26 February 2004, the _Playboy_ magazine cover featured a nude model with the wings and tail of the Polish national emblem's eagle as part of a campaign titled _Próba personifikacji polskiego orła_ [ _Attempts to Personify the Polish Eagle_ ] and initiated by łódż Kaliska, a group originally formed in the unofficial third art circulation of the 1980s. Artists declared they had intended to celebrate Poland's accession to the EU by showcasing Poland's vital natural resource – the beauty of her women. Head of LPR Roman Giertych immediately announced that he would make efforts to halt the sales of that particular _Playboy_ issue; head of LPR in Przemyśl Andrzej Zapałowski notified the prosecution of a crime of insult to state symbols having been committed (Art 137 PCC). Artists had to testify at the prosecutor's office, all proceedings ultimately dismissed. The cover also functioned as an independent artwork ( _Godło_ – _Emblem_ ), starting a panic amongst gallery directors and curators in 2004. At the _Projekt Godło_ [ _Project Emblem_ ] exhibition at Warsaw's Galeria Karowa, the work was shrouded with red fabric. In September, at the _Signal Box/Nastawnia_ exhibition at the BWA in Katowice, the piece was covered with brown paper, whereas the Bielsko-Biała edition of the exhibition pulled out of showing it altogether. In Sopot, the work was wrapped in plastic film. In such context, it comes as no surprise that the jubilee exhibition titled _Prawdziwa historia grupy artystycznej łódż Kaliska_ [ _Real Story of the łódż Kaliska Art Group_ ] at the Museum of Art in łódż (9 November – 5 December 2004), while intended for adult viewers only, spiked All-Polish Youth's protests.

Another example of attempts to interfere with freedom of expression on grounds of similar rationale – albeit on the outskirts of artistic activity – included the case of a prosecution authority initiating proceedings against cartoonist and satirist Marek Raczkowski in the case of insult to the national flag. On 24 March 2006, in a broadcast by the private radio station Tok FM, Raczkowski described a happening in the course of which he himself and artist Agnieszka Brzeżańska had allegedly planted seventy small white-and-red flags in dog poo on Warsaw's lawns (Poland continues to suffer of the problem of dog owners failing to clean up after their animals). An email of protest from a listener was aired during the broadcast, upon which Jerzy Urban (see p.324 n534), another guest of that same broadcast, commented characteristically: "Maybe the lady is a dog lover, and she is upset to learn that the flag of such a miserable country was planted in such noble excrement". The prosecution approached Raczkowski and Urban, the KRRiTV contacted Tok FM. Chairperson of the KRRiTV Elżbieta Kruk admonished the head of the station, ordering her to pay more attention to what is said on air (the point having been that the host of the broadcast, instead of protesting, had burst out laughing). In October 2006, proceedings against Raczkowski and Urban were dismissed. During the hearing, the artist said that the happening had never taken place, and that he had made it up to draw attention to the issue of dog poo in the streets. In April 2008, the KRRiTV decided to penalise the TVN station for emitting Kuba Wojewódzki's talk show, in the course of which Raczkowski planted a Polish flag in poo provided by the host. Former vice-minister of education Mirosław Orzechowski (LPR) had already notified prosecution of the same case. Notably, Wojewódzki attempted to confer artistic meaning upon the entire occurrence: "I think the ghosts of the past outrage involving Dorota Nieznalska and Katarzyna Kozyra have kind of come back to haunt us, as this actually was a reference to such happening" (implicitly: referencing the immunity of art had been the actual point).

National symbol protection ties in with broadly understood history-oriented politics, which I perceive as an institutionalised suite of actions engaged in by the state and local governments in education, culture, law, and foreign policy, to the end of forming citizens' historical and national awareness, and an image of the nation as a proud community. Consequently, politics of history is realised not only during history classes, but also in the awarding of decorations, celebration of national holidays and other official state ceremonies, anniversary resolutions passed by the Sejm and Senate, cult of state and national symbols, funding specific cultural initiatives, developing the state's international image on foundations of its idealised history, or efforts to settle historical wrongs and damages. I find emphasising the phrase necessary in that it ties in directly with current state policy, and remains an official factor shaping and forming political discourse. The state applies politics of history to promote specific viewpoints while marginalising or even suppressing others, thus actively outlining freedom of expression boundaries. In following Judith Butler, it would be noteworthy to emphasise the productive aspect of politics of history, which yields an effect of forming legitimate boundaries of subjectiveness and speech – possible and impossible kinds of citizens, and achieving cultural control over own representation and narrativisation.

Pressure to proceed with such activities was exerted by the right-wing populist coalition of PiS-LPR- Samoobrona, in government in the years 2005-2007 – on 11 November 2005, Minister of Culture Kazimierz Ujazdowski announced his programme _Patriotyzm jutra_ [ _Patriotism of Tomorrow_ ], intended to foster patriotic attitudes and promote modern educational forms in presenting Polish history and culture. In June 2006, minister of education Roman Giertych declared that "patriotic education" would be made part of school curriculum, any school ceremony opening, closing, or adjourning with the singing of the national anthem.

In such context, any artistic activity contrary to official history-oriented politics assumptions – e.g. targeting re-interpretation of patriotic-slash-national mythology, quests for items intentionally (or unintentionally) omitted, or critical metahistorical reflection (i.e. pointed directly at the very concept of history-oriented politics), rather than development of said mythology – can obviously stumble upon lesser or greater persecution. Such restrictions to freedom of speech appeared rather late in the Third Polish Republic, for obvious reasons of the eleventh-hour introduction of distinctive and concise history-oriented politics concept.

No conflict involving history-oriented politics in visual arts was recorded in the early days. Isolated incidents chiefly concerned the theatre (as in case of the play _Transfer_ staged by Jan Klata). The related policy climaxed in the passing of the so-called Lex Gross, i.e. Art 132a PCC, as of 18 October 2006: "Whoever slanders the Polish Nation on account of participating in, organising, or being accountable for communist or Nazi crime, shall be subject to a term of imprisonment for a term of up to 3 years." The name Lex Gross originated in legislative proposers – LPR deputies – attempting to counteract such publications as books by Jan Tomasz Gross, a sociologist describing crimes committed by Poles against Jews during times of Nazi occupation and just after WWII. The introduction of the ban prompted protests by academics and lawyers, calling attention to the fact that such provisions restrain freedom of scientific research; the Ombudsman challenged the regulation before the Constitutional Court. In January 2008, the prosecution authority received first notifications of Gross having committed a crime under Art 132a PCC on account of his book _Strach_ [ _Fear_ ], wherein he described post-World War Two pogroms of Jews in Poland. Already in February, the prosecution refused to initiate proceedings because the features of the prohibited act had not been fulfilled. By virtue of a Constitutional Court ruling of 19 September 2008 (Ref. No. K 5/07), Art 132a PCC was duly repealed – yet the Court had not examined the merits of the case, quoting formal reasons as the grounds for the ruling.

While Gross' book was obviously an academic (or quasi-academic, as some historians claim) rather than an art work, Art 132a PCC could well have applied to artistic creation as well. One could easily imagine novels or films in breach of Lex Gross – in case of images or exhibitions, specifically those employing understatement and/or subversion.

Issues with interpreting subversively applied historical motives surfaced in the course of an exhibition of works by Marek Jaszczuk. In September 2004, Jaszczuk (unemployed technical secondary school graduate and amateur painter, aged 28), showed a series of paintings rendering Wehrmacht soldiers at the Podlaska gallery of the Municipal Centre of Culture in Biała Podlaska. The exhibition titled _Niemcy 1939_ [ _Germans 1939_ ] was his artistic debut. German troops were shown as alluring young men in stylish glossy uniforms. To offer deeper meaning to the exhibit, gallery manager Mieczysław Skalimowski expanded it by displaying an album of photographs showing Nazi crimes in Poland, and placing quotations from Third Reich leaders between paintings, e.g.: "... the Polish spine should be broken once and for all [...]"; "I want young people capable of violence, imperious, relentless, and cruel". According to Skalimowski, the intent behind the inscriptions was to "tell the true story of the deeds of »those beautiful boys in their Nazi Wehrmacht uniforms«". Consequently, Skalimowski became more than just exhibition curator, morphing into the co-author of artistic manifestation, which gradually took on a meaning similar to Piotr Uklański's famous exhibition _The Nazis_. Jaszczuk himself, as if contradicting Skalimowski to an extent, displayed a more down-to-earth attitude to his own oeuvre: "I paint soldiers, portraits of women, horses, landscapes, religious scenes. I have been painting Germans for the past five years. I have no interest in ideology. I am primarily taken by militaria. German troops were much better equipped that Poles. Their army was the most modern in the world at the time." Concurrently, the amateur painter was aware of contemporaneous art-related conflicts and potential reception of his show: "I could see some people frown already at the opening. I was concerned: someone will show up with a sabre and start slashing, like Olbrychski. But you need courage to show something like that. And I did.... . Others place genitals on a cross, or crush the Pope with a meteorite". Several days after the opening, LPR councillor Waldemar Wożniak wrote an open letter to the mayor of Biała Podlaska: "Powers hostile to our homeland have for some time now been attempting to denigrate us Poles, in the eyes of other nations and in our own. This infamous exhibition is one such attempt." In the wake of the councillor's protest, Municipal Centre of Culture director Janusz Izbicki ordered the removal of all exhibited paintings, Skalimowski banned from talking to the press. Deputy Mayor of Biała Podlaska Henryk Chmiel said that "the exhibition was shut down for the sake of peace and quiet".

Exhibition-related controversy did not relate to any rupture in officially weaved historical imaginings (Skalimowski's message at the exhibition was basically clear); the direct cause was either rooted in the political cynicism of LPR politicians and their will to gain media recognition, or in a simple inability to handle the power of images, establish analytical distance, and merge the iconographic layer with the presentation context. Similarly to Uklański's _The Nazis_ , Jaszczuk and Skalimowski's (or rather: Skalimowski and Jaszczuk's) exhibition actually problematised visual stereotypes consolidated by popular culture in a warning against their illusionary attractiveness.

Critique of Those in Government

PiS' victory in the autumn of 2005 (supported by 26.99% of voters, with 24.14%, 11.41%, 11.14%, and 7.99% votes cast for the PO, Samoobrona, SLD and LPR, respectively) yielded major re-valuation in political and public life alike. For the first time since 1989, a party of such strong conservative, national, and Catholic profile came into power, forming a coalition government with the extremely right-wing LPR and populist Samoobrona rather than with any centrist option. The Third Polish Republic was to symbolically become the Fourth, a "new" state, as it were, breaking away from the past of the Round Table "corrupt" compromise with the communists and the consequent legal relations, as well as informal social and economic ones.

The confrontational rhetoric of the victorious party's leading politicians and changes to the _status quo_ appealed for in many fields (the form and manner of introducing these changes in particular) accompanied by attempts to advance a conservative, traditional social model, led to resistance on behalf of a major part of the society. While any detailed analysis definitely transcends the scope of this work, the unprecedented contemporaneous politicisation – and the related public polarisation involving a simple poll of "for" or "against" PiS – is noteworthy.

It goes without saying that the climate of the period affected art. In 2006, the number of recorded freedom of expression restrictions visibly increased (39 cases, against 14 in the previous year), which might to a large extent have (on the one hand) tied in with intensified political activity in the field and with fear of right-wing, extremely conservative politicians intervening, and (on the other) with counter-reaction of artists willing to vent the groundswell of political pressure, and thus engaging in direct and occasionally unsophisticated critique of those in power. To that end, the array of tactics employed was expanded to include guerrilla street art.

On 1 April 2006, Katarzyna Matul, curator of the exhibition _Postery post_ery_ [ _Post_era Posters_ ] which opened celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the International Poster Biennale at the Poster Museum at Wilanów, rejected a work by Radykalna Akcja Twórcza [Radical Creative Action - RAT]. The piece showed leaders of the governing party Lech and Jarosław Kaczyński, one in uniform styled to Nazi outfits, the traditional swastika armband replaced with a PiS logo, a portrait of father Tadeusz Rydzyk (founder and director of the extreme right-wing Catholic Radio Maryja) hung above the brothers' heads. The whole work was accompanied by an inscription reading "One nation, one church, two leaders". Matul declared: "This work is nothing but fascist and repulsive". Consequently, RAT members organised a guerrilla campaign, putting up posters on street billboards in the district of Wilanów; in an unquestionably graceless move, they copied an email from the exhibition's curator on their website, the message reading: "My dear RATs, I will be frank: if we show your work at the exhibition, we will have terrible problems with raising any subsidies for the Biennale. As you can clearly see, we are regrettably dependent on these gentlemen you have shown in your project. ... Do you have another idea, less, hmmm, literal?"

Shortly after the Wilanów incidents, on the night of 3 April, the Edward Abramowski anarchist group put up a poster on a billboard near the rapid urban railway Gdańsk Stocznia station: _PiS – Przemoc i Strach_ [ _PiS – Violence and_ Fear]. The poster, which stayed up for one night only, criticised the exacerbation of criminal policy planned as of February 2006 by Zbigniew Ziobro, minister of justice at the time.

"Unknown perpetrators" organised a similar guerrilla action bordering on art and visual culture on 26 August 2006 in Poznań, putting up a poster depicting Our Lady of Czę stochowa with (as reported by _GW_ ) Hitler's face. The Madonna was holding two haloed figures resembling President Lech Kaczyński and Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, one clutching a piece of paper reading "Gazeta", referencing the _GW_ logotype. The poster had been allegedly created during a workshop in the nearby anarchist squat Rozbrat; the anarchists stated that this was a joint political commentary by RAT, art group Vobin, and Manufaktura formation. Upon motion by PiS deputy from Poznań Filip Libicki, the prosecution authority initiated proceedings to investigate crimes of insult to the head of state and to religious feelings, albeit – as it turned out – the Madonna had been given the face of founder and editor-in-chief of _GW_ Adam Michnik rather than of Hitler. The poster vanished after two days. Since the police failed to ascertain the identity of its authors, proceedings were dismissed.

In all three cases, controversial political or politicałand-religious manifestation apart, all activities as described involved violation of public order on account of unauthorised public display of posters (Art 63a CPO), which is why the removal of posters differed in nature to the removal or inadmission of works in or to gallery settings.

The latter took place in April 2006, at ZPAP's Prymat gallery in Cracow. Waldemar Cichoń, a sculptor from Elbląg, submitted his project for the _Altana i przyjaciele_ [ _Gazebo and Friends_ ] exhibition: _Kaczka dziwaczka_ [ _You Reign Pot_ ], an actual hospital urine pot. The show's curator Piotr Biesa refused to show the ready-made (references to Duchamp's Fountain are barefaced), however, remarking that its worth is embarrassing: "Mr. Cichoń's work is no sculpture, no art. Times of parading urinal in art gallery concepts are over.... My political views are probably similar to Mr. Cichoń's. Yet I am just out to defend art here". Cichoń saw the move as political censorship: "The exhibition had no specific theme, after all. I am not convinced by the explanation that the object did not match its general concept".

Tellingly, the described cases of anti-government – or anti-PiS, rather – manifestations occurred after coalition agreements had been signed by and between PiS, Samoobrona and LPR, and at the time of the new government making their first decisions, which speaks of considerable contemporaneous tensions.

Yet PiS coalitioners could not feel safe either. Head of LPR Roman Giertych spawned particular resistance: on 5 May 2000, he took office as minister of education, which prompted immediate dissent amongst young people. One year later in June, Michał Hałabura (math teacher from Maniowy village near Nowy Targ and drummer of the punk band Czosnek) tried to hold a concert dubbed _Gier-tych dośc! Vivat wakacje_ [ _Guerre-tych, Enough! Vivat Vacation_ ] at the Dudek music club. Instead, the teacher was rebuked by his school's headmaster; the club cancelled the event. Organisers attempted to change the concert venue to the nearby town of Krościenko – yet nobody would provide local premises either; even an open-air version was refused. A local PiS councillor accentuated that "the conservative Podhale region is no place for concerts targeting vice-prime minister Giertych".

The situation was tense enough to spike official concern at the slightest hint of any political allusion. In May 2006, the authorities of Bielsko-Biała disallowed an exhibition titled _IV Rzeczypospolita_ [ _Fourth Polish Republic_ ] at the Włókniarz Centre of Culture, designed to show works by local amateur photographer Bogusław Jaroszek. Despite the seemingly politicised title, works prepared for the exhibit were not provocative. Nonetheless, authorities became suspicious upon viewing Jaroszek's invitation design, featuring an image of hell and the word "Reality" on one side, and blue sky, fluffy clouds, and an inscription reading "Promises" on the other. Having presented the invitation to town officials, the photographer was called half an hour later by the centre of culture and duly notified that the exhibition would not take place. Officially, the exhibition title or content had not been the reason for its annulment – yet one of the local executives confirmed that its political chords raised concern.

The over-zealousness of law enforcement agencies seeking out any indication of criticism of authorities may be proven by the case of Peter Fuss' 2007 exhibition _Jesus Christ King of Poland_. The gallery was shut down one day after the exhibit had opened, the prosecution initiating proceedings on account of insult to the head of state; subsequently, legal classification was changed to one equally unconvincing, given the exhibition's context: incitement to racially based hate speech. Charges of illegal poster placement appeared as well, probably under Art 63a CPO. At the end of the day, proceedings were summarily dismissed.

Right-wing politicians were not the only ones gagging non-standard contesters of contemporaneous authorities and their activity. Examples of quasi-artistic happenings of the Poznań-based right-wing _Akcja Alternatywna "Naszośc"_ [" _Ourness"_ _Alternative Action_ ] prove that no powers that be, their ideological support structures notwithstanding, are capable of accepting a certain kind of criticism. On 7 November 2001, _"Ourness"_ organised a happening to commemorate the anniversary of the October revolution. Wearing caps with red stars, carrying a cardboard model of the cruiser _Aurora_ and banners depicting Lenin, Stalin, and prime minister in office at the time (Leszek Miller, SLD), were planning to storm the _"Winter Palace"_ , that is the office premises of Deputy Sylwia Pusz (SLD). The action was blocked by the police; group leader Piotr Lisiewicz told police officers he was Lenin, appealing to other participants of the happening to hand their IDs over to the police, because they are applications to the Council of People's Commissars. Thirteen people were charged with participating in an illegal gathering under the CPO; Lisiewicz was further charged with intentionally misleading a police officer as to his identity, declaring that his name was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, whereas in reality his name was Piotr Lisiewicż The grotesque trial, which in all actuality smacked of political harassment, commenced on 19 June 2002. In December, the court acquitted all defendants, including Lisiewicz, who listened to the verdict while holding a large oil painting of Lenin.

The police intervened time and time again (in 2003, 2005, and 2008, for example) during quasi-dadaist happenings organised by _Naszośc_ , always similar in their aesthetics, targeting politicians of PO, a liberal party in power from 2007, as well. The zeal of law enforcement agencies, at times excessive, usually yielded bizarre results, exposing police officers to ridicule, and questioning the solemnity of the judiciary.

New Left Wing, New Censorship

In the years 2003-2007, new left-wing movements became much more pronounced. In 2002, the _Krytyka Polityczna_ magazine saw daylight, with intent to develop activity in three fundamental fields – politics, science, culture, – considering them something of a joint area of political combat with economic and cultural exclusion. Following in Antonio Gramsci's footsteps, they embraced the need to restructure public discourse and social awareness, thus affording space to left-wing politics. In the year 2005, _Krytyka_ activists formed the Stanisław Brzozowski Association, stepping up their work. The Association engages in dynamic publishing activities and organises hundreds of open meetings, discussions, workshops, film screenings, etc. across Poland. Vital _Krytyka Poliyczna_ strategy components involve a process of opening art to political discourse, and attempts to confer upon it the rank of a significant tool of social change.

Feminists were another community set in more active motion post-1989. Their first 1993 battle to liberalise the abortion law ended in failure; actually, until this day one would be hard-pressed to identify public life areas (with the possible exception of changes to election parities and anti-discrimination Labour Code clauses) wherein feminist appeals would have been reflected in the letter of law (sexual education, contraceptives reimbursement, abortion, fully secular state, etc.). Circumstances did not change even upon the forming of new left-wing political parties with programmes comprising feminist postulates, such as _Nowa Lewica_ ( _New Left Wing_ , 2003), Zieloni 2004, or _Partia Kobiet_ ( _Women's Party_ , 2007).

In 2001, in light of Poland's planned accession to the EU, prime minister Leszek Miller (SLD) was forced to introduce the position of the Government Plenipotentiary for Equal Treatment, assumed by Magdalena środa three years later. In May 2005, środa pointed to sexist trends in crafting the feminine image in TV commercials, and penned a related letter to head of KRRiTV Danuta Waniek (SLD). According to the Plenipotentiary, many commercials are socially harmful, disseminating the image of women as "submissive, inferior, and infantile, their only forms of activity involving sexuality, caregiving, or other kinds of unpaid work benefitting the family". środa suggested that an institution be formed (for public TV purposes at least) to analyse commercials and reject those conducive to the discrimination of women.

Consequently, while środa's proposals did not concern art, but the commercial field only, in case of implementation they could have had a major impact on the scope of creative freedoms, as duly observed by two other feminists, Agnieszka Graff and Izabela Kowalczyk. In a joint letter, Graff and Kowalczyk remarked:

... the ban on sexism will be curtailed, leaving a ban on sex. The body precluding certain kinds of commercials as decreed by Minister środa could in the future preclude different kinds of commercials altogether. And not only commercials. Someone might feel a craving to prohibit all social campaigns in support of sexual minorities, claiming that they insult the heterosexual majority. Someone else may do away once and for all with the oeuvre of critical artists, claiming that it offends his/ her religious feelings. Today, such efforts are non-legislative, or appraised by an independent court of law. Do we really want them to be boosted by a state authority charged with safeguarding morality?... Magdalena środa's comments are already today put to political use by purported morality defenders.

Graff and Kowalczyk correctly pointed to the fact that right-wing activists are appropriating radical feminist postulates intended to restrain freedom of expression. History knows similar exotic alliances of these two radically dissimilar ideologies: in the early 1980s, American radical feminists Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin tabled appeals for an absolute ban on pornography, to eager support by conservative communities. Albeit the rationale for introducing such restrictions was wholly different (protecting women against sexual violence, first and foremost, vs. safeguarding Christian values, morality, family, and children), such censorship would have yielded an effect equally satisfying to both sides. Yet it seems that feminists would have ultimately lost more. Just as Dworkin and MacKinnon's radical moves became a threat to sexual minorities, to groups involved in a struggle against AIDS, and to artists, "środa's law" could have in time resulted in expression limitations rationalised exclusively with right-wing beliefs at the expense of other views, represented by marginalised social groups in particular. In employing the ambiguity of language and its susceptibility to redescription, politically and socially involved artists have appropriated and destabilised the language of popular culture, pornography, and hate speech. It goes without saying that the consistent application of anti-discriminatory bans could well threaten such subversive artistic strategies. Graff and Kowalczyk observed with considerable intuition that

contemporary visual culture is a complex grid of meanings rather than a set of segregable, appraisable, and censorable images.... The freedom of critical art cannot be defended in parallel to top-down advertising control. One case involves claims of insult to religious feelings (Dorota Nieznalska and her _Passion_ ); another – of insult to feminine dignity (mobile telephony network and female breasts). 'We find this offensive and cannot consent' – both sides declare. Yet democracy requires difference, and respect for difference. It is no system for sulkers. If we want freedom of art, we have to agree to freedom of visual culture, thus of advertising.

Anti-abortion exhibitions prompted decidedly greater controversy in left-wing and feminist communities. In June 2005, political sciences student łukasz Wróbel organised the _Wybierz życie_ [ _Choose Life_ ] exhibition in the city centre of łódż. Fourteen plaques showed photographs of abortion results, juxtaposed with adjacent pictures offering context for ethical assessment, e.g. a shot of a monkey, its head subject to scientific experiments, the inscription reading "If this is evil...", in combination with a photo of forceps grasping an aborted foetus' head, the inscription reading, "...is this good?" Three residents of łódż filed complaints with the police, who found the exhibition author to have committed an offence pursuant to Art 141 CPO. On 11 September 2006, the Regional Court in łódż ruled that the exhibition was not indecent, and did not fulfil the features of an offence under Art 141 CPO. The court further emphasised that Wróbel had acted on noble premises.

The exhibit of aborted human foetuses was shown i.a. in Lublin and Białystok (end of August 2005), where cases were also tried pursuant to Art 141 or 51 **§1** CPO. History repeated itself in Opole in 2007. Wróbel was duly acquitted. In 2010, the police in Poznań initiated investigation proceedings in connection with an enormous banner having been put up on a tenement house at Rondo śródka, showing a merge of images of Hitler and human foetus remains, and captioned "Abortion for Polish women introduced by Hitler on 9 March **1943".**

With organisers planning a further 30 anti-abortion shows across Poland for 2010, on 22 February 2010 a group of liberal intellectuals published an open letter appealing to "authorities of Polish cities to allow the exhibition in closed and properly marked venues, inaccessible to youngest viewers". The exhibits prompted highly emotional reactions, sufficient to provoke iconoclastic actions at multiple locations.

The _Choose Life_ exhibition was obviously no artistic event, although it could have been one according to the institutional definition of art, had it been accompanied by the authors' declaration that they were creating an artwork. In a sense, the exhibit was drawing on visual strategies employed by contemporary artists: the shock caused by photographs itself, showing what usually remains concealed from human eyes, was reinforced with contextual juxtaposition, intended to force viewers to dwell on deeper reflection. Brief picture captions served the same purpose. The show used transgressive – yet not subversive – elements, combinations missing the displacement in code so typical for numerous critical artworks; the message was forceful, controversial, and legible, making the campaign similar to an advertisement. Yet the deciding factor involved authors moving out into open public space (public art began flourishing in Poland ca. 2005) and overcoming the related consensus of certain topics and items not being suitable for public display. The violent and occasionally iconoclastic reactions were more of a consequence of the show's ideological message (abortion equals crime) rather than of its brutal renderings (incidentally, one might well ask where were LPR and their stickers cautioning against a "Children-unfriendly exhibition" at the time of Wróbel's exhibit). In other words, the plaques on show were not destroyed by abortion challengers unable to stand drastic images (or protecting children against them), but by abortion defenders who found the exhibit's message unacceptable in that the shocking foetus images removed the mother's interest from sight altogether.

The question remains as to the justifiability of prosecuting such exhibitions pursuant to the letter of law. Dorota Jarecka wrote in _GW_ : "The drastic anti-abortion campaign in łódż should not be prohibited – just as Dorota Nieznalska should not be convicted on charges of blasphemy". I myself would be inclined to suggest an interim solution between Jarecka's proposal and the one put forward in the afore-quoted appeal. It seems that the exhibition could have been left in open public space, and arranged in a form unimposing to passers-by unwilling to see the images; for example, viewing it could have required a conscious decision to venture between plaques. An absolute ban on anti-abortion exhibitions, however, would result in unacceptable restrictions to public matter-related debates, handing a retribution-based alibi to persons attempting to curb the dissemination of the transgressive art of today.

In Lieu of a Summary

Culture Wars

The herein-contained synthetic description of the freedom of artistic (and non-artistic) expression during the period of 2003-2007 is obviously far from exhaustive. Suffice to mention that censorship of TV and cinematographic film productions was revisited. The theatre was going through a difficult time; metal and death/black metal band concerts were spiking remarkably high interest of censorship circles - Ryszard Nowak of the All-Polish Committee for Safeguarding against Sects (OKOpS), in particular.

During times of quantitative escalation, many intrusions into the freedom of artistic expression served to prove the far-fetched oversensitivity of local politicians, in resemblance to LPR and their _Operation Arsenał_ in Białystok (several such intrusions have been described above, e.g. Tarasewicz's installation in Poznań or Jaroszek's exhibition in Bielsko-Biała). Such circumstances led to comical, occasionally surreal, situations, always precarious to gallery staff dependent on public officials. In the autumn of 2004, for example, councillor of the right-wing _Razem Polsce_ [ _Together for Poland_ ] formation Józef Heczko was outraged to see a poster by Natalia LL accompanying the exhibition _Podsumowania_ ( _Recapitulations_ ) at the BWA in Bielsko-Biała (7-31 October 2004): "When glancing at the poster, I have no wish to wonder whether the lady is wearing any underwear under that dress or not. Youngsters stare, smirking. Elderly people look on gloomily". While Heczko admitted not to have seen the exhibit itself, he said he knew the artist to be a feminist. On 21 October, Culture Committee councillors visited the BWA to inspect the contents of monograph on Natalia LL, accompanying the show and almost ready for the printing press; ultimately, they issued approval for the publication and gallery's activities alike. Two years later, _Shark_ , a work by David Cˇerny, was removed "under mysterious circumstances" from the exhibition _Shadows of Humor. Przykra sprawa, CzeSka wystawa_ (8 September – 8 October 2006) held at the same gallery, one day after it opened. Showing an effigy of Saddam Hussein immersed in a giant fish tank, the Czech artist's installation paraphrased Damien Hirst's famous _Shark_.

Poster of Natalia LL exhibition _Recapitulations_ [ _Podsumowania_ ] in Bielska Gallery BWA (7–31.10.2004), courtesy of Bielska Gallery BWA

David Cˇerny, _Shark_ , 2005, courtesy of Bielska Gallery BWA

While officials kept insisting that the town had not objected, in actuality gallery's management remained under colossal pressure. Curator of the exhibit William Hollister, an American resident in Prague, said that one day after the show had opened, Deputy Mayor of Bielsko-Biała Zbigniew Michniowski (PO) called the BWA ordering the sculpture's removal. The mayor did not see the work live, only a press photograph thereof the following morning. When pressed for an explanation by the curator, he responded that the piece was irritating and made him feel uncomfortable. Hollister and Smalcerz, having been forced to eliminate the work, decided to show it at _Galeria Szara_ in Cieszyn, that town's authorities seeing nothing problematic with exhibiting the installation. Concurrently, Hollister gave Michniowski no break: having nothing to lose – in contrast to Polish curators – he told the deputy mayor he would not leave the room before being presented with written confirmation that a public official had censored the show. The politician gave in to the curator's blackmail; yet taking advantage of the other man's lack of command of the Polish language, he wrote in his statement that "The decision to limit the time of showing Mr. David Cˇerny's project at the _Shadows of Humor_ exhibition was not made by the exhibition's curator William Hollister, but by the managing body of the BWA Bielska gallery", which could have pointed in equal measure to town hall officials and the gallery's management. Consequently, the subsequent triumphant proclamation to the Polish art world that the authorities had confirmed their censorship of art in writing for the first time was slightly exaggerated. Hollister proceeded with something akin to retaliation, pestering Michniowski with email messages for over two years in protest against censorship. Removing Shark from the exhibition was astonishing in that the piece did not violate any of the "classic" Polish themes of conflict – on the contrary, it actually mocked the "enemy" (Polish troops having taken part in the Iraq War). Spiteful gossip had it that Michniowski had felt offended with his own similarity to the effigy. Notably, only persons entirely independent of local power systems can afford Hollister-like gestures of rebellion. Culture animators, particularly in small centres devoid of art communities, extensive intellectual support structures, and abundant choice of jobs, have to fend for themselves and depend on the personal whims of local bigwigs; consequently, authority-personnel relations may easily take on the form of quasi-mobbing and intimidation, all with impunity. Local officials are clear in their message: no controversy, no scandal; there is enough non-controversial art you can show. You are on the public dime, we are responsible for the public money and we will not be amused by any tomfoolery...

It seems that the significant growth in the number of censorship cases in the years 2003–2007 might have been connected with several factors. Since the autumn of 2001, the left-wing ruled the political scene with absolute power. In comparison with the preceding elections, support for the SLD increased by a dozen percentage points, to 41%. In the context of the landslide victory of the SLD's candidate Aleksander Kwaśniewski in the 2000 presidential elections, post-communists won nearly all the power at the central level even with the need to create a coalition with the PSL. The local governmental elections of 27 October 2002 did not herald any rapid changes in election preferences although a decrease in the support for the SLD was noticed, as the party won "only" 24.65% in elections held at provincial level, with 16.02% support for the PO – PiS coalition, 15.98% for Samoobrona and 14.35% LPR. It was in those elections that Lech Kaczyński (PiS) who ran for the office of the mayor of Warsaw easily beat the SLD candidate and, as we can remember, representatives of the LPR won the elections in Białystok. However, in early 2003 the so-called Rywin scandal in fact wiped out the post-communist left-wing from the political scene, depriving it of public support for good and sealing a strong right-wing turn in the election preferences of the Polish people which led to the results of the parliamentary elections in 2005. Therefore, the quantitative escalation period can be divided into two sub-periods: up until 2005 (EU accession) and after 2005 (the rule of PiS – LPR - Samoobrona coalition). In my view, the latter period established the true beginnings of the cultural war which continues to a greater or lesser extent to date, influencing the intensity of censorship cases. Following James D. Hunter, I would define a cultural war as a conflict manifesting as social and political hostility stemming from a clash of different moral systems. Those systems cannot be subject to negotiations and change just like that - as sources of individual and group identity they refer to ultimatum-like visions of the good and bad, true and false and thus are non-reducible. It is the goal of the conflict which reaches down to the deepest layers of identity for one ethos to win domination over competitive ethoses to a degree which will allow it to independently define reality (we could say in reference to Pierre Bourdieu's theory – to establish its own doxa or at least orthodoxy). It is worth pointing out that it is accompanied by the slogan "those who are not with us are against us"; any intermediate options, attempts at mediation or balancing arguments within a particular situation are treated by conflicting parties with the same distrust and usually fought against just as hard as the key adversary.

It was after the PiS – LPR - Samoobrona coalition got into power that the right wing came together and the conservative part of the society activated significantly while the opposing powers hardened enough to set a certain counterbalance for those tendencies, if not in the Sejm (they are too weak for that even today) then at least in the social _praxis._ Therefore, at one side of the front we had the national right-wing with the Catholic Church as its stronghold while the other was occupied by diverse communities with no specific political background (feminists, sexual minorities, anti-church movements, new left-wing, libertarians, etc.), who were all oriented towards social change through rejection of thinking based on the national and Christian tradition or religious transcendence altogether. That picture is a bit complicated by the profile of the PO which was in power in the years 2007-2015 on a countrywide scale and in many local governments - its ideological background has never had any specific expression and in fact it is set, from one case to the next, either by the opportunistic need to keep public support or individual preferences of some of the more distinct members who usually take positions on the right side of the barricade. At the same time, the cultural conflict which started to be seen at the beginning of the millennium in disputes over art, began to spread onto other spheres of social activity - art became only one of many and not the most important front in the fight, although public visibility has always remained a key issue.

Non-post-communist left-wing as well as feminist and gay communities started bolder, more institutionalized and well thought-out activities in the early 21st century, a fact which along with the appearance of new associations, political parties, publications, social and information campaigns and postulates for changing language towards the spirit of political correctness led to new type of restrictions in the freedom of speech. 2004 saw the organization of Poland's first Equality March in Poznań. Although it was a protest against all kinds of exclusions, it was widely associated with the homosexual community. Having gone just several hundred meters, the march was attacked by counter protesters. A year later, the mayor of Poznań did not consent to another march but when it formed anyway, the police dispelled and arrested many of its members (the mayor's decision was later ruled unlawful by the Provincial Court of Administration). Meanwhile, Mayor of Warsaw Lech Kaczyński issued a ban on the organization of the Equality Parade which was going to be a protest against discrimination of sexual minorities. Despite the ban, the Parade walked the streets of the capital city. More or less at the same time (May 2004), a year after Poles decided in a referendum to join the EU, the accession did happen, having been long awaited by some communities while other perceived it as a risk to Polish independence, identity, customs or even religion. All those phenomena undoubtedly motivated the right-wing to work harder and increase its presence in the public space. It was not by accident that protests against Ryszard Wożniak's exhibition in Wrocław in 2003 were combined with anti-abortion and anti-EU slogans. At the same time, numerous press reports, which are now also available in rapidly expanding internet, on political interference with the freedom of artistic expression might have given rise to ordinary people's need to be ideologically active and encouraged them to act. Surprising was the case of a 79-year-old resident of Kraków who, having seen Igor Mitoraj's "nude" sculptures displayed on the Main Square in 2003 asked the PPO to commence proceedings into dissemination of pornography claiming that "penises were being displayed all over the Market". However, the PPO refused to initiate proceedings. Just like the increasing activity of leftist communities motivated the conservative part of the society, the 2006 PiS coalition with the LPR, which was extremely right-wing and very active party when it comes to censorship, urged some artists to engage in aggressive anti-governmental protests. These actions in turn led to panic among institutions of culture which were more cautious than usual and to a growth in censorship cases. Due to the tensions connected with the political situation of 2005–2007, law enforcement was also infected by oversensitivity.

Paradoxically, as if against all those tendencies, the overall situation of art seemed to improve slowly. Upon the initiative of SLD-appointed Minister of Culture Waldemar Dąbrowski, 2004 saw the beginning of _Zachętas_ , i.e. regional associations of modern art established as part of _Znaki Czasu_ [ _Signs of Time_ ] programme and giving rise to 15 local collections of contemporary art while works on the design of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, both the institution as well as the building, started in 2005. The beginning of the 21st century was also characterized by an increased number of exhibitions. While 18 events were held in BWA in Zielona Góra in 1998, in the following years the number ranged between 27 (2003) and 56 (2007) per year; 12 events were held in Białystok's Arsenał in 2001 while in 2003 the number started to reach 20. Funding, which had been available from the EU since 2004, strengthened that growing tendency even more. It seems that it might have also influenced the number of censorship cases - the increase in the number of cultural events proportionally increased the likelihood of censorship and although in absolute numbers one can see a quantity escalation of restrictions of freedom of speech in 2003–2007, it is uncertain whether one could speak of such an escalation in relative numbers (the ratio of cultural events vs censorship cases did not have to grow at all). Art was also gaining a stronger foothold in the mainstream media whose critics had finally learned to read and explain new artistic phenomena, as clearly seen in _GW_ 's publications. At the same time, a talented generation of creators who entered the artistic scene at the turn of the centuries was academicising gradually.

Moral Panic

It is also worth separately analyzing the statistical lists of cases of censorship from the years 1999–2005, slightly destabilizing the previously proposed division into the periods of qualitative and quantitative escalations. In my view, the notion of "moral panic", as defined below, would be quite useful for the purposes of such an analysis. It is:

sudden, exaggerated, media-enhanced social anxiety caused by the belief that the social order is collapsing. This collapse is caused by the appearance of "social evil" which might be a certain condition, episode, person or a group of people defined as risks to social values and interests; the nature of that risk is presented by the media in a stylized and stereotypical way. It is also important that the sense of risk posed by social evil is most often much higher than any real threat. Moral panic is limited in time, space and with regard to its social range. Usually, it covers a certain, often significant, part of the society who agree as to the existence of risk to accepted values and as to the necessity to act. ... most often it appears at a time of social crises and other changes and difficulties in adjusting to them.

There are five main phases of moral panic. Firstly, the appearance of social evil and attribution of a meaning to it in the public discourse and through the media - at the end of the 1990s, mainstream media notice a "degenerated" latest art which no longer searches for the Good, Truth and Beauty, being used for postmodern ideology which negates traditional values instead. Right wing columnists publish more and more alarming texts, every now and again _GW_ reports on "nonsensical" artistic provocations, articles in opinion-forming weeklies list obscenities of "artists". Secondly, stigmatization - the media present social evil stereotypically. This point needs not to be seen diachronically, i.e. as one following the first point, it has to be perceived synchronically instead. Newspaper articles and TV shows repudiate aesthetic, ethical, historic, intellectual and commercial values of contemporary art. Those tendencies seem to have been summarized in the manipulated, _stimulacral_ feature broadcast by Fakty TVN which led to Dorota Nieznalska's indictment. Thirdly, heightened social anxiety due to the belief that the situation is dangerous enough to require an intervention, e.g. readers' responses in letters to the papers, letters to gallery directors (especially Zach _ę_ ta), statements made by the clergy. Fourthly, undertaking actions meant to eliminate the risk - appearance of "moral experts", people or institutions who pressurise decision makers to increase social control by e.g. introduction of a tougher law. After numerous enunciations in the media, various-level politicians intervene to make personnel changes in exhibitory institutions and subject them to strict control, there are proposals to amend Art 196 PCC, separate ministers and the Ombudsman Office are being urged to interfere with exhibitions, there are frequent attempts at involving law enforcement to block a certain type of statement or make its authors suffer the consequences. The fact that Tarasiewicz's installation was torpedoed in 2003 in the Poznań opera proved the start of a mechanism in which everything which was not associated with a traditional, preferably figurative, easel painting or a traditional statuary sculpture was perceived by right-wing politicians as an emanation of immoral leftist contemporary art. An abstract pattern on a column was becoming as "dangerous" as the most controversial works of critical art or equality parades. However, as I wrote before, art was ceasing to be the main battlefield at the time. The prospects of Polish accession to the EU (May 2004) undoubtedly built a sense of danger in the right-wing communities as well as a condition of ideological mobilization which made them act in all the fields of social life. Fifthly, social anxiety subsides as a result of undertaken action - indeed, 2005 saw a correction of the growing trend of interferences with the freedom of artistic expression, the situation calmed down even in Białystok. However, it was just calm before the nationwide political storm of the years 2006–2007.

**3.6 Period of Stabilization (2007–2010)**

Insult to Religious Feelings

After nearly 15 years of fight for the right to be able to comment on the socio-political reality, it seemed that art was emerging as a victor from the conflict. Critical artists of the nineties won the status of classics and retrospective exhibitions were held to celebrate them in Zachęta (Zbigniew Libera, Katarzyna Kozyra), Dorota Nieznalska was acquitted and after the LPR became a "couch party" with waning public support, the regular "forays" on galleries combined with financial and personal blackmails ended. For some time, art in galleries stopped being of any interest to politicians, at least as a tool for drawing political capital but the widely understood image circulating especially in open public space continuously remained at the centre of ideological attention. The network of institutions engaged in contemporary art was also strengthening. In February 2006, the Minister of Culture established CSW "Znaki Czasu" in Toruń, the building of the institution, the first one to have been built for the purposes of presentation of contemporary art after 1989, was opened in 2008; in 2007 Joanna Mytkowska was appointed director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw which had been established two years before; 2010 saw the official opening of Krakow's MOCAK, and a year later, the Wrocław City Council established Wrocław Contemporary Museum. It was also a period which saw the start of Indeks 73, a collective initiative involved in monitoring and protecting the freedom of art - for over three years of intense activities it was able to win a position as an important player in the Polish art world and no one wanted to provide any excuse to be listed in the body's register of censorship cases.

The number of censorship cases measured in absolute numbers decreased (which does not mean that it became low), returning to its 2003–2004 level, at the same time, attempts at limiting the freedom of artistic expression lost ideological vividness. This dullness of censorship of a kind might have been a reflection of the ideological blandness of the PO which was in power since the end of 2007. In terms of numbers, there were a lot of cases of censorship rationalised with morals (37% of cases reported at the time), but morals are a sphere which is repressed to a greater or lesser degree in every country. In Poland, sexual orientation has always been very controversial and the latter period saw a significant increase in restrictions (or attempted restrictions) of artistic statements on the issue. The period of stabilization saw the beginning of two important trials on the freedom of artistic expression - in 2010 the vocalist of blackmetal band Behemoth was charged with a crime to religious feelings and the trial of painter Krzysztof Kuszej (see p. 121) also got underway. However, none of those cases gave rise to so much controversy as the accusation of Dorota Nieznalska in the past. In the first case, it was likely due to the fact that the repressions did not concern the so-called high art but a specific area of pop culture and in the latter probably because the accusations concerned a sphere which needs to be protected in almost everyone's view and were directed at a little known artist who exhibited his works on online marketplace Allegro and not in the well-renowned Wyspa Gallery. It must also be pointed out that this kind of court-related issues seemed to have been exhausted in the media discourse - the unprecedented trial of Nieznalska might have dulled the topic, making it not very attractive to the press and television. (Mainly local) press continued to report in a sensational and not abuse-free tone about controversial artistic events but the situation seen during Nieznalska's trial when disputes were fought in the media for months and moral and legal judgments were passed did not occur again even in relation to Nergal's case. At the same time, conflicts over art which involved religious elements were no longer as intense as they were in the early 21st century (about 24% of cases). Apart from the Gdańsk performance of the band Behemoth, examples of artistic controversy with religious background include Julia Curyło's _Baranki Boże_ [ _Lambs of God_ ] and the film (or rather "the process of the film shooting") _Adam_ by Marek Wasilewski in łódż.

A19 Gallery has been opened since 2007 at Warsaw's Marymont metro station. It is a gigantic wall (35.87 x 3.43 m) on which works of young artists selected in cyclical contests are presented. The work of graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts Julia Curyło entitled _Baranki Boże_ [ _Lambs of God_ ] (a photograph wallpaper made of a painting of the same title) was going to be displayed at the station from 6 January to 30 April 2010. However, several days after the mural was unveiled, the public started to protest. The protesters emphasized that the lambs in the mural looked like "inflatable dolls from a sex shop for zoophytes" and that several of them were shown in a way which suggests a sexual intercourse. Juxtaposed with the title (in the New Testament terminology the Lamb of God refers to the sacrifice made by Jesus on the cross), those elements of the work proved especially controversial to those who believe in God. It was also important that the mural was going to be presented in the Easter period.

On 20 January, someone sprayed the words "piece of junk, not art" on the mural. The perpetrator, 21-year-old photography student Paweł Kostkowski, was stopped by the metro security services and brought to the police. He said that his action was based on religious grounds. The Programme Board of the project met after the incident and emphasized in a written statement that when choosing the work it was not aware of the origin of the lambs. The body also decided to have the work removed before Easter. Denying some allegations, the Board also pointed out that the contest was not publicly funded and the mural did not breach Art 196 PCC which penalizes the insult to religious feelings.

Julia Curyło's mural was definitely provocative, however it is worth pointing out that the protesters did not see or did not want to see the ambivalence which is of key importance to its interpretation while it was this ambivalence that made it impossible to boil its content down to pure blasphemy. The very use of the plural term _Lambs of God_ in the title made the comparison of the inflatable lambs to Christ ungrounded (the Programme Board was not wrong when it emphasized that the work does not constitute an offence under Art 196 PCC). It seems that the title of the work suggests not so much a reference to Christ but to the People of God, a "flock of sheep" that Christ is a shepherd of and whose absence in the painting seems significant (there is only a piece of cloth resembling a red flag blowing in the clouds, as if it has just been left by the Christ arisen). The reference to God's people is proven by the use of the plural ("lambs") as well as a direct usage of the profane, i.e. sex shop gadgets. The latter are definitely perverse, however they are not figments of the artist's imagination - they are parts of the reality, items which can be bought from dozens of Warsaw's specialist shops and if there was no demand for them they would not exist. It might seem that the violence and one-sidedness of protests on the part of some members of the audience pointed out to their need to repress certain uncomfortable social facts connected with the area of sexuality. After all, Warsaw is not only the capital of a "largely Catholic country" but as every metropolis, it is also a _sin city_.

Another case was based on developments connected with a film made by Marek Wasilewski, professor of the University of the Arts in Poznań, as part of the Focus łódż Biennale festival. On 8 December 2006 he testified as a witness in Dorota Nieznalska's trial. His disquisitions are among the most interesting, the best thought-out and the most competent among dozens of other testimonies made during the court proceedings which dragged on for years. Therefore, it is quite paradoxical that Wasilewski could have been brought to court himself, having been charged with the same offense as Nieznalska

In May 2010, the local press in łódż heated up:

According to one of the witnesses, right before eight am, a young barefoot man in a coat appeared in front of a church during the morning holy mass. After a few minutes, he entered the church and took his coat off. He was naked. A moment later, he left the shrine. A professional film crew recorded the whole thing. During the incident, the few worshippers were gathered in front of the altar. However, a parish member who was standing in the hall saw the event. He was outraged. He notified parish priest Ireneusz Kulesza and the latter immediately reported the incident to the police.

Meanwhile, tabloid "Fakt" reported: "A completely naked man stormed into a metropolitan cathedral in łódż during the morning mass. He strolled naked between the benches, having no regard for the feelings of the worshippers. He was closely followed by a camera operator and the whole thing was recorded by a Poznań film crew".

According to Wasilewski who was shooting a short film for the biennale in łódż that day (he was filming a naked man walking the streets of the town), "nobody could have seen a naked actor in the church because he was simply not there while he was seen in front of the church by one man". During the filming we experienced no negative response because apart from that man there were no direct witnesses. We started the filming after the mass, and waited for the people to leave the church and the square in front of the cathedral before we started shooting. The naked actor did not enter the church, when he was walking through the door of the vestibule he was covered with a coat, neither did we leave the vestibule which was completely dark inside. The activities such as those in łódż never have any hard scenario, there are many variants to them since when we go into the street we do not know e.g. what the response of the pedestrians will be. Only twenty seconds of the twenty-minute film take place in front of the cathedral, all the other scenes were shot at Piotrkowska Street". The discrepancy between the _stimulacral_ press reports and the depiction of events presented by Wasilewski is quite striking, however the version presented by the artist was confirmed by CCTV recording.

Marek Wasilewski, _Adam_ , film (still image), 2012, courtesy of Marek Wasilewski

The acts of Wasilewski as the managing perpetrator and those of the actor were definitely done in public and in "a place indented for public practice of religious worship". However, it is debatable whether stepping through the threshold of a vestibule in a cathedral naked was an objective expression of contempt for the shrine, i.e. whether it was an insult within the meaning of Art 196 PCC. After all, nakedness in itself does not have to be offending, it is enough to imagine that instead of an actor we would be dealing with a person who was actually robbed of his clothes by criminals and then looked for shelter in the church. The artist seemed to symbolically refer to a similar situation as well as old-time customs. In the legal culture of the Middle Ages, a cathedral shrine was considered to be a so-called asylum protecting one against vendetta or arbitrary court proceedings which were often a source of monarchical abuses. In Wasilewski's artistic vision, a naked man who steps into the łódż cathedral does not insult, he emphasizes the role of this place as a safe haven, thus also pointing out to the role of God as the one whom we turn to when in need. However, even if we adopted the restrictive interpretation and considered nudity as objectively experienced contempt for a place of worship which insulted the religious feelings of other people, in this case it would not mean an unavoidable conviction for the artist and the actor. It would be also necessary for them to fulfil the subjective features of a prohibited act.

It might be concluded from the facts presented by Wasilewski (filming in the early hours, after the mass, with an empty square, ascetic behaviour of the actor who did not make any gestures, only walked, the fact that he was immediately covered in a dark vestibule) that even if members of the film crew expected that their behaviour might insult someone's religious feelings, they wanted to avoid that and did not agree to it, therefore they did not act intentionally. Accusing anyone from the film crew of a crime of insult to religious feelings would be based on exceptionally feeble grounds. Therefore, it is not surprising that at the turn of August and September 2010 the PPO discontinued the proceedings due to the fact that the features of a prohibited act had not been fulfilled.

As in many other cases, emotions played the biggest part in Wasilewski's case as did media-enhanced imagination. The interpretation of Art 196 PCC, according to which a subject of religious worship might be publicly insulted "indirectly", in the absence of the victim who learns of the fact from the media, is controversial in criminal law and in the case of a work of art, it seems even more complicated than e.g. in case of a slander. Interpretive openness of the work, the context of its creation and display, its aesthetic values which are perceivable only in direct contact seem to demand greater caution in legal evaluations. After all, a sensational piece of news about "a naked man who stormed into a church during a mass" is something quite different to watching Wasilewski's film full of the surreal atmosphere and symbolic references.

We Keep Saying NO to Homosexuals

The approach to homosexuality is changing in Poland slowly but consistently, with not so much as full social acceptance but tolerance to this sexual orientation improving gradually. Therefore, we can speak of a certain evolution towards openness but, let us emphasise it explicitly, tolerance is not an equality notion as it does assume asymmetry of positions. The improved tolerance for the presence of homosexual people in the public domain (homosexuality is talked about more often, with more freedom and less controversy than 20 or even 10 years ago when the Equality March was banned in Poznań) is accompanied by reluctance to or fear of any changes in the legal and social status quo connected with the so-called traditional family model (reasoning such as: "I am tolerant but why legitimize such relationships?"), and moreover, there is a continued and relatively constant tendency to make any signs of this kind of sexual preferences invisible. At the same time, emancipation demands which are being voiced ever bolder by the gay community lead to proportionally stronger resistance from a big part of the society and politicians or even aggression from those of extremely conservative beliefs. Those phenomena could affect perception of art created by homosexuals and using homosexual references.

In February 2009, the Warsaw Uprising Museum commissioned Karol Radziszewski to design a mural which was going to be presented on the outside gallery of works by contemporary artists featured on the fence around the institution. However, Radziszewski's proposal was rejected. Unofficially it was being said that part of the design which showed an injured insurgent licking his own hand was controversial. Even a trace of erotic suggestion in Radziszewki's project was enough to make the management of the museum suspicious. After a while, the artist himself commented on his project with the following words: "I had no intention to provoke at the time. It would have been too easy: to paint insurgents in a homoerotic situation and then accuse the museum of homophobia. I proposed a very calm scene, therefore I was all the more surprised by the refusal".

Karol Radziszewski, _Insurgents_ [ _Powstan´cy_ ], 2009, unrealised project of a mural for the Warsaw Uprising Museum, courtesy of Karola Radziszewskiego

**Radziszewski was also curator of the Siusiu w torcik [Pee into the Cake] exhibition in** Zachęta (4 September – 22 November 2009) whose part included screening of the first gay pornographic film to have been produced in Poland. As the curator explained: "most of contemporary exhibitions are boring - they lack some enlivening, even excitement... . The public love scandals, they even expect them. I meet those demands". The film was screened once a week behind a red curtain. Zachęta's director Agnieszka Morawińska said that "it was a scandal by popular demand". Before the exhibition, Radziszewski asked what kind of formalities he needed to meet not to cause any legal problems for the institution. Obviously, a notice that the film is pornographic was required, therefore the artist made a painting on which on a white background he wrote the following bilingual warning: »Chłopcy fantomowcy. [ _Phantom_ _Boys_ ] 2000, 1'25« the first gay porno movie to have been produced in Poland. Film presented courtesy of »Gejzer« monthly. WARNING! The film is addressed only to adults whose world view or religious beliefs do not prevent them from watching it. Enter out of your own free will and at your own responsibility. Screenings are held every Friday at 18:30". Despite that in early October 2009 PiS deputy Artur Górski submitted an interpellation with the minister of culture and national heritage concerning a gay porno movie screened in the Zachęta Gallery. Górski was particularly outraged at the fact that "those things are happening at a National Gallery where many extraordinary exhibitions proving the high level of Polish art were presented. Meanwhile, we are dealing with profanation of a place which witnessed important historical events...". Then, he asked: "should the severe assessment of activities undertaken by the management of Zachęta Gallery not lead to Mrs Agnieszka Morawińska's dismissal as head of the facility?".

The case of the _Siusiu w torcik_ exhibition is a perfect example of how the Polish people's approach to contemporary art changed during that time. The very slogan "scandal by popular demand" which was officially used by the artist and the director of Zachęta proved that firstly, it was not easy to start such a scandal and it required special endeavours on the part of organizers of the exhibition, while several years before it was enough to include a name of an artist or even distant erotic or religious references to provoke political raids, acts of censorship and media polemics. Secondly, things calmed down around art, it stopped preoccupying politicians - disputes over art, if there were any, lost their significance and became marginalized in public debates. Even the intervention by deputy Górski who was well-known for his ultraconservative comments on social and morality issues did not seem convincing. Instead of rows at the gallery, letters demanding closure of the exhibition, cuts in the institution's budget and engagement of prosecutors, Górski "gently" asked the minister at the very end of his query whether it would be possible to dismiss Morawińska.

PiS's Stanisław Pięta was another deputy to start an active fight against "dissenting" art. Nearly at the same time as Górski he submitted an interpellation to the minister of culture and national heritage about an exhibition of "items which refer to homosexuality", i.e. _Ars homo erotica_ which had been planned in the MNW (it is worth pointing out that neither of the parliamentarians cooperated, they acted on their own, and thus their interventions became manifestations of individuals, not a party or an ideologically-connected group and lost their media and causative power. The exhibition was opened on 11 June 2010 and was a kind of an inauguration of the exhibitory programme developed by new director of the MNW Piotr Piotrowski. In line with his idea, the museum should serve the critical function, i.e. self-criticize existing canons and ways of its own operation as well as engage in public criticism by actively taking part in public debates and initiating conflicts on its own. The exhibition was curated by Paweł Leszkowicz who said that "this will be the biggest exhibition of male nudes from antiquity to contemporary times to have ever been presented in Poland. Perception of nudes is dominated by the heteronormative view. We tried to reverse that order for a moment, for the three months of the exhibition, and place that which had to date been marginalized at the centre".

Deputy Pięta responded very aggressively to this _dictum_ and asked the minister why the director of the museum "limits himself only to »works of art« which refer to homosexuality, why he wants to discriminate against the works of necrophiliacs, paedophiles and zoophiles? Homosexuality is a deviation which is similar to all of the above". He emphasized that a museum "which collects treasures of national heritage is no place for such peculiarities. The current director wants to turn a temple of art into a privy". Obviously, he also touched upon the institution being publicly funded and the fact that in connection with that "it cannot be a tool for demoralizing the public at the hands of a marginal, isolated group". However, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Żuchowski defended the exhibition and the concept of a critical museum. Deputies Pięta and Górski acted independently, but according to a similar plan and following the same reasoning. Important was the thread of "sullying" a temple of art - national museums and galleries were places where gay people were forbidden, and, as we have seen, activities such as e.g. peeling potatoes were also inadmissible there. Association Pracownia Różnorodności [Diversity Workshop] responded to Pięta's words by filing an indictment in connection with defamation with the Regional Court in late October 2010. However, the Sejm did not revoke his parliamentary immunity.

Therefore, on the one hand the presence of the gay community in the public domain is open to strong restrictions, and on the other, when homophobic statements are made, the community wants to defend itself and thus moves towards limiting the freedom of expression itself. Such a defensive response was triggered by Andrzej Krauze's drawing published on 15 June 2009 in _Rzeczpospolita_ daily. The drawing presented a marrying gay couple and a man with a goat on a rope to which he said: "We just have to wait for those gentlemen to get married and then it's our turn!" Several days later, the daily featured an article by Maciej Rybiński who signed it as Mecka the Goat from the Pasture. In the text, _Mecka the Goat_ expressed her criticism of Krauze's comparison of a heterosexual mixed-species relationship of a goat and a man to homosexual relationships which are against nature. In another text featured in _Rzeczpospolita_ ultra-Catholic publicist Tomasz Terlikowski wrote: "If procreation, upbringing and loyalty do not matter in the relations of two partners, and their only goal is to satisfy them, there is no reason to make any difference between a homosexual and a zoophile relation". In his opinion, political correctness leads to forced changes in the language and blockage of a scientific discussion on homosexuality and a kind of "terror" against those who try to polemicise about it in a way which is against the interests of the gay lobby.

Urszula Pawlik and Michał Minałto (a bisexual woman and a gay man) who carried a big banner reading "We demand a bill on civil partnerships" during the Equality Parade in June 2009, a fact which was shown by various TV stations, had the impression that it was them that _Rzeczpospolita_ equalized to zoophiles. They felt humiliated by that and demanded a correction and an apology from the paper. It is worth pointing out that no article presenting the arguments of the other side was published by the daily at the time. _Rzeczpospolita_ refused to apologize, emphasizing that in a democratic state everyone has the right to speak the views they consider right. In early December 2009, supported by Kampania Przeciwko Homofobii Campaign Against Homophobia] and Stowarzyszenie Lambda [Lambda Association], Pawlik and Minałto brought an action to court against Andrzej Krauze, Maciej Rybiński (some sources list also Tomasz Terlikowski as a defendant) and editor-in-chief Paweł Lisicki, demanding a correction, an apology and PLN 10,000 to be donated to charity. The Polish gay community also intervened in an English daily _The Guardian_ with whom Krauze cooperated but head of the paper's graphic department Roger Browning emphasized that although he understood the outrage, he had no influence over what other papers publish. Krauze allegedly ensured him that the drawing was misunderstood in Poland as he meant to ridicule the conservative part of society which objected to legal reforms. According to Krauze, "Exaggeration is a characteristic feature of satire. Even if I exaggerated in the drawing with the goat, as a satirist it is my right. And I will defend that right". The artist wanted to protest against homosexual marriages but not against civil partnerships which he accepts, at the same time admitting that he would not publish such a drawing in the _Guardian._[ 649

In January 2012, the district court ruled that _Rzeczpospolita_ did not have to apologize for the drawing and the satirical article. According to the court, the fact that even a big part of society considers a given statement outrageous and inacceptable is not enough to apply norms which protect the personal rights of individuals. In line with the Constitution, freedom of speech and the press is one of the basic civic values. The paper's publications would have had to "expressly refer" to the plaintiffs for their personal rights to have been infringed. No press information stated whether the court examined the issue of the caricature as a specific artistic type of communication for which the boundaries of freedom of expression are wider.

After the end of the proceedings, _GW_ 's Wojciech Karpiszczuk rightly noticed a legal asymmetry between the protection of religious feelings and the protection of minority rights as well as the absence of criminal regulations protecting people against discrimination with respect to sex, sexual identity, age and disability. "The Criminal Code sanctions an offense such as public insult connected with religious beliefs. It can be seen on the example of singer Doda who was recently fined for insult to religious feelings after, referring to the Bible, she said in an interview: 'One can hardly believe in something that was written by some dude plastered with wine and smoking some kind of weed'. Meanwhile, not long ago the court dismissed the action filed Urszula Pawlik and Michał Minałto...". Karpieszczuk mixed the protection of personal rights under the PPC with that stemming from the Civil Code. In the latter case, courts usually refuse protection of religious beliefs as well as of dignity connected with identity or sexual orientation when the slanderous statement has no specific expressly indicated addressee or a group of addressees. Meanwhile, the asymmetry of protection in the criminal code can be removed in a twofold way - firstly, in the way postulated by Karpiszczuk, through introduction of additional regulations which would protect the dignity of sexual minorities and not only the dignity of national, ethnic, race or religious minorities. Such a provision could apply to _Rzeczpospolita's_ publication unless the court would admit a kind of a countertype stemming from e.g. the use of caricature. An amendment to Art 257 PCC seems justified because the regulation would protect the rights of a historically victimized minority which is just fighting for recognition of their rights, contrary to religious believers, especially Catholics, whose world view is protected by numerous legal privileges. There is also another way, which I personally consider a better option in the Polish context, i.e. an attempt at liberalizing or derogating various criminal regulations limiting the freedom of speech and pointing us more in the direction of a free market of ideas; at the same time putting emphasis on education.

History-oriented Politics Continued

The two-year period during which PiS was in power resulted in the introduction of the notion of "history-oriented politics" into the ongoing political affairs. The new government headed by Donald Tusk did not cease to support that idea (undoubtedly seeing it as a comfortable instrument in political games), but it did amend it to some extent. In 2008, the minister of culture in the PO-PSL government Bogdan Zdrojewski abandoned the programme _Patriotism of tomorrow_ claiming that "it was the field of many abuses... . After all, the programme included initiatives such as playing bridge tournaments in castle ruins or organization of bicycle rallies in search for historical monuments in places where there were none". Sometimes, associations and local governments "patriotised" ordinary street parties and fairs to obtain funding. Having been funded from the programme, instead of providing serious educational content, the recently popular reenactments of various historic events often turned into a kind of a game, a fair (for actors and audiences) during which the seriousness and drama of the reenacted events and the proper historic context were lost. Reenactments of the most terrible events from the latest history, such as the one of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising planned in 2008 (and eventually cancelled) seem most problematic. Therefore, the allegation of aesthetisation and banalisation of evil, leading to a false image of history, seems to be of key importance to such events. In 2011, the government returned to a modernised, reformed idea of reenactments, this time under the name of the _Grand Theatre of History_.

Obviously, the mythologizing tendencies which provided the basics of history-oriented politics continued in a modified form by Donald Tusk's government resulted in marginalization of critical and polemic tendencies which appeared in historiography and art. The conflict manifested the most strongly in cinematography - a medium of a significant financial dependence on the state patron and the strongest influence on the public. The end of August 2008 saw a media and political dispute over the script of a movie entitled _Tajemnica Westerplatte_ [ _The Secret of Westerplatte_ ]. Author of the screenplay and director Paweł Chochlew wanted to tell the story of the defence of Westerplatte in a Hollywood-like style and the film was scheduled to be completed on the 70th anniversary of WWII outbreak. The plot was going to be centred around the dispute between Westerplatte commander major Henryk Sucharski (a pragmatist) and his deputy captain Franciszek Dąbrowski (a romantic). When the filmmakers asked the Prime Minister's Chancellery for patronage, the latter forwarded the screenplay for evaluation by expert historians. One of them, Mariusz Wójtowicz-Podhorski (who was preparing his own script for a film about Westerplatte) decided that Chochlew's project was a "rude and exceptionally brutal attack on a legend", it disgraced the soldiers who fought there, was "anti-Polish" and fictitious in 80%."

Obviously, the politicians in power also responded. Head of the prime minister's cabinet Sławomir Nowak said: "We build the Museum of the Westerplatte Battlefield together to remind everyone of the special importance of the Polish Thermopile. Therefore, under no circumstances will we promote something which suggests that Westerplatte defenders were abusing alcohol or acting irresponsibly and uncivilly, to put it mildly" and the prime minister added that "public money will be spent on projects which enhance the sense of national identity and pride, instead of weakening it". Asked whether artists have full freedom to create in Poland, in an interview given a few days later for _GW_ , Minister of Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski answered: "Yes, all of them. However, not all artistic activities should be publically funded". Chochlew himself denied the allegations, emphasizing that his preliminary research was very extensive - he used all the available sources concerning the Westerplatte defence.

After the negative responses from the politicians in power some co-producers withdrew from sponsoring the project, and the Polish Film Institute (PISF), which had complemented the screenplay and promised a PLN 3,5 million (ca. USD 1,6 million) subsidy, ordered additional expert opinions just in case and said that funding of Chochlew's film would depend on them. Allegedly, PISF's response was based on concerns about possible actions on infringement of personal rights which could block distribution of the film – every day the institute received letters of protest, also from hastily formed associations, e.g. the Committee for the Defence of Westerplatte 2008. The filmmakers quickly presented another version of the screenplay without the most controversial scenes. In the end, PISF kept the subsidy for _The Secret of Westerplatte_ , and the film was made, although on a reduced budget and with a cast which changed during the filming for not entirely disclosed reasons. Chochlew's movie premiered three and a half years later than planned. Director and PO senator Kazimierz Kutz aptly summarized the causes of the commotion: "the director and the producer of _The Secret of Westerplatte_ made a mistake by sending the prime minister the screenplay and asking him for patronage. It is proof of the absence of reason and unfamiliarity with the political situation. There is an aggressive fight in Poland between PiS and PO, also over historical monuments. The first ones have the Warsaw Uprising Museum, the latter want a Westerplatte Museum. The filmmakers let themselves be caught in political games at their own request".

The fact that disputes over history-oriented politics peaked in the years 2007-2008 was no coincidence. Had PO negated PiS's history oriented policy after it got into power, it would have been exposed to the attacks of the opposition and the accusation of not being patriotic. At the same time, the issue of Chochlew's film showed that the creation of works (even if screenplays are selected in contests) to please politically motivated and imposed theses about "how it really was", "what was important" and "how it should be presented today" does not bode well for art. It is no new discovery, the fact had been known in Poland at least since the beginning of 1950s when communists imposed the social realism doctrine. Neither does the significance and absolute indisputability of the filmed events alone "make the movie", as it was expressly confirmed by the severe criticism of pictures such as Jerzy Hoffman's _1920 Bitwa warszawska_ [ _Battle of Warsaw 1920_ ] (2011) or Renzo Martinelli's _Bitwa pod Wiedniem_ [ _September Eleven 1683_ ] (2012) which were to glorify Polish arms. The scandal involving Chochlew's scenario made filmmakers face a particularly unattractive alternative: comply with the tastes and needs of politicians and by doing that keep state funding or create according to their own artistic vision and principles of cinematic art but for their own money.

Chochlew's attackers included film director Władysław Pasikowski who accused him of being inexperienced. Two months after the scandal around the film made by his younger colleague, in an interview for _GW_ Pasikowski himself accused the PISF of censoring film projects, including his movie _Kadisz_ [ _Kaddish_ ] which was devoted to Polish anti-Semitism. In his opinion "Since... _Kaddish_ 's screenplay is good and has good reviews, politics, or more precisely political censorship is the only reason why it was not made (obviously apart from money)". The PISF's Director Agnieszka Odorowicz denied, explaining the decision with formal reasons (the fact that the director asked for funding for two films at the same time and the subsidy was granted to his other project called _Stankiewicz_ ) and doubts on the part of experts.

The film finally premiered in cinemas in November 2012 with the title changed to _Pokłosie_ [Aftermath]. Over 60% of the budget which was preliminary declared by Pasikowski came from a PISF subsidy (with a 42% average for other films), a fact which seems to indicate that the original lack of funding from the Institute was politically motivated (the first decision was allegedly taken when PiS, a party very sensitive to how Polish-Jewish relations during WWII are depicted, was still in power).

In the years 2007–2009, Poland also saw a debate on artistic relics of the Polish People's Republic's past, especially monuments. Usually, the removal of communist memorials was treated as an expression of historical justice and was not highly controversial. However, problems appear when we remove an ideologically problematic monument which at the same time is a great work of art, as it was the case during the (luckily failed) attempt at demolishing Władysław Hasior's _Monument to the victims of internal fights after the WWII_ , commonly known as _The Pipe Organ_ (1966).

It Is Not the End Yet...

In July 2009, conflicted with Wojciech Krukowski and the CSW ZU's curator team, Zbigniew Libera refused any kind of cooperation on the _Schizma_. _Sztuka polska lat 90._ [ _Schism. The Polish art of the 1990s_ ] exhibition (9 September–21 November). Despite that the curator of the project Adam Mazur decided to exhibit Libera's work _Christus Ist Mein Leben_ (the 1989 original was destroyed, the work was partially reconstructed in the late 1990s), believing that it was owned by the CSW ZU. Mazur also attempted to reinterpret his work and put the artefact, which had been intended to be presented on the ground, above the entrance to the room with documentation on _Lego. ConcentrationCamp_ and Artur Żmijewski's film _Berek_ [ _A Game of Tag_ ]. Libera decided that the integrity of his work was disrupted, as it had been meant to be a reflection over the alliance of religion and capitalism in the times of early transformation and not, as Mazur wanted, a commentary on the Holocaust and the ways it is presented in Polish art of the end of the 20th century. Therefore, Libera hired a law firm which requested protection of his copyright, at the same time demanding that the gallery apologises to the artist immediately in the press and surrenders all his works from the CSW ZU Collection. It cannot be denied that Libera's aggressive legal action resembled Lego's legal attack against him 12 years before and stood in contrast with the image of an anti-systemic rebellious artist. It is worth emphasizing that the attempt at blocking the curator's lawlessness in the CSW ZU and in fact also the curator's freedom of expression and his right to interpret the work originated from an artist who himself freely processed the works of other artists. By hiring lawyers against the CSW ZU, Libera himself seemed to cultivate the old myth - transgressions are only for artists.

A grand monographic exhibition of Libera's works was held at the same time at the Zachęta. Numerous photographs of the artist featured in the press gave the event a lot of publicity. On the occasion, Mazur pointed out that "critical art, which Zbigniew Libera _in fact is_ , is becoming part of a system which it was meant to criticize; it is a spectacle easily absorbed by uncritical media", "in this context, the titles of press reports such as »the artist, the public enemy«... must be treated as a kind of publicity stunt, rather than a statement which is based on reality in any way". Soon after the exhibition of the "father" of critical art at the Zachęta, the institution organised a presentation of works by its "mother" Katarzyna Kozyra (4 December 2010 – 13 February 2011). Meanwhile, in 2012, the National Museum in Gdańsk which declared that it builds its collection on the basis of works of critical art, bought one of Dorota Nieznalska's pieces.

It seems that art finally won the minimum scope of freedom needed to live, which encompassed gallery interiors. It was only in the period of stabilization that the once controversial works could be presented more freely in exhibitions and their creators did not have to fear legal consequences, political inference or aggressive attacks from the press. Summarizing the first decade of the 21st century, Dorota Jarecka concluded optimistically:

The wins by Cattelan, Nieznalska, Libera, Katarzyna Kozyra and Artur Żmijewski are something like the American First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech. At the moment, everyone who talks about the way how art touches upon issues such as religion, body, sex, politics, death, sickness, Holocaust, needs to return to debates around those artists as the model. It can be compared to the influence exerted on the public sphere by the simultaneous debate on the rights of women, as well as the debate on Polish anti-Semitism which started right after the publication of Gross's famous book on Jedwabne. Those events remodelled the language of the public debate, excluding anti-women and anti-Semitic insults from it but also slanders connected with art.

However, the situation was neither as problem-free nor as obvious, a fact that stemmed both from general historical and structural conditions as well as current social mechanisms and practices which usually depend on them.

Jarecka's diagnosis was backed by the belief that the issue of freedom of expression moves linearly towards some peak of nearly unlimited freedom. The belief is naive not only since we will always be subconsciously subject to some doxa, but also because the battlefield of heterodoxy and orthodoxy is a place of never-ending tensions, sociałpoliticałeconomic pressures, revaluations and reactions, breakthroughs and returns of cultural conflicts which continuously destabilize and move the boundaries of what can and cannot be said, showed, thought. The above also applies to art which is an important component of symbolic exchange. In Poland, given the rise of the culture clash over the past several years, disputes on separate artefacts are part of more fundamental, identity-related social conflicts. It is for those reasons that it seems that censorship of art is often of a different weight and has a different trajectory than analogous activities in old democracy states. There is a historic justification to this phenomenon which is worth approaching in the categories of _the longue durée_ \- relatively permanent structures subjected to very slow historic changes. The termination of GUKPPiW and introduction of constitutional guarantees of freedoms and human rights theoretically gave us a chance to look at the freedom of speech and art from the perspective of post-Enlightenment liberal democracies, however, the problem lies in the fact that a change of the legal framework alone is not enough. Neither changes to the law, nor an exhibition scandal, nor a court judgment, not even accession to the EU will suddenly change the socio-religious relations which have been structurally reproduced for dozens or hundreds of years. Poland is still painfully affected by the superficial reception of Enlightenment ideas and the absence of a contestatory tradition in art with regard to social or artistic _status quo_. Visual arts have never been considered prestigious in our country and if they were appreciated, it was mainly done as part of patriotically-motivated duties or deliberations in the categories of autonomous, formal values of the work. Those phenomena are continuously accompanied by the dominant religious context which is usually conducive to acts of censorship.

Even in the times of the Polish People's Republic, the conservative Catholic Church did not show much understanding of artistic experiments and it did not find it improper to inspire the state coercion system, (which it itself hated), to prevent them. After 1989 the authority and the political power of the Catholic Church let it mark legal regulations and actual boundaries of freedom of expression. And although the Church no longer "rules the souls" as it did e.g. in the eighties, its social influence is still significant and it remains an important player on the political scene which all the ruling parties need to take into account. Thus, it actively maintains the sociałreligious status-quo. The conservative profile of social relations translates into law. In Poland, many regulations which pose a threat to free exchange of thoughts are still in force, while authorities, even those considering themselves liberal, are in no rush to change at least some of the controversial provisions. It is dangerous given that the doctrine and judicature of various levels show not much understanding of the idea of freedom of expression. Quite alarming were verdicts based on very controversial provisions of the PCC, such as the conviction of the creator of website Antykomor.pl for insult of the president, the conviction of football fans chanting "Donald, you moron, your government will be overthrown by football hools" for insult of "constitutional governing bodies of the Republic of Poland", and the 2012 conviction of singer Dorota "Doda" Rabczewska who referred to authors of the Bible as "some dudes plastered with wine and smoking some kind of weed", for insult to religious feelings (Art 196 PCC). When Doda filed a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court, the body ruled that Art 196 PCC complies with the Constitution. Doda's statement was part of an interview, not an artistic creation, and possibly it was for that reason that courts addressed it differently than in Nieznalska's, Darski's or Kuszej's cases. This assumption is confirmed by the fact that despite having to initiate several dozen explanatory proceedings in cases of alleged offenses in connection with artistic activities after 1989, to date the prosecutors only filed three indictments. As a consequence, the 2003 non-final conviction of Dorota Nieznalska was the first and last judgment which sentenced the defendant for an artistic statement over the past 28 years, all the other similar cases (subsequent rulings on the artist and judgments in Adam Nergal Darski's and Krzysztof Kuszej's cases) ended with acquittals. Therefore, it seems that the PPO and particularly lower-instance courts tended to grant a special status to art. In my belief, this is only seemingly a good solution. As we have seen, Michelangelo, "an artist worlds apart", left a permanent mark on the thinking about artists and the nature of their activities. His widely admired works broke formal canons, and importantly, standards connected with iconography and content. When sensitivity of the epoch changed and the outlook on the world became more rigid, the power of his name made even Catholic radicals refrain from iconoclastic impulses. Veronese knew it when he defended himself by quoting Michelangelo's precedents while standing before the Inquisition Tribunal. Dorota Nieznalska also knew it when 430 years later, having been accused of a crime of insult to religious feelings, she referred to the works of the Renaissance hero. From the 16th century, the art canon started to function as a kind of a shield protecting against censorship and in the 19th century the same power was granted to the notion of art itself, being already permanently tied to the talent of an extraordinary individual - the artist. The belief that the creator remained entirely free in art did not seem problematic as long as they stayed in the area of modernist autonomy of form. The fact that they could reign the form proved their genius and let them raise the effects of their work above the "mundane" issues of this world as if they were a priest. The attack on the autonomy of art by the historical avant-garde movements bared the transgression of social, moral and legal norms at the cost of issues addressed by form, but was not equal to artists throwing off their priestly robes. Also today, after modernist and avant-garde narrations were questioned by philosophy and art, creators are reluctant to give up their privileges which arose from the old 19th century myth of the artist-priest: negating the autonomy of art they still demand this autonomy (immunity) for themselves, thus, they _volens nolens_ autonomise their works anew. Artists' claims are protected by a number of defensive tactics which formed over the ages and are meant to justify and provide immunity to the violations of the social and legal _status quo_.

In my belief, it makes no sense in Poland to translate those claims into legal regulations as the currently applicable legal framework makes it possible to treat artistic activity liberally, without referring to the so-called countertype of art. The softening of many regulations which restrict the freedom of expression, a process which in itself is very needed in Polish criminal law, cannot apply only to creators, it should encompass the entire society too. It seems that it will only be possible when the discourse on the freedom of expression in general and the freedom of art in particular is thoroughly remodelled in the public sphere. The above was confirmed by the debate on the unprecedented trial of Dorota Nieznalska. The voices of support for the artist did not include ones which would be motivated by a wider outlook on the freedom of expression, not just the narrow "guild-related" interests of creators. In my view, the array of tactics used by the commentators did not include the most important one, i.e. the First Amendment defence - art is part of the universe of expression which deserves special protection as a whole (obviously the name of the tactic is symbolic in Poland and the reference to it is postulative). Art should not be treated as a "madman" or a social "alien" - the immunity of art, including the art countertype notion, protects the artist against liability for their own actions, at the same time preventing the public from engaging in a true meeting with art. It also seems that the artists' focus on religious or morałrelated oppression blocks reflection over other important problems. The time has come for the Polish art world to reject the pose of an ideological victim and redirect energy towards analyses of class conflicts and institutional critique. It was not long ago that artists started to address their precarious situation and social repercussions of the free market transformation, however the critique of the art market, the informal curator-sociałbusiness relations, the role of art institutions e.g. their purchasing policy is still very weak. As an inherent feature of every field, such relations of power will always determine the scope of possibilities for potential actors who play for various stakes, including for setting rules applicable in that field. The latter are formative: artists, curators, critics, gallery owners, art dealers, scholars, audiences generate the field of art, at the same time being its products. Analysing this constitutive censorship on the pre-preventive, or doxic level seems to be a difficult but also an interesting research problem.

Apart from general issues, it is also worth pointing out to a number of other factors which make one reluctant to accept Dorota Jarecka'a aforementioned optimistic diagnosis. Firstly, it must be emphasised that after 2007 the number of attempts at restricting or restrictions of freedom of expression still remained high but their meaning and structure changed - cases of censorship usually concerned less prominent places, events and people, were not of any systemic nature and had no distinctive ideological or party-related background. They did not give rise to much controversy as had been the case in the past - the media, even those focused on the arts, were not much interested in censorship, writing about local excesses, mainly to meet their reporting duties, instead. Secondly, it seems that ideological disputes started to concern art to a lesser degree, focusing more on the image in general. Signs, symbols or more generally aesthetics circulating in the media and the public space became more important than what was happening in galleries; neither did ideologists forget about the language, school curricula and obviously the law. Thirdly, in reference to the preceding point, it is worth pointing out that what became admissible in galleries, including those run by the state or local governments, was continuously exposed to resistance in open public spaces. Even a fast glimpse through censorship cases reported in 2010 makes it possible to notice that they happened much more seldom in _white cubes_ than in open spaces which became the most important arenas of the ever more aggressive ideological fights - therefore, in my belief, Kozyra's _Blood Ties_ could not have been displayed on Polish city streets neither in 1999 nor a decade later. Fourthly, politicians continued to perceive contemporary art as a tool of electoral marketing. However, instead of attacking galleries and destroying works of art as was the case in the past, they opportunistically used it as a means of support in order to enhance their image. This improved freedom of expression only seemed because the culture continuously remained dependant on political currents (albeit in a more velvet way). The activities of the Mayor of Kraków Jacek Majchrowski (SLD) are a good examples of this fact. The very same Majchrowski who used to consistently torpedo all cultural projects connected with sexual minorities opened the MOCAK (Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków) in November 2010. The ceremony was held right before local governmental elections in which the mayor sought re-election - after he won his mandate again, the completely empty at the time museum was closed and reopened permanently only five months later. It is worth adding that despite reluctance from the art community, the director of the museum Maria Anna Potocka was not chosen in any contest, having been arbitrarily appointed by the mayor in 2009. The latter problem confirms, fifthly, that procedures for the transparent appointment of heads of state-run and local governmental institutions of culture have still not been formed, neither was financial and administrative autonomy of those institutions secured, a fact which is particularly uncomfortable to facilities in smaller centres which are strongly dependent on the whim of local bigwigs. Appointments for managerial positions are often decided by politicians and should the appointed heads of institutions of culture be disloyal, they can always resort to financial blackmail or dismissal. Sixthly, old rebels became part of the canon, were recuperated by the system, their art lost its transgressive and provocative edge and no new rebels seemed to be in sight. It might have stemmed from a burnout of a certain way of thinking about art and artistic freedom, it is also possible that the growing pressures of the market simply started thwarting younger artists' need to rebel and transgress. The appearance of institutions which introduced Polish art to the international market after 2000 drew attention away from local problems and naturally redirected it towards international trends and search for fast career tracks. Despite often leading to sensations, transgressive art is not necessary easy to profit from and ever more difficult to fund. Such projects are equally uncomfortable to officials who allocate public funds (when a scandal breaks they are criticized both by politicians and the public) as well as to private sponsors (as it could undermine the good reputation of the company). Seventhly, the issues of funding and the art market are also connected with the deepening gaps in artistic education of the new generations. The few who want to take part in artistic life will find additional education themselves but the vast majority who when leaving secondary schools have little knowledge on visual arts remain the problem. Unaware of contemporary art, the middle class decides about the shallowness of the art market; as well as the weakness of private galleries and art dealers, a fact which might lead to their reluctance to risk promotion of avant-garde experiments. Educational gaps are also visible among intellectuals with no ties to the art world who have a real influence on the freedom of expression (mainly lawyers and journalists, to a lesser degree academics specializing in fields other than art or culture) and the circles who have funds to invest. Eighthly, things are not made any easier by the _stimulacral_ , not merit-based, nature of information about visual arts presented in the mainstream media, a fact which obviously stems from logics of the journalist field. It can hardly be said that the situation in the mass media improved over the past dozen years, unless one considers the fact that usually bad publications turned into no publications at all as a good sign. This was the case of _GW_ which clearly harmed contemporary art in the 1990s with its lack of understanding for other than modernist paradigms. At the moment, the daily seems to have lost any interest in that area of culture. Obviously, education alone, whether provided by schools or enhanced through the media, is not enough and, as emphasized by Bourdieu, wider access to other forms of cultural capital is necessary to widen participation in culture. Ninthly, tendencies to restrict freedom of expression based on the leftist ideology started to intensify, both with the use of legal mechanisms and those found outside of the law (wrongly understood rules of political correctness). Tenthly, the awareness of the art community with respect to issues connected with the freedom of artistic expression changed only seemingly. Conclusions of Indeks 73's 2009 report on artistic freedom are alarming - the Polish art world has a very low legal awareness and seems not to perceive the freedom of art as a value which is worth fighting for. It must also be added that attacks against it did not encourage the community to undertake any joint defences, it can even be said that it was the other way around - in the times of crises, instead of showing solidarity, institutions panicked, legitimizing acts of censorship. Eleventhly, there appeared strong taboo areas, especially with respect to child sexuality, leading to excessive restrictions in personal freedom. An extended scope of means of penalization allows politicians to wash their hands of a very serious problem which in reality requires a well thought-out and complex social, educational and legal policy. Twelfthly, the fact that sometimes censorship cannot be seen does not mean that it does not function in a different, covert way. On the one hand, heads of institutions of culture learnt how not to put themselves at risk from the government, sponsors, etc. and on the other hand, how not to become exposed to critique from the art community. It can be supposed that censorship started at preliminary stages of selection of works, disguised as e.g. merit-based evaluation. However, such practices are very difficult to detect and prove which does not mean that they must not be talked about.
 Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) was an independence activist, politician, soldier, leader of the Polish Socialist Party. His activity provided a major contribution to Poland's regaining of independence in 1918, after which Piłsudski became a long-term dominant figure on the country's political scene. After 1918, he was Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, Chief of State between 1918 and 1922, Prime Minister between 1926 and 1928 and in 1930. In 1926, Piłsudski headed the so-called May Coup, which introduced authoritarian rule. Polish historiography recognises him as a controversial figure, yet his status of a national hero remains undisputed.

 After the brief period of Socialist Realism (1949–1955) – when Polish artists were forced to pursue their creative practices under the dictation of the only accepted ideology and all their contacts with Western art were severed – came the period of the "thaw". Visual artists picked up the then globally dominant abstract tendencies, focussing their attention primarily on Paris, and to a lesser extent on the American scene. The authorities consented to that turn because, on the one hand, the art in question did not go beyond Modernist divagations concerning the form and thus posed absolutely no political threat; while on the other hand, it offered the possibility to build a liberal image of the regime and lend it credibility abroad: in Poland under communism it was possible to make modern art par excellence. During the next decades, the development of the Polish art scene mirrored the transformations of global art – the only difference being that although artists could use whatever formal means they pleased (from the entire stylistic spectrum of painting and sculpture, to installations, experimental film, happenings, performances, to conceptual experiments), they were banned from addressing political themes. It was not only through various sanctions that this tacit rule was enforced – the Communists also bought off the milieu, as it were, by rolling out a system of institutional and welfare privileges for artists. The activity of visual artists at times of political turning points is indicative of their opportunism. Given the considerable engagement demonstrated by literary writers and scholars, one is struck not only by the lack of anti-communist initiatives launched by visual artists, but also by their extremely meagre support offered to the initiatives that already existed. That situation changed, yet only after the imposition of martial law by the Communists in 1981.

 For example, the atmosphere of absurdity, fairy tale, obscenity and sacrilege that emanated from the work of the Gruppa painters (Ryszard Grzyb, Paweł Kowalewski, Jarosław Modzelewski, Włodzimierz Pawlak, Marek Sobczyk, Ryszard Wożniak) stood in contrast not only to the extremely mundane reality and the rambling rhetoric of the communist authorities, but also to patriotic-religious imperatives and "neo-Socialist Realism" (Kowalewski's term) that dominated the church exhibitions. The members of Gruppa were therefore censored by the so-called independent culture milieu on the one hand, while on the other hand – they were threatened by interventions of the GUKPPiW. In November 1984, the Warsaw Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary hosted the exhibition _Chaos – czl_ - _owiek – absolut_ [ _Chaos – Human – Absolut_ ] from which part of Gruppa's paintings were removed without the artists' knowledge upon an order of the pastor of creative milieus, Father Wiesław Niewęgłowski. One year later, an exhibition by Gruppa was closed on the day of the opening by the parson of the church in Zytnia St. due to the "pagan" character of the works. In 1988, at the Na Ostrowie gallery in Wrocław (the venue was not boycotted), some of Gruppa's paintings were turned with their faces to the wall as they were considered indecent.

Analogous acts of censorship were also possible within the completely secular underground circulation of literature. The Gdan´sk-based poet Antoni Pawlak, who published a poem featuring erotic scenes in the underground publication "Puls", recalls that "the same colporteurs of underground press who took on a struggle with communist censorship as their mission, were tearing out the pages with my poem". P. Bratkowski, "Cały naród buduje swoją cenzurę," _Newsweek_ , May 4, 2004.

 Historians go even so far as to distinguish the emergence of a specific kind of religiousness of martial law, during which prayer itself became a form of protest against the communist authorities. The same period gave rise to the mythology of "Solidarity", which became interwoven with the martyrological tradition of national liberation uprisings of 1831, 1863, 1944 as well as the brutally quashed anti-communist protests of 1956, 1968, 1970 and 1976. See: A. Paczkowski, _Wojna polsko-jaruzelska. Stan wojenny w Polsce 13 XII 1981 – 22 VII 1983_ (Warszawa: Prószyn´ski i S-ka, 2007), 244, 248.

 The icon of Our Lady (Black Madonna) of Częstochowa at the Jasna Góra Pauline Monastery in Częstochowa has been surrounded by a special cult amongst Poles for centuries. The Jasna Góra Sanctuary is one of the most prominent sites of Marian devotion worldwide and the most significant pilgrimage destination for Catholics in Poland.

After the outbreak of the scandal around the exhibition _Irreligion_ (2001/2001), Adam Rzepecki stated in an interview for the Cracow edition of _GW_ (November 22, 2001): "My work was created in response to the situation in which art found itself under martial law. ... The Church suddenly opened its doors to artists who were struggling to find a place for themselves. Counting on apanages, they were making art that responded to commissions and was often – as we can see in hindsight – insincere. With the advent of democracy, many of them showed the Church the middle finger and escaped from under its wings. At the time, I was a member of the Łódż Kaliska group. We decided to find our own place, independent from the state and the Church. We organised self-funded plein-airs, we attempted to publish the magazine _Tango_. ... That was when _Our Lady_ was created... – it featured on the cover of the first issue. ... It is striking that so much is being said about something that one did not see. And, after all, my work had been known before. It was displayed in several exhibitions, published in the press, and even discussed in the 1980s during an academic conference at the Catholic University of Lublin".

 P. Raina, _Kościól_ - _w PRL. Kościól_ \- _katolicki a pan´stwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989_ , vol. 2 (years 1960–1974), (Poznan´: W Drodze, 1995), [hereafter as Raina, _Kościól_ \- _(2)_ ], 86–87. In the letter as of 13 February 1961 to the Plenipotentiary of the Government for Relations with the Church, Jerzy Sztachelski, concerning the screening of the film _Mother Joan of the Angels_ Bishop Choroman´ski wrote: "In our conversations we have already indicated more than once the mounting anti-religious action that is strangely tolerated by the Authorities. The film ... is proof that the promoters of that action have run out of arguments against religion other than mockery, despicable insinuations and sacrilege". In turn, in the letter to the Public Prosecutor General of the PRL of 13 February 1961, Bishop Choroman´ski expressed his hope that the guilty would be brought to justice. Raina, _Kościól_ \- _(2)_ , 87–88.

 Raina, _Kościól_ \- _(2)_ , 192.

 In the Memorial of the Episcopate of Poland to the Government as of 24 January 1974 concerning Christian culture, bishops remarked, amongst other issues, that "Experiments conducted on works by our bards, eminent Romantic and neo-Romantic authors, whose oeuvre remains in its most profound inspiration an expression of the Christian spirit of the nation, raise serious concerns. Attempts to subject such pieces to vivisection in film and television in order to adapt them to secular or even anti-religious principles at times betray a painful lack of respect for their appropriate character". Raina, _Kościól_ \- _(2)_ , 592, 633.

 P. Raina, _Rozmowy z wl_ - _adzami PRL. Arcybiskup Dąbrowski_ , vol. 1 (Warszawa: Książka polska, 1995), 234.

 Raina, _Rozmowy_ , 242.

 Yet, artists (especially those with a powerful position) sometimes enjoyed preferential treatment in the PRL. For instance, despite the heteronormative social model diligently guarded by Communists, the ballet soloist of the Grand Theatre, Stanisław Szyman´ski, could "show off" his homosexuality.

 Raina, _Rozmowy_ , 301–302.

 G. Kowalski, "Szafy, szuflady, trumna," in ed. M. Sitkowska, _Sigma, Galeria Repassage, Repassage 2, ReRepassage_ , exh. cat. (Warszawa: Galeria Zachęta, 1993), 132. Censors also evoked Catholic sensibility in 1971, when they banned Ken Russel's _The Devils_ and Passolini's _The Decameron_ from Polish cinemas.

 Artist and curator Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski recalls that in the 1970s and 1980s a trust-based telephone consultation between a censor and a gallery director was sometimes sufficient (the author's interview with J. S. Wojciechowski, August 7, 2014), whereas such situation was unthinkable in theatre, film or literature. The extensive document _Podstawowe zagadnienia pracy merytorycznej i sprawy organizacyjne w świetle sprawozdania GUKPPiW za rok 1972_ , most probably authored by the head of the GUKPPiW Józefa Siemka, offers information about censorship intervention in secular and Catholic press, radio, television, Polish and foreign films, fiction and scholarly literature, cabaret, theatres, official documents of the Church, yet it does not feature a single mention about visual arts. See: A. Pawlicki, _Kompletna szarość. Cenzura w latach 1965–1972. Instytucja i ludzie_ (Warszawa: Trio, 2001), 152–158. The lack of interest in visual arts on the part of the authorities is also confirmed by documents stolen from censorship by Tomasz Strzyżewski, see n271.

 See: e.g. SB note of 6 April 1983 concerning the representations of the tomb of Christ in churches; also "Pro memoria" USW of 12 January 1985 concerning the use of the decoration of nativity scenes for political purposes. P. Raina, _Kościól_ \- _w PRL. Kościól_ \- _katolicki a pan´stwo w świetle dokumentów 1945–1989_ , vol. 3 (years 1960–1974), (Poznan´: W Drodze, 1995), 396–397, 449–450.

 We also need to emphasise that in the 19th century under all partitions, the protection of the sociałpolitical order was combined with a special protection of Christian religion, owing to which the Catholic Church, within its capacity, did not hesitate to tap into the censorship of partitioning states to secure its own interests.

 Stefan Wyszyn´ski (1901–1981) was appointed the Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw and the Primate of Poland in 1948; in 1957 he was raised to the rank of cardinal. He is recognised as one of the most prominent figures in post-war Polish history. Wyszyn´ski attempted to develop rules of co-existence with the communist authorities founded on a compromise. He was imprisoned by the Communists between 1953 and 1956. Despite harsh anti-Catholic policy pursued by the authorities, the Cardinal managed to sustain the Church's subjective role and to even broaden its influences in the society.

 Raina, _Rozmowy_ , 59–66.

 Krzem, "Pan´stwo – Kościół – Konstytucja," _GW_ , April 19, 1990.

 The low status of visual arts in Poland has its historic roots and was emphasised already in the 16th century by writer L-ukasz Górnicki, and in the 19th century by historian Julian Klaczko, whose _Sztuka polska_ (Polish Art, 1858) laid bare in nothing short of a spectacular way, the Polish dilettantism in terms of painting and sculpture. The same problem is also obviously noticed by contemporary authors. Art historian Krzysztof Pomian remarks: "In the hierarchy of arts established for its own needs by every national culture, they [fine arts] occupy the third place here: behind literature, particularly poetry, and behind music. ... In the imaginary national pantheon ... fine arts were represented for many decades by solitary [Jan] Matejko; during the bygone half-century he was joined perhaps only by [Jacek] Malczewski, albeit both are valued more for the patriotic content of their works than for artistry. This pantheon does not seem to feature a single 20th century painter nor a single sculptor ... When in the early 1990s the Gallery of Polish Art of the National Museum in Warsaw reopened after a complete reorganisation, neither the Polish President nor the Prime Minister honoured the ceremony with their presence. And when a few years ago the new edifice of the National Museum in Poznan´ opened – notably the first museum edifice raised in Poland after WWII, a fact that comes as the best illustration of the position of fine arts in the hierarchy of importance – ... the only guest from Warsaw was ... the head of the Association of Art Historians". K. Pomian, "W błysku reklam, w świetle laserów", _GW_ March 20, 2004. The traditional lack of interest in visual arts in Poland was also underlined by Piotr Piotrowski, "Pazurami i dziobem w obronie demokracji", _Artmix_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://archiwum-obieg.u-jazdowski.pl/artmix/1729>.

 L. Falandysz, "Prokurator cenzorem," _GW_ , January 22, 1990.

 A. Bikont, "Cenzura jest likwidowana! Rząd jest reformowalny!," _GW_ , January 25, 1990.

 After many years, Tadeusz Mazowiecki justified sluggishness in the abolition of censorship with the government's fears concerning anti-Soviet provocations. Tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were still stationed in Poland and were withdrawn only in 1993, while Gorbachev's democratic declarations were for obvious reasons greeted with disbelief – in 1989 everyone in Poland believed that the political situation could witness a U-turn at any given moment. Yet, the explanation offered by the former PM does not appear highly credible; it seems that with difficult tasks ahead, the government wished to keep the flow of information under control to facilitate governing the country.

 In the PRL, it was a special committee operated by the Film Distribution Head Office, which was dissolved in 1990. Cinematography was therefore subject only to consequential, repressive control of the PPO regarding matters regulated by the provisions of the penal code. Up until the present day, it is the cinemas and distributors that specify the age rating, yet merely as a suggestion – the ultimate responsibility rests with parents.

 It is in such categories that Jan Sowa comments on the current social and economic situation in Poland in _Fantomowe cial_ - _o króla. Peryferyjne zmagania z nowoczesnością_ (Universitas: Kraków, 2011).

 On this topic see e.g. Ż Romek, "System cenzury w PRL" and T. Strzyzżewski, "Wstęp," in T. Strzyzżewski, _Wielka Cenzury PRL w dokumentach_ (Warszawa: Prohibita, 2015), resp. 9–27 and 29–56.

 See e.g. Art 1 of the Press Law of 26 January 1984: "The press benefits ... from freedom of speech and print, ... strengthens the constitutional system of the Polish People's Republic, in particular: disseminates information and expresses opinions that serve the development of socialist social relations ... Art 6(1) ... The press ... pursues a truthful representation of the discussed phenomena, guided by the interest of the society and the socialist state ...

 More on this topic in Romek, "System".

 Strzyzżewski, "Wstęp," 33. From August 1975 to March 1977 Tomasz Strzyzżewski was employed at the Cracow branch of the GUKPPiW. During that period, he copied top secret materials with instructions for censors included in _Książka Zapisów i Zalecen´ GUKPPiW_ [Book of Provisions and Recommendations of the GUKPPiW], and later fled with them to Sweden. The documents were published in 1977 in London as _Czarna Księga Cenzury PRL_ [ _Black Book of Censorship in the PRL_ ]. The publication came as a shock to emigrants and intellectuals in the country, it undermined the communist influence and boosted the dynamics of the Opposition's activity. In Poland, Strzyzżewski's materials were published only in 2015 as _Wielka Księga Cenzury PRL w dokumentach_.

 The Bunkier Sztuki (Bunker of Arts) Gallery was established in 1965, it belonged to the BWA network and was the most important contemporary art institution in Cracow in the PRL.

 Romek, "System," 22-23.

 M. Foucault, _Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison_ , trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 200–202.

 Jerzy Kalina is a visual artist who in the 1980s designed the tomb of priest Jerzy Popiełuszko (charismatic chaplain of "Solidarity", brutally murdered by the SB in 1984) as well as decorations for many church ceremonies. In 1994, the artist anticipated with anxiety the exhibition _Ars erotica_ at the National Museum in Warsaw (see p. 184): "I'm a little afraid of people's reactions. I haven't showed my erotic drawings in public so far, only my friends have seen them. I thought: they know me as a 'church decorator', but I'm a normal man, I'll come out. After all, I have both a soul and a body, I've got three children, they haven't come from nowhere. As for the erotic world, despite ZChN, first came pulp magazines, we've been flooded by the worst kind of porn. _Ars erotica_ will finally provide a remedy. It will prove that this world, embarrassing for many people, can be talked about in a refined way". M. Szczygieł, M. Cichy, "Eros i kwas solny," _GW Magazyn Gazety_ , January 28, 1994.

 The author's interview with S. Ambroziak, August 16, 2010. The supervisor of Ambroziak's diploma, Prof. Grzegorz Kowalski also remarks that it was not only the iconic layer of the sculpture that proved controversial, but also its form, which represented the then fashionable New Expression tendency (The author's interview with G. Kowalski, March 11, 2014).

 The author's interview with G. Kowalski, March 11, 2014. In December 1970, a mounting political and economic crisis in the country brought about a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdan´sk, which spread with time to other industrial plants and cities on the Polish coast. Clashes with the Civic Militia ensued; The First Secretary of the KC PZPR Władysław Gomułka eventually decided to deploy the military (25 thousand soldiers, 1300 tanks and troop carriers). The pacification of the workers' protests cost the lives of 45 people, 1165 were injured and 3000 were arrested. The crisis swept Gomułka from the political scene; Edward Gierek replaced him as the First Secretary.

 The book stirred up controversies also after its publication in October 1992. The ZChN Parliamentary Club released a statement in which it stated that the book violated "social peace, while Polish Muslims, Tartars, have the right to demand respect for their identity". In turn, the ambassador of Iran stated that since Poland and Iran "are characterised by profound religious convictions and respect for ethical values", the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini should not be subject to criticism in Poland. D. Warszawski, "Cztery paradoksy o wolności słowa," _GW_ , February 12, 1993; "ZChN i 'Szatan´skie wersety'," _GW_ , December 12-13 1992.

 M. Szczygieł, M. Cichy, "Eros i kwas solny," _GW_ _Magazyn Gazety_ , January 28, 1994.

 The author's interview with W. Wierzchowska, E. Dzikowska, J. Zagrodzki, September 26, 2014. In fact, Gutt's work bore only an indirect formal reference to the Latin cross. It was a kind of polygon filled with 13 photographs with completely nude women depicted in some of them.

 Lech Wałęsa was the President of the Third Polish Republic between 1990 and 1995. During his election campaign he promised to offer each Pole PLZ 100,000,000 (currency prior to redenomination) if he was elected. The funds were supposed to originate from a widespread privatisation of post-communist state property. Despite the impressive number of zeroes (with hyperinflation in Poland running rampant at the time), it was not an exorbitant sum (less than USD 10,000), however in a heavily impoverished post-communist country, with much lower prices than in Western Europe, it was tremendously impressive. Obviously, Wałęsa failed to deliver on his promise.

 For instance, in June 1993, the Bass Records company, which released an album by the band Big Cyc removed Wałęsa's name from the lyrics of the song _Ostry dyżur_ [ _Accident and Emergency_ ]. In the song, the author of the piece Krzysztof Skiba compared Wałęsa to blunt needles in syringes. According to the head of Bass Records, had the name of the then president not been removed, the company would have faced a lawsuit; he also admitted that the majority of radio stations refused to air the song. At that time, some media suspected that Wałęsa's chaplain, priest Franciszek Cybula – considered as the grey eminence in the president's chancellery – was delivering opinions about public television broadcasts. As the president, Wałęsa fought with acute criticism of his person and towards this end he made an unscrupulous use of the strict penal code provisions that originated from the PRL and had previously protected the communist authorities.

 G. Brzozowicz, M. Chmiel, W. Staszewski, "Senator ZChN oskarża: Kazik sprofanował," _GW_ , December 30, 1992.

 west, "Sto tysięcy 'Piersi'," _GW_ , February 15, 1993.

 A. Wąsek, "Ochrona uczuć religijnych w prawie karnym," in ed. H. Misztal _Prawo wyznaniowe_ (Lublin: KUL, 2000), 259.

 The 1980s witnessed a complete collapse of the centrally planned economy. Not only was Poland losing its position in relation to developed Western states, but also to other countries of the communist bloc. In October 1989, Leszek Balcerowicz – Minister of Finance in Tadeusz Mazowiecki's government – presented a plan of radical reforms that were supposed to usher in a transition to market economy (known as Balcerowicz Plan or "shock therapy"). Despite unquestionable successes, the social costs of that economic shock therapy proved enormous. In 1990–1991 industrial production shrank by 30% (with a 20% decrease in GDP), which was accompanied by a decrease in agricultural production and the number of flats built. Many enterprises collapsed, people were losing their jobs overnight, and in 1992 the recorded unemployment rate reached ca 14%. The first months of the economic transformation saw a sharp increase in prices and a decrease in real wages (by ca 10%).

 The video formed part of the artist's diploma work defended in 1993 at the ASP in Warsaw at Grzegorz Kowalski's studio. The performance was recorded at the MNW; the artist emphasises that he informed the curator of the Medieval Art department about the planned form of the work. The action proceeded undisturbed until a napping female museum hall guardian woke up and raised the alarm. Only then did other MNW employees arrive, the performance was stopped and the artist was requested to hand over the recorded footage, but he only returned empty cassettes. Later, when Markiewicz's ruse became clear, the artist found himself under pressure to return the actual tapes; he even received a call from the director of the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle (CSW ZU), Wojciech Krukowski (the author's interview with J. Markiewicz, August 28, 2014).

 In Poland, _The Last Temptation of Christ_ stirred up controversy even when the film had already become a masterpiece in the world's cinematographic canon and had essentially been tacitly accepted by the Catholic Church. It was only in 2010 (22 years after the premiere) that the organisers of the film festival Plus Camerimage in Bydgoszcz announced the first Polish presentation of Scorsese's work on the big screen (the film had previously been distributed only in niche art house cinemas). In 2002, a priest thwarted a students' screening of the film in the underground space of the Camaldolese church in Bielany, Warsaw. The priest allegedly took away the DVD and informed the baffled audience: "the screening will not take place, please go home. I've done it to save you from sin. This film is a blasphemy": "Ks. Paleczny vs. _Ostatnie kuszenie Chrystusa_ ," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.filmweb.pl/news/Ks.+Paleczny+vs.%22Ostatnie+kuszenie+Chrystusa%22-8884>.

 The Zachęta – National Gallery of Art is the most prestigious exhibition space for contemporary art in Poland and the oldest gallery in Warsaw. Its history dates back to 1860; from the very beginning it was a community and national initiative. After the war, it operated as the Central Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions, and after 1989 – as the Zachęta State Gallery of Art. The institution acquired the official status of a national gallery in 2003.

 Kowalnia (Smithy) is the customary name of the studio of Prof. Grzegorz Kowalski at the Faculty of Sculpture of the ASP in Warsaw (the name initially had a derogatory undertone). Kowalski's didactic activity was influenced by the Open Form theory developed by the architect and sculptor Oskar Hansen in the 1950s. The theory offered the viewer a key role in the creation of the work. In the 1980s, Kowalski introduced his own pedagogical method called "partner didactics", which was based on collective activity and pursuit of non-verbal communication.

 The author's interview with G. Kowalski, March 11, 2014.

 A photocopy of the letter is stored in the author's archive.

 S. P. Gaszyn´ski, "Piramida nieporozumien´. Granice eksperymentu w sztuce," _Przeglą d Akademicki_ no. 18 (1993).

 Kozyra recalls that the "Animals" programme included, for instance, images of horses running free on a meadow followed by a close-up of the dead glass eye of the horse from the installation. Much is revealed about the programme by the fact that soon after the broadcast the artist received a phone call from a psychiatrist with an offer of professional help. " _Coś mi siedzi z tyl_ - _u czaszki_ (rozmowa z Katarzyną Kozyrą)," _Polityka_ , January 31, 1998.

 Letters by G. Kowalski and J. Ciecierski, _Zycie Warszawy_ , August 26, 1993.

 D.H., "Uczennica... Benettona? 'Piramida zwierząt' – piramida nienawiści," _Gazeta Gdan´ska_ 20 September 1993.

 I. Morawska, "Piramida," _GW,_ September 4, 1993.

 B. Maciejewska, "Raport o cenzurze," _Magazyn Sztuki_ , no. 29 (2004). In order to better understand the context of that conflict, one needs to bear in mind the role played by the ZPAP in the PRL. It was a professional association fully controlled by the communist authorities and a dominant force in the country's artistic life. Membership in the association was a formal confirmation of the artist's status. The authorities used it to distribute privileges – only members could exhibit their work at state galleries (other types of venues were virtually non-existent), they had a privileged access to materials, studios, plein-airs, publications, potboilers commissioned by the state, etc. After 1989, the ZPAP lost its central role in the Polish art world.

 The authorities of the PRL created a network of state-run exhibition venues called Bureaus of Artistic Exhibitions (BWA) located in major cities. Around 50 such venues existed in 1989, the vast majority of which have survived until the present day and came to be managed by local self-governments in 1998. Many of them continue to enjoy their status as leading regional galleries.

 Morawska, "Piramida".

 "Polish contemporary art lacks significant examples of critical statements addressing the sensitive spheres of contemporary life and deconstructing the ideological foundations of normative moral systems that always represent the interests of a specific level of power. ... The work by the artist is merely a description and a confirmation of the permanent and universally accepted state. Therefore, its critical charge is not levelled against the system, which cannot ever be challenged and questioned, but against the masking discourses of oblivion and cultural safety valves that protect our consciousness from anxiety hidden behind full knowledge ...". P. Leszkowicz, "Katarzyna Kozyra 'Piramida Zwierząt' – Komentarz," _Magazyn Sztuki_ , no. 5 (1995).

 B. Czubak, "Sztuka na marginesie rzeczywistości," _Magazyn Sztuki_ , no. 4 (1994): 44–54.

 On this topic see: I. Morawska, "Piramida," _GW_ , September 4, 1993.

 A. Zmijewski, _Drżące cial_ - _a. Rozmowy z artystami_ (Bytom–Kraków: Krytyka Polityczna 2006), 169, 172.

 Por. H. Foster, "Who's Afraid of the Neo-Avant-Garde?," in _The Return of the Real. The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century_ (Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 1996), 1–32.

 See: M. Decker, "Wszystko jest sztuką," _Fakty_ , November 12, 1997.

 The quotes refer respectively to the following texts: A. Zmijewski, "Piętrowy tanatoid. O pracy Katarzyny Kozyry", and G. Kowalski, "O dyplomie Katarzyny Kozyry," _Czereja_ , October 1993. It is noteworthy that the _Czereja_ magazine (1992–1998) – founded and edited by Zmijewski and financed by the ASP in Warsaw – in which the above texts were published, was an object of frenzied attacks from some members of the Faculty of Sculpture staff.

 A. Matuchniak-Krasuska, _Zarys socjologii Pierre'a Bourdieu_ (Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 2010), 55–56.

 _GW_ was founded as part of the agreement reached during the Round Table Talks, it was supposed to operate as the press branch of the Civic Committee "Solidarity" prior to the parliamentary elections in June 1989 (the first issue was released on 8 May). From the very beginning the editor-in-chief has been Adam Michnik. In the 1990s, the average circulation amounted to ca 500,000 copies, with additional 200 – 300,000 copies of weekend editions; still, shortages of copies available for sale were often recorded. For comparison, the circulation of such opinion-forming daily newspapers as _Rzeczpospolita_ oscillated around 270,000 copies, and _Zycie Warszawy_ – several dozen thousand copies. For average circulation tables see:

http://www.zkdp.pl/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=8&Itemid=4&lang=pl, accessed November 9, 2014.

 M. Cichy, "Nie o Bałce," _GW_ , February 25, 1993; A. Przywara, "Niezrozumienie," _GW_ , March 1, 1993; M. Cichy, "Zażenowanie," _GW_ , March 1, 1993. A similar way of thinking to Michał Cichy was represented by another _GW_ publicist Wojciech Cesarski. In his review of Richard Serra's exhibition at the Zachęta (November 1994), he remarked: "What remains unclear ... is the sense of the entire undertaking. What are Serra's works presented at the Zachęta in their essence? Six variants of the same purely visual idea, whose materialisation is supposed to trigger in the viewer ... a banal psychological effect, or something more? ... do Serra's works carry any message, thus being works of art, or are they only wisecracks created with excellent technical skill? ... Serra frequently emphasised his willingness to engage in a 'dialogue with the viewer'. ... It is therefore worth remembering that the basic condition of starting any conversation is having something to say". "Sztuka czy inżynieria?," _GW_ , September 26, 1994.

 M. Kuc, "Prace z elektrycznością," _GW_ , April 9, 1993.

 A paradigmatic example can be found in the unprecedented – given the Polish realm of that time – exhibition _Polish Women Artists_ at the MNW (Autumn 1991). Yet, neither the curator Agnieszka Morawin´ska nor, the less so, Dorota Jarecka, who commented on the exhibition, tried to tap into the feminist potential of the show: D. Jarecka, "Bez feminizmu," _GW_ , January 7, 1991. The conservative character of the exhibition at the MNW was confirmed by the critic Ewa Toniak, who attempted to emphasise the role of feminism in contemporary art and research as well as bring the problem closer to the Polish reader: E. Toniak, "Artystki. Duch feminizmu w Muzeum Narodowym," _GW_ , September 9, 1991. The deficiencies of Polish feminist art historical and critical discourse were not so acute as long as women's art displayed in exhibitions revolved around the formal aspects. Yet, when women artists abandoned the safe haven of aesthetics and ventured towards social criticism, as it was the case, for instance, in the exhibition _Kobieta o kobiecie_ [ _Woman on Woman_ ] in Bielsko-Biała in 1996, jibes turned into derision and right-wing politicians became nervous (about the exhibition see p. 245).

 W. Cesarski, "Galanteria z sugestiami," _GW_ , January 27, 1994, on the censoring of Serrano's exhibition by the head of the CSW ZU Wojciech Krukowski.

 A. Osęka, "Sensacja w Akademii," _GW_ , October 25, 1997 – polemic by M. Musidłowska and reply by A. Osęka, _GW_ , November 5, 1997.

 Osęka strongly emphasises that there was never any agreement between the _GW_ publicists as to the type of art championed: _Andrzej Osęka. Strategia pająka. Wywiad-rzeka. Rozmawia Adam Mazur_ (Warszawa: 40000 Malarzy, 2011), 222–228.

 M. Kuc, "Antyciała i męczennicy sztuki," _GW_ _Gazeta Stol_ - _eczna_ , July 21, 1995; A. Osęka, "Urok ciała w formalinie," _GW_ , July 15, 1995; D. Jarecka, "Smutek antyciała," _GW_ , July 17, 1995; A. Osęka, "Niedościgniony Jim Rose," _GW_ , September 30, 1995.

 E. Gorządek, "Impotencja krytyki," _GW_ , August 9, 1995; E. Mikina, "Ciało w punkcie newralgicznym," _GW_ , August 9, 1995.

 R. Warta, "Tożsamość golasa," _Nowości_ , August 4, 1995.

 The work in the exhibition _Antibodies_ that was recognised as particularly controversial was Alicja Zebrowska's _Original Sin_ , containing images of female genitals from which a Barbie doll emerges. Although the film may be interpreted as pornography, admission to the exhibition at the CSW ZU was not subject to an age limit. Only the following information was displayed at the entrance to the show: "The exhibition depicts the matters of the human body, also in a way that may raise objections amongst the viewers, particularly parents accompanied by children. Please bear this in mind".

 The author's interview with E. Gorządek, June 24, 2014. Izabela Kowalczyk suggested that attempts had been undertaken to prevent the presentation of _Antibodies_ abroad. I. Kowalczyk, _Cial_ - _o,_ 81.

 M. Lisiewicz, "Antycia _l_ -a – cia _l_ -a przeciw rzeczywistości," _Format_ no. 3/4 (1995).

 As opposed to Western art, particularly in the USA, the question of AIDS has occupied a marginal position in Polish art.

 "Wystawa 'Ja i AIDS' opuszcza 'Stolicę'," _Rzeczpospolita_ January 11, 1996.

 The author's interview with G. Kowalski, March 11, 2014.

 K. Bielas, "Instalacja z toaletą," _GW Gazeta Stol_ - _eczna,_ May 28, 1994.

 B. Maciejewska, "Manewry uliczne" (interview with R. Rumas), _Przekrój_ no. 49 (2001). On the reception of _Hot Water Bottles_ in Brussels in 2001.

 The author's interview with A. Szyłak, August 6, 2014.

 The author's interview with M. Slizin´ska, June 24, 2014.

 W. Krukowski (letter to the readers), _GW_ _Magazyn Gazety_ , March 25, 1994. In one of his last extensive interviews before his death in 2014, Krukowski said: "During our discussion with Milada [Slizin´ska] about addressing Paula Cooper Gallery regarding Serrano's exhibition, we were looking at all his photographs on slides. I found _The Morgue_ the most convincing; Milada suggested that we could not show _The Red Pope_ here and I said that I wouldn't like _Piss Christ_ either, because that would leave me in a controversial situation ... . We agreed to order the remaining works and specified them in a letter sent to Paula Cooper, so there's written evidence ... Later, when the works were already on their way, Paula Cooper's Gallery wrote a kind request to Milada if they could include _Piss Christ_ in the transport as Serrano's next exhibition was in Bregenz, where they wanted to show that work. We agreed and the piece arrived in a separate crate because it wasn't meant for us. That forbidden fruit obviously intrigued people and they rushed to see it. Leon Tarasewicz [artist – J.D.] is said to have taken the work and hung it on the wall to see how it looked. It looked very well, of course. I heard that there was a chance to see it so I went down to the gallery, where Milada rushed to me and asked if we should leave it on the wall. I said: 'But why? Everything was already agreed'. And that was it, there's nothing more". A. Mazur, "Pulsowanie. Rozmowa z Wojciechem Krukowskim (2)," _Szum_ , accessed on November 9, 2014, <http://magazynszum.pl/rozmowy/pulsowanie-rozmowa-z-wojciechem-krukowskim-2>.

 The author's interview with M. Slizin´ska, June 24, 2014.

 "Głodem mnie nie wezmą" (interview with W. Krukowski), _GW_ , February 21, 2001.

 The work by Serrano has invariably stirred up controversy across the world. In 1997, the Archbishop of Melbourne George Pell made an (unsuccessful) judicial attempt to block the display of the work at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 2000, in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, the work was removed from Serrano's retrospective show as a result of an intervention made by Catholics already before the opening. In 2011, Avignon witnessed a march of around 1000 Christians against the display of the piece at a local gallery, and on Palm Sunday four young men destroyed it with a hammer; Serrano's photograph had already been presented in France several times. In September 2012, it was exhibited at the Edward Tyler Nahem Gallery in New York. Local Councillor Michael Grimm and Head of the Catholic League William Donahue made an unsuccessful appeal for President Obama to condemn the work; several dozen League members also protested in front of the gallery.

 The author's interview with M. Gożdziewski, August 28, 2014; see also A. Mazur, "Pulsowanie".

 E. Obrębowska-Piasecka, "Wprost profanacja," _GW_ , August 22, 1994.

 Case Dubowska and Skup v. Poland (application nos., respectively, 33490/96 and 34055/96). Teresa Dubowska and Tomasz Skup notified the PPO about the crime of insult to religious feelings by the editor-in-chief of _Wprost_ , the case went through all public prosecution levels and was eventually discontinued. Dubowska and Skup therefore lodged an application to ECHR. The European Commission of Human Rights underscored that members of religious communities "must tolerate and accept the denial by others of their religious beliefs and even the propagation by others of doctrines hostile to their faith". The Polish authorities had pursued the proceedings for nearly 18 months, "in their decisions discontinuing the investigations they carefully assessed all circumstances of the case and the importance of the issue at stake". For these reasons, on 18 April 1997, the Commission declared the Dubowska's and Skup's applications inadmissible.

 "Gorszyciel," _Prawo i Zycie_ , December 10, 1994.

 Hans Belting argues that film offers the best proof of the anthropological foundations of the image, since it is not created in stone or on canvas, but in the viewer through association and memory. In no other place does the viewer experience themselves more as the true locus of images than at the cinema hall. "We identify with an imaginary situation as though we ourselves had stumbled into the movie picture. ... the fleeting images flowing before his eyes are nothing other than his own images, like the ones he experiences in imagination and in dreams". Akin to a dream, at the cinema one finds themselves in the state of "exposure to images that one cannot control". H. Belting, _An Anthropology of Images. Picture, Medium, Body_ , trans. T. Dunlap (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 52.

 According to the Curia, the scene of the protagonist's shrift "is unsuitable for the film, unrealistic, not amusing, unconstructive, and instead comes across as surprising", while the "disclosure" of her confession is "inappropriate, wrong, disturbing even in the film". "The very idea of a comedy about today's Polish reality is good and the Author largely succeeded in carrying it out. Yet, it is unfortunate that a comedy ends with the victory of evil over good (death of the main protagonist) and blasphemy against God, as this is the only way in which to understand the final phrase in the protagonist's song 'For him you were more than God'". "Kuria metropolitalna do producenta _Uprowadzenia Agaty_ " (fragments), _GW_ , August 19, 1993.

 KAI, ard, "Katolicy nie chcą _Księdza_ ," _GW_ , September 2, 1995.

 K. Kęsicka, "Prokurator obejrzy _Księdza_ ," _GW_ , September 12, 1995.

 K. Bielas, K. Kęsicka, " _Ksiądz_ : decydujące starcie," _GW_ , September 14, 1995.

 A civil lawsuit was underway — simultaneously — concerning an infringement of personal rights (religious feelings) by the company that pasted the posters; the case even went to the Supreme Court (Supreme Court judgement as of June 12, 2002 (Ref. No. III CKN 618/2000, LEX No. 78339), but the complaint was dismissed. It is noteworthy that the withdrawal of the poster was also demanded by Catholics in France. The Gaullist mayor of Versailles ordered that the poster be removed from the walls of the city. On 20 February 1997, the court stated that it did not violate religious freedom. In turn, in the United States – paradoxically enough for a film with an anti-censorship message – the poster was banned by the American film rating council "Motion Picture Association of America and replaced with a different one. For the sake of 'a greater variety of the advertising campaign', the Polish distributor chose to use both posters". j.sż, cop, "W Paryżu dozwolony, w Warszawie nie," _GW_ , February 21, 1997.

 RR, Ba, "Werbowanie stróżów moralności," _GW_ Kraków, September 26, 1997.

 In the programme _Big Zbig Show_ , which aired on TVP on Easter Monday in 1993, the famous Polish actor Zbigniew Zamachowski performed a parody of music festivals from the PRL period, including the religious song festival, thus stirring up major controversy. The Association of Catholic Journalists, amongst other organisations, deemed the show blasphemous and offensive to religious feelings, while the KRRiTV received numerous protests even from the top ranks of the Church hierarchy.

 M. Gruchoła, _Ochrona telewidza w III Rzeczypospolitej_ (Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2003), 72.

 On the strategies of corporate selling see: N. Klein, _No Logo_ (London: HarperCollins, 2009).

 D. Jarecka, "Bo kobieta ma tożsamość," _GW_ , November 15, 1996; man, "Radna o 'Kobiecie...'," _GW_ Bielsko-Biała, October 23, 1996; A. Smalcerz, "Sztuka kobiet punkty zaczepienia," _Exit_ , no. 1 (1997).

 Quotations from J. S. Wojciechowski's book _Wl_ - _adze widzenia. Postświecka kultura wizualna_ , which still awaits publication (I would like to thank the author for access to the typescript of the relevant fragment of the book). In hindsight, Wojciechowski admits that he made a mistake. As he explains, working hastily on the exhibition concept, he failed to recognise the power of self-imposing references to the Holocaust and the specific character of the presentation (Polish Pavilion in Venice), which activated an additional network of semantic references, such as the false phrase "Polish concentration camps" that appeared in the Western press (the author's interview with J. S. Wojciechowski, August 7, 2014).

 J. S. Wojciechowski, _Jaki rozum po katastrofach. Wokól_ \- _polskiej sztuki lat 90_ (Warszawa: Instytut Kultury, 1998), 137–138.

 Wojciechowski underlines that the attempt to achieve compromise was scuttled by Libera's gallerist from Copenhagen, "who, initially discreetly and behind the scenes, and later overtly and conspicuously, engaged in forcing Lego's presence in Venice", which ultimately undermined the curator's trust in the artist "as an independent critic of the commercial market". Wojciechowski, _Jaki rozum_ , 138.

 "Sztuka legalizowania buntu." Zbigniew Libera in conversation with Bożena Czubak, _Magazyn Sztuki,_ no. 15 (1997). Libera upholds this version of the events; he also does not rule out political pressure (the author's interview with Ż Libera August 8, 2014).

 _A. Rottenberg in: Side by Side. Poland – Germany. 1000 Years of Art and History_ , ed. M. Omilanowska, exh. cat. (Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 2011), 624.

 I. Kowalczyk,"Spory o sztukę lat 90.," _Magazyn Sztuki_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://magazynsztuki.eu/old/archiwum/teksty_internet_arch_all/archiwum_teksty_online_11.htm>

 "Przy artyście nikt nie jest bezpieczny" (interview with Ż Libera), _GW Duży Format_ , February 9, 2004.

 It is noteworthy that in 2011 the director of the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, which hosted the exhibition _Side by Side. Poland – Germany. A 1000 Years of Art and History_ , wanted to block the display of a reproduction of _Lego_ in the catalogue. This fact confirms that even a work that has entered the canon does not become neutral, and its transgressive edge may become actualised depending on the circumstances.

 The author's interview with Ż Libera, August 8, 2014.

 Art 755 **** §1 of the Code of Civil Procedure (as in force in 1997): If an injunction is sought with respect to claims other than pecuniary claims, the court shall grant such injunction as it considers appropriate in the circumstances, not excluding security or injunction applicable to pecuniary claims. If it appears necessary with regard to the relief sought, such security or injunction may consist in regulating the relations during the proceedings. § 2. When deciding on the type of security or injunction, the court shall take into consideration the interests of the parties in proceedings insofar as is necessary to satisfy or to provide legal protection to the creditor without excessively burdening the debtor.

 W. Grejciun, " _Witajcie w życiu_ , czyli historia filmu, który od 15 lat le _ż_ y na półce," accessed November 9, 2014 <http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/1,114871,13067773,_Witajcie_w_zyciu___czyli_historia_filmu__ktory_od.html#MT>.

 In 1998 provincial courts were replaced by district courts.

 Board for petty offence (kolegium ds. wykroczen´) was extrajudicial body that adjudicated on cases of lesser importance since 1951 (in the 1990s, such cases involved offences punishable by up to three months of detention, up to three months of limitation of liberty, by fine up to PLN 5,000 or reprimand). Those who adjudicated in BPOs were not professional lawyers but lay judges appointed for a four-year term of office. In the PRL, the authorities used BPOs to harass the Opposition. In 2001, they were dissolved and their role was conferred to courts of the lowest instance.

 "'Amway' wygrałz Dederką," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.money.pl/gospodarka/wiadomosci/artykul/quot;amwayquot;;wygral;z;dederka,244,0,50676.html>.

 It seems that the scandal around Dederko's film could also carry broader negative consequences. After courts of justice blocked the publication by _Dziennik Bal_ - _tycki_ devoted to the Banpol company, Maciej L-uczak, lawyer and consultant of the Press Freedom Monitoring Centre, remarked: "What was a precedent merely half a year ago becomes the norm today. We have already had three court bans. Apparently, the media hype surrounding Amway brought a result that was different from the intended – courts have not resigned from injunction, and even make an ever broader use of it: in Banpol's case it is no longer about one ready piece, but about all publications that could potentially come into being". S. Sowula, "Nic na b.," _GW_ , December 3, 1998.

 In order to silence criticism, American companies use lawsuits called SLAPP ( _strategic lawsuits against public participation_ ). Such lawsuits are usually protracted and generate immense costs, which of course do not pose problems for large legal entities, but remain beyond the reach even of wealthy individuals. Already the sheer potential threat of a SLAPP often provokes self-censorship.

 W. Cesarski, A. Dajbor, "Już był w Zachęcie...," _GW_ , May 20, 1994.

 According to Rottenberg, Minister of Culture Kazimierz Dejmek told her after Serra's exhibition that "those lumps of lead did not befit the word 'national' in the gallery's name and he gave Zachęta the title of the State Art Gallery [instead of the "national" status postulated by Rottenberg – J.D.]". When Rottenberg replied: "But Mr Minister, he is already a classic, a man featured in all textbooks", he retorted: "We'll change that history". Dejmek also did not appreciate the conceptual artist Roman Opałka, who represented Poland in 1995 at the Venice Biennale, "I received a call and was told I should feel dismissed from my office". "Nie sprzyjam miernocie" (interview with Anda Rottenberg), _GW_ , December 27, 2000.

 M. Musiałowska, A. Ubertowska, "Trójmiejski odpływ," _GW_ , November 30, 1994.

 D. Jarecka, "Alarm w muzeum," _GW_ , February 7, 1996.

 M. Kuc, "Modern hero," _GW_ _Co jest grane_ , July 3, 1998.

 D. Jarecka, "Kolekcja 3," _GW_ , September 22, 1998.

 The influence of the Church is manifest also in many ordinary laws such as those that stipulate the obligation to organise religion classes in primary schools, while regulations make it possible to hang crosses in classrooms, include the grade from Religion class in school certificates and in the grade point average; a provision was introduced concerning the protection of Christian values in public mass media; specific privileges are granted exclusively to the Catholic Church (tax and custom exemptions); the obligation to act according to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland was removed from the Act on the Relation of the State to the Catholic Church; The Concordat of 28 July 1993 introduced religious criteria to the state law and granted state positions to the clergy.

 M. Pietrzak, _Rozdzial_ \- _kościol_ - _a i pan´stwa - modele i spór o ujęcie normatywne w nowej konstytucji,_ in _Podstawowe prawa jednostki i ich sądowa ochrona_ , ed. L. Wiśniewski(Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Sejmowe, 1997), 114–119. Apart from the questions of abortion and powers of the President, it was the manner of regulating the relations between the state and the Catholic Church that stirred up the most controversies from the very beginning (September 1994) of works on the Constitution.

 English translation of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland is available at <http://www.sejm.gov.pl/prawo/konst/angielski/kon1.htm>.

 See: J. Szymanek, "Wolność sumienia i wyznania w Konstytucji RP," _Przegla ˛d Sejmowy_ 73, no. 2 (2006): 48.

 T. Zarycki, "Wybory samorządowe w 1998 r.," _Decentralizacja terytorialnej organizacji kraju: zal_ - _ożenia, przygotowanie, ustawodawstwo_ , ed. G. Gorzelak, Raporty CASE no. 21 (Warszawa: Centrum Analiz Społeczno-Ekonomicznych 1999), 39-57.

 Yet, election results in Poland cannot be automatically connected with an increase or decrease in censorship activities. For instance, despite being in power two times after 1989, politicians of the post-communist SLD – although beyond doubt more tolerant than members of the ZChN, AWS or LPR – did not relax those provisions of the criminal law that imposed the most acute limitations on the freedom of expression (it was with the left-wing in power that Dorota Nieznalska was charged and sentenced by the court of first instance). Some post-communist politicians defended Christian values as zealously as right-wing politicians, while others refused to embrace gay emancipation movements and attempted to decide on the selection of the employees of art institutions. We may say that the post-communist left-wing was not left-wing in the classic understanding of the word, since it demonstrated opportunism with regard to the Catholic Church and an overly carefree approach to the free market. _Mutatis mutandis_ , analogous reproaches can be made against the (quasi)liberal Civic Platform (PO), which dominated the Polish political scene between 2007 and 2015. Instead of openness, its activities in the sociałideological sphere were characterised by a far-reaching conservatism.

 B. Piórkowska, B. Swiąder, "Aresztować tę sztukę," _GW_ Trójmiasto, March 10,1999.

 D. Jarecka, "Kolekcja 3," _GW_ , September 22,1998.

 B. Piórkowska, B. Swiąder, "Aresztować tę sztukę," _GW_ Trójmiasto, March 10, 1999. Yet, the belated attack by the TOZ may be explained by press announcements and reviews of Kozyra's show in Gdan´sk. The texts indicated that even though _Pyramid_ had already ceased to stir up extreme emotions, it was still far from being completely academicised and socially accepted. Quite the opposite, the prestigious exhibition at the Zachęta and, particularly, the information that Kozyra was to represent Poland at the Venice Biennale, where she would show a mysterious work that nobody had ever seen, revived the interest in the artist and her controversial piece. The TOZ's counterattack revealed that acceptance of a certain type of artistic work was very shallow. Another proof came with a debate at the CSW L-ażnia devoted to Kozyra's works (end of March 1999). The audience refused to listen to critics, but wanted to hear the artist, who was expected to publicly "confess" her immoral deeds.

 B. Piórkowska, B. Swiąder, "Aresztować tę sztukę," _GW_ Trójmiasto, March 10, 1999.

 Art 17(1) item 6 of the act of 21 August 1997 on the Protection of Animals, which prohibits "propagation or dissemination of drastic scenes of killing, inflicting suffering or other violence on animals by humans unless the purpose of the scenes is to condemn cruelty to animals". Violation of this prohibition, amongst other penalties, was threatened with detention or a fine, forfeiture of the tools or objects used to commit the offence (which would mean destroying Kozyra's film) or objects originating from it.

 BS, "Kozyra a satanizm," _GW Gazeta Morska_ , April 18, 2000.

 B. Swiąder, "Radni nie lubią L-azżni," _GW_ Trójmiasto, April 24, 1999.

 In those cities, Kozyra's work had the earliest announcements in the press, see: B. Swiąder, "Kozyra na billboardzie," _GW_ Trójmiasto, May 8, 1999.

 MZ, "Jak na Rzeszów – zbyt kontrowersyjne," _GW_ Rzeszów, May 19, 1999.

 JAD, "Znów prowokacja. Skandalistka Kozyra dla Kosowa," _GW_ , May 14, 1999.

 B. Swiąder, "Trójmiasto bez plakatu," _GW_ , May 19, 1999 and D. Karaś, "Więzy moralności," _GW Gazeta Morska_ , May 17, 1999.

 D. Jaworski, "Prowokacja na ulicach," _GW_ , May 17, 1999.

 Jaworski, "Prowokacja".

 D. Karaś, "Więzy moralności," _GW Gazeta Morska_ , May 17, 1999.

 A special statement issued during the conflict by the AMS directly blamed the media, particularly _GW_ , for the failed display.

 Kowalczyk remarked that works shown in the AMS gallery had an "unclear message", as opposed to _Blood Ties_ , a work that was "truly critical" and – as we may infer – legible. It is noteworthy that her interpretation of the symbol of the Greek cross in Kozyra's work involves none of the doubts and ambiguities that will come to offer the critic some of the key arguments in defence of Dorota Nieznalska's _Pasja_ [ _Passion_ ] several years later. According to Kowalczyk, the motifs of the cross and crescent in _Blood Ties_ are simply "symbols of Christianity and Islam as well as symbols of humanitarian relief": Kowalczyk, _Ciało_ , 138–139. It is also difficult to agree with Kowalczyk when she remarks that "it does not matter how much body can be shown, but in what context and meaning", indicating that the true reason behind the censorship of the work consisted in Kozyra's transgression of "fixed schemes and habits of the viewers, according to which a female nude is supposed to offer visual pleasure, and not ... refer to a social problematic". (Kowalczyk, _Ciało_ , 86–87). How much body is shown in the discussed context obviously is important (also for legal qualification) – for instance, I have never seen any street advertisement that would feature, akin to Kozyra's work, a photograph of a completely nude woman (or man); at least the genitals are always veiled.

 We might assume that the presentation of the original version of _Blood Ties_ would lead to a more straightforward violation of the trademark law and personal rights of international institutions. It would also increase the probability of the accusation of insult to religious feelings and committing a petty offence by presenting indecent materials in public. Yet, despite modifications, the new version of the work remained problematic. In his legal opinion issued for the AMS "concerning the possibility of presenting Katarzyna Kozyra's work _Blood Ties_ on billboards", legal counsel Przemysław Dziubak stated – not unrealistically – that the interpretation of the content provided alongside the work "bears traits of a subjective evaluation and may only have an auxiliary meaning for the object of the opinion. ... Regardless of the artist's intention, it is highly likely that the representation of religious symbols alongside naked and mutilated bodies may offend religious feelings of a major part of the society. ... The argument of shocking or breaking conventions in order to achieve a socially desired goal is difficult to reconcile with a conservative dimension that is important for every religion .... Another important question concerns the subjective evaluation of the presented content by the entities with which the AMS has signed land lease contracts for advertisement carriers. A negative evaluation of the presented works may result in grave consequences for the AMS (e.g. termination of the lease contract) .... To sum up, I state that ... a probability exists of negative reception by some social groups that will seek to prove a violation of personal rights and norms as stipulated in the criminal code. ..."

The solicitor was right to notice the necessity to take into account the most common and basic understanding of the work by a broader interpretive community (in the described situation, it is the interpretation of this community that should be legally relevant at the stage of investigating the objective features of the prohibited act). In his opinion, Dziubak rather groundlessly excluded the possibility of violating Art 141 CPO, which prohibits posting an indecent advert, inscription or drawing in public space.

 M. Wyszyn´ska, "Zgorszenia nie będzie," _GW_ Poznan´, April 15, 2000.

 S. Tabisz, "Bzdet na autostradzie sukcesu," _Dziennik Polski_ , June 30, 1999; Letter of S. Tabisz (Secretary of the Main Board of the ZPAP), "Snobistyczny amok," _Życie_ , June 24, 1999.

 Running concurrently with the presentation of _Bathhouse_ at the CSW ZU in Warsaw was an exhibition by Oleg Kulik (opening: 21 January 2000). In a mocking review of the two events ("Sztuka szczeka na człowieka," _Nowości_ , February 11, 2000) R. Warta and M. Załuski report that the Russian performer's show attracted media hype "when it was visited by a right-wing deputy who later publicly expressed his disgust in front of the cameras". According to the CSW ZU curator Ewa Gorządek, it was the then deputy Minister of Culture from the AWS (the author's interview with E. Gorządek, June 24, 2014).

 _Coś mi siedzi z tyl_ - _u czaszki_ (rozmowa z Katarzyną Kozyrą), "Polityka" January 31, 1998.

 Art 191a §1 Anyone who records the image of a naked person or a person during sexual activity, using violence, unlawful threat of violence or deceit for this purpose, or who distributes the image of a naked person or a person during sexual activity without his or her consent, is liable to imprisonment from three months to five years. 2. The prosecution takes place at the motion of the aggrieved party.

 J. Zydorowicz, _Artystyczny wirus. Polska sztuka krytyczna wobec przemian kulturowych po 1989 roku_ (Warszawa: Instytut im. Adama Mickiewicza, 2005), 148.

 P. Piotrowski, _Sztuka wedl_ - _ug polityki_ (Kraków: Universitas, 2007), 202–203.

 The title of the chapter is a paraphrase of the title of the work by Zbigniew Libera _How to Train Little Girls_ (1987), see: <https://artmuseum.pl/en/filmoteka/praca/libera-zbigniew-jak-tresuje-sie-dziewczynki-2>.

 "Wystawa, której nie było" (interview with Maciej Nowak), _Głos Wybrzeża_ , March 15, 1999.

 T. Zarycki, "Wybory".

 M. Nycz, "Odrzucony z salonu," _GW_ Katowice, July 26, 2000.

 P. Piotrowski, _Sztuka_ , 205.

 M. Wyszyn´ska, "Na łonie Kultury," _GW_ Poznan´, May 25, 1999.

 Markiewicz's exhibition, in which he presented a video shot furtively at a peep-show, was said to have been closed due to technical reasons. As Markiewicz recalls, Director Krukowski informed him that not enough equipment was available. Yet, both Markiewicz and the exhibition curator Marek Gożdziewski deny that there was any problem with the equipment (the author's interview with J. Markiewicz and M. Gożdziewski, August 28, 2014).

 A. Mazur, "Majtki Arakiego: rzecz o pruderii i zakładaniu majtek posągom," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://fototapeta.art.pl/fti-inv41ark.php>.

 According to Krukowski "censorship means an intervention into the artist's idea or what the artist recognises as an integral whole", and therefore the changes in the exhibition of Japanese art ideally matched his definition of censorship. (M. Małkowska, "Prawda artystyczna czy przyzwoitość," _Rzeczpospolita_ , February 25, 2003). On the other hand, around the time of censoring Araki, the CSW ZU produced and exhibited at the _Scena 2000_ [ _Scene 2000_ ] exhibition, Artur Zmijewski's work _Kompania Reprezentacyjna Wojska Polskiego (KRWP)_ [ _Polish Military Colour Guard_ ], which featured naked soldiers marching with machine guns and in military caps. As Krukowski recalled, complaints were lodged by "the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of National Defence, Ministry of Education, Military Ordinariate of Poland and various deputies ... Yet, the longest dispute was with the Political Administration of the Polish Army, with which I had to engage in a polemic for months". A. Mazur. _Pulsowanie_.

 M. Małkowska, "Prawda artystyczna czy przyzwoitość," _Rzeczpospolita_ , February 25, 2003.

 "Spowiedż dyrektora," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.raster.art.pl/archiwa/archiwum_listy.htm>.

 "Spowiedż".

 S. Błaszczyk, "Zbójeckie prawo," _GW_ , July 11, 2001.

 C. Polak; Kaya, "Cenzor z urzędu? Grzeszna margaryna?," _GW_ Białystok, 4 June 2001; "Co oni prezentują!" (interview with J. Racewicz), _GW_ Białystok, June 4, 2001; "Awantura o malutką Izę", accessed November 9, 2014, <http://raster.art.pl/archiwa/archiwum_III_2001.htm>; "Szarlataneria z pornografią."

 M. Krasny, "Dlaczego wciąż dajemy się gnoić?," <http://www.raster.art.pl/tygodnik/numer138/numer141.txt>

 The author's interview with W. Baraniewski, February 15, 2014.

 What might have contributed to that situation was a spontaneous statement made by the then Director of the IHS Prof. Maria Poprzęcka, quoted in the media, who suggested that she took responsibility for the entire fuss. "Twożywo's work incorporated a Christological symbol, and therefore insult to religious feelings is likely. I prefer to assume the role of a cowardly censor to allowing my Institute to suffer". "Sztuka na cenzurowanym," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.kosciol.pl/article.php/20040126173657696>.

 Dreszer allegedly told Jakubowicz that he should not state in the bio note that he was an employee or even a graduate of the Academy, since it was detrimental to its image. He added that the artist "offended his homies" who "are employed by VW" and "as we all know, Jews are making excellent business deals with VW". He also demanded that further distribution of the postcards be interrupted until he decided "what to do with Jakubowicz". At the same time, without knowledge as to where the work would be eventually presented, he temporarily blocked access to the AT gallery on the premises of the Academy just in case, see: I. Kowalczyk, "Dyscyplinowanie albo Volkskulturpolitik, rozmowa z Rafałem Jakubowiczem, o cenzurze i skandalu wokół Arbeitsdisziplin," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.indeks73.pl/pl_,web_journal,_,124,_,430.php>.

 "To cenzura prewencyjna" (Letter), _GW_ Poznan´, September 3, 2002.

 A. Kowalska, "Skandalista Daniel," _GW Gazeta Stołeczna_ , November 20, 2000.

 Kowalska, "Skandalista". Rottenberg dismissed the ticket office employee for allowing the actor to enter in a coat (later, owing to Olbrychski's backing, he found employment at the Współczesny Theatre in Warsaw), other employees of the gallery responsible for the exhibition received admonitions.

 _The Nazis_ was shown for the first time in 1998 at the Photographers' Gallery in London. The exhibition enjoyed success, yet the press wrote about "shameless glorification of Nazism". As Jarecka wrote, it was necessary to print leaflets that explained the sense of the exhibition (D. Jarecka, "Wszystko jest obrazem," _GW_ , November 23, 2000). The work was later presented at Kunsthalle in Berlin's former Jewish district, yet the show went unnoticed. New York's Jewish Museum was planning to exhibit the work in March 2001.

The Zachęta had previously published a free folder with a commentary on the work and organised a press conference with the artist, and yet – as Szymczyk said years later – "... the exhibition, also due to the incompetence of the some media, was received in a literal way. It was not treated as an installation by a contemporary artist, but as an exhibition of film stills of the Nazis ...". K. Bielas, D. Jarecka, "Artysta na górce brudnego śniegu" (interview with A. Szymczyk), _GW Duzży Format_ , May 08, 2003.

 Olbrychski's attack and its repercussions triggered an incredible media response; I have gathered around 100 articles and press mentions about this topic originating from the period between 19 and 30 November 2000 alone. The celebrity character of the event completely eclipsed Uklan´ski's work itself. At the same time, it is worth emphasising once again the unpredictable character of artistic scandals. One month before Uklan´ski's exhibition, the same gallery hosted a show by Sławomir Belina titled _Osiem_ [ _Eight_ ]. The artist made his body available as a creative material to eight well-known Polish artists who created eight photographs. In his work, Artur Ż mijewski referred to practices from Nazi concentration camps where one of the experiments on humans consisted of inserting an anal crank into the male rectum in order to cause ejaculation. Belina surrendered to such a procedure, which was administered by a nurse played by a porn actress. In turn, in Katarzyna Kozyra's photograph, Belina stuck his buttocks out to the viewer underneath an inscription "It's better to know nothing". The inscription formed part of a work by Douglas Gordon showed at the Zachęta one month before at the exhibition _Szare w kolorze_ [ _Grey in Colour_ ]. The exhibition _Eight_ went completely unnoticed.

 Data quoted from: _Raster_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://raster.art.pl/archiwa/kmicic.htm>.

 _GW_ readers wrote, for example, "A huge board should be installed in front of the Zachęta on which the motivations behind showing such an exhibition would be explained in caps. At school, pupils would also get explanations about what the author meant to convey". Some comments came as a confirmation of a celebrity cult: "The exhibition should not re-open. I am outraged by it. What worries me the most is the presence of Jan Englert amongst 'the Nazis'. He is such a kind man". "Sprawa Daniela O.," _GW Gazeta Stołeczna_ , November 22, 2000.

 _Potop_ ( _The Deluge_ ) is the second novel in Henryk Sienkiewicz's _Trylogia_ ( _Trilogy_ ). It was published in 1886 and tells the story of an audacious nobleman Andrzej Kmicic during the Swedish invasion of Poland between 1655 and 1660. A film by the same title, based on the novel, was produced in 1974 (dir. Jerzy Hoffman), featuring a bodacious performance by Daniel Olbrychski himself playing the role of Kmicic.

 T. Sobolewski, "Od redakcji," _GW_ , December 18, 2000.

 "List posła głupi i antysemicki," _GW_ , December 29, 2000. After the jubilee exhibition, the Zachęta was flooded with hateful and anti-Semitic letters. In 2011, those letters were exhibited by Goshka Macuga ( _Goshka Macuga. Bez tytułu / Goshka Macuga. Untitled_ , Zachęta 3 December 2011 – 19 February 2012).

 "Nie sprzyjam miernocie" (interview with A. Rottenberg), _GW_ , December 27, 2000.

 "In Cattelan's sculpture, the Pope is overwhelmed by a burden symbolised by a stone, a meteor. Today, in societies that do not follow spiritual objectives, the Pope accepts the burden, holding the cross up high ... Cattelan's work speaks about the mission of the great Pole, a mission received from God". D. Jarecka, T. Sobolewski, "Skandal wirtualny," _GW_ , December 14, 2000.

 P. Piotrowski, _Art and Democracy in Post-Communist Europe_ , trans. Anna Brzyski (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 267–268. It did not pertain only to the visual relationship – sociological studies confirmed a completely uncritical approach of the Polish media to the Pope, see e.g. A. Szepke, "Przemoc symboliczna w polskim dyskursie publicznym: Jan Paweł II – 'Papież Polski'," _Przegląd Socjologiczny_ , no. 1 (2003): 235–262.

 D. Jarecka, T. Sobolewski, "Skandal wirtualny," _GW_ , December 14, 2000.

 D. Jarecka, "W nowej reżyserii," _GW_ , December 15, 2000 and D. Jarecka, "Zachęta do frustracji," _GW_ , August 3, 2001.

 "Kicz epoki postliberalnej. Rozmowa o granicach pomiędzy sztuka, kiczem i świętokradztwem," _Ż ycie_ , January 25, 2001.

 DJ, "Będą rady w galeriach," _GW_ , 14 February 2001; D. Jarecka, "Cała władza w ręce rad," _GW_ , 15 February 2001; D. Jarecka, "Dam rady," _GW_ , 15 February 2001. The statute of the Zachęta originated from 1994; its provisions stated that: "A programme council operates at the Zachęta as an advisory body by the director. The director of the Zachęta stipulates the regulations of the council and its composition". The programme council of the CSW ZU, comprising the content-related staff, has been functioning informally since 1990. In February 2000, external members began to form part of the council. The council evaluated the programme implemented by the gallery and its plans. In November 2000, Ujazdowski granted the CSW a new statute, which confirmed that state of affairs. His decision as of Feburary 2001 would therefore change the legal state that the minister had only just accepted.

 When Tomczak became a Member of the European Parliament, the motion concerning waiving his immunity was sent to Brussels. Yet, it was only in 2009 (and therefore after the expiry of his term of office as an MEP) that the PPO accused Tomczak of acting with the pre-meditated intention of damaging the sculpture. His act caused a damage estimated at nearly PLN 40,000. Tomczak said: "I destroyed it because that was what my voters expected from me", and he stated in a letter to the PPO that the charges were incomprehensible to him "considering who the Holy Father was and what he did throughout 28 years for Poland and Poles. On 13 July 2016, the court conditionally discontinued the proceedings for a trial period of one year. Tomczak was therefore deemed guilty, yet he was not punished. Still, he had to pay PLN 3,000 to the company that insured the sculpture and cover PLN 3,000 of court fees. R. Pawłowski, "Zniszczył rzeżbę, straci immunitet," _GW_ , June 28, 2008; "Europoseł Witold Tomczak straci immunitet," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.rp.pl/artykul/153945.html>. Ansa/PAP, "Koniec 16-letniego procesu obron´cy papieża. Sąd umorzył proces b. europosła o zniszczenie rzeżby Jana Pawła II w Zachęcie," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://wpolityce.pl/spoleczenstwo/300628-koniec-16-letniego-procesu-obroncy-papieza-sad-umorzyłproces-b-europosla-o-zniszczenie-rzezby-jana-pawla-ii-w-zachecie>.

 W. Sobecki, "Od 'Przedwiośnia' do 'Irreligii'," _Trybuna_ , January 4, 2001.

 The author's interview with K. Piotrowski, November 20, 2010.

 The Christian Democratic Mayor Jette Herve Doyen, denied funding for the exhibition: "Neither as the mayor nor as a believer do I agree with the idea of the exhibition, whose works have only one goal – to shock! I have told this to Wodek and Parson Scheerens [parson of the Notre-Damme de Lourdes church – J.D.]" (J. Safuta, "Uwolnić Madonnę!," _Polityka_ , November 24, 2001). In turn, Belgian bishops expressed their regret and appealed to the parson not to make the church available as an exhibition site. The PPO was notified about an offence contrary to Art 144 of the Belgian Criminal Code, yet indictment was not filed to the court because the local church authorities ultimately did not recognise an insult to the religious site. After the opening, the sexton from Notre-Dame de Lourdes wrote critical commentaries on the presented works and Parson Scheerens on the walls of the temple. Yet, the inscriptions were quickly removed. The work that stirred the greatest controversy in Brussels was the painting by Sobczyk, as some Belgians were outraged at the image of two figures reminding them of a Jew and an Arab, torturing and insulting Christ. "These paintings are shocking as they bring nothing to the debate. Many Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, may consider them as aggressive...." – stated Georges Dallemagne, Christian Democratic member of the board of the municipality of Brussels-City. "The role of the public authorities does not consist of financing such things..." (J. Safuta, "Uwolnić"). In turn, Christian Democratic member of the municipal board Chantal Noël destroyed Robert Rumas' installation _Hot Water Bottles_ (see also...) displayed on the courtyard of the Brussels city hall – she released a holy figure from the burden of a sack lying on top of it and hid it in her office. Yet, Councillor Simons carried it back underneath the "hot water bottle". Not for long. On several occasions, unknown perpetrators cut the sacks with water, which finally had to be removed from the courtyard.

 M. Chmarniak, "Dyplomata cenzorem?," _Trybuna_ , November 28, 2001.

 http://www.lodzkaliska.pl/rzepecki/Hi-Mr%20Marcel/image10[5].html, accessed November 9, 2014.

 While the exhibition _Irreligion_ was shown in Brussels, a fashion show was staged in London by the Polish designer Arkadiusz Weremczuk vel Arkadius, whose attires incorporated Christian and Marian motifs. Protests against _Irreligion_ often pertained also to that thread, but the list of reproaches was obviously much longer and was soon to become extended (see footnote 457).

 J. Safuta, "Uwolnić Madonnę!," _Polityka_ , November 24, 2001.

 <http://www.senat.gov.pl/k5/dok/sten/oswiad/szafrani/0301.htm>, accessed November 9, 2014.

 On 23 September 2001 (during the conflict about _Irreligion_ ) parliamentary elections were held that resulted in a landslide victory of post-communist parties SLD and PSL, which seized power. A reshuffling amongst parliamentarians also followed, for instance Krystyna Czuba lost her office as a senator, while Szafraniec became a senator.

 <http://ww2.senat.pl/k5/dok/sten/oswiad/szafrani/0301o.htm>, accessed November 9, 2014, and letter from Minister of Culture A. Celin´ski to K. Czuba, _Nasz Dziennik_ , December 6, 2001.

 "Sacrum jest wspólną wartością" (interview with K. Piotrowski), _Dziennik Łódzki – Wiadomości Dnia_ , November 24, 2001.

 A. Mazur, _Pulsowanie_.

 "Nikt tam nie chodził" (wywiad z prof. Sławojem Ostrowskim), _GW_ Trójmiasto, February 13, 2002.

 It is noteworthy that the tide of struggles with contemporary art also swept out the Director of the Regional Museum in Bydgoszcz, Małgorzata Winter, from her office on 30 October 2003. Winter was first accused of stagnation, then of wrong programming (too difficult and involving too little "culture and art of the region"), and finally of fraud, which was however never proved. Her activity was very much respected and valued in the contemporary arts milieu.

 Testifying in the court as a witness in Nieznalska's case, Sielatycki denied having written the e-mail, claiming that someone had made use of his account (see also footnote 470): R. Daszczyn´ski, "Gdyby ją tak jeszcze zdemolować...," _GW_ Trójmiasto, March 4, 2003.

 In this context, an excerpt from a homily by Primate of Poland Józef Glemp becomes instructive, said homily referencing the _Irreligion_ exhibition and delivered on 18 November 2001 in the Brussels Cathedral: »... in sensing his helplessness, a man harmed is ready to engage in desperate acts. Hence the direct path from helplessness to violence. What a precarious way of hauling Christians into structures of hatred. Thus, in today's Gospel, Christ admonishes us, "Take heed, that ye be not deceived" «, accessed November 9, 2014, http://www.lodzkaliska.pl/rzepecki/Hi-Mr%20Marcel/image10[5].html.

 Certain analogies with "Sensation", an exhibition shown in the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York (1999/2000), come to mind; Chris Ofili's _The Holy Virgin Mary_ was shown among works by so-called _Young_ _British Artists_ from Charles Saatchi's collection. The painting depicts a simplistic image of a black woman surrounded by pornographic photographs and encrusted with elephant dung. The work spiked a media storm in New York and a judiciary conflict between the Museum and city authorities headed by Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani. Additionally, just before the exhibition closed, Denis Heiner, 72, squirted white paint over the painting. W.J.T. Mitchell was observant in pointing out that Heiner's gesture was actually no defacement, but rather an attempt to safeguard a holy icon. The paint – soluble in water and easily removable – did not jeopardise the work, and was intended to "veil" rather than destroy it: W.J.T. Mitchell, _What Do Pictures Want? : The Lives and Loves of Images_ (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2005), 136.

 Freedberg, _Power_ , XXII-XXIV.

 Freedberg, _Power_ , XXIV, 13, 51.

 Freedberg, _Power_ , 74, 283, 420.

 Freedberg, _Power_ , 360.

 LPR deputy Zofia Krasicka-Domka engaged in multi-tiered elision when remarking during her parliamentary intervention of 11 November 2001, »We also wish to notify our regret concerning the performance by actress Magdalena Mielcarz, who appeared as a model in Arkadiusz Weremczuk's fashion show in London, which desecrated religious symbols. Those who saw the film _Quo Vadis_ [based on the novel of the same title by Henryk Sienkiewicz – J.D.] were surprised to learn that Ms. Magdalena Mielcarz, having played the part of Ligia and met with Holy Father John Paul II in Rome, decided to take part in the outrageous London show as a model« (<http://orka2.sejm.gov.pl/Debata4.nsf/main/63D7DD12>, accessed November 9, 2014). Krasicka-Domka, having correctly identified the film character with the referent (Ligia the literary character), proceeded to erroneously personify her as a historical figure, and then to conclude that the actress (the fully real Mielcarz) is, as it were, Ligia, and should thus in her own life cherish ideals identical to those revered by her character in Sienkiewicz's novel. In particular, she should refrain from using religious images which, "are", after all, God himself, to secular purpose.

 D. Freedberg, V. Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empathy in Esthetic Experience," _TRENDS in Cognitive_ _Sciences_ , vol. 11, no. 5 (2007): 197-203.

 Freedberg, Gallese, "Motion": 201.

 Freedberg, Gallese, "Motion".

 A. Urban´czyk, "Pasja kontrowersyjna," _GW_ Gdan´sk, January 17, 2002.

 "Pasja Nieznalskiej," _GW_ Gdan´sk, January 17, 2002.

 On 18 January, _GW_ published a brief piece accompanied by a photograph highlighting the penis-bearing cross more explicitly than before. The piece was titled _Gdy człowiek nie ma nic do powiedzenia_ , and directly continued in its first sentence: "he does as Dorota Nieznalska does".

 In western art, iconoclastic juxtapositions have had something of a tradition. In the context of Nieznalska's work, Wallace Berman's _Cross_ (1965-1957) seems particularly relevant. Shown in 1957 at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, the work comprised a wooden Latin cross placed on a wooden chest (total height: 275 cm, width: 152 cm), a box suspended on a chain from the left arm of the cross, the box holding a photograph captioned _Factum Fidei_ and depicting female and male genitals in sexual congress. In a search for pornographic material, the police raided the exhibition; having surprisingly overlooked the work, they did, however, find an indecent drawing in _Semina_ , a magazine Berman was editor of, and placed the artist under arrest on related charges. In 1960, in turn, the Swiss Supreme Court upheld the judgment of the lower instance court who had sentenced an artist on the basis of Art 261 of the Swiss Criminal Code (equivalent to Art 196 PCC) for the public display of a painting depicting a crucified naked woman; the intent of the work had been to protest violence against women. At this juncture, it is noteworthy that in 2005, Austrian artist Marcus Hank attempted to organise paschal parade in Salzburg. Hank invited Nieznalska to participate in his happening; she was to be crucified in the nude. Yet one week before the happening, the artist was notified by the Polish consulate in Austria that she should abandon her plans to travel to Austria, as local nationalists had been issuing death threats. An Austrian tabloid had allegedly published the artist's photographs captioned _Polish Pig Will Scandalise Again_ ("Nieznalska na bramie," _GW Duży Format_ , August 20, 2011). In Poland, Wiktor Gutt referenced the form of the cross presenting photographs depicting naked women in his work _Krzyż duży_ [ _Big Cross_ ], see image in Chapter 2.4.4.1).

 Dorota Nieznalska's indictment, District Prosecution Office Gdan´sk-South, file Ref. No. 3, 16/02.

 Dorota Nieznalska's indictment

 SZUB, "Zrobiona w przestępcę," _Trybuna_ , March 27, 2002.

 Art 13(2) of the Press Law of 26 January 1984: "It shall be prohibited to publish the personal data or images of persons under pre-trial or trial, or the personal data or images of witnesses, victims, and/or injured parties, unless such persons explicitly provide their consent."

 I. Kowalczyk, "Wolność zniewolona," _Trybuna_ , September 16, 2002.

 The artist became the target of vicious attacks on the www.trojmiasto.pl website, where anonymous members of _Młodzież Wszechpolska_ [ _All-Polish Youth_ ] organisation posted that such artists as Nieznalska should be hanged or have their heads shaved. The following message was sent from Grzegorz Sielatycki's e-mail box: "We will kick the ass of any similar exhibition in the Tri-City... and hang every such artist". R. Daszczyn´ski, "Gdyby ją tak jeszcze zdemolować...," _GW_ Gdan´sk, March 3, 2003.

 A. Osęka, "Policja moralności" and P. Zaremba, "Nie śmiejcie się z farmerów," _GW_ , November 18, 2002.

 D. Janowski, "Pasterze milczą a owczarnia beczy," _Głos Wybrzeża_ , July 16, 2003.

 KRZY, DJ, PAP, "Nieznalska skazana!," _GW_ , July 19, 2003.

 It appears that no previous visual art-related event (excepting Daniel Olbrychski's attack on Piotr Uklan´ski's work) had triggered such media response in Poland. I managed to collect approximately 80 assorted press publications for the period of three weeks immediately following the court sentence, the collection by no means guaranteeing its exhaustive completeness.

 M. Małkowska, "Obojętni i tolerancyjni," _Rzeczpospolita_ , July 30, 2003.

 "After all, Michelangelo chiselled Christ without the perizoma..., which had not been received as an insult to religious feelings." "Bez listka," interview D. Nieznalska, _Express Bydgoski_ , February 2, 2003.

 A. Osęka, "Policja moralności," _GW_ , November 18, 2002.

 P. Leszkowicz, "Niebezpieczne związki z męskim ciałem," _Res Publica Nowa_ , (September 2002).

 P. Kuncewicz, "Powrót przypadku Szpotan´skiego," _Trybuna_ , August 1, 2003.

 D. Janowski, "Pasja nietolerancji," _Gl_ - _os Wybrzeża_ , September 17, 2003.

 S. Rodzin´ski, "Awantura o _Pasję_ ," _Gość Niedzielny_ , August 10, 2003.

 "Bez granic sztuki" (interview with W. Cieślak), _Głos Wybrzeża_ , July 22, 2003.

 S. Rodzin´ski, "Artysta nie ma prawa obrażać," _Rzeczpospolita_ , July 31, 2003.

 S. Podemski, "Obraza uczuć religijnych czy dobrego smaku," September 28, 2002.

 See commentary by A. Morawin´ska and P. Piotrowski, _GW_ , November 18, 2002.

 T. Piątek, "Sacrum i genitalium," _GW_ , July 22, 2003.

 R. Sołtyk, "Europa przyjrzy się Pasji," _GW_ , July 24, 2003; titles (and content) of the following articles alluded to similar developments: Ż Wróbel, "Zadupie," _Trybuna_ , July 19, 2003, and PEES, "Zadupia ciąg dalszy," _Trybuna_ , July 25, 2003.

 Sołtyk's reference to draft Art 13 ("The art and scientific research should be free of constraint" without recognition of Art 10 protecting the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, or the limitation clause of Art 52, was another misuse.

 S. Lux, "Alarm dla Europy," Trybuna, April 29, 2004.

 With regard to equal treatment of religion and art, suffice to inspect the Italian criminal code and the adjudicature of the Constitutional Court of Italy of the last 20 years with regard to criminal laws protecting the area of religion (Art 402, 403, 404§1, 405§1, 406 of the Italian criminal code). With regard to the topic, see e.g. Blasphemy, Insult: 182-183. Notably, in 2006 an installation of the Goldechiari duo shown at the Muzeion in Bolzano was removed from the exhibition by the PPO, both artists duly charged with insulting the Italian nation (the work blended the sound of a lavatory flush with the Italian national anthem); the court delivered a judgment of acquittal. In late July 2008, also in Bolzano, a local politician went on hunger strike to force a local museum to remove Zuerst die Füsse, a work by Martin Kippenberger. Rebuked by the politicians and clergy, the sculpture portrayed a crucified frog with a beer in one palm and an egg in the other. Ten thousand people signed the petition for artwork removal; a march of protest was organised. Under pressure, the museum moved the sculpture to a less exposed location. In October, the institution's director Corinne Diserens was dismissed. In April 2009, Katyn´, a film by Andrzej Wajda telling the story of Soviets murdering over 10,000 Polish officers in 1940, was withdrawn from the majority of Italian cinemas as politically inconvenient. This was not the first such case. In May 1999, an Italian publishing house shelved a foreword by Gustaw Herling-Grudzin´ski to Varlam Shalamov's writings, wherein the Polish writer drew a parallel between Soviet forced labour camps and Nazi extermination camps.

 "Estetyka kary," _Trybuna_ , March 29, 2002.

 P. Szubartowicz, "Zaocznie obrażeni," _Trybuna_ , September 19, 2003.

 "Architektura płci," _GW Wysokie Obcasy_ , April 12, 2003.

 G. Klaman in: _Kresy – Kwartalnik Literacki_ , no. 4, (October-December 2003): 174.

 MAG, "Dorota prowokuje," _GW_ Torun´, February 14, 2003. See also e.g.: W. Kozłowski: "Artystka skazana," (conversation with W. Kozłowski), _Gazeta Lubuska_ , July 22, 2003; M. Kruczkiewicz, "Ukarać za _Pasję_?," _Nowości. Gazeta Pomorza i Kujaw_ , July 23, 2003); J. Grąziewicz, "Granice ekspresji," _Głos Wybrzeża_ , July 22, 2003.

 "Apel Zbigniewa Hołdysa", accessed on November 9, 2014, <http://www.nieznalska.art.pl/holdys.html>.

 Remark by father Adam Boniecki, _GW_ , November 18, 2002.

 P. Zaremba, "Nie śmiejcie się z farmerów, _" GW_ , November 18, 2002.

 M. L-ętowski, "Znawczyni się znalazła," _Głos Wybrzeża_ , July 25-27, 2003.

 P. Wielgosz, "Krzyżowanie wolności," _Trybuna_ , August 1, 2003.

 "Czy sąd drugiej instancji powinien uwolnić Nieznalską od zarzutu obrazy uczuć religijnych," _Przegląd_ , no. 31, 2003.

 Ż Watrak, in B. Czechowska-Derkacz, "I o to idzie gra," _Gl_ - _os Wybrzeża_ , August 1-3, 2003.

 S. Rodzin´ski, "Artysta nie ma prawa obrażać," _Rzeczpospolita_ , July 31, 2003.

 S. Rodzin´ski, "Awantura o _Pasję," Gość Niedzielny_ , August 10, 2003.

 P. Leszkowicz, _Niebezpieczne._

 The text was published after the conviction – I. Kowalczyk, "Skazana: Dorota Nieznalska. Sztuka wobec przemocy, przemoc wobec sztuki," _Artmix_ , no. 6 (2004).

 P. Leszkowicz, in _Kresy – Kwartalnik Literacki_ , no. 4 (October-December 2003): 180 (Leszkowicz was one of the many responders to an editorial question: _Why do Polish intellectuals dislike contemporary art?_ ). The critic was obviously aware of how problematic the situation had become: "The LPR harmed contemporary art and art critique in numerous aspects, primarily by blocking any deeper reflection. It is difficult to truly consider art under circumstances of an imperative to constantly defend it against fundamentalists, and of the need to write about it from such an elementary vantage point." P. Leszkowicz, "Czy twój umysł jest pełen dobroci," _Obieg_ , July 18, 2006, accessed November 9, 2014, <http://archiwum-obieg.u-jazdowski.pl/teksty/5766>.

 A. Urban´czyk, "Pasja kontrowersyjna," _GW_ , January 17, 2002.

 "Dekonstrukcja męskości" (conversation with D. Nieznalska), _GW_ _Wysokie Obcasy_ , 16 November 2002.

 WIEK, PAP, "Sztuka czy obraza uczuć," _Zycie_ , September 17, 2002.

 I. Kowalczyk, _Skazana_.

 When asked whether she feared that the cross might prompt religious motive associations and unpredictable reactions in some people, Nieznalska responded, "Of course I was worried, if only for reasons of having attended the Irreligion exhibition, and experienced its aftermath". "Nikt nie obciął mi głowy," _Trybuna_ , February 4, 2002.

 "Nieznalska na bramie," _GW Duży Format_ , August 20, 2011.

 T. Piątek, "Sacrum i genitalium," _GW,_ July 22, 2003.

 The concept of good taste was oft-repeated in commentaries, paradoxically in Nieznalska's defence, in substitute of religious feelings; "the artist may be accused of violating good taste, but not of blasphemy, not of crime".

 In one interview, Nieznalska said, "My father was a typical household tyrant, who turned my mum, my older brother and me into his subordinates. Although my parents divorced quite early and I was brought up by my mum from the age of eleven, he caused a lot of harm over the few years we spent together.... explorations led me to identify evil with a man, potentially stronger, aggressive, capable of violence and raping a woman." "Dekonstrukcja męskości" (conversation with D. Nieznalska), _GW Wysokie Obcasy_ , November 16, 2002. On 19 January 2005, Nieznalska testified in court: "As a child, I was actually spiritually educated by force, baptised and made to take first communion at thirteen, which is another issue conducive to a negative perception of faith and religion in my life."

 A. Young, _Judging the Image: Art, Value, Law_ (Oxon – New York Routledge, 2005), 41-42.

 J. Cegła, "Niepożądana," _Gl_ - _os Pomorza,_ October 4, 2003.

 M. Weiss, "Czarownica w galerii," _Ziemia Kaliska_ , November 19, 2003.

 T. S _l_ -yż, "Nieznalska skazana," _Super Express_ Gdan´sk, October 4, 2003; J. Cegła, "Niepożądana," _Gl_ - _os Pomorza_ , October 4, 2003.

 T. Rogowski, "Prezydent z jajami," _Trybuna,_ October 9, 2003.

 I. N. Czapska, B. Kamin´ska, "Przeklęta czarownica," _Zycie Warszawy_ , October 8, 2003; K. Gruszczyn´ska, "D. Nieznalska. Obojętność Gdan´ska," _Gl_ - _os Wybrzeża_ , October 10-12, 2003.

 M. Weiss, "Nie ma galerii nie ma wystawy," _Ziemia Kaliska_ , November 25, 2003.

 M. Weiss, "Nie ma galerii".

 The author's interview with D. Nieznalska, August 5, 2010.

 The closing of the _Le Madame_ club can also be recognised as something of a restriction to the freedom of expression, artistic expression included. After having been charged and before the conviction, Nieznalska had two exhibitions in Poland: at the Polski Theatre in Bydgoszcz in February 2003, and a show forming part of the Theatrical _Reminiscences_ International Festival at Cracow's in late March 2003. Notably, neither of the two was a professional or leading exhibition salon.

 The show – organised at two of Warsaw's galleries: the private _Program_ and the public gallery _XX1_ – was later held at the BWA _Awangarda_ in Wrocław and Art Gallery in Legnica. It explored i.a. the use of symbols connotating assorted corporate, state, national, or religious authority systems in public space. Despite the profusion of numerous controversial works, Warsaw survived the show with no scandal – yet the further from the capital city the more difficult things became. Certain concerns were expressed in Wrocław (not least because of the time of national mourning after John Paul II's death). In Legnica, the Prosecution Authority initiated proceedings (later dismissed) to investigate insult to religious feelings in June 2005, following a motion by LPR.

 S. L-upak. "Atak moherowych beretów," _GW Duży Format_ , March 7, 2005.

 T. Piątek, "Sacrum i genitalium," _GW,_ July 22, 2003.

 A. Osęka, "Wojna z lubieżnym nierządem," _GW,_ March 6, 2000.

 In a justification to his veto, Kwaśniewski wrote: "I cannot sign a law whose authors agree to the option of its non-enforcement and of creating illicit pornographic content. Making such matters part of behaviours subject to criminal prosecution shall exclude all control altogether, and – contrary to the legislator's expectations – may prove conducive to criminal behaviour". According to Presidential Chancellery minister Barbara Labuda, signing the law would further bring censorship back, and result in an annihilation of human freedoms: A. Kublik, "Wolno porno," _GW_ , March 28, 2000.

 In listing examples of depreciation of believers' right, the senator quoted "texts and installations of Polish artistic communities..., such as 'Elijah the Prophet' shown in TV Theatre some time ago, the 'Irreligion' exhibition in Brussels, a fashion show in London, Mauritio Cattellan's work [original spelling] in Zachęta, screenings of the film 'Dogma', 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' film poster, the most recent show of 'Passion' at a gallery in Gdan´sk, and many, many others", accessed November 9, 2014, <http://ww2.senat.pl/k5/dok/sten/oswiad/szafrani/0703.htm>

In response to the statement, A. Zoll observed i.a. "... I am convinced that criminal law provisions cannot be applied too broadly with intent to penalise discussive or provocative expressions of creation having little in common with artistic values. Such phenomena cannot be fought effectively with legal instruments – public disapproval could, in turn, serve as the correct measure. This, however, is no place for any official act by the Ombudsman, who has not been appointed to judge or defend artistic values, but rather... human and civic rights and freedoms in case of their breach by public authority institutions.", accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.senat.gov.pl/k5/dok/sten/oswiad/szafrani/0703o.htm>.

 POL-, "Krucjata rusza w bój!," _GW_ Białystok, January 19, 2002.

 " _Chujart" (Dickart)_ : title of a piece in the Nie weekly, April 11, 2002. Nie was formed in 1990 by Jerzy Urban, government spokesman in the years 1981-1989 and one of the most hated representatives of the communist regime. The scandalising and anticlerical periodical swiftly gained considerable readership.

 "Walka trwa" (K. Kwaśniewska and L-. Tischner in conversation with T. Sobolewski, M. Tarabuła, M. Tomaszewski, T. Walas and A. Zagajewski), _Znak_ , no. 12 (2002).

 Some categories display considerable connection; furthermore, examples quoted include a number of adjoining rhetorical schemes. I have derived some of the related classification items from an analysis of press hate speech targeting sexual minorities by I. Zielin´ska, "Panika moralna, mniejszości seksualne i mowa nienawiści," in: _Emocje a kultura i życie spol_ - _eczne_ , eds. P. Binder, H. Palska, W. Pawlik, (Warszawa: IFiS PAN, 2009), 190-192.

 Burt, "(Un)censoring in Detail. The Fetish of Censorship in Early Modern Past and the Postmodern Present," in ed. R. C. Post, _Censorship and Silencing. Practices of Cultural Regulation_ (Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and Humanities, 1995), 25 ff.

 P. Bourdieu, _On Television_ , trans. P. Parkhurst Ferguson (New York: New Press, 1998), 54.

 Bourdieu, _On Television_ , 46.

 Bourdieu, _On Television,_ 36-37.

 Bourdieu, _On Television_. 17-18, 28-30, 74.

 Bourdieu, _On Television,_ 73-75.

 Bourdieu, _On Television,_ 75-76. It might be argued that many scandalising artists are not focused on their own market – on the contrary, their intent is to attract outside forces resulting in escalating media scandal; yet as aforementioned, the morphology of scandal is not entirely divulged. While numerous controversial works remain largely unnoticed by the mass media, moderately controversial or directly uncontroversial works, or even ones considered canonic, may prompt unexpected comeback. Moreover, scandal is no guarantee of profit, as it may well lead to the isolation of an artist or his/her work.

 Matuchniak-Krasuska, _Zarys,_ 39.

 J. Truszkowski, _Artyści radykalni_ (Bielsko-Biała: Bielska Gallery BWA, 2004), 9.

 Truszkowski, _Artyści_ , 114 and 150. While CSW ZU's exhibition policy of the 1990s would require separate research, it seems that the names of artists Truszkowski claimed to have been excluded did appear at a variety of shows held by the institution.

 "Zdegradowani – skazani na magazyn," _Raster_ , September-December 2001, accessed November 9, 2014, <http://raster.art.pl/archiwa/archiwum_IV_2001.htm>.

 See E. Gorządek, S. Szabłowski, W. Krukowski, "Dwa listy w sprawie zarzutów stawianych przez Zbigniewa Liberę", _Obieg_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.obieg.pl/felieton/15705>. Libera accused CSW ZU not only of censorship, but also of destroying works, disallowing exhibitions, blocking his career, infringing the artist's right to his image, and copyright violations.

 J. Truszkowski, "Champion of Golgota" and "Czy przed 1989 w Polsce była sztuka krytyczna? Zofia Kulik płakała," _Raster_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://raster.art.pl/archiwa/archiwum_II_2002.htm>.

 T. Załuski, "Powtórzenie i krytyczny dyskurs o sztuce performance," _Sztuka i Dokumentacja_ , no. 8 (2013).

 A. Smalcerz, _Ankieta_ , in: eds. M. Kosin´ska, K. Sikorska, A. Czaban, _Zawód_ _kurator_ (Poznan´: Galeria Miejska Arsenał, 2014), 477.

 Bourdieu, _On Television_ , 28.

 Author's interview with G. Kowalski, March 11, 2014.

 Bourdieu, _On Television_.

 Ż Warpechowski, _Wolność_ (Radom: MCSW w Radomiu, 2009), 70, 80, 105-108.

 Warpechowski, _Wolność_ , 36-39.

 Warpechowski, _Wolność_ , 36, 50-51, 103.

 Warpechowski, _Wolność_ , 99-100.

 Warpechowski, _Wolność_ , 111-113.

 The phenomenon may be illustrated by censorship of _The Krasnals_ group (the name concealing a group of anonymous artists, often as not brutally contesting the Polish artworld's establishment). In an email to the author of February 8, 2013, the group listed the following cases of their works having been censored: withdrawal from a previously approved mural forming part of the _ArtBoom_ festival in Cracow (2011); censoring of an exhibition at the Art Academy in Szczecin (January 2012); refusal to organise a travelling exhibition of the _Bitwa pod Grunwaldem. Statek gl_ - _upców_ [ _Battle of Tannenberg. Ship of Fools_ ] painting (2012) at public galleries in Poland (most institutions did not respond at all, some definitely refused, others withdrew). Somewhat hastily branded as conservative by the artworld, _The Krasnals_ group were presented with an award by _Arteon_ – the only critical and artistic periodical in Poland attempting to promote conservative ideas in the art world. An exhibition of the Group's works accompanied the award presentation ceremony. Paradoxically, _Battle of Tannenberg_ set right-wing activists and politicians on alert. Head of the OKOpS Ryszard Nowak went as far as to file notification of _The Krasnals_ having committed the offence of insulting father T. Rydzyk, founder of the ultra-Catholic _Radio Maryja_ station, and John Paul II.

 P. Samka, "Zachęta do zimnej wojny," _Życie_ , January 26, 2001, see also C. Michalski in: "Kicz epoki postliberalnej. Rozmowa o granicach pomiędzy sztuką, kiczem i świętokradztwem," _Życie_ , January 25, 2001. Piotr Piotrowski emphasised that Poland had never experienced consensus typical for liberal democracy, and that it had been replaced with Catholic-cum-national diktat. P. Piotrowski, _Agorafilia. Sztuka i demokracja w postkomunistycznej Europie_ **** (Poznan´: Rebis, 2010), 263-288.

 Ż Libera, "Zimmna wojna sztuki ze społeczen´stwem," _Magazyn Sztuki_ , accessed on November 9, 2014, <http://magazynsztuki.eu/old/archiwum/teksty_internet_arch_all/archiwum_teksty_online_22.htm>

 b.t., "Wolność, co to znaczy?," _Kurier Szczecin´ski_ , May 28, 2001

 M. Jabłon´ski, "Gabinet osobliwości," _Życie_ _Warszawy_ , March 19, 2001.

 W. Makowiecki, "Zaufajmy widzom," _GW_ Poznan´, April 20, 2002.

 J. Gęga, "Ryzykowne więzi," _GW_ Poznan´, April 20, 2002.

 P. Sarzyn´ski, "Znowu awangarda," _Polityka_ , March 31, 2001.

 E. Podgajna, "Obraża czy obnaża," _GW Gazeta na Pomorzu_ , May 28, 2001.

 I. Kowalczyk, in "Wartością sztuki krytycznej jest to, że wywołuje dyskusje i prowokuje do rozmów o wartościach..." (discussion transcript), _Gazeta Malarzy i Poetów_ no. 2/3 (2001).

 W. Makowiecki, in "Wartością".

 Julita Wójcik "Sztuka ziemniaków i karmników dla niebieskich ptaków," _GW_ _Wysokie Obcasy_ , June 4, 2005.

 "Nie-ładnie na Sląsku," _Raster_ , accessed on November 9, 2014, <http://raster.art.pl/archiwa/archiwum_I_2001.htm>.

 P. Bourdieu, H. Haacke, _Free Exchange_ (Polity Press, 1995), 11-12.

 M. Zmijewska, "Rozbierany Arsenał," _GW_ Białystok, February 19, 2003. A few days later, SLD deputy Wiesław Kobylin´ski said, "Katarzyna Korzeniecka's exhibition is no longer on view at Arsenał, now they are showing i.a. abstract paintings by Jerzy Lengiewicż An LPR councillor admitted to me after visiting the exhibition that she actually liked it. One day later, she said she had changed her mind. A friend of hers opened her eyes to extensive concealed sexual content, which makes this show even more perfidious than the previous one". Concurrently, Antypiuk filed objections concerning the _Ex Oriente Lux_ photographic show, documenting life on the EU's prospect eastern borders and opening that April. According to the councillor, mentioning borders was unfitting, as the European referendum was only planned for May, so borders were uncertain. T. Cwikowski, " _Nie_ obłudnikom," _GW_ Białystok, March 24, 2003.

 M. Zmijewska, "Piesek jest be," _GW_ Białystok, November 20, 2003.

 M. Zmijewska, "Radna bez portretu," _GW_ Białystok, May 22, 2004.

 Zmijewska, "Radna".

 Election results: http://wybory2006.pkw.gov.pl/kbw/wynikiKandydatec03.html?okregId=206101-RDA/1&kandydatId=8a8a8a840e33ee43010e36b658ea0340, accessed November 9, 2014. In actuality, re-election was only possible thanks to the highly controversial option of election list grouping, introduced by the PiS–LPR-Samoobrona coalition (August 2006). Without the amendment, LPR would have placed no candidate in local governments at all.

 Works included a fragment of Zuzanna Janin's _Widzial_ - _am swoją śmierć_ [ _I saw My Death_ , 2003], a work very poorly received by the media and part of the art community. Originally, the work was to be shown mid-May 2003 at Warsaw's Foksal gallery. A performance action lay at the work's foundation, the artist having placed an obituary with her artistic alias in a newspaper, signed _"family and friends"_. Foksal gallery's director Wies _l_ -aw Borowski placed another obituary; on 7 April, Janin's mock funeral was held, the artist attending in the guise of an elderly woman. Apart from her family, project curator Stach Szab _l_ -owski, the Foksal gallery crew and Anda Rottenberg, other funeral guests did not know whether they were part of an artistic action or real memorial service. The Foksal gallery show was to comprise 6 elements: 1) video and photographs titled _Siedem śmierci. Corpus delicti_ [ _Seven Deaths. Corpus Delicti_ ] - images of the artist as a corpse found by people, video showing a figure dancing in the nude; 2) _Ceremonia & Zabawy_ [ _Ceremony and Fun_ ] video installation - record of the artist's fictitious funeral and people enjoying themselves at a water park, accompanied by a sculpture (3) titled _Fotel_ ( _Armchair_ ) upholstered with the artist's mourning attire from the performance; 4) _Roboty murarskie_ [ _Masonry Works_ ] - video showing the coffin being bricked in the family crypt, superimposed on a film of house builders; 5) _Wywiady_ [ _Interviews_ ] - video presenting people talking about Janin's action and death in art; 6) _Cytaty_ [ _Quotations_ ] - installation comprising action-related comments by politicians, journalists, and private individuals – mainly critical, they were frequently aggressive or offensive: _"Give me her address, I'll send her my sh..."_ , _"Kill her kids"_ , _"How can you do that in the country of Katyn´ and Auschwitz"_.

The negative reception of Janin's work surpassed comments: she had issues with exhibiting it. Borowski himself claimed that he _"felt manipulated"_ at the cemetery, and had agreed upon an entirely different project with the artist, after the performance he advised her to put the exhibition project on the back burner _"for a very long time, or forget it altogether"_ (interview with W. Borowski, _GW Gazeta Stol_ - _eczna_ , April 9, 2003). Janin vehemently denies such version (the author's interview with Ż Janin, May 5, 2014), emphasising that Borowski knew the project inside out, but got cold feet when faced with a media smear campaign and protests by the mother of Janin's son's schoolmate and wife of a right-wing politician. Using her political connections, the woman pressured Borowski to cancel the exhibition, and attempted (ineffectively) to get Janin's son expelled. At the end of the day, Borowski censored the work, permitting only the _Armchair_ , _Masonry Works_ , and a series of small _Ceremony_ photos to be shown. To avoid potential personal rights breach lawsuits, Janin removed images of persons requesting her to do so from all works – Borowski's decision cannot thus be justified with legal grounds. The show of other parts of the work ( _Ceremony, Seven Deaths._ _Corpus delicti_ ) at the artist's studio at Foksal No. 17 coincided with the Foksal gallery exhibition – yet no space was assigned to the _Interviews & Quotations_ installation, which was exactly the exhibit displayed as part of _Martial Law_ show.

 A. Kowalska, "Fotocenzura," _GW Gazeta Stol_ - _eczna_ , February 15, 2003.

 J. Suchan, "Prawdziwe żródła niepokoju dyrektora Krukowskiego," _GW Gazeta Stol_ - _eczna_ , February 25, 2003.

 <http://orka2.sejm.gov.pl/IZ4.nsf/main/60CCA370>, accessed November 9, 2014.

 The author's interview with R. Wożniak, August 18, 2014.

 D. Jarecka, "Partyjni esteci," _GW_ , September 20, 2003.

 S. Wilczak, "Paskom _nie_ ," _GW_ Poznan´, October 23, 2003.

 "Oswajanie Chruszcza," _Newsweek_ , February 29, 2004.

 G. Giedrys, "Jak p _l_ -achta na byka," _GW_ Torun´, July 30, 2004.

 NOT. AS, "Pytanie o naklejanie," _GW_ Wrocław, January 11, 2005.

 M. Kużnik, "Kultura pod ciężkim butem," _Gazeta Studencka_ , no. 4 (2005).

 J. Hanusek, "Historia z nalepką w tle (Listy)," _GW_ Kraków, February 3, 2005.

 K. Górowicz, "Stop artystom," _GW_ Wrocław, January 21, 2005.

 D. Jarecka, "Krucjata dziecięca," _GW_ , March 30, 2005.

 The author's interview with Agnieszka Rayzacher, August 22, 2014; my attention was drawn to the weight of the community's resistance to save the _Mother's Day_ exhibition by authors of a report: A. Kaim, L. Makowska eds., _Wolność twórczości artystycznej i swobodny dostęp do dóbr kultury – raport Inicjatywy Indeks 73 z ogólnopolskiego badania środowisk kulturotwórczych_ (Gdan´sk: Indeks73, 2009), 21.

 I. Zielin´ska, "Panika".

 W. Pelowski, "Artyści też nie chcą ich pokazać," _GW_ Kraków, April 9, 2003.

 Similar pressures were applied in Szczecin. In June 2007, owner of the _Klub Kultury Niepopularnej Alter Ego_ Bartek Sawicki received a letter from the Maritime Authority in Szczecin (owner of premises rented by the club) demanding that a performance by the _Suka Off_ theatre be cancelled. Administrative director Grzegorz Jasin´ski (LPR) wrote, "I cannot agree this building to house perfomances depicting motives of violence... ." He further threatened to terminate the lease contract should the club fail to abide. Sawicki did not give in to threats; the performance was held. A. Zadworny, "LPR chce zamknąć Klub Sztuki Niepopularnej Alter Ego," _GW_ , June 19, 2007. The alternative _Suka Off_ theatre was regularly censored for morality reasons, show organisers suffering problems as well.

 J. Sokołowska, " _Pedał y_ Karola Radziszewskiego," _Obieg_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.obieg.pl/recenzje/2427>. Notably, Radziszewski began publishing _Dik-Fagazin_ , a gay magazine, in 2005.

 D. Jarecka, "2006: Rok politycznej kontrakcji," _GW_ , December 23-26, 2006.

 P. Leszkowicz, "Sztuka wobec rewolucji moralnej," _Obieg_ , accessed November 9, 2014 <http://www.obieg.pl/teksty/5770>.

 In November 2005, Mayor of Poznan´ Ryszard Grobelny broke the law in banning the Equality March.

 Deutsche Bank, sponsor of the prestigious _Views_ competition for young artists, precluded the option of submitting obscene works in the event's rules (importantly, the competition's rules were not made public, which might have stemmed from the fact that such censorship-loaded entry would have been perceived as compromising for the banking patron, at least in the art world). Under said rules, on 9 September 2003 – on the eve of the 1st _Views Award_ edition opening at _Zachęta – Wideopamiętnik widżeja_ [ _A Veejay's Video Diary_ ], a work by Piotr Wyrzykowski, was not admitted to the show. The video comprised a number of sections shot by Wyrzykowski in various situations. Allegedly, the competition organiser voiced objections with regard to beach scenes showing a couple making love, and a recording of an party in Kiev, in the course of which a minor girl was pulling down a drunken man's underwear. Ultimately, only one piece by Wyrzykowski was displayed.

 P. Bratkowski, "Cały naród buduje swoją cenzurę," _Newsweek_ no. 19 (2004).

 I. Torbicka, "Pornograficzne obsesje radnego," _GW_ Poznan´, February 9, 2007.

 Iwona Zielin´ska noticed that the piece printed by the ultra-Catholic _Nasz Dziennik_ discussing e.g. homosexual manifestations is devoid of any illustration: "Panika," 194 and 196.

 _Fun Gun nie jest fun_ ( _Fun Gun is no Fun_ ), _Raster_ , accessed November 9, 2014 <http://www.raster.art.pl/archiwa/archiwum_listy.htm>.

 pap.em., "Psie kupy a flaga polska,", accessed November 9, 2014, <https://www.wprost.pl/94365/Psie-kupy-a-flaga-polska>

 jaś/kwj, "Wojewódzki ukarany za psią kupę," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.tvn24.pl/wiadomosci-z-kraju,3/wojewodzki-ukarany-za-psia-kupe,56076.html>. In their resolution, KRRiTV found that by broadcasting _Kuba Wojewódzki_ (25 March 2008), TVN had violated Art 18(1) of the Radio and Television Law of 29 December 1992 (the provision prohibits i.a. the dissemination of "activities contrary to the letter of law, Polish _raison d'etat_ , and attitudes and beliefs contradicting morality and public interest").

 J. Butler, _Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative_ , (New York & London: Routledge, 1997), 136.

 P. Reszka, "Ci piękni chłopcy w mundurach Wehrmachtu," _GW_ , September 16, 2004.

 According to Michał Ceniuk (chairman of the local All-Polish Youth chapter): _"Senior people found that_ [the exhibition] _particularly outraging. My grandpa saw a photograph from the show in the paper, and got terribly upset. This was especially justified because of the German soldiers smiling in some drawings. Smiling, at moments dramatic for Poland.... This is an attack on our national pride. It insults us as Poles!"_. Reszka, _Ci piękni._

 R. Ziarkiewicz, "Sztuka musi przestać być sztuką, aby ponownie stać się sztuką," _Magazyn Sztuki_ , May 12, 2006, accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.dsw.muzeum.koszalin.pl/magazynsztuki/online_2006/tekst_06_6_ok.htm>

 J. Głaz, "Plakat z Matką Boską, Hitlerem i Kaczyn´skimi," _GW_ , August 28, 2006.

 _GW_ journalist's mistake seems to be significant: the well-nigh automatic juxtapositioning of the Kaczyn´ski brothers with fascists, then Hitler, was a frequent rhetorical device used by PiS opponents in media combat, perceived by many as an uncomprising smear – if not hate – campaign. This time, the attribution proved discreditable for the journalist: in submitting to contemporaneous rhetoric, he failed to recognised the image of his own newspaper's editor-in-chief.

 The ready-made's title _Kaczka dziwaczka_ is a wordplay on a couple of ideas and meanings. The title points at:

1) urine pot - in Polish called "kaczka sanitarna" [sanitary duck]

2) a title of a popular in Poland children's poem _Kaczka Dziwaczka_ [ _The Quirky Duck_ ], written by Jan Brzechwa

3) kaczor or kaczka [drake or duck], rather scornful nicknames for Polish right-wings politicians Lech Kaczyn´ski and Jarosław Kaczyn´ski.

 G. Szaro, A. Katarzyn´ska, "Awantura o kaczkę," _GW_ , April 14, 2006.

 B. Kuraś, O. Szpunar, A. Pałys, A. Pawłowski, "Z Giertychem problemy jak za komuny," _GW Gazeta Stołeczna_ , June 22, 2007.

 E. Furtak, "Urzędnicy odwołali wystawe _˛ IV Rzeczpospolita_ ," _GW_ , May 15, 2006.

 On activities of _Krytyka Polityczna_ , see <http://politicalcritique.org/>, accessed on November 9, 2014.

 M. Kula, "Blondynka rozmawia z pralką," _GW_ , May 10, 2005.

 A. Graff, I. Kowalczyk, "Kogo obraża biust?," _GW_ , May 25, 2005.

 Art 141 CPO: Whoever places indecent announcements, inscriptions, or drawings, or uses indecent words in public space, shall be subject to penalties of restriction of liberty, fine up to PLN 1,500.00, or reprimand.

 Art 51 §1 CPO: Whoever disturbs the peace, public order, or nocturnal rest with shouts, noise, alarm, or other mischief, or causes moral outrage in public space, shall be subject to penalties of custody, restriction of liberty, or fine.

 "Apel: Ta wystawa nie jest dla dzieci", accessed on November 9, 2014, <http://bielskobiala.wyborcza.pl/bielskobiala/1,88025,7590649,Apel__Ta_wystawa_nie_jest_dla_dzieci__.html>.

 D. Jarecka, "Wojna na obrazy," _GW_ , June 23, 2005.

 A. Saraczyn´ska, E. Furtak, "Sprawa majtkowa a sztuka," _GW_ Wrocław, October 21, 2004.

 The author's interview with A. Smalcerz, August 27, 2014. On the other hand, Hollister himself admitted that in view of earlier protests in Wrocław (April 2006) where _Shadows of Humor_ had been shown, he decided not to exhibit the _Superstart_ sculpture by the _Kamera Skura_ group in Bielsko-Biała in fear of committing the crime of insult to religious feelings: "Cenzura w Polsce, obojętność w Czechach" (conversation with W. Hollister), _GW_ , October 5, 2006.

 The author's interview with A. Smalcerz, August 27, 2014.

 Notably, Saddam Hussein in the fish tank was to be shown in early 2006 during an Art Festival in the Belgian town of Middelkerke, yet the local mayor refused permission for the installation to be shown. In justification, officials claimed it could provoke negative reactions as potentially _"explosive"_. The decision of Middelkerke authorities is far more comprehensible: early 2006 was a time of the massive – well-nigh civilisational – conflict tying in with the publication of Muhammad cartoons by _Jyllands-Posten_ , whereas Belgium has a large Muslim population.

 In July 2002 film producer Lew Rywin suggested to _GW_ editor-in-chief Adam Michnik that he could influence a governmental draft amendment to the Act on radio and television leading to advantageous changes for media concern Agora ( _GW_ 's publisher). For USD 17.5 million which was to be donated to the SLD, Agora could buy Polsat TV. _GW_ would also be required to stop criticizing prime minister Leszek Miller (SLD) and employ Rywin in Polsat, after Agora's acquisition of the station. The scandal broke as late as in December 2002 after _GW_ published Paweł Smolen´ski's article "A bill for a bribe, i.e. Rywin visits Michnik".

 J. D. Hunter, _Culture Wars. The Struggle to Define America_ (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 42 ff.

 The conflict over Bytom's Kronika gallery is a good example of the PO's strong conservative ideological background. Its beginnings date back to May 2006 when several days before Pope Benedict XVI was scheduled to visit Poland, a performance by Czech art group Guma Guar was held during the opening of _Bad News_ exhibition in Kronika. Surprising the management of the gallery and curators, the artists changed the scenario of the concert and demanded that a poster with their own photomontage presenting Pope Benedict XVI holding a severed head of singer Elton John in his raised hand with an inscription reading "You are all queer" be hanged on the wall. By way of compromise organizers of the exhibition agreed to the poster being hanged only during the performance but the fact still outraged local politicians. Paweł Koj, head of the Bytom Centre of Culture whom Kronika reported to was reprimanded by the city authorities (the mayor was a SLD member) and the prosecutors commenced proceedings into the crime of insult to religious feelings. The councilors also got interested in the gallery but no repressive action was taken. In mid-March 2007, the city council culture committee, this time sitting in a panel changed after local governmental elections in the autumn of 2006 (the PO was victorious), audited Kronika once again. Having thoroughly reviewed the Centre's expenditures on Kronika, the councilors accused the management of the gallery of not being dynamic enough and not presenting top art and concluded that Artur Zmijewski's book _Drżące ciała_ [ _Trembling Bodies_ ] which was published by Kronika and Krytyka Polityczna promoted homosexuality. Deputy Mayor of Bytom Halina Biedak suggested that a programme board be appointed in the Centre. The conflict ended with Kronika's head Sebastian Cichocki leaving the institution in 2008. The events in Kronika showed once again that regardless of any party affiliation of politicians, their tolerance for modern art is very limited and especially in provincial centres peace and quiet is preferred to any ambitious but controversial cultural programs.

 Mitoraj's flamboyant, classic-like nudes were considered an example of "true art" and an antidote to avant-garde transgressions by the Polish political and business establishment. Such personalities of the Polish political and business world as President Kwaśniewski and Mrs Kwaśniewski, Minister of Culture Waldemar Dąbrowski, or the richest Poles Grażyna and Jan Kulczyk made the sculptor the first artist of the Third Republic. The fact was ridiculed by some members of the Polish art world, however, it is worth pointing out that for the first time in independent Poland, a representative of contemporary visual arts and his works (albeit having been consecrated by film authorities like Andrzej Wajda) were introduced into the "high society", becoming a positive element in building political image.

 I. Zielin´ska, "Panika moralna, mniejszości seksualne i mowa nienawiści," in _Emocje a kultura i życie spol_ - _eczne_ , eds. P. Binder, H. Palska, W. Pawlik (Warszawa: IFiS PAN, 2009),187–188. Zielinska refers to Stanley Cohen's concept of moral panic, see: _Folk Devils and Moral Panics. The Creation of the Mods and Rockers_ (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1972).

 See I. Zielin´ska, "Panika moralna," 188.

 For the sake of accuracy, the period of quantitative escalations should be closed in September 2007, together with the end of the rule of the right-wing coalition; censorship activities started to subside from October. However, for simplification purposes, I decided to use full-year periodization.

 Before attacking the work, Paweł Kostkowski, who did not want the media to refer to him as Paweł K., unsuccessfully appealed to the management and spokesperson for Warsaw Metro and with the City Hall. He also sent the artist a letter asking "whether she knows the origin of the lambs or whether those specific lambs were included in her painting accidentally" but did not receive any response. Given the lack of answer, Kostkowski decided to, as he said, "act out of the box": "after my act of protest, journalists had to write »PIECE OF JUNK, not art«... in their titles". After spraying the words, Kostkowski did not ran away and let security services catch him. At the same time, he supported the artist in the media "... My backers are not faultless either. Krzysztof Bosak [a right-wing politician – J.D.] wrote on his blog: »I wouldn't mind if Curyło moved to a sex shop for good«.... . Those words only prove that he is loutish.... Let me remind all the protectors of faith who have suddenly appeared behind my back: »Bless and do not curse«. Julia needs prayers right now. So do I. And this is what I ask for". _Chłam nie sztuka. W obronie dobrego smaku i Baranka Bożego_ , accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.warszawa.pl/Bezpieczenstwo/1178,5079,1,1,0,0-Ch%C5%82am_nie_sztuka.html>.

 M. Witkowska, "Łódż: Wbiegł nago na mszę do katedry," _Dziennik L_ \- _ódzki_ , May 15, 2010.

 M. Felisiak, "Skandal! Golas w katedrze," _Fakt_ , May 17, 2010; there were many similar reports in the press.

 The author's interview with M. Wasilewski, June 5, 2010.

 According to CBOS (Public Opinion Research Center) studies homosexuality was regarded as normal by the following percentages of respondents: 5% (2001), 4% (2005), 8% (2008), 8% (2010); homosexuality is a departure from the norm but must be tolerated: 47% (2001), 55% (2005), 52% (2008), 63% (2010); homosexuality is not normal and must not be tolerated: 41 % (2001), 34% (2005), 31% (2008), 23% (2010).

Asked whether same-sex couples in an intimate relationship should: A) have the right to form non-marriage partnerships in which the partners would have the same property rights as spouses, e.g. the right to joint taxation, the right to inherit from a deceased partner, 34% of respondents answered "yes" in 2003, with the percentage increasing to 46% in 2005, 41% in 2008 and 45% in 2010, while 56% said "no" in 2003 with the percentage dropping to 44% in 2005, 48% in 2008 and 47% in 2010; B) marry, a "yes" answer was provided by 24% of respondents in 2001 as well as 22% in 2005, 18% in 2008 and 16% in 2010; while "no" was said by 69% in 2001, 72 % in 2005, 76% in 2008, 78% in 2010.

When the Polish population was asked by CBOS: "Do you think that gay couples ... should have the right to show their way of life in public or not?", 16% of respondents answered "yes" in 2005, with the percentage increasing to 25% in 2008 and 29% in 2010, while 78% said "no" in 2005 with the percentage dropping to 69% in 2008 and 64% in 2010.

According to CBOS studies, the belief that homosexuality should not be tolerated is most often expressed by older respondents, people of elementary education, residents of rural areas, farmers and devout believers. Tolerant attitudes are most often reported for residents of the biggest cities, those of higher education, young people and high earners. ... Those who personally know a gay person do not tolerate homosexuality more seldom than those without such acquaintances and more often consider it normal". See: _Postawy wobec gejów i lesbijek. Komunikat badan´_ , July 2010, accessed November 9, 2014, <http://cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2010/K_095_10.PDF>.

 The Warsaw Uprising Museum commemorates one of the most tragic and the most controversial Polish insurrections (2 August – 3 October 1944). The uprising broke because leaders of the Polish underground state wanted to free the capital from German occupation before the Red Army reached Warsaw from the east. By doing this, they wanted to prevent Poland from being reduced to vassalage by Stalin. However, the Soviets stopped their offensive in the direction of Warsaw and let the Nazis put down the uprising. Approximately 16,000 Polish underground soldiers as well as nearly 200,000 civilians died. Many of them were killed in regular massacres carried out by German troops. As a result of the fights and the planned demolition of the city by the Germans, the part of Warsaw on the left-bank of the Vistula ceased to exist.

 A. Kowalska, "Co gorszy powstan´ca w muzeum," _GW_ Warszawa, February 16, 2009.

 A. Kowalska, "Po co to porno?," _GW_ Warszawa, September 2, 2009.

 <http://orka2.sejm.gov.pl/StenoInter6.nsf/0/ECA9239964436E32C125766A0048464F/$file/52_aneks_ksiazka_cz1.pdf>, accessed November 9, 2014.

 ROM, "Ars Homo Erotica w Muzeum Narodowym," _GW_ Warszawa, May, 242010.

 <http://orka2.sejm.gov.pl/IZ6.nsf/main/161CCD77>, accessed November 9, 2014,. After those loutish comments from Pięta, Gay.pl published his mobile phone number (which he himself had shared on his official website) together with an appeal: "Let Pięta remember this! Call the deputy who insults gay people!!!" Pięta received over 100 text messages, some of them vulgar and aggressive. He notified law enforcement of the threats and the PPO launched pretrial proceedings into punishable threats and insult of a public official. "Sejmowy homofob chce zapędzić gejów przed sąd," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://wiadomosci.wp.pl/kat,83914,title,Sejmowy-homofob-chce-zapedzic-gejow-przed-sad,wid,12143922,wiadomosc.html>.

 <http://orka2.sejm.gov.pl/IZ6.nsf/main/675602C6>, accessed November 9, 2014. It was not the only attempt at censoring _Ars homo erotica_. During the exhibition, archbishop of Warsaw Kazimierz Nycz pressurized minister of culture Bogdan Zdrojewski to demand withdrawal of Aleka Polis' sound installation _Krzesl_ - _o konfesyjne + spowiedż_ [ _Confession Chair + Confession_ ] which featured a recording of the artist's actual confession during which she confessed to homosexuality, however any censorship interference was strongly objected to by MNW director Piotr Piotrowski.

 T. Terlikowski, "Rewolucja homoseksualna," _Rzeczpospolita_ , June 25, 2009.

 W. Karpieszuk, "Geje skarża _˛ Rzepę_ za kozę," _GW_ , December 24, 2009.

 "Sąd: " _Rzeczpospolita"_ nie musi przeprosić za rysunek dotyczący homoseksualistów," "Rzeczpospolita", January 26, 2012, accessed November 9, 2014, <http://www.rp.pl/artykul/94652,798499-Sad---Rzeczpospolita--nie-musi-przeprosic-za-rysunek-dot--homoseksualistow.html>.

 W. Karpieszczuk, "Po rysunku "z kozą": czy można lżyć gejów?," accessed November 9, 2014, <http://m.warszawa.gazeta.pl/warszawa/1,106541,11080642,Po_rysunku__z_koza___czy_mozna_lzyc_gejow_.html>.

 PW, "Patriotyzm jutra, czyli brydż w ruinach," _GW_ , April 24, 2008.

 Between 1 and 7 September 1939, Westerplatte was the site where a small Polish garrison defended a depot of ammunition against a massive German attack. It was the first battle of WWII.

 B. Gondek, "Eksperci premiera o _Tajemnicy Westerplatte_ : To film antypolski," _GW_ Gdan´sk, August 26, 2008.

 B. Gondek, "Eksperci".

 "Czy artyści w Polsce są wolni?" (rozmowa z B. Zdrojewskim), _GW_ , September 8, 2008. Those words outraged many filmmakers who said in an open letter: "We find it difficult to understand that politicians who admit their Solidarity roots find it appropriate to engage in acts of preventive censorship... . We cannot imagine a situation where funding which had been granted legally and in compliance with procedures can be invalidated under political pressures. Especially, before the film is made and evaluated properly _"._ "List otwarty do mediów i polityków ws. filmu _Tajemnica Westerplatte_ ,' _GW_ , September 3, 2008.

 "Kutz: Wygrał paskudnie banalny mit Westerplatte," _GW_ , September 12, 2008.

 "Pasikowski: Tu jest cenzura," _GW Duży Format_ , November 10, 2008.

 In an interview for _GW_ Agnieszka Odorowicz emphasized: "... I do not tolerate anti-Semitism myself. Over two years, we subsidized five feature films and 17 documentaries on the issue.... We decided that _Kaddish's_ screenplay was not good enough to get funding". She also added that films such as _Kaddish_ should be "based on facts, not just the screenwriter's _licentia poetica"._ She assured readers that "there is no blacklist. And there is no censorship...". "Agnieszka Odorowicz: Chcę filmu o Jedwabnem," _GW_ , November 20, 2008.

 A. Mazur, "Libera Ist Mein Leben," _Obieg_ , March 5, 2010, accessed on November 9, 2014, <http://www.obieg.pl/wydarzenie/16325#footnoteref17_llzwf1a>.

 D. Jarecka, "Dekada w sztuce," _GW_ , January 3, 2011.

 It was a reference to President Bronisław Komorowski (2010-2015) and Prime Minister Donald Tusk (2007-2014) respectively, i.e. leaders of, at least theoretically liberal, PO.

 Kaim, Makowska eds., "Wolność".

 A good example is provided by the developments in Torun´'s CSW "Znaki Czasu" in April 2009. Roman Dziadkiewicz's installation _Studium bl_ - _ota_ [ _A Study of Mud_ ] was supposed to be presented at an exhibition entitled _Lucim żyje_ [ _Lucim is Alive_ ]. The work was composed of museum exhibits (including old paintings, coffin portraits and ceramics) on loan from various museums, a wall of clay and straw as well as a video of pictures and films made by the artist. In one of the films, a man was showing the process of making bread during which he masturbated and left his semen in the dough. However, the CSW's management did not aagree to the screening and the institutions which loaned their exhibits to Dziadkiewicz decided to withdraw them.
**A LIST OF CENSORSHIP CASES** _*_

**1989**

**2 June** – Sylwester Ambroziak's sculpture _Temptation of St. Anthony_ was censored for religious and moral reasons (p.181 - 182).

**1990**

**Spring** – problems with the publication of Salman Rushdie's _Satanic Verses_ (p.184).

**1992**

**1992** – cancellation of the exhibition _Ars Erotica_ in the Archaeological Museum in Warsaw for fear of right-wing politicians' reactions (p. 184).

**August** – a punk rock band Nauka o Gównie, which in harsh lyrics challenges the social and political situation in Poland, is the only band removed from the list of performers at the Jarocin Festival. Contrary to the documents confirming such a move, the organiser claims that the band never qualified for the competition.

**August** – controversies around the songs of Kazik Staszewski _Wałęsa Give Me Back My 100 Millions_ and _Poland Is Not Yet Lost_ start (p. 185).

**Summer** – attempts of ZChN at censoring the song of the band Piersi _ZCHN Is Coming_ (p. 186).

**Mid-December** \- PPO interrogates Kazik Staszewski, who is suspected of insulting national symbols in connection with the lyrics of the song _Poland Is Not Yet Lost_ (p. 185).

**December -** ZChN announces draft laws with sanctions against those television stations that demoralise (erotic films) and insult religious feelings (programmes mocking the Church).

**1993**

**15 April –** right-wing deputies notify the PPO about the offence of insult to religious feelings in connection with the screening of the film _The Last Temptation of Christ_ in Poznań (p. 190).

**April/May –** KRRiTV receives letters of protest concerning _Big Zbig Show_ , which allegedly insulted religious feelings (p.221 n344).

**June/July –** protests and an unprecedented artistic scandal in connection with the _Pyramid of Animals_ sculpture of Katarzyna Kozyra (p. 190).

**June –** the label releasing the LP of the band Big Cyc removes the name of President Lech Wałęsa from the lyrics of the song _Accident and Emergency_ the name of President Lech Wałęsa (p. 186 n282).

**June** – right-wing councillors from Poznań want to cancel a subsidy for the Malta Theatre Festival because of the performance by Turbo Cacahuete group entitled _Mom's funeral_ in which the artists walked around the city with a coffin

**August** – problems with the making of and cinema distribution of the film _The Kidnapping of Agata_ directed by Marek Piwowski (p. 217).

**May** \- ZChN activists from Poznań enter _The Last Temptation of Christ_ by Martin Scorsese, the TV programme _Big Zbig Show_ and the book _Secrets Under the Cassock_ in the " _White Paper_ of works whose dissemination in a Catholic country would not be recommended" (p. 221).

**October –** Publishing house M from Cracow does not allow the distribution of Allen Ginsberg's poetry collection _Znajomi z tego świata_ [ _Friends from this World_ ] because of the homosexuality of the author.

**1993/1994 –** Creator' f-ma (producer) and the TVP (ordering party) do not allow the dissemination of Konrad Szołajski's documentary _Parafia księdza kustosza_ [ _The Parish of Custodian Priest_ ] about Virgin Mary's Sanctuary in Kałków as it is deemed to mock religion.

**1994**

**End of January** – protests against the exhibition _Ars Erotica_ in the MNW and destruction of Wiktor Gutt's work that was deemed to be blasphemous (p. 184).

**April** – in Sopot, in connection with the planned Klaus Kinski Days, a commemorative plaque is to be hung on the house where the actor once lived. There were, however, protests by politicians motivated by the bad conduct of the actor. Prominent figures refused to unveil the plaque.

**April –** Jan Szafraniec, member of the KRRiTV, starts to prepare a draft regulation on what cannot be broadcast on radio and TV. Finally, in November 1994, the KRRiTV forbids the broadcasting of programmes with scenes of violence and rape, obscene and vulgar content between 11 pm and 6 am.

**May –** passers by walking down Gdańsk's Long Market destroy the work _Hot Water Bottles_ by Robert Rumas (p. 209).

**July** – Director of the CSW ZU Wojciech Krukowski does not allow the work _Piss Christ_ of Andres Serrano to be displayed (p. 210).

**End of August** – a dozen hours before the beginning of a concert of religious music at the premises of the Jasna Góra Monastery, the prior of the monastery excludes two artists Henryk Talar and Grażyna Barszczewska from participation in the concert. Talar, as the head of Adam Mickiewicz Theatre from Częstochowa, together with Barszczewska staged the play _Boya wina_ [ _Boy's Fault_ ] based on the poetry collection _Słówka_ [ _Words_ ] of the inter-war anti-clerical writer Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński.

**End of November** – łódż Museum of Cinematography witholds paintings of Krzysztof Kuszej that spark controversy on religious grounds (p. 212).

**December** – Jan Szafraniec founds the Association for the Protection of Radio and Television Audiences SORT (p. 221).

**1995**

**June** – resident of Gorzów Wielopolski tries to cut off the member of the steel sculpture by Zbigniew Frączkiewicz placed in public open space. Right-wing circles protest against the display of the statue. The sculpture was put on display in connection with the exhibition of Frączkiewicz's works. In March 1996, a councillor from UW party Józef Teofil Finster purchased the sculpture and donated it to the town. The statue, which became known as śfinster, was placed in the Wool Market (see also March 1996 and the end of October 1998).

**First half of July –** problems with the exhibition _Antibodies_ in the CSW ZU (p. 205).

**July –** Director Krukowski refuses to exhibit the work _Emblems_ by Grzegorz Klaman in CSW ZU as it insults his religious feelings (p. 209).

**From September** – protests against the film _Priest_ by Antonia Bird (p. 218).

**1996**

**12 January –** closing of the exhibition _Me and AIDS_ in Stolica cinema in Warsaw (p. 207).

**March** – on the occasion of the unveiling of śfinster sculpture in Gorzów the Wi-Fi-Fi Theatre from Częstochowa stages a performance _Miraculous Resurrection_ , which offends the sense of morality of the Mayor of Gorzów Henryk Maciej Wożniak (UW). On his instruction, one of the councillors requested that the actors stop the performance.

**April** – works of Jean-Marie Gheerardijn exhibited at the Arsenał Municipal Gallery in Poznań insult the religious feelings of right-wing councillors (p...)

**20 September** – _Woman on Woman_ exhibition opens at the BWA Gallery in Bielsko-Biała, which sparks the protests of right-wing councillors (p. 202 n312).

**1997**

**February/March** – protests against the poster advertising Milos Forman film _The People vs. Larry Flynt_ begin (p. 219).

**February/March –** cancellation of display of Zbigniew Libera's work _Lego_. _Concentration Camp_ in the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The Lego company also protests against the work (p. 228).

**Spring** – due to the planned visit of Pope John Paul II to Gorzów, attempts at the removal of śfinster (see June 1995) are made. On the night before the Pope's arrival, unknown perpetrators cover śfinster with a sack, but the sculpture's founder councillor Finster rips off the sack.

**September** – the Mayor of Cracow Józef Lassota announces his intention to form a special committee tasked with the removal of immoral advertisements from buildings owned by the municipality (p. 220).

**October** – first attempt by Amway of blocking in court the screening of Henryk Dederko's film _Welcome to Life_ (p. 232).

**1998**

**Spring** – the painting _Divina Polonia_ of Franciszek Starowieyski is hung in the building of the Representation of the Republic of Poland to the EU. The artist presented Poland and Europe as two women. Originally, the title was meant to be _Divine Poland Kidnapped by Profane Europe_ , but was changed under diplomatic pressure. The artist also resigned from painting Europe with a "golden pussy", a symbol of devotion to material values.

**Summer** \- radio and TV stations block the broadcast of the song entitled _Szmata_ [ _Slut_ ] of the band Sto % Bawełny. The following words were repeated in the song: "This is a slut, kill her! kill her!".

**End of October** – stepping down members of the Town Council of Gorzów from the AWS party vote for the removal of śfinster. Despite the opposition of the Mayor, the sculpture is taken away to a building materials warehouse. After the local elections held on 11 October, won by the left wing, the sculpture was re-established, however, at the end of November unknown perpetrators smashed the iron man. The restored sculpture returned to its place in March 1999.

**1999**

**13 February** \- during a performance in Katowice the vocalist of the band Big Cyc Krzysztof Skiba shows bare buttocks on stage in the presence of Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek and his wife. The BPO imposed on him a fine of PLN 1,200 (ca. USD 300) for "an indecent act in a public place".

**20 February –** during the staging of _Zemsta_ [ _Revenge_ ] by Aleksander Fredro in Tarnów Theatre, one of the characters of the comedy enters the stage on a horse (turned with his head toward the horse's croup) with buttocks covered only by a narrow loincloth. AWS councillors demand, among others, reconsideration of the "purpose of continuing to employ the theatre's management" and "resigning from school group trips seeing the play".

**9 March** – TOZ attacks the management of the CSW łażnia in Gdańsk for exhibiting the _Pyramid of Animals_ by Katarzyna Kozyra (p. 242).

**10 March** – Director of BCK in Gdańsk Maciej Nowak calls off the exhibition of Rafał Ewertowski (p. 255).

**April** – group of AWS councillors demand that the play _Shopping and Fucking_ by Mark Ravenhill in Rozmaitości Theatre in Warsaw due to its vulgar language and indecent scenes be prohibited.

**End of April –** Grzegorz Klaman's exhibition _Anatrophy_ in CSW łażnia provokes AWS councillors to demand that subsidies for the gallery be cancelled (p. 244).

**May** – Director of MNP Konstanty Kalinowski censors the work _Both Home and Museum_ of Zofia Kulik (p. 257).

**Mid-May** – Katarzyna Kozyra's work _Blood Ties_ , which was to be displayed on billboards of the AMS Outdoor Gallery, is censored (p. 245).

**September** – because of the poster advertising Milos Forman film _The People vs. Larry Flynt_ PPO charges the CEO and advertising specialist of the film's distributor with the crime of insult to religious feelings (p. 219).

**November -** Family Committee of the City Council in Gdynia decides that the musical _Hair_ staged at the Musical Theatre promotes drug abuse. The committee proposes to subsidise this theatre for specific performances only.

**2000**

**21 January** – the opening of Oleg Kulik's exhibition entitled _Kulik in Warsaw_ in CSW ZU. The exhibition was inspected by the deputy Minister of Culture (AWS) and criticised for obscenity (p. 251 n395).

**3 March** \- the Polish parliament tries to tighten anti-pornography regulations (p. 222)

**Beginning of March –** right-wing councillors protest against swear words in the play _Zamęt albo Hurlyburly_ [ _Confusion or Hurly-burly_ ] directed by Jacek Orłowski, based on the play by David Rabe, staged in Nowy Theatre in łódż.

**19 March** – Director of CSW ZU closes the exhibition of Jacek Markiewicz entitled _Aneta II_ (p. 259).

**April –** city officials in Poznań do not allow the works of Katarzyna Kozyra, Alicja Żebrowska, Jacek Staniszewski and Paweł Kruk to be displayed on billboards on the Old Market Square (p. 250).

**End of July** – the curator of _Art Exhibition Bielsko-Biała 2000_ does not allow the paintings of Grzegorz Madej to be displayed (p. 256).

**October** – Director of CSW ZU does not allow several erotic photos by Nobuyoshi Araki to be presented at the Japanese art exhibition entitled _Gendai._ _Contemporary Japanese Art. Between the body and space_ (p. 260).

November – the Mayor of Kłodzko demands that the performance of Strefa Ciszy theatre entitled _Judases_ be removed from the 10th edition of the International Theatre Festival Zderzenie. He considers the title of the performance to be provocative as the play was to be staged on the main market on the day of the town council session. As a consequence, the whole festival is cancelled.

**17 November** – actor Daniel Olbrychski destroys the installation of Piotr Uklański _The Nazis_ in the Zachęta gallery (p. 268).

**November – December** – Catholic groups in Białystok protest against the staging of Edward Redliński's _Konopielka_ at the Aleksander Węgierko Theatre because in a scene added by the director Piotr Ziniewicz to the original plot, the main character cuts off the head of a wooden figure of Christ with a scythe, shouting, "There is no sanctity left!".

**December** – Director of the BWA gallery in Zielona Góra, Wojciech Kozłowski, removes the video of Hubert Czerepok " _Record of a Mass Offered to the Success of the Exhibition_ " from the _Polonia – Słubice_ exhibition. Before this happens, an employee of the gallery covered the erotic drawings of Ryszard Górecki accompanying the film of his own accord (p. 261).

**Mid-December** – after the opening of a jubilee exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Zachęta gallery, a right-wing journalist attempts to cover the sculpture of Maurizio Cattelan _La nona ora_ with a sheet. A few days later two right-wing deputies damage the sculpture (p. 273).

**2000 -** councillor Krzysztof Mączkowski (AWS) is trying to prevent the appointment of Paweł Wodziński and Paweł łysak as the heads of the Polski Theatre in Poznań. In his opinion, they are involved in scandalous theatre initiatives.

**2001**

**Beginning of the year –** government officials and MPs protest against Artur Żmijewski's work _KRWP_ presented in **CSW ZU** (p. 367).

18 January – PPO in Poznań confiscates a copy of _Dogma_ film by Kevin Smith as part of the proceedings in an insult to religious feelings case.

**January** _/_ **February** \- some paintings by Marek Firek are removed from the exhibition of the ładnie group in Sector I gallery in Katowice (p. 342).

**13 February** – Minister of Culture Kazimierz Ujazdowski (AWS) tries to impose new programme boards in the Zachęta gallery and CSW ZU (p. 268).

**16 March** \- the _Fun Gun_ exhibition at the Wrocław Military Museum is closed one day after the vernissage, because, according to the Director of Arsenal, one of the works (by Krzysztof Wałaszek) insults the emblem of Poland (p. 367).

**April** – after guest screening of Ravenhill's _Shopping and Fucking_ in the Polski Theatre in Poznań, councillor Krzysztof Mączkowski wants to dismiss its Directors Paweł Wodziński and Paweł łysak. He accuses them of introducing a scandalous repertoire, financial scheming, manipulating audience data and hiring friends.

**End of May** – councillor Józef Racewicz accuses Zbigniew Rogalski of promoting pornography and paedophilia in his works displayed at the _Relaxation_ exhibition in Arsenał gallery in Białystok; he demands that the gallery's subsidies be cut off (p. 262).

**June** – after an unsuccessful attempt to impose a programme board in CSW łażnia, the Gdańsk city council dismisses the head of the centre Aneta Szylak, under the guise of mismanagement. The charges have not been confirmed (p. 268).

**Beginning of July** – Roland Topor's exhibition in the Palace of Art in Cracow is censored (p. 261).

**Early Autumn** \- _Passion_ is censored during the exhibition of Dorota Nieznalska's works in the Arsenał gallery in Białystok (p. 109).

**October –** the exhibition _Irreligion. Morphology of non-sacrum in Polish art_ starts in Brussels and arouses numerous protests of Catholics (p. 278).

**21 November** – LPR deputy Zofia Krasicka-Domka demands in the Polish Parliament that the Minister of Culture "takes appropriate measures against the Polish organisers of pseudo-cultural events", i.e. the _Irreligion_ exhibition and Arkadiusz Weremczuk's fashion show in London.

**2002**

**2002** – the Director of CSW ZU is interrogated by PPO in connection with the crime of insult to religious feelings, as the postcard depicting Adam Rzepecki's _Our Lady of Częstochowa with a moustache_ can be bought at the centre's book store (p. 281).

**19 January –** Piotr Kowalewski is appointed as the Director of the Aleksander Węgierko Theatre in Białystok. He removes all plays that spark religious or moral controversy. The new director also removes vulgar words from the plays.

**Second half of January** – a scandal around Dorota Nieznalska's work _Passion_ presented in Gdańsk at the Wyspa gallery breaks out (p. 109).

**29 January** – due to the Nieznalska's exhibition, the Wyspa Gallery loses its premises (p. 282).

**End of January** – in reaction to the scandals around contemporary art initiatives, Senator Jan Szafraniec initiates the Polish Crusade to Defend the Nation's Spiritual Values, which is intended to protect the values contained in the Gospel. He demands that the Polish Ombudsman take a stance "in the face of increasingly frequent symbol desecration and the growing number of acts of insult to religious feelings" (p. 323).

**February** – right-wing councillors from Poznań attack the Directors of the Nowy Theatre in Poznań for the intention of organising a casting for "slim women aged between 65 and 80" for Sarah Kane's _4.48 Psychosis_ (directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna). The winner of the casting was to appear naked on stage in one scene.

**May** – councillors decide to remove from the wall of the BWA Gallery in Bielsko-Biała the mural of Wilhelm Sasnal referring to the graphic novel _Maus_ by Art Spiegelman (p. 343).

**June** \- two award-winning works are removed from the 18th International Poster Biennale in Wilanów - Alain Le Quernec's _Henri. A homage to Toulouse Lautrec_ and Dominika Różańska's _ICON 2000_ (p. 263).

**August** – the project _Plein Air_ by Robert Rumas wins a competition organised by Kunsthalle Wien and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM) for artistic performance at Karlsplatz in Vienna as part of the programme of the Polish Year in Austria. For a week, students dressed in white coats wearing black moustaches were to recreate the atmosphere of the square from the time of young Hitler, when he was twice turned down by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. IAM resigned from the project because it raised "too much controversy". At the same time, Agnieszka Dzieduszycka, the coordinator of the Polish Year in Austria, loses her position. Rumas' idea is also criticised by the Polish Ambassador in Vienna. However, the management of Kunsthalle announces that it would carry out Rumas' project by itself, yet Rumas manages to show _Plein Air_ only in a limited version.

**August/September –** Director of the Arsenał gallery in Poznań calls off the exhibition of Rafał Jakubowicz _Arbeitsdisziplin_ for fear of legal action from Volkswagen. (p. 264).

**October –** the chancellor of the University of Warsaw does not agree to display the poster of the Twożywo group _IHS. Creation is Love_ on the building of the Institute of Art History (p. 263).

**2003**

**12 January** – TVP 1 removes all sex scenes from _The Idiots_ of Lars von Trier without the consent of the Polish distributor.

**14 February** – Director of CSW ZU closes the exhibition of Nan Goldin's works _Devil's Playground_ for juveniles. Nevertheless, MP Stanisław Papież (LPR) demands his dismissal by the Minister of Culture (p. 353).

**Second half of February** – LPR councillors in Bialystok attempt to cut the budget of the Arsenal gallery because they are not satisfied with the exhibitions organised so far (p. 346).

**March** – homophobic attacks on billboards of Karolina Breguła's _Let Them See Us_ , presenting gay and lesbian couples holding hands (p. 363).

**April -** after protests of right wing circles, the Cracovian ZPAP branch withdraws from organising the exhibition _Let Them See Us_. A private gallery Burzym & Wolff, that takes over the exhibition, receives a notice of termination of its lease agreement (p. 363).

**April** – protests against the exhibition of Ryszard Wożniak in BWA in Wrocław. The artist is interrogated by PPO with regard to a crime of insult to religious feelings (p. 355).

**April/May** \- Education and Culture Committee of the City Council in Białystok receives a proposal to switch the premises of the Arsenał gallery and the Sleńdziński Gallery. Despite the support of the LPR party, this project that would be a harassment of Arsenał was not implemented.

**May** \- LPR councillors protest on religious grounds against the play of Tadeusz Słobodzianek _Sen pluskwy, czyli towarzysza Chrystusa_ [ _Bedbug' Dream or Comrade Christ_ ] staged in a theatre in Jelenia Góra (directed by Krzysztof Kopka). As a result of the intervention, the banner advertising the play is removed.

**May** **–** the exhibition of Zuzanna Janin _I saw My Death_ is censored by the Director of Foksal Gallery Wiesław Borowski (p. 352 n579).

**August** – after the Mayor of łódż Jerzy Kropiwnicki (ZChN) blocks the annual techno music Freedom Parade, the residents of łódż, in a two-day popular vote clearly declare their support for the parade, nevertheless the event is not organised anymore.

**September** \- The Municipal Art Gallery in Częstochowa changes the name of Andrzej Urbanowicz's painting _Big cunt pissing on the world_ , submitted to the 5th " _Sacrum_ " _Triennial Art_ Festival, without the author's knowledge.

**9 September –** on the eve of the opening of the first edition of the _Views_ Deutsche Bank Foundation Award at Zachęta, the organisers exclude Piotr Wyrzykowski's work _A Veejay's Video Diary_ (p. 365 n601)

**September - October** – LPR members protest against the installation of Leon Tarasewicz placed on the columns in the portico of the Grand Theatre in Poznań (p. 355).

**October** – Director of the Baszta Czarownic gallery in Słupsk calls off Nieznalska exhibition due to the protests of Catholic circles (p. 315).

**October** \- a resident of Cracow, who was outraged by the 'naked' sculptures by Igor Mitoraj displayed in the Main Square, demands that the PPO investigate a case of dissemination of pornography (p. 387).

**30 October** **–** the Mayor of Bydgoszcz dismisses the Director of the Regional Museum in Bydgoszcz on the grounds of fraud, which was never proved (p 282 n449).

**19 November –** under the pressure of right-wing politicians, the head of the Arsenał gallery in Białystok removes the installation of Piotr Kurka _I Got a Doggy_ from the exhibition. Before the opening of the exhibition, she also prevented the showing of the painting by Marek Sobczyk (p. 347).

**November/December** – Nieznalska's exhibition at a private gallery Data in Ostrów Wielkopolski is blocked by local priests and the owner of the gallery receives a notice of termination of the lease agreement (p. 317).

**End of 2003** – the exhibition of Nieznalska's works that was to be held at the editorial office of the _Polityka_ weekly is called off (p. 317 - 318).

**2004**

**January** – the staging of Dave Freeman's farce _A Bed Full of Foreigners_ in a theatre in Kielce (directed by Jerzy Bończak), insults the religious feelings of a PiS deputy Przemysław Gosiewski because one of the actresses is wearing a nun's frock that showed her bare buttocks at the back.

**1 February –** in the Cracow branch of TVP, a concert of the Norwegian black metal band Gorgoroth is recorded for Metal Mind Productions company. During the concert, naked models are hanging on crosses on the stage and the sets include satanic symbols, animal remains and artificial blood. The PPO accuses Tomasz Dziubiński, the CEO of Metal Mind Productions, of the crime of insult to religious feelings and proceedings are launched into organising a mass event without permission. In March, Senator Szafraniec sends a statement to the Polish Ombudsman asking for "intervention in the matter of recording ... a satanic concert of the Norwegian group".

**Mid-February –** two works from the exhibition _In a Norwegian Forest. Norwegian Art of the Past Decade_ in Zachęta offend the religious feelings of the LPR politician Sylwester Chruszcz (p. 356).

**Beginning of March** – LPR fights against the cover of _Playboy_ magazine created by the łódż Kaliska group, depicting a naked model with wings and the tail of the Polish national emblem's eagle (p. 367).

**2004** – the work of łódż Kaliska _Emblem_ (or _The Polish Eagle_ ) is censored at exhibitions in Warsaw, Katowice, Bielsko-Biała and Sopot. The artists are interrogated by PPO with regard to insulting the national emblem (p. 367).

**19 April** \- Edward Bogumił, chairman of the LPR unit in Bolesławiec, tries to prevent the staging of Eve Ensler's play _The Vagina Monologues_ in the Bolesławiec Cultural Centre.

**April/May** **2004** – LPR politicians demand that Cracow authorities withdraw their consent for the _Culture for Tolerance_ festival and the gallery Bunkier Sztuki cancels the photo exhibition accompanying the festival (p...)

**21 May** **–** Director of the Arsenał gallery in Bialystok does not allow Marcin Maciejowski to display a portrait of a right-wing councillor famous for fighting against the gallery (p. 349).

**10 May** – councillors threaten to dismiss the art director of Rozmaitości Theatre in Warsaw, Grzegorz Jarzyna, because of the staging of _Stitching_ by Anthony Neilsson. Giving in to pressure, the team working on the play removes the most controversial lines from it: "Sunday belongs to God", "Well, fuck that, motherfucker" and one about masturbating over a book about the Auschwitz concentration camp. The performance is cancelled soon afterwards.

**28 May** **– the** Rozmaitości theatre cancels the morally controversial play _Ivan Vyrypayev Dreams_ (directed by łukasz Kos) under the pressure of Warsaw authorities. The official reason was that the venue – the darkroom of the Le Madame club - allegedly functioned in violation of the law and failed to meet building requirements.

**29 May** **– the** premiere of Bertolt Brecht's _Threepenny Opera_ prepared by the Aleksander Węgierko Theatre in Białystok (directed by Piotr Tomaszuk) is cancelled due to an alleged violation of the license agreement. The real reason was that one of the scenes was modelled on the Berlin Love Parade, and Mack the Knife resembled Marilyn Manson.

**Beginning of September -** Sylwester Chruszcz (LPR) sends a letter to the distributor of the film _Bad Education_ by Pedro Almodóvar (Polish premiere on 3 September 2004): "... The film is a provocation that goes beyond good taste and contradicts the very idea of art ... The purpose of the film is to discredit the Church as an institution." Inscriptions "cancelled" appeared on the posters advertising the film in Warsaw.

**2 September –** LPR deputy Andrzej Fedorowicz damages the installation of Radek Szlaga in Białystok as he finds it "insulting to the idea of all-Polishness" (p. 349).

**Beginning of September** – under the pressure of LPR councillors in Biała Podlaska, the exhibition of paintings by Marek Jaszczuk _Germans 1939_ which allegedly glorifies Wehrmacht soldiers, is closed (p. 371).

**September** \- Larry Ugwu, the new Director of NCK in Gdańsk, cancels the concert of the English band Psychic TV in St. John's church, claiming that it is an "anti-Christ group". . The decision of Ugwu was supported by the Marshal of the Pomorskie Province.

**October** – the poster and catalogue for the exhibition of Natalia LL to be held in the BWA in Bielsko-Biała spark protests of right-wing councillors (p...)

**November -** protests of the All-Polish Youth against the exhibition _Real Story of the łódż Kaliska Art Group_ at the Museum of Art in łódż (p. 368).

**December** – Józef Heczko, a right-wing councillor, attacks the feminist work of Anna Baumgart _Bombowniczka_ shown in BWA Bielsko-Biała.

**2005**

**Mid-January** – the authorities of the Mazowieckie Province temporarily close Gallery XX1, in which the feminist exhibition _Mother's Day_ is held (p...)

**Spring** – Anna Walentynowicz (a legendary activist of the Solidarnośc trade union) protests against the film by Volker Schloendorff _Strike_ even before the shooting begins. Changes are introduced to the script, but Walentynowicz still, under pain of a lawsuit, objects to the film being made. After she yields, the shooting starts. After a special screening for Walentynowicz (25 August 2006), she accuses the film of distortions and makes it a matter of the nation's honour not to show it at the Venice festival. She also demands compensation for moral losses and for the appropriation of her copyrights from the producer.

**March** – _Memories of My Melancholy Whores_ by Gabriel García Márquez is published in Poland. In the introduction, the translator Carlos Marrodán Casas explains that in the title of the book the word "whore" [kurwa] was replaced with the word "hooker" [dziwka] by the Polish publisher, who did not want to commit a petty offence against public morality.

**March -** LPR starts the campaign "Children friendly/unfriendly exhibition" (p. 359).

**June** – on the day of opening the exhibition _Neuropa INC. Art Confronted with Corporate Seizure of Public Expression Settings_ in the Art Gallery in Legnica, local LPR members demand the mayor of the town to refrain from opening the exhibition and they notify the PPO of a crime of insult to religious feelings. Eventually, the prosecution discontinues the proceedings.

**July** \- Monika Mamzeta's _When I Grow up, I'll Be a Virgin_ is not shown at the _Mother's Day_ exhibition in the Polish Institute in Budapest (p. 360 - 361).

**September –** teachers from the Solidarnośc trade union in Płock submit to the Minister of Education a complaint concerning the poem of Jacek Podsiadło entitled _List do papieża Jana Paw_ ł _a II. Pocztą niedyplomatyczn_ ą [ _A Letter to Pope John Paul II. Non-Diplomatic Bag_ ] (1993) included in the textbook for the last grades of secondary schools. The poem allegedly offends the Pope and subsequently the publisher replaces it with another poem of Podsiadło.

**20 September –** LPR councillors from Legnica protest against two "morally scandalous" plays staged by the Zakład Krawiecki Theatre from Wrocław: _Bottom Parts_ – _An Intimate Musical_ based on Eve Ensler's _The Vagina Monologues_ and Paweł Palcat's monodrama inspired by Pedro Almodóvar stories _Roxxy Hot_.

**18-19 November – the** Suka Off Theatre stages the controversial _Flesh Forms 013_ within the project _Alternative Promotion Stage_ in the M25 club in Warsaw, having labelled it with relevant warnings. After the performance the tabloid _Fakt_ publishes several pictures depicting naked actors in perverse poses along with a provocative headline and text. As a result of this publication, the Mayor of Praga Południe (a district in Warsaw), Tomasz Koziński (PiS), notifies the PPO of the crime of illegal dissemination of pornography; his office also revokes the funding for the Santa Claus children's picnic that was to be organised by the club. The prosecution refuses to initiate proceedings.

**End of November** – Tomasz Bieszczad, the head of the Academic Centre of Artistic Initiatives, refuses to provide access to the centre's premises to the Suka Off theatre, which was to present the _Clone Factory_ performance as part of the 14th łódż Theatre Meetings. Eventually, the performance was removed from the programme of the event without explanation. Other alternative theatres interceded for the group, threatening to withdraw their performances from the festival. As a compromise, the performance was presented in a video version, and the group performed in a private club.

**November –** a secondary school cabaret Normal from Ełk parodies the owner of the ultra-Catholic radio, father Tadeusz Rydzyk, during a performance given on the occasion of Independence Day. Religion teachers from the school send a protest letter to their principal and to the priest in charge of the parish where the school is located. The principal has to submit an explanation to the education board office.

**November** – PiS councillors from Słupsk demand a cancellation of a puppet adaptation of Kornel Makuszyński's story _O dwóch takich co ukradli księżyc_ (1962) [ _The Two who stole the Moon_ ] at the "Tęcza" State Puppetry in Słupsk. The show allegedly ridicules the heads of their party Jarosław and Lech Kaczyński, who as children played in a film adaptation of the story.

**29 November –** LPR councillors from Białystok accuse the Wierszalin Theatre of insulting religious feelings. They are outraged by photographs from the play _Ofiara Wilgefortis_ [ _The_ _Offering of Wilgefortis_ ], depicting a wooden sculpture of a crucified bearded woman with bare bust (they did not know that it was a figure of the legendary medieval Saint Wilgefortis). The politicians demanded that the theatre be deprived of subsidies and notified the PPO about a crime. In December, Senator Szafraniec sends an open letter condemning the activity of the theatre to the Minister of Culture and the Marshal of the Podlaskie Province.

**2006**

**Beginning of the year** – the performance of Suka Off Theatre in the BWA in Koszalin is called off due to its indecency.

**2 January** – a media scandal breaks out: in Alban Berg's _Wozzeck_ (directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski) to be staged at the Polish National Opera in Warsaw, the Dutch singer Mateo di Monti playing the title role is to appear naked in the presence of children in one of the scenes. The art director persuades the director to modify this part and eventually di Monti appears in underpants. Just before the premiere, the bank sponsoring the performance withdraws from cooperation.

**3 February –** three residents of Myślenice find two photographs by Bogna Becker at the exhibition depicting graffiti from various European cities _City Portraits. Graffiti Photographs_ insulting to their religious feelings. The first of the works shows the Virgin Mary with horns surrounded by a halo of EU stars (Barcelona), in the other photograph Christ is holding a mobile phone and a bag with the slogan "Consumption is opium for the masses" (Venice). The police enter the exhibition and seize both photos.

**4 February** – the _Rzeczpospolita_ daily is the only Polish newspaper that reprints (only some) caricatures of Prophet Muhammad published earlier in the Danish daily _Jyllands-Posten_. Ryszard Nowak, head of OKOpS, notifies PPO about the crimes of insulting religious feelings and religious hate speech. Right-wing politicians and Polish Muslims also protest against the publication.

**Beginning of February** – Pauline Fathers from the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa are outraged by the cover of the pop-cultural magazine _Machina_. The cover shows the picture of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa with the face of Madonna the singer and the child resembling her daughter, Lourdes (painted by Piotr Leśniak). The prosecution initiates proceedings in a case of insult to religious feelings, which are eventually discontinued.

**February** – right-wing press find the advertising poster, trailer and even the title of Marek Koterski's film _Wszyscy jesteśmy Chrystusami_ [ _We're all Christs_ ] (premiere on 21 April) as insulting to the religious feelings of Poles in a way that requires a criminal investigation

**February** – The Deputy Mayor of łódż Mirosław Orzechowski (LPR) protests against a concert of the black metal band Dark Funeral that was to perform in the Dekompresja club in łódż. The organiser cancels the show not only in łódż, but also in other cities.

**20 February –** The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and Amnesty International, organisers of the 4th edition of the travelling festival _Human Rights in cinematography_ , call off the Lublin edition of the event after the rector of the University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska Prof. Wiesław Kamiński bans the exhibition _A_ _T-shirt for freedom_. It was to display photographs of famous people dressed in T-shirts with various inscriptions, e.g. "I am an Arab", "I am a Jew", "I do not go to church", "I am gay", "I had an abortion", "I masturbate", "I don't listen to the Pope". Some Catholics and the Archbishop of Lublin Józef Życiński protest against the sale of the T-shirts at the university.

**Beginning of March** \- Director of the Juliusz Osterwa Theatre in Gorzów Wielkopolski Jan Tomaszewicz orders a new version of the programme to be printed for Stanisław Wyspiański's _Liberation_ (directed by Andrzej Rozhin) as the old one included a photo from the performance of Tadeusz Różewicz's _Coitus Interruptus_ (from 1976), of two dressed adults, accompanied by five naked boys aged 5-10. The director also orders the removal of the photograph from the exhibition held on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of Rozhin's artistic work.

**5 March** – the police disrupt Kompania Primavera's premiere performance of fragments of the _Madrid'03_ show (directed by Dariusz Lewandowski), The play is devoted to the Madrid 2006 terrorist attacks and staged in the Warsaw Metro.

**24 March** \- on the Tok FM radio, the cartoonist Marek Raczkowski describes a happening in which he allegedly planted seventy small white-and-red flags in dog poo lying on lawns. The PPO initiates proceedings in a case of insult to the national flag. KRRiTV also launches its own investigation (p. 368).

**March** \- a rock band Normalsi from łódż records an LP that is to be awarded to the best high school graduates in Poland that refers to the film series _The Decalogue_ by Krzysztof Kieślowski. The Ministry of Education, however, withdraws from cooperation, as the cover of the album features a fragment of the painting _Hell_ by Hieronymus Bosch.

**1 April -** curator of the _Post_era Posters_ exhibition at the Wilanów Poster Museum rejects the work "RAT" because it insults the heads of the ruling party - the Kaczyński brothers (p. 373).

**3 April** \- the Mayor of środa Wielkopolska forbids the local cultural centre to stage _Apocalypsis_ performed by an amateur theatre group IT, as it allegedly insults religious feelings and has a satanic character. The script of the play by Piotr Pajchrowski, includes fragments of _The Satanic Bible_ by Anton Sandor LaVey, the Apocalypse of St. John, and poems by William Blake.

**3-4 April** – the billboard _PiS – Violence and Fear_ made by Edward Abramowski group is taken down from a wall at the railway station in Gdańsk, after only one night (p. 373).

**7 April** – ready made _You Reign Pot_ by Waldemar Cichoń is not admitted to the exhibition held in the ZPAP gallery in Cracow (p. 374).

**10 April** – the advertising agency AMS decides not to display on its carriers a poster advertising the first edition of the Polish-German theatre festival Express EC 47 as it may insult religious feelings. The poster features the naked body of a woman with outstretched arms, fragmented and spattered with black paint, combined with a drawing of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian man.

**18 April –** LPR activists demand that the exhibition of contemporary Czech and Slovak art _Shadows of Humor_ held in BWA Awangarda in Wrocław be closed as one of the presented items - the _Superstart_ sculpture by Kamera Scura and Kungst Fu group - insults their religious feelings. At the next venue of the travelling exhibition (BWA in Bielsko-Biała), the curator of the exhibition William Hollister, does not present the said work (p. 356).

**End of April** \- senator from Gdynia Dorota Arciszewska-Mielewczyk (PiS), unsuccessfully demands to see the script of Jan Klata's play _Transfer!_ , about the expelled Poles and Germans after WW2, before the premiere.

**April** \- LPR deputy Janusz Dobrosz in an interpellation to the Minister of Culture Michał Ujazdowski, expresses concern over the violation of workers' rights and the low quality of the programme of the Musical Theatre Capitol in Wrocław, where according to him drugs, eroticism, deviations, vulgar language and oddity are being glorified.

**May** – the secretary of state in the Prime Minister's office Adam Lipiński (PiS) finds that the exhibition _Scandal_ showing the works submitted for the 15th International Goldsmithery Competition in the Art Gallery in Legnica, insults his religious feelings. Local Catholic activists notify the PPO of a crime and also demand the closure of the gallery and the dismissal of its director. The patronage of the Ministry of Culture and the Marshal's Office over the exhibition is withdrawn and KGHM Polska Miedż SA resigns from sponsoring it. The PPO initiates an investigation, which is, nevertheless, discontinued.

**12 May** – exhibition of amateur photographer Bogusław Jaroszek entitled _The_ _Fourth Polish Republic_ to be held in Bielsko-Biała is called off (p. 375).

**Mid-May** – the Management Board of the LPR branch in Gdynia calls on city authorities to cancel subsidies for the Musical Theatre and to withdraw from co-financing the musical of Jerry Herman _Lunatics' Cage_ (directed by Maciej Korwin), which allegedly promotes gay lifestyle.

**19 May** at the opening of the _Bad News_ exhibition in the Kronika gallery in Bytom a Czech group Guma Guar presents the poster _You Are All Queer_. Local press and councillors accuse the gallery's management of insulting religious feelings (p...)

**23 May –** Rector of Adam Mickiewicz University Prof. Stanisław Lorenc orders the removal of two exhibitions _Let Them See Us_ and _My Life - My Decision_ from the lobby of Collegium Polonicum in Słubice **(p...)**

**May** \- councillor Bogdan Nowacki (LPR) protests against a performance of the Acting School run at the Stefan Jaracz Theatre in Olsztyn – _The_ _Journey into the Interior of the Room_ (directed by Giovanni Castellanos). One of the actors in a papal disguise is scattering condoms with the Vatican stamp across the stage. Senator Szafraniec submitted a statement to the Polish Ombudsman in this regard.

**End of May** – the conference entitled _Queering of Feminism_ , accompanied by an exhibition of photographs presenting Polish and world drag queens, is held at the Zamek Cultural Centre in Poznań. One of the officials working at the Centre considers some of the photos as pornographic, demands their removal, and organises a picket line. The management of the Centre moves the photographs from the corridors to the premises, where the conference is held, and replaces them with information about internal censorship.

**June – the** Association of the Expelled in Gdynia inspired by senator Dorota Arciszewska-Mielewczyk protests in a letter to the Director of Contemporary Theatre in Gdynia against the play _Transfer!_ , which is deemed to falsify history (see also end of April 2006).

**Mid-June –** the tabloid _Fakt_ intervenes again with regard to the performance of Suka Off theatre, this time at the A PART festival in Katowice (15-19 June 2006). In one of the articles, the newspaper demands that the city Mayor Piotr Uszok step in. Eventually, the City Hall reduces the subsidy for the festival.

**Second half of June** \- the PPO is to investigate whether the online video _The Pasion according to Benny Hill_ (compilation of fragments of Mel Gibson's _The Passion of the Christ_ and music from _The Benny Hill Show_ ) insults religious feelings. A link to the video appears on the o2.pl portal.

**July** \- protests against the film _The White Masai_ spam the mailbox of the Local Cultural Centre in Mielec. The posters advertising the film are also destroyed. A few weeks earlier in Mielec, a group of councillors and residents objects to the screening of _The Da Vinci Code_ during the inauguration of the Centrte's new auditorium.

**11 August** – a limited admission Black Metal Festival in the Proxima club owned by the University of Warsaw is cancelled. It is torpedoed by Ryszard Nowak from OKOpS, who intervenes with City Hall. The city officials promise to provide legal assistance to the university if the cancellation provokes a dispute with the organiser of the festival.

**Mid-August –** PPO refuses to initiate proceedings against the distributor of the film _The Da Vinci Code_. It was notified about the alleged crime of insult to religious feelings by senators Ryszard Bender (LPR) and Czesław Ryszka (PiS), who also intervened with the Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro (PiS). The film was banned by local authorities in świdnik, Dobre Miasto and śrem.

**26 August** – Poster of Our Lady of Częstochowa holding two figures with halos resembling the Kaczyński brothers (the state leaders) appears on a billboard in Poznań. The head of PiS party in the Poznań notifies the PPO about a crime of insulting religious feelings and the head of state (p. 407).

**Beginning of September** – The PISF refuses to subsidise the _Kaddish_ project of Władysław Pasikowski on Polish anti-Semitism. The director accuses the institute of censorship (p. 407)

**9 September** – David Cerny's work _Shark_ is removed from the exhibition _Shadows of Humor_ in the BWA gallery in Bielsko-Biała. The town's deputy mayor is outraged with this work (p. 381).

**18 October** – Art 132(a) PCC intended to protect the good name of the Polish nation is adopted (p. 370).

**28 October** \- at an official gala celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Cracow branch of the TVP, the song _Wojna o stołki_ [ _The War Over Stools_ ] with the chorus line: "Politicians lie to us, they lie, lie, lie all the time" by the WU-HAE group stirs up consternation of the attending politicians. The performance is cut out from the concert broadcast on the Internet.

**2006 -** the head of the Wybrzeże Theatre in Gdańsk, Maciej Nowak, leaves office, as the Marshal of the Pomeranian Province Jan Kozłowski (PO) accuses him of financial mismanagement resulting in the theatre's debt. The PPO finds no grounds for pressing charges against Nowak. At the same time the Marshal questions the theatre's programme, which allegedly does not cover enough classical repertoire.

**2007**

**2007** – upon a motion from a Regional Court in Cracow the PPO verifies the illustrations in the calendar by the designer Tomasz Kozak. According to the court settling a civil dispute over payment for the calendar, Kozak's works are "vulgar" and may be considered as propagating fascism, pornography and insulting the state flag. Eventually, the PPO discontinues the proceedings.

**Second half of January** \- in 2006 łukasz Kasperczyk won the Prize of the Mayor of Czestochowa in the 2nd Countrywide Presentations of the Art of Youths _Hopes_. The prize was to be a personal exhibition at the Municipal Art Gallery (26 February – 18 March 2007). When the artist presents the scenario of the exhibition _Coffin Self-Portraits_ , the director of the gallery Czesław Tarczyński does not allow it to be installed. In his opinion, the exhibition would create the atmosphere of a pre-burial house and could cause emotional shock to some viewers. Tarczyński proposes organisation of another exhibition to Kasperczyk, which the artist rejects.

**26 January –** Peter Fuss exhibition _Jesus Christ King of Poland_ at the SCENA gallery in Koszalin closed by the PPO, which conducts proceedings concerning an insult to the head of state and racist hate speech (p. 87 n148).

**Beginning of February** – Sławomira Raczyńska's text on _shunga_ in _Gazeta Malarzy i Poetów_ published in Poznań, illustrated with two homosexual acts, provokes protests from councillor Krzysztof Mączkowski (PiS) (p. 366).

**March** – Olga Lipińska claims that the play she directed _Cud mniemany czyli Krakowiacy i Górale_ [ _Supposed Wonder or Cracovians and Highlanders_ ], shown by the Television Theatre, was censored. Lipińska added some political references in the final couplets which were removed subsequently by the TVP authorities.

**16 March** – councillors from Bytom visit Kronika gallery once again (see 1 May 2006), the chair of the City Council's Culture Committee, Danuta Skalska, questions some of the gallery's expenditure and the quality of the art presented. Artur Żmijewski's book _Drżące ciała_ [ _Trembling Bodies_ ] published by Kronika and _Krytyka Polityczna_ appears to be particularly controversial, as it allegedly promotes homosexuality (p.386 n631).

**20 March** \- in the Awangarda gallery in Wrocław, Kozyra's exhibition _In art, dreams become reality_ opens. The works present the artist as a character from her dreams, e.g. a cheerleader, Snow White and an opera diva. Local LPR activists call the exhibition obnoxious and demand that the mayor dismiss the head of Awangarda Marek Puchała and the head of the Culture Department at the City Hall Jarosław Broda.

**18 April** – at the 18th Złotów Theatre Meetings, Tomasz Cebo and Dominik Smużny perform _Instalacja z performatywnym udziałem artysty_ [ _Installation with Performative Participation of the Artist_ ]. A fragment of Mel Gibson's _The Passion of the Christ_ is shown while the artists undress. One of them asks the audience: "What shall I do with him [the second performer]?" and someone answers "Crucify him!". Then the artists perform the pantomime of crucifixion. LPR senator from Piła Janusz Kubiak notifies the PPO about an alleged crime of insulting religious feelings.

**May** \- some of the participants resign from performing in cabaret night at the Polish National Song Festival Opole 2007 as they were forbidden to mock the authorities.

**25 May** – TVP 2 airs an episode of a BBC series _Little Britain_ , with the scenes depicting homosexual priests cut out. The spokeswoman for TVP said that "the BBC gives its licensees the opportunity to introduce small changes .... Using this option, we decided to remove some of the scenes that could be considered controversial in our culture."

**June** – on the poster promoting the latest book by Paulo Coelho _The Witch of Portobello_ , the female nipple is covered. The book cover, identical with the poster, is not censored.

**Mid-June** – the Arsenal Gallery in Poznań publishes a book with a series of works by Radosław Szlaga _Bad Drawings_. One of the drawings contains the subversively used slogan "Negroes go to hell for shooting and dope." PiS councillor from Poznań Przemysław Foligowski attacks the gallery, accusing it of preserving racial stereotypes with public money.

**22 June** – the authorities of Nowy Targ block the concert of the punk band Czosnek which was to be held under the slogan _Guerre-tych, Enough! Vivat Vacation_ (p. 375).

**June** \- The Maritime Office in Szczecin tries to block the performance of the Suka Off theatre which was to be staged at premises rented by the Office to the Alter Ego Club of Unpopular Culture in Szczecin. (p. 364 n596)

**4 August** – on the local radio, the Archbishop of Lublin Józef Życiński calls the Kreatury theatre from Gorzów to resign from staging a play entitled _Betanki_ about rebellious nuns from the Bethany Family Order in Kazimierz Dolny. The theatre does not give in to pressure.

**Beginning of September** – while performing in Nowy Dwór, the Klika cabaret jokes about the Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro (PiS). During the sketch, Beata Kempa, the deputy Minister of Justice, storms the stage and, as the satirists report, threatens: "You can have fun today, but you do not know what will happen tomorrow." Kempa later argues that her performance was meant as a joke.

**Mid-September** – the photo exhibition by Dominika Mróz and Michał Drozd at the Municipal Gallery at the Art School Complex in Rzeszów is censored preventively on moral grounds. The director of the institution was scared as during the exhibition, the Mayor of Rzeszów Tadeusz Ferenc (SLD) was to meet with the residents of the neighbouring quarter in the gallery.

**Beginning of October** – head of the OKOpS Ryszard Nowak publishes _A black list of musical bands promoting Satanism_ to be distributed among i.a. various state and local government departments. The report describes 15 Polish and 27 foreign bands considered satanic, and lists the concerts of satanic groups that performed in Poland as well as the most important satanic music events in Poland.

**Mid-November** – in Kłodzko, the concert of black metal bands: Hate, Crionics, Deathbringer and Vedonist (a part of the _Rebel Angels Tour_ ) is forbidden by the mayor due to protests from local parishes.

**25 December** –– the sentence "for mommy a kiss and a good Christmas goose" uttered in the film _Shrek the Halls_ which was aired on Christmas Eve by TVN outraged MP Tadeusz Cymański (PiS), a member of the Sejm's Committee of Social Policy and Family. As the Polish translation of the sentence is very frivolous, in his opinion someone has to take responsibility for the incident.

**2008**

**February** \- Ryszard Nowak from the OKOpS notifies the PPO about the alleged crime of insult to religious feelings committed by the leader of the band Behemoth, Adam Darski Nergal during the concert played on 13 September 2007 at the Ucho club in Gdynia (the denunciation also includes club managers). The PPO, however, discontinues the proceedings (p...)

**Beginning of February** \- director of CSW łażnia in Gdańsk Jadwiga Charzyńska decides that the exhibition _Wit and the Power Judgement – (Asteism in Poland)_ can be watched by adults only. The leitmotif of the exhibition is humour in Polish art. In 2007 the Centre was accused of exposing children to watching, as part of an educational programme, "naked bodies jumping on the wall' [reference to Kozyra's work święto wiosny ( _The Spring Fest_ )]". As _GW_ marks: "After a series of unjustified slander, the director buries her head in the sand and limits young people's access to the achievements of Polish culture."

**12 February** \- editors of the Catholic weekly _Niedziela,_ acting in the name of different catholic groups, submit to the Marshal of the Dolnośląskie Province a letter of protest against the "attacking and ridiculing of basic religious values during the performances presented on the stage of Jerzy Szaniawski Dramatic Theatre in Wałbrzych". The theatre is also attacked by a PiS councillor, who accuses the artists of insults to religious feelings, voyeurism, brutalisation and the shocking of the audience. In his opinion, if the theatre is funded from taxes it should meet the expectations of the majority of audience.

**April** \- TV Puls, whose majority shareholder is the Franciscan order, cuts out without the authors' permission erotic scenes from the films _Gorączka_ [ _Fever_ ] by Agnieszka Holland and _Per_ ł _a w Koronie_ [ _Pearl in the Crown_ ] by Kazimierz Kutż

**17 May –** head of the TVP branch in Opole, suspends the production of the documentary on the newest play by the director Maja Kleczewska _Tale of the Vienna Woods_ by Ödön von Horváth, officially due to problems with arranging an interview with her. In Kleczewska's opinion the real reason is fear of a religious and moral scandal.

**Mid-May** \- Przemysław Obarski prepares an exhibition _Energy Field_ about the swastika (a solar symbol) in the Wozownia Gallery in Toruń. Before the opening, the head of the Tumult Foundation, Marek Żydowicz, publishes in the press an open letter to the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Province, Piotr Całbecki, demanding the cancellation of the exhibition. The Marshal calls a meeting with the directors of Toruń galleries and museums, after which the director of Wozownia Anna Jackowska cancels the show.

**May/June** – the broadcast on Polish Radio of a radio-play based on the drama _Osobisty Jezus_ [ _Personal Jesus_ ] by Przemysław Wojcieszek is put on hold. The radio's management demands that the director, Waldemar Modestowicz, cut out vulgar words. Modestowicz refuses, and the play is sent to the archive.

**June** – catholic activists and the All-Polish Youth protest against a discussion panel to be held at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow about the ECHR case of Alicja Tysiąc vs. Poland (Alicja Tysiąc was refused an abortion, even though Polish law allows it in some circumstances, for example when a mother's health and life are threatened. She almost completely lost her sight as a result of childbirth. She complained to the ECHR and won). The poster advertising the meeting is also controversial, as it uses a work by Dorota Nieznalska, showing a naked woman girded with a crown of thorns (see pg. 108). However Nieznalska did not consent to the usage of her work. The posters are torn off by unknown perpetrators and Nieznalska successfully sues the organisers of the panel for copyright infringement.

**June** \- the municipal police accuse the director of the Helena Modrzejewska Theatre in Legnica, Jacek Głomb, of two petty offenses: erecting an installation in front of the theatre in a public space without permission and putting satirical texts and drawings on the installation, which mocks the Mayor of the city Tadeusz Krzakowski. Głomb claims that the Mayor regularly persecutes the theatre.

**29 June -** Icchak Chaim Rapoport, a rabbi from Wroclaw protests against a work of Hubert Czerepok prepared for the 6th Young Art Review in Extreme Conditions. It is an iron ribbon with the inscription _Not only good comes from above_ , which is hung over the passageway to the courtyard of the White Stork synagogue. The ribbon resembles the famous inscription _Arbeit macht frei_ from the Auschwitz concentration camp. The rabbi accuses the organisers of anti-Semitism, the work is removed. The artist emphasises: "... On the one hand, I referred to mass genocide, and on the other hand I alluded to the Old Testament vision of god, who was not always good. I wanted to open a dialogue, but I met with censorship. The rabbi acted from the position of strength, he did not talk, he demanded..."

**July** \- Catholic activists collect signatures against a concert that is to take place within the second edition of the _Alternatywna Twierdza_ festival in Kłodzko. In their opinion, it is a satanic event. They also submit an appropriate petition to the mayor. The event is eventually cancelled after someone cuts the power supply wires of the main stage.

**5 August** – directors Andrzej Saramonowicz and Tomasz Konecki shoot the comedy _Idealny facet dla mojej dziewczyny_ [ _A Perfect Guy For My Girlfriend_ ] in Częstochowa near the Jasna Góra Sanctuary. In one of the scenes they use a car with the inscription "Radio Always Virgin" (reference to the name of Radio Maryja – ultra Catholic station of father Tadeusz Rydzyk). Pauline Fathers from Jasna Góra are outraged and complain to the Mayor of Częstochowa, Tadeusz Wrona. He publicly criticises the film crew and calls the head of the Częstochowa Police Traffic Department not to approve similar initiatives in the future.

**End of August** – a conflict over the screenplay of the film _The Secrets of Westerplatte_ by Paweł Chochlew, begins. The screenplay allegedly insults Polish soldiers (p. 405).

**19 September** – CSW łażnia and BCK in Gdańsk receive a new issue of the underground art magazine _Krecha_ , published by an independent students collective from the ASP in Gdańsk. The main theme of the issue is terrorism. The authors attach to the magazine an envelope with flour inside and an inscription "anthrax". Director of CSW łażnia Jadwiga Charzyńska, without trying to clarify the matter with the editors of _Krecha,_ calls the police and they initiate anti-terrorist procedures. The employees of the BCK have no doubt that it is an artistic provocation.

**23 September -** police orders to dismantle the swing placed on the Kościuszko Infantry Division Memorial in Warsaw, which the artist Kamila Szejnoch installed as a part of the _Karuzela Zjeżdżalnia Huśtawka_ [Merry-go-round Slide Swing] project (intended to give new functionality to the monuments from the communist times). The authorities of the Praga Północ district first give the artist permission for the installation, and then (under the pressure of the veterans) withdraw it without giving reasons. The police file a case against the artist for a petty offence.

**September** \- thanks to the commitment of Beata Jaszczak, curator of the Płock Culture and Art Centre, a specific gallery of street murals is created in Płock. The murals were created as part of an annual festival dedicated to engaging children. During the 2008 edition, the Twożywo group creates the _Zaangazowanie_ [ _EnGASment_ ] mural. As one of the group members observed in an interview for _GW_ "the word 'GAS' alludes to the city's neighbour and employer, the PKN Orlen oil company [the biggest Polish company]". The article was quickly removed from the daily's online version, and on 10 September, the Mayor of Płock ordered (without any justification and legal basis) that all new murals be painted over within 4 days. Jaszczak defended the works, as a result of which she was dismissed.

**24 October** – Art 202(4)(b) is added to the PCC (p. 134).

**November 2008** \- local church officials, the deans of the Orthodox and Polish-Catholic Church, parish priests of the EvangelicałAugsburg and EvangelicałMethodist church, as well as various Catholic associations start to protest against the performance prepared by amateur directors Jakub Jaworski and Jarosław Klonowski which is planned to be staged on Holy Wednesday on 8 March 2009 at the Old Market Square in Bydgoszcż The performance is based on the theme from the musical _Jesus Christ Superstar_. Amateur actors are to be engaged and Pilate is to be played by a woman. It is to be interrupted by a question from the audience: "Should Christ be crucified?" and the results of an SMS survey are to be displayed on the giant screen. The protesters call on the city authorities not to subsidise the project from public funding and not to facilitate its organisation. The directors themselves submit the script to the PPO to verify whether the text insults religious feelings. The PPO however, diplomatically refrains from issuing official on statement on this issue. The protesters are not satisfied even with the self-censorship solution offered by the directors - instead of the audience, the actors and fake viewers can take part in the voting so that the verdict can be consistent with the Gospel (originally the performance was to end with crucifixion regardless of the result of the vote.) Eventually, the project is not carried out.

**End of 2008** – deputy Joanna Fabisiak (PO) finds that the TV series _Londyńczycy_ [ _Londoners_ ] (about Polish immigrants in London) slanders the image of Polish residents and declares to ask the executives of TVP for intervention in this matter. A homosexual plot in the series is also to be censored.

**2009**

**27 January** \- councillors in Jelenia Góra amend the by-laws of the local theatre by increasing the representation of the commune's authorities in the artistic council and separating the functions of General Manager and Art Director. At the same time, and during a pending competition for the post of the theatre's director, they change the rules of the competition, introducing a new requirement that applicants must have managerial and humanistic education and at least five years of managerial experience. This excludes Wojciech Klemm, the Art Director at that time, from the competition, whose work gave the theatre renown among theatres in Poland, but who, according to the councillors, did not satisfy the taste of the majority of local residents. As a result of an intervention of SLD councillors, the mayor orders Klemm to terminate the _Krytyka Polityczna_ club operating at the theatre.

**February –** The Warsaw Uprising Museum rejects a mural it had commissioned to Karol Radziszewski because it considers it to be too erotic (p. 397).

**February – the** Catholic portal _Fronda_ calls for protests against the performance _Tourists_ staged at the Polski Theatre in Bydgoszcż The performance allegedly insults religious feelings.

**19 February** \- ZTM (the municipal transport authority in Warsaw) refuses to display city bus ads accompanying a feminist manifestation Manifa that, among others, are supposed to address the influence of the Catholic Church on the legal system in Poland. According to ZTM's spokesperson "The public transport fleet is not a suitable place for exchanging views or artistic provocation ..."

**19 February -** in one of the Warsaw shopping centres, the sanitary inspectors start the inspection of the exhibition _Bodies... the exhibition_ , with 13 bodies and 250 body organs preserved by so-called plastination. A few days later, the PPO launches an investigation in a case of corpse desecration and checks if the permission for the organisation of the exhibition was issued correctly. The exhibition is also criticised by former Presidents of the Constitutional Court.

**6 March** \- Director of the łażnia gallery cancels Alina Żemojdzin's project for the exhibition _Women's Day in Advance_. The artist created a series of slimming cosmetics, the main component of which is human fat from liposuction. The work is entitled _"aLine" New line of your body_ , and the cosmetics seem identical with the products available in stores. It is censored because of the associations with Nazi experiments and a criminal aspect of the case - the hospitals refused to provide the artist with human fat, so she obtained it illegally (p. 73n).

**17 March – Councillor Adam Michalski (PiS) protests against** an exhibition of works by Lidia Krawczyk and Wojtek Kubiak _Genderqueer_ in the BWA gallery in Bielsko-Biała because of the photograph _Water/Fire_ by Katarzyna Legendż, that wasn't even on a display.

**April** \- Elżbieta Szumska, acting Director of TVP 1, orders the creators of the series _Londyńczycy_ to remove the plot of a Polish woman giving birth to a black child. In her opinion, viewers will not accept such a character and thus the audience ratings of the series will drop.

**2 April** – the performance _Accidents: Kill to Eat_ by Rodrigo Garcia, staged during the Wrocław review of Europe's best theatre performances, begins with a scene in which Garcia, smoking a cigar, kills and cleans a lobster. Then he starts eating it and announces it is the end of the show. During the performance, some spectators protest, and the police arrive, but the law is not infringed as a lobster is a slaughter animal and the actor follows the standard procedure used in restaurants. Garcia also shows another performance _Cover Mickey Mouse With My Ashes_. This time he throws Syrian hamsters (semi-arid animals) into an aquarium and when the animals begin to drown, the actor pulls them out with a landing net. A spectator threw a bottle at Garcia, and a representative of the Animal Guard organisation interrupted the performance and confiscated the hamsters. The prosecution summons Garcia for interrogation, but he does not turn up.

**Beginning of April** – before the opening of the exhibition _Lucim żyje_ [ _Lucim is Alive_ ] organised in CSW in Toruń, the director of the centre orders to shut out a part of the installation _Studium Błota_ [ _A Study of Mud_ ] by Roman Dziadkiewicz, featuring a video in which a man, while demonstrating the process of baking bread, masturbates and leaves his sperm in the dough. According to the CSW spokesperson, the film exists "in the space of the exhibition only in a conceptual form, unavailable to viewers. The artist and curator agreed to this form of presentation ...". The spatial context of the video's presentation is also controversial - a film documenting the self-immolation of Ryszard Siwiec in 1968 in protest against the intervention of the Warsaw Pact troops in Czechoslovakia is shown next to Dziadkiewicz's work (p. 416n)

**14 June** \- Przemysław Sanecki gives a performance in BWA Awangarda in Wrocław during which he snorts white powder. The gallery's lawyer notifies the PPO about the suspicion of committing a crime. Subsequently, the gallery breaks off cooperation with Sanecki on the planned project.

**15 June –** a satirical drawing published by the _Rzeczpospolita_ daily, showing a gay couple getting married and a man who speaks to a goat led on a rope 'We just have to wait for those gentlemen to get married and then it's our turn!' sparks a conflict between gay communities and the daily's editorial team (p. 402)

**23 June** – Ryszard Nowak from OKOpS notifies the PPO on suspicion of a crime committed by Adam Darski, the vocalist of the band Behemoth, who is said to have insulted the religious feelings of Catholics with the song _Chwała mordercom św. Wojciecha_ [ _Glory to the Murderers of St Adalbert_ ].

**July - August** \- right-wing councillor Marian Brudzyński tries to block Madonna's concert in Warsaw scheduled for 15 August (the feast of Assumption of Mary). Brudzyński requests the sanitary inspection to check the people working on the concert on A/H1N1 virus or HIV infections and the National Labour Inspectorate to inspect their work permits. He also wants to organise a "public prayer crusade". A group of Internet users boycott the concert's sponsor Allegro.

**18 September** \- the photo exhibition _Wałbrzyszanie nieWałbrzyszan - Waldenburg Obiektywnie_ by Jakub Ochnio and Bartłomiej Chlebek is closed after two days in Galeria Pod Atlantami in Wałbrzych. Violetta Kasiborska, the gallery's director, comments,: "... Wałbrzych was presented as a hotbed of poverty, pathology and urban catastrophe. The photographs by Ochnio and Chlebek are, in my opinion, a slap for this city and people who identify with it." She did see the exhibition before it was opened, thus it is not clear why she suddenly changed her decision.

**6 October** \- MP Artur Górski (PiS) raises an interpellation to the Minister of Culture with regard to a gay porn presented at the exhibition _Pee into the Cake_ at Zachęta (p. 396).

**13 October** – the screening of Henryk Dederko's film _Witajcie w życiu_ at the Warsaw Film Festival is blocked by the Chairman of TVP (who owns the rights to the film), who fears Amway's lawsuits (p. 220).

**19 October** – MP Stanisław Pięta (PiS) raises an interpellation to the Minister of Culture with regard to the exhibition _Ars homo erotica_ at MNW (p...)

**December** \- The Academic Cultural Centre at the University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska in Lublin removes from its programme a student's exhibition prepared under the patronage of _Krytyka Polityczna_ referring to group layoffs at the University. The students wanted to exhibit 10 photo portraits of technical service workers accompanied by interviews.

**8-10 December** – on 8 December, the exhibition _Subversive Crafts: Taboo in the Weaving of Culture_ , which accompanies the international conference _Taboo in the Wide Open Eye_ organised by the Institute of Slavic Studies at the UAM in Poznań, opens in the lobby of AMU's Collegium Maius. After two days, one of the curators, Zvonko Dimoski, is notified by telephone about the order to remove two works: Sonja Hrzˇina Majstorovic's _Woman-Wife-Whore-Saint_ (a big yellow hand covered with pinkish transparent material, with pink bra at the wrist, and spoons for stirring dishes attached to the fingers) and Roberta Weissman Nagy's _Inner Beauty_ (menstrual blood embroidered on sanitary towels). Dimoski together with co-curator Kristina Babosek remove the works, leaving only their descriptions and blank white pages on the floor. The head of the Institute of Classical Studies, Prof. Elżbieta Wesołowska, claimed responsibility for the intervention. She was forced to look at the works which disgust her, and in her opinion, the lobby is not the right place to present such works, which are not art anyway.

**2010**

**14 January** – three PiS deputies once again notify the PPO on suspicion of a crime of insult to religious feelings, committed by the vocalist of Behemoth band Adam Darski, during a concert at the Ucho club in Gdynia on 13 September 2007 (p. 121).

**20 February** – the temporary mural _Lambs of God_ displayed at the Marymont metro station in Warsaw is damaged. After protests against the mural (it allegedly insults religious feelings), its display is shortened.

**25 February** – the Polish Public Railways withdraw the consent for the display of Kamila Szejnoch's work _Holy machine_ at the Central Railway Station in Warsaw. The machine similar to an ATM, offers to arrange various spiritual and religious services such as confession. According to Szejnoch, it was meant to be a confession machine, not a confessional - at the end of the procedure, there was no "you have been absolved" message, only the words "go in peace" and a receipt was issued. Catholic portal _Fronda_ sent complaints to Polish Public Railways authorities and the Tax Office, since issuing a receipt gave rise to a suspicion of committing a fiscal offence.

**March** – a seventeen-year-old student of the High School in łódż arranges a photo session in which she poses together with her friend. Pictures are taken by their classmate. Photographs from the session are posted on a photo blog. The school's guidance counsellor, class tutor and the school nurse demand their removal under the threat of expulsion from school as the photos allegedly "encourage weight loss, which poses a risk of anorexia", and additionally manifest sexual orientation of the girls. The łódż board of education and the deputy Mayor of łódż responsible for education intercede for the girls.

**8 May** – Marek Wasilewski shoots a short film prepared for the Focus łódż Biennale festival. One of the scenes shows a naked man entering the łódż cathedral. The PPO launches proceedings in a case of insult of religious feelings (p...)

**Mid-May** \- Warsaw authorities refuse to prolong the contract with Maciej Kowalewski, the managing and artistic director of Teatr na Woli. They find his programme too controversial.

**17 May** – the work _U(a)M_ by Aurelia Nowak, a student of the ASP in Poznań, is censored by the authorities of the Poznań University of Medical Sciences before the opening of the _Hipokretyna_ exhibition. It is displayed in the university building. The work allegedly abuses the university's logo.

**19 May** – a night patrol of municipal police stops students of the ASP in Poznań from painting (without any appropriate permission) a zebra crossing leading nowhere in one of the main streets of the city. The students wanted to draw attention to the shortage of pedestrian crossings in Poznań.

**June –** during the exhibition _Ars homo erotica_ held in MNW, Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz pressures the Minister of Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski (PO) into ordering the removal of a sound installation by Aleka Polis _Confession Chair + Confession_ with a recording of the confession of the artist during which she confessed to her homosexuality.

**Second half of June** \- on the scaffolding surrounding a tenement house in Poznań, a vast reproduction of the work of the Italian artist Max Papeschi appears. The work shows a lying naked woman with the face of Mickey Mouse with a huge swastika in the background and advertises the opening of the Abnormals gallery. A PiS councillor notifies the PPO on suspicion of committing a crime of propagating fascism. A few days later, someone cuts the poster. However, according to the PPO, the objective features of the crime under Art 256 PPC, are not fulfilled.

**End of June** – a sculpture by Agnieszka Wolska depicting naked gymnasts appears in front of the Zielona Góra aquapark. The Mayor, Janusz Kubicki (SLD), issues the artist an ultimatum - she must either cut the penis off the sculpture, or the whole work will be removed from the place near the pool. Wolska succumbs and castrates her work. After the case gains publicity all over Poland, the Mayor allows the penis to be restored.

**20 October** – the police enter the studio of an artist from łódżż Krzysztof Kuszej and secure paintings showing mainly sexual acts of priests with children. The PPO accuses the artist of various crimes related to pornography and paedophilia (p. 136).

Quantitative breakdown of rationalisations of censorship cases

Quantitative dependence of recorded censorship cases on the balance of political forces in local governments (the darker sections mark periods between the middle of 1994-1998 and late 2002-2006 where the left held the majority and the periods with lighter hues mark periods where non-left parties were in the majority.)

Quantitative dependence of recorded censorship cases on the balance of political forces in the parliament (the darker sections mark periods between the middle of 1993-1997 and late 2001-2005 where the left held the majority and the periods with lighter hues mark periods where non-left parties were in the majority.)
**LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS**

APP - Application

ASP (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych) – Academy of Fine Arts

AWS (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność) – Solidarity Electoral Action, right wing political party coalition in Poland in the years 1996-2001

BPO (kolegium ds. wykroczeń) - Board for Petty Offence

BWA (Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych) – Bureaus of Artistic Exhibitions, a network of state-run exhibition venues in the Polish People's Republic located in major cities, realizing state cultural policy. Today some institutions – mostly the successors of those entities – still use this name

CPO (Kodeks Wykroczeń) - Code of Petty Offence

CSW (Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej) – Centres of Contemporary Art other than CSW ZU (see below, eg. CSW łażnia in Gdańsk, CSW Toruń)

CSW ZU (Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski) - The Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw

ECHR – The European Court of Human Rights

EHRR - European Human Rights Reports

GUKPPiW (Główny Urząd Kontroli Prasy, Publikacji i Widowisk) - The Main Office for the Control of the Press, Publications, and Public Performances, the Office of Censorship in the Polish People's Republic

_GW_ ("Gazeta Wyborcza") – "The Electoral Newspaper", the liberałleftist daily published in Warsaw, founded in 1989

KRRiTV (Krajowa Rada Radiofonii i Telewizji) – The National Broadcasting Council, the Polish broadcasting regulator

LPR (Liga Polskich Rodzin) – The League of Polish Families, radical right wing political party in Poland, founded in 2001

MNP (Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu) – The National Museum in Poznań.

MNW (Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie) - The National Museum in Warsaw

NCK (Nadbałtyckie Centrum Kultury) - Baltic Sea Culture Centre in Gdańsk

OKOpS (Ogólnopolski Komitet Obrony przed Sektami i Przemocą) – The Nationwide Committee for the Defense Against Sects and Violence

OTK Orzeczenictwo Trybunału Konstytucyjnego Zbiór Urzędowy – Journal of Constitutional Court Judgements

PCC (Kodeks Karny) – Polish Penal Code

PCK (Polski Czerwony Krzyz˙) – The Polish Red Cross

PGS (Państwowa Galeria Sztuki w Sopocie) – The State Gallery of Art in Sopot

PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) – Law and Justice, nationałconservative political party in Poland, founded in 2001

PISF (Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej) – The Polish Film Institute

PO (Platforma Obywatelska) – The Civic Platform, liberałconservative political party in Poland, founded in 2001

PPO – Public Prosecutor's Office

PRL (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) – Polish People's Republic, communist state existing between 1945 (officially 1952) and 1989

PSL (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe) - The Polish People's Party or The Polish Peasants' Party, agrarian and Christian democratic political party in Poland, re-established in 1990

PZPR (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza) - The Polish United Workers' Party, communist party in power in the Polish People's Republic from 1948 to 1989

RAT (Radykalna Akcja Twórcza) - Radical Creative Action

RPO (Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich) – Ombudsman. The Commissioner for Human Rights, constitutional authority for legal control and protection

SB (Słuz˙ba Bezpieczeństwa, between 1944–1956 as Urząd Bezpieczeństwa) - The Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Polish People's Republic (after 1956)

SLD (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej) – The Democratic Left Alliance, post-communist left wing political party in Poland, founded in 1991

StGB (Strafgesetzbuch) – German Criminal Code

TK (Trybunał Konstytucyjny) - The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Poland

TOZ (Towarzystwo Opieki nad Zwierzętami w Polsce) – The Society for the Protection of Animals in Poland, founded in 1864

TVP (Telewizja Polska) – The Polish Television, Polish public broadcasting corporation

UD (Unia Demokratyczna) – The Democratic Union, liberal Christian-democratic political party in Poland, founded in 1991

USW (Urząd do Spraw Wyznań) – The Office of Confessional Affairs, communist central organ of state administration responsible for the policy toward churches and religious denominations, founded in 1950

UW (Unia Wolnoścci) – The Freedom Union, liberal democratic party in Poland, founded in 1994 out of the merger of the Democratic Union (see: UD) and the Liberal Democratic Congress (Kongres Liberalno-Demokratyczny, KLD)

ZChN (Zjednoczenie Chrześccijańsko-Narodowe) - The Christian National Union, catholic-nationalist political party in Poland in the years 1989-2010

ZPAP (Związek Polskich Artystów Plastyków) – The Association of Polish Artists and Designers, official association of professional artists in Poland, est. 1911
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**Legal Acts**

Polish Legal Acts

Act of April 23, 1964 Civil Code. Journal of Laws (1964) no. 16, item 93, as amended

Act of May 20, 1971 Petty Offences Code. Journal of Laws (1971) no. 12 item 114, as amended

Act of January 26, 1984 Press Law. Journal of Laws (1984) no. 5, item 24, as amended

Act of December 29, 1992 On Radio and Television Broadcasting. Journal of Laws (2004) no. 253, item 2531 as amended

Constitution of the Republic of Poland of April 2, 1997. Journal of Laws (1997) no. 78 item 483

Act of June 6, 1997 Criminal Code, Journal of Laws (1997) no. 88, item 553

Act of August 1, 1997 on Constitutional Court. Journal of Laws (2000) no. 102, item 643

International Legal Acts

European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as amended by Protocols Nos. 11 and 14, November 4 (1950). Council of Europe, European Treaty Series (1950) No. 5

Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, March 16 (2001). UN General Assembly, A/RES/54/263

Council Framework Decision 2004/68/JHA of 22 December 2003 on combating the sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. Official Journal of the European Union, (2004) L 13/44

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Official Journal of the European Communities, (2010) C 83/389

German Legal Acts

Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of May 23 (1949). Federal Law Gazette Part III, classification number 100-1, as amended

Criminal Code in the version promulgated on November 13 (1998). Federal Law Gazette I p. 3322, as amended

**Judgements**

Polish courts

Constitutional Court judgment of June 7, 1994. Reference no. K 17/93. OTK (1994) No. 1

Constitutional Court judgement of October 30, 2006. Reference no. P10/06. OTK (2006) No. 9

Constitutional Court judgement of July 6, 2011. Reference no. P 12/09. OTK (2011) No. 6

Constitutional Court judgement of July 19, 2011. Reference no. K 11/10. OTK (2011) No. 6

Supreme Court judgment of February 17, 1993. Reference no. III KRN 24/92. Wokanda (1993) No. 10

Supreme Court judgment of October 26, 2001. Reference no. V CKN 195/01. Legal Information System LEX No. 53107

Supreme Court judgement of June 12, 2002. Reference no. III CKN 618/2000. Legal Information System LEX No. 78339

Supreme Court judgment of April 6, 2004. Reference No. I CK 484/03. Legal Information System LEX no. 132396

Supreme Court judgement of November 23, 2010. Reference no. IV KK 173/10. Legal Information System LEX No. 667510

Supreme Court judgment of February 2, 2011. Reference no. II CSK 431/10. Legal Information System LEX no 784917

Supreme Court resolution of October 29, 2012. Reference no. I KZP 12/12. Legal Information System LEX no 1227992

Judgment of the District Court in Gdansk of April 22, 2004. Reference no. Ka 1795/03. Unpublished

Judgment of the District Court in Gdansk of March 11, 2010. Reference no. V Ka 976/09. Unpublished

Judgement of the District Court in Łódz of February 6, 2013. Reference no. V Ka1385/12. Unpublished

Judgement of the District Court in Gdansk of February 11, 2014. Reference no. V Ka 860/13. Unpublished

Judgment of the Regional Court in Gdansk of July 18, 2003. Reference no. IV K 638/02. Unpublished

Judgment of the Regional Court Gdansk-Południe of 4 June 2009. Reference no. II K 290/05. Unpublished

Judgement of the Regional Court in Gdynia of 18 August 2011. Reference no. II K 589/10. Unpublished

Judgement of the Regional Court in Łódz of 25 July 2012. Reference no. IV K620/11. Unpublished.

Judgement of the Regional Court in Gdynia of 3 June 2013. Reference no. II K 155/13. Unpublished

ECHR judgements

Castells v. Spain, App. no. 11798/85. (1992) 14 EHRR 445

Dubowska and Skup v. Poland. App. nos. 33490/96 and 34055/96. (1997) 24 EHRR CD 75

I.A. v. Turkey. App. no. 42571/98. (2007) 45 EHRR 30

Karatas¸ v. Turkey. App. no. 23168/94. ECHR 1999-IV

Lingens v. Austria. App. no. 9815/82. (1986) 8 EHRR 407

Müller et al. v. Switzerland. App. no. 10737/84. (1991) 13 EHRR 212

Oberschlick v. Austria, App. no. 1162/85. (1991) 19 EHRR 389

Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria. App. no. 13470/87. (1995) 19 EHRR 34

US Judgment and others

Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 239 (1903)

Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495 (1952)

Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 US 413 (1966)

Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497 (1987)

State v. Walden Book Co., 386 So. 2d 342 (La. 1980)

Pell v Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria, Supreme Court of Victoria (Australia), 8-9 October 1997. No 7358 of 1997. Transcript of judgment. Victorian Government Reporting Service. 3
**AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES**

_Jakub Dąbrowski_ (born 1977) - graduated in both law and history of art. In 2013 he has completed a PhD thesis at the History of Art Faculty at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. He is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Visual Culture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw where he lectures History of Contemporary Art and Copyright Law. His main field of research covers ever-existing relationships between art and law as well as history of Polish art after 1945. In 2010 he won Polish Art Historian Association award for best scholar work of the young members of the Association, in 2015 he won The Award of the Polish Art Critique for a book _Cenzura w sztuce polskiej po 1989 roku_ (Censorship in Polish Art after 1989).

_Anna Demenko_ (born 1978) - graduated from the Law Faculty of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the Law Faculty of Rheinische-Friedrich- Wilhelms- Universität in Bonn. Holder of a PhD in law. She is an Assistant Professor in the Chair of criminal law at the Law Faculty of the Adam Mickiewicz University, where she lectures criminal law. Member of the European Criminal Bar Association. She has an individual law practice. In her research she concentrates on the relation between criminal law and freedom of speech as well as on transnational criminal law.
**INDEX**

Abakanowicz, Magdalena

Abramowski, Edward ,

Adamas, Jacek

Adamowicz, Paweł ,

Adamson, Matthew

Adler, Amy

Alberti, Leon Battista

Aleksandrowicz, Przemysław

Almodovar, Pedro ,

Althamer, Paweł , ,

Ambroziak, Sylwester , ,

Andersson, Christiane

Andrejew, I

Anthony (Saint, born Fernando Martins de Bulhões) , , , , , , ,

Antypiuk, Beata ,

Arafat, Yasser

Araki, Noboyushi (Nobuyoshi) , , ,

Arciszewska-Mielewczyk, Dorota ,

Aretino, Pietro

Ashley-Cooper, Anthony

Atkins, Robert ,

Baczyński, Jerzy

Baglarian, Sarmen

Balcar, Jacek

Balcerowicz, Leszek

de Balzac, Honoré

Bałka, Mirosław ,

Banaszak, Bogusław , ,

Baraniewski, Waldemar ,

Barnes, Bernardine

Barry, ,

Barszczewska, Grażyna

Barthes, Roland

Bartkowiak, Krzysztof

di Bartolommeo, Michelozzo

Bartołowicz, Jarosław

Baumgart, Anna ,

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb

Becker, Bogna

Belina, Sławomir

Belmondo, Jean-Paul ,

Belting, Hans

Bender, Ryszard ,

Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), , ,

Berg, Alban

Berman, Wallace

Białostocki, Jan

Bieczyński, Mateusz Maria

Biedak, Halina

Bielas, Katarzyna , ,

Biesa, Piotr

Bieszczad, Tomasz

Bik, Katarzyna

Bikont, Anna

Binder, Piotr ,

Bird, Antonia ,

Bleistein, George (Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co.,)  George Not Find

Blumsztajn, Seweryn

Błaszczyk, Szymon

Bodnar, Adam

Bogumił, Edward

Bojarski, Tadeusz , ,

Bondanella, Julia C.

Bondanella, Peter

Boniecki, Adam , ,

Bończak, Jerzy

Borowski, Wiesław , ,

Borowski, Marek

Bosak, Krzysztof

Bosch, Hieronymus

Botticelli, Sandro

Bourdieu, Pierre , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Boy-Żeleński, Tadeusz

Boziewicz, Władysław ,

Brâncus¸i, Constantin

Bratkowski, Piotr ,

Braudel, Fernard

Bravo, Paweł

Brecht, Bertolt

Breguła, Karolina , ,

Breker, Amo (Arno)

Britt, David

Broda, Jarosław

Brown, Frederick

Browning, Roger

Brudzyński, Marian

Brzechwa, Jan

Brzeż ańska, Agnieszka

Brzozowicz, Grzegorz ,

Brzyski, Anna

Budyn-Kulik, Magdalena , –, , ,

Bujnowski, Rafał

Buonarotti, Michelangelo

Burden, Chris

Bürger, Peter , –, ,

Burstyn, Joseph

Burt, Richard , ,

Butler, Judith , ,

Buzek, Jerzy , ,

Całbecki, Piotr

(Carmilly) Camilly-Weinberger, Moshe ,

Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da ,

Casselius, Joanna

Castellanos, Giovanni

Castells, Manuel

(Cattelan) Catellan, Maurizio , ,

Cebo, Tomasz

Cegła, Jacek

Cejrowski, Wojciech

Celiński, Andrzej

Cellini, Benvenuto

Ceniuk, Michał

Cˇ erný, David

Cesarski, Wojciech , ,

(Rapoport) Chapoport, Icchak Chaim

Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor)

Charzyńska, Jadwiga ,

Childs, Elizabeth C. ,

Chlebek, Bartłomiej

(Chmarniak) Chmamiak, Marcin ,

Chmiel, Maciej

Chmiel, Henryk

Chochlew, Paweł ,

Choromański, Zygmunt

Chruszcz, Sylwester , ,

Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) ,

Cichocki, Michał

Cichocki, Sebastian

Cichoń, Waldemar ,

Cichy, Michał, , , , ,

Ciecierski, Jan

Ciemniewski, Jerzy

Cieślak, Wojciech ,

Coelho, Paolo (Paulo)

Cohen, Stanley

Cooper, Paula

Courbet, Gustave

Cubała, Andrzej

Culver, Stuart

Curie-Skłodowska, Marie ,

Curyło, Julia ,

Cybula, Franciszek

Cymański, Tadeusz

Czaban, Anna

Czapska, Iza N.

Czarnecki, Ryszard

Czechowska-Derkacz, Beata

Czekalski, Stanisław ,

Czekalski, Marek

Czerepok, Hubert , ,

Czuba, Krystyna ,

Czubak, Boż ena , ,

Cwikowski, Tomasz

Dajbor, Agnieszka

Dallemagne, George

Damocles

Daniluk, Paweł

Danto, Arthur ,

Darger, Henry

Darski, Adam , , , , ,

Daszczyński, Roman ,

Daumier, Honore

Davies, Stephen

Dąbrowski, Jakub

Dąbrowski, Bronisław

Dąbrowski, Waldemar ,

Dąbrowski, Franciszek

Dąbrowski, Jakub

Dec, Katarzyna

Decker, Majka

Dederko, Henryk , , ,

Dejmek, Kazimierz , ,

Demczuk, Julita ,

Demenko, Anna , ,

Derrida, Jacques

Desiderio, Monsu

Despentes, Virginie

Dickie, George

Dimoski, Zvonko

Diserens, Corinne

Dobrosz, Janusz

Dołęgowska-Wysocka, Mirosława

Douzinas, Costas

Doyen, Jette Herve

Drabarczyk Vel Grabarczyk, Paweł

Dreszer, Włodzimierz

Drozd, Grzegorz

Drozd, Michał

Dubin, Stephen

Dubowska, Teresa

Duchamp, Marcel

Duchowski, Mirosław

Dukiet-Nagórska, Teresa

Dunikowski, Xawery

Dunlap, Thomas

Dürer, Albrecht

Dworkin, Andrea

Dziadkiewicz, Roman ,

Dziedziniewicz, Maria

Dzikowska, Elż bieta ,

Dziubak, Przemysław

Dziubiński, Tomasz

Eco, Umberto

Emanuel, Susan ,

Englert, Jan ,

Ensler, Eva ,

Ephraim, Gotthold

Estreicher, Karol

Ewertowski, Rafał ,

Fabisiak, Joanna

Falandysz, Lech

Fedorowicz, Andrzej ,

Felisiak, Marlena

Felix, Josef

Ferdinand VII (of Spain)

Ferenc, Tadeusz

Ficino, Marsilio

Filar, Marian , ,

Finnley, Karen

Finster, Józef Teofil

Firek, Marek , ,

Fish, Stanley ,

Flaubert, Gustave

Flynt, Larry , , ,

Fokt, Karolina

Forman, Miloš , ,

Foster, Hal , , ,

Foucault, Michel ,

Frasyniuk, Władysław

Frączkiewicz, Zbigniew

Fredro, Aleksander

Freed, Michael

Freedberg, David , ,

Freeman, Dave

Freshwater, Helen

Freud, Sigmund

Frycz, Jan

Furtak, Ewa ,

Fuss, Peter , ,

Galiński, Tadeusz ,

Gallese, Vittorio

Garcia, Rodrigo ,

Gardocka, Teresa

Gardocki, Lech

Gardzielewski, Jerzy

Garlicki, Lech

Gaszyński, Piotr

Gautier, Teophile (Theophile)

Geimer, Samantha

Gęga, Joanna

Gheerardijn, Jean-Marie ,

Ghilberti, Lorenzo

Gibson, Mel ,

Giedrys, Grzegorz

Gierek, Edward ,

Giertych, Roman , ,

Giry, Stephanie

Giuliani, Rudy

Gleizes, Albert

Glemp, Józef ,

Gliszczyńska-Grabias, Agnieszka

Głaz, Jakub

Głomb, Jacek

Głowacki, Janusz

van Gogh, Vincent

Goldin, Nan , ,

Golka, Marian ,

Gołda-Sowicka, Teresa

Gomułka, Władysław ,

Gondek, Bartosz ,

Gorbachev, Mikhail ,

Gordon, Douglas

Gorządek, Ewa , , ,

Gorzelak, Grzegorz

Gosiewski, Przemysław

Gottlieb, Alexander

Goya, Francisco

Gozdziewski, Marek , ,

Górecki, Ryszard ,

Górna, Katarzyna , ,

Górniak, Zbigniew

Górnicki, Łukasz

Górniok, Oktawia

Górowicz, Katarzyna

Górski, Artur ,

Graff, Agnieszka

Gramsci, Antonio

Grąziewicz, Jacek

Greenberg, Clement ,

Grejciun, Wojciech

Grobelny, Ryszard ,

Gross, Gary

Gross, Jan Tomasz

Grosz, Georg

Grotowski, Jerzy

Gruchoła, Małgorzata

Grundgens, Gustav

Gruszczyńska, Katarzyna

Grzebałkowska, Magda

Grześkowiak, Alicja

Grzyb, Ryszard

Gumkowski, Marek

Gutt, Wiktor , ,

Guzek, Łukasz ,

Haacke, Hans

Habermas, Jürgen

Hałabura, Michal

Hansen, Oskar ,

Hanusek, Jerzy ,

Hašek, Jaroslav

Hasior, Władysław

Hauser, Robert

Heczko, Józef ,

Heiner, Denis

Heinich, Nathalie

Helms, Jesse

Herling-Grudziński, Gustaw

Herman, Jerry

Herzfelde, Wieland

Hirst, Damien ,

Hitler, Adolf , , , ,

Hoc, Stanisław

Hoffman, Jerzy ,

Hofgen, Hendrik

Holland, Agnieszka

Hollister, William , ,

Hołda, Joanna

Hołda, Zbigniew

Hołdys, Zbigniew ,

Horace

von Horvath, Odon

Hunter, James D.

Hussein, Saddam ,

Izbicki, Janusz

Jabłoński, Maciej ,

Jabłoński, Mariusz

Jackowska, Anna

Jadzińska-Zgubieńska, Barbara

Jagiełło, Michał

Jakubowicz, Rafał –,

Janin, Zuzanna , ,

Janowski, Dariusz ,

Jansen, Sue ,

Janyga, Wojciech

Jaracz, Stefan

Jaraczewski, Wojciech

Jarecka, Dorota –, , , , , , , ,

Jaros, Janusz

Jaros, Piotr

Jaroszek, Bogusław ,

Jaroszyk, Jacek

Jarzyna, Grzegorz ,

Jaskanis, Jan

Jaskiernia, Jerzy

Jaszczak, Beata

Jaszczuk, Marek ,

Jaworski, Dariusz

Jaworski, Jakub

Jay, Martin

Jedlińska, Eleonora

Jedliński, Jaromir ,

Jesus Christ , , , , , ,

Jędraszewski, Marek

Jędrzejec, Wiktor

Jędrzejewski, Z

John, Elton , ,

John (Saint) , ,

John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) , , , , , –, , , ,

Julius, Anthony , , ,

Jurek, Marek ,

Jurga, Tadeusz

Kaczyński, Lech , , , , , , ,

Kaczyński, Jarosław ,

Kaim, Agnieszka

Kalina, Jerzy

Kalinowski, Konstanty ,

Kalwas, Andrzej

Kamińska, Barbara

Kamiński, Wiesław

Kandinsky, Vasyli

Kane, Sarah

Kania, Stanisław

Kania, Władysław

Kant, Immanuel , ,

Kaplan, Paul

Karaś, Paweł

Karaś, Dorota

Karataś, Seher , ,

Karpieszczuk, W

Karpieszuk, Wojciech

(Karttunen) Kartunnen, Ulla

Kasiborska, Violetta

Kasiński, Michał

Kasperczyk, Ł ukasz

Katarzyńska, Alicja

Kawalerowicz, Jerzy

Kazmierczak, Władysław ,

Kądziela, Józef

Kempa, Beata

Kern, Andrzej

Kęsicka, Katarzyna ,

Khomeini, Ruhollah

Kibitlewski, Wojciech

Kieślowski, Krzysztof

Kietrys, Alina

Kinsky, Klaus

Kippenberger, Martin

Klaczko, Julian

Klaman, Grzegorz , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Klata, Jan ,

Kleczewska, Maja

Klein, Naomi

Klemm, Wojciech

Klinger, Max ,

Klonowski, Jarosław

Kmicic, Andrzej

Kobyliński, Maciej

Kochan, Jerzy

Koj, Paweł

Kołodziejski, Jacek

Komorowski, Bronisław

Konecki, Tomasz

Koons, Jeff ,

Kopka, Krzysztof

Korwin, Maciej

Korzeniecka, Katarzyna ,

Kos, Ł ukasz

Kosińska, Marta

Kostkowski, Paweł

Kosuth, Joseph

Koterski, Marek

Kowalczyk, Izabela , , , , , , , , , , ,

Kowalewski, Paweł

Kowalewski, Maciej

Kowalik, Andrzej

Kowalska, Agnieszka , ,

Kowalski, Grzegorz , , , , , , , , ,

Kozak, Tomasz

Koziński, Tomasz

Kozłowski, Jan , ,

Kozłowski, Wojciech ,

Kozyra, Katarzyna , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Krajewski, Marek

Krasicka-Domka, Zofia ,

Krasny, Marcin

Krauss, Detlef

Krauze, Andrzej ,

Krawczyk, Lidia

Krechowicz, Jerzy

Kris, Ernst

Kropiwnicki, Jerzy

Król, Marek

Królikowski, Michał ,

Kruk, Paweł ,

Kruk, Elż bieta

Krukowski, Wojciech , , , , , , , , , ,

Krzakowski, Tadeusz

Kubiak, Rafał ,

Kubiak, Janusz

Kubiak, Wojtek

Kubica-Bilska, Małgorzata

Kubicki, Janusz

Kubota, Shigeko

Kuc, Monika , ,

Kuciński, Ryszard

Kucz, Jan

Kucka, Michał

Kukiz, Paweł

Kukuła, Teresa

Kula, Michał

Kulczak, Andreas

Kulczyk, Graż yna ,

Kulczyk, Jan

Kulesza, Witold

Kulik, Marek ,

Kulik, Oleg , ,

Kulik, Zofia , , –, , ,

Kulon, Stanisław

Kuncewicz, Piotr

Kuraś, Bartłomiej

Kurka, Piotr , , ,

Kurpik, Maria

Kuszej, Krzysztof , , , , , , , ,

Kutz, Kazimierz ,

Kuzyszyn, Konrad

Kuz, Adam

Kwaśniewska, Krystyna

Kwaśniewski, Aleksander ,

Kwiek, Przemysław

Labuda, Barbara ,

Lach-Lachowicz, Natalia , ,

Lachman, Magdalena

Larsen, Borre

Lassota, Józef ,

Le Quernec, Alain ,

Legendz, Katarzyna

Legutko, Ryszard

Lelouch, Claude

Lengiewicz, Jerzy

Lenin, Vladimir

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim

Leszczyński, Leszek

Leszkowicz, Paweł , , ,

Leśniak, Piotr

Lewandowski, Dariusz

Libera, Zbigniew , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Libicki, Marcin

Libicki, Filip

Linda, Bogusław

Lingens, Kurt ,

Lipińska, Olga

Lipiński, Adam

Lipski, Jan Tomasz

Lisicki, Paweł

Lisiewicz, Małgorzata , , ,

Lisiewicz, Piotr

Lisowska-Magdziarz, Małgorzata

Livingston, Jacqueline ,

LL (see Lach-Lachowicz), Natalia , , ,

Lombroso, Cesare

Lord Shaftesbury (see: Ashley-Cooper Anthony)

Lorenc, Stanisław ,

Louis Philippe I (King)

Lux, Simonetta ,

L-abędzki, Marian

L-ętowski, Maciej

L-odziana, Tadeusz

L-uczak, Maciej

L-uczycki, Edward

L-ugowski, Ryszard

L-ukasiak, Alicja

L-upak, S.

L-ysak, Paweł

Maciejewska, Beata , ,

Maciejowski, Marcin , ,

Mackinnon, Catherine

Macuga, Goshka

Madej, Grzegorz ,

Magdalena, Mary

Majchrowski, Jacek , ,

Majewska, Barbara

Majewska, Ewa

Majewski, Włodzimierz , ,

Majstorovic, Sonja Hrzina

Makowiecki, Wojciech ,

Makowska, Lidia

Makuszyński, Kornel

Malczewski, Jacek

Malec, Krzysztof

Malisiewicz, Maciej

Małkowska, Monika

Mamzeta, Monika ,

Manet, Edouard , ,

Mann, Klaus ,

Mann, Sally

Manson, Marylin

Mapplethorpe, Robert , , ,

Marek, Andrzej ,

Markiewicz, Jacek , , , , , , ,

Martinelli, Renzo

Matejko, Jan

Matuchniak-Krasuska, Anna ,

Matul, Katarzyna

Mazowiecki, Tadeusz , ,

Mazur, Lucyna

Mazur, Adam , ,

Mączkowski, Krzysztof , ,

Mcclean ,

Mcluhan, Marshall

Metzinger, Jean

Michalska-Warias, Aneta

Michalski, Cezary ,

Michalski, Adam

Michelozzo (see Bartolomeo)

Michnik, Adam , ,

Michniowski, Zbigniew

Mickiewicz, Adam , , , , ,

Mielcarz, Magdalena

Mikina, Ewa

Mikołaj of Wilkowiecko

Mikulski, Stanisław

Miller, Leszek , ,

Millet, Catherine

Minałto, Jarosław

Minałto, Michał ,

Mintcheva, Svetlana

Misztal, Henryk

Mitchel, William John Thomas

Mitoraj, Igor ,

Modestowicz, Waldemar

Modrzejewska, Helena

Modzelewski, Jarosław

Molanus, Johannes

Molotov, Vyatcheslav ,

Monkiewicz, Dorota

di Monti, Matteo (Mateo)

Morawińska, Agnieszka , , , ,

Morawska, Irena , ,

Mościcki, Ignacy

Mozgawa, Marek

Mróz, Dominika

Muhammad (the founder of Islam) , ,

Muller, Josef Felix

Müller, Beate

Musialska, Anna

Musidłowska, Maryla

Muż a, Wojciech

Myjak, Adam ,

Mytkowska, Joanna

Nagy, Roberta Weissman

Nalewajko, Justyna ,

Neilsson, Anthony

Nice, Richard

Niedałtowski, Krzysztof

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Niewęgłowski, Wiesław ,

Nieznalska, Dorota , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nitsch, Hermann

Noël, Chantal

Noll, Peter

Nowacki, Bogdan

Nowak, Czesław

Nowak, Maciej , , ,

Nowak, Ryszard , , , , ,

Nowak, Aurelia

Nowak, E.

Nowikowski, Ireneusz

Nowina-Konopczyna, Halina

Nycz, Mariola

Nycz, Kazimierz ,

Oberschlick, Gerhard ,

Obrębowska-Piasek (Piasecka), Ewa ,

Ochnio, Jakub

Odorowicz, Agnieszka ,

Ofili, Chris

Olbrychski, Daniel , , , , , ,

Olszewski, Lechosław

Omilanowska, Małgorzata

Orłowski, Jacek

Orszulik, Alojzy

Orzechowski, Mirosław ,

Osęka, Andrzej , , , , , , , ,

Osiatyński, Wiktor

Osterwa, Juliusz

Ostrowski, Sławoj

Paczkowski, Andrzej

Palcat, Paweł

Paleczny, Piotr ,

Palska, Hanna ,

Pałka, Katarzyna

Pałys, Andrzej

Panofsky, Erwin

Papież , Stanisław ,

Paprzycki, Lech

Paradowska, Janina

Parkhurst Ferguson, Priscilla

Partum, Andrzej

Pasek, Zbigniew

Pasikowski, Władysław ,

Pasolini, Pier Paolo

Pastwa, Antoni

Pawlicki, Aleksander

Pawlik, Wojciech ,

Pawlik, Urszula ,

Pawłowski, Aleksander

Pawłowski, Roman

Pazder, Janusz

Pączek, Tomasz

Pease, Allan

Pell, George

Pelowski, Wojciech

Pęczak, Andrzej

Philippe, Louis ,

Piasta, Przemysław

Piątek, Tomasz , , , ,

Pietras, Monika

Pietrzak, Michał

Pięta, Stanisław ,

Piłsudski, Józef

Pinard, Ernest

Piosik, Edmund

Piotrowski, Piotr , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Piórkowska, Barbara ,

Piórkowska-Flieger, Joanna

Piskorski, Jan

Piwowski, Marek , 4189

Pluhar, Werner

Płaza, Stanisław

Podemski, Stanisław

Podgajna, Ewelina

Podkański, Zdzisław

Podsiadło, Jacek

Pohl, Łukasz

Polak, Cezary

Polański, Roman

Pomian, Krzysztof

Popiełuszko, Jerzy

Poprzęcka, Maria ,

Post, Robert C.

Potocka, Maria Anna

Preisner, Artur

Preminger, Otto ,

Prince, Richard

Przyjemski, Stanisław M.

Przywara, Andrzej

Puchała, Marek

Pusz, Sylwia

Rabczewska, Dorota ,

Racewicz, Józef ,

Raczkowski, Marek ,

Raczyńska, Sławomira ,

Radbruch, Gustav

Radzikowska, Barbara

Radziszewski, Karol , , ,

Raina, Peter , ,

Rank, Otto

Ratajczak, Mirosław

Ravenhill, Mark

Raymond, Gino

Rayzacher, Agnieszka

Redliński, Edward

Redslob, Edwin

Reszka, Paweł

Ribbentrop von, Joachim

Richter, Hans

Riefenstahl, Leni

Rodziński, Andrzej

Rodzynkiewicz, Mateusz

Rogalski, Zbigniew ,

Rogowski, Tomasz

Romek, Zbigniew

Rorty, Richard

Rosiak, Mariusz

Rossellini, Roberto

Rottenberg, Anda , , , , , , , , , ,

Rozhin, Andrzej

Róż ańska, Dominika ,

Róż ewicz, Tadeusz

Rumas, Robert , , , , , , ,

Rushdie, Salman , ,

Ruskin, John ,

Russel, Ken

Ruszczyc, Ferdynand

Rux, Andrzej

Rybczyńska, Julita A.

Rybiński, Maciej ,

Rydzyk, Tadeusz , ,

Ryszka, Czesław

Rywin, Lew

Rzepecki, Adam , ,

Saatchi, Charles

Sacharuk, Walery

Sadler, Michael ,

Sadurski, Wojciech , , ,

Safuta, Jacek ,

Sanecki, Przemysław

da Sangallo, Giuliano

Saraczyńska, Agata

Saramonowicz, Andrzej

Sarzyński, Piotr

Sasnal, Wilhelm , ,

Sawicki, Bartek

Scheerens, Parson

Schiller, Friedrich

Schwan, Gesine

Schwarzkogler, Rudolf

Scorsese, Martin , ,

Sebastian (Saint),

Sekuła, Eż bieta Anna

Semka, Piotr

Serra, Richard ,

Serrano, Andres , , –, , ,

Shalamov, Varlam

Shields, Brooke

Show, Michael

Siegert, Julius

Sielatycki, Grzegorz ,

Siemek, Józef (Józefa Siemka)

Sienkiewicz, Henryk ,

Sikorska, Karolina

Sitkowska, Maryla ,

Siudmak, Wojciech

Siwiec, Ryszard

Skalimowski, Mieczysław

Skalska, Danuta

Skiba, Krzysztof ,

Skoczylas, Andrzej

Skrętowicz, Edward

Skrzydło, Wiesław

Skup, Tomasz

Skwara, Bartosz

Słobodzianek, Tadeusz

Słonina, Stanisław

Słowacki, Juliusz

Słyż , T.

Smalcerz, Agata , , ,

Smith, Kevin

Smoleński, Paweł

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Sobczyk, Marek , , ,

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Sobolewski, Tadeusz ,

Sokołowska, Joanna

Sołtyk, Robert

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Sowula, Sławomira

Spiegelman, Art ,

Spiegelman, Władek

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Srebro, Maciej ,

Stajuda, Jerzy

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Staniszewski, Jacek ,

Starowieyski, Franciszek

Staszewski, Kazik –,

Staszewski, Wojciech

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Struges, Jock

Strzyż ewski, Tomasz ,

Sturges, Jock

Subbotko, Donata

Suchan, Jarosław

Sucharski, Henryk

Sytek, Przemysław

Szafraniec, Jan , , , , , , ,

Szaniawski, Jerzy

Szaro, Grzegorz

Szczurek, Wojciech

Szczygieł, Mariusz ,

Szeemann, Harald

Szejnoch, Kamila ,

Szepke, Anna

Szewczyk, Monika ,

Szlaga, Radek , ,

Szołajski, Konrad

Szpala, Agnieszka

Szpotański, Janusz

Szpunar, Olga

Sztachelski, Jerzy

Sztwiertnia, Grzegorz

Szubartowicz, Przemysław

Szumlas, Jacek

Szumska, Gertruda , , –, –

Szumska, Elż bieta

Szumski, Czesław

Szwechowicz, Stanisław

Szydłowska, Teresa

Szyłak, Aneta , , , , , , ,

Szymanek, Jarosław

Szymański, Stanisław

Szymański, Antoni

Szymczyk, Adam –,

Szymoniczek, Joanna

Slizińska, Milada

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Swiąder, Bogdan –

Tabisz, Stanisław , –

Talar, Henryk

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Tarczyński, Czesław

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Tejchma, Józef

Terdiman, Richard

Terlecki, Władysław

Terlikowski, Tomasz ,

Thorgeirson, Thorgeir

Tischner, Łukasz

Tomaszewicz, Jan

Tomaszewski, Mieczysław

Tomaszuk, Piotr

Tomczak, Witold  ,

Tomczyk, Józef "Kurosawa"

Toniak, Ewa

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Torbicka, Iwona

von Trier, Lars

Trinh Thi, Coralie

von Troth, Klaus

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Trzeciakowski, Zbyszek

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Tusk, Donald –,

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Tysiąc, Alicja

Tzara, Tristan

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Ugwu, Larry

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Ujma, Magdalena –

Uklański, Piotr , , , , , ,

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Urbanowicz, Andrzej

Urbańczyk, Anna ,

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Uziębło, Piotr

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Walas, Teresa

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Wałęsa, Lech , , , , ,

Waniek, Danuta

Warhol, Andy

Warlikowski, Krzysztof

Warpechowski, Zbigniew –

Warta, Ryszard , , –

Warwick, Nigel

Warylewski, Jarosław , , , ,

Wasilewski, Marek , , –,

Watrak, Zofia

Wąsek, Andrzej ,

Weber, Max

Weiss, Marek –

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Weremczuk, Arkadiusz "Arkadius" , ,

Wesołowska, Elż bieta

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Whistler, James McNeill

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White, Michael

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Wielgosz, Przemysław

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Wierzchowska, Wiesława

Wilczak, Sylwia

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Wildmon, Donald

Winter, Małgorzata

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Witek, Kazimierz

Witkowska, Matylda

Włodarczyk, Wojciech ,

Wnuk-Nazarowa, Joanna

Wodziński, Paweł

Wojciechowski, Jan Stanisław ,

Wojcieszek, Przemysław

Wojewódzki, Jakub

Wojnarowicz, David

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Woziński, Andrzej

Wozniak, Ryszard , ,

Wozniak, Waldemar

Wozniak, Henryk Maciej

Wójcik, Julita , ,

Wójtowicz-Podhorski, Mariusz

Wrona, Tadeusz

Wróbel, Włodzimierz

Wróbel, Ż

Wróbel, Łukasz

Wyrzykowski, Mirosław

Wyrzykowski, Piotr , , ,

Wyspiański, Stanisław

Wyszyńska, Małgorzata

Wyszyński, Stefan

Young, Alison

Zadworny, Adam

Zagajewski, Adam

Zagrodzki, Janusz

Zakrzewski, Włodzimierz

Zamachowski, Zbigniew

Zaorski, Janusz

Zapałowski, Andrzej

Zarawski, Jerzy

Zaremba, Piotr ,

Zarycki, Tomasz ,

Zawłocki, Robert , ,

Zdrojewski, Bogdan , , , ,

Zemła, Gustaw

Zemojdzin, Alina ,

Zhdanov, Andrei ,

Ziarkiewicz, Ryszard , ,

Zielińska, Joanna

Zielińska, Iwona ,

Zieliński, Tomasz ,

Ziniewicz, Piotr

Ziobro, Zbigniew , , ,

Zola, Emile , ,

Zoll, Andrzej , , , ,

Zydorowicz, Jacek ,

Żebrowska, Alicja –, , , ,

Żemojdzin, Alina ,

Żmijewska, Monika , ,

Żmijewski, Artur , , , , , , , , , –, ,

Żuchowski, Piotr

Życiński, Józef ,

Żydowicz, Marek

Żyszkiewicz, Waldemar

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