Dolls and Puppets as Artistic and Cultural Phenomena Dolls and Puppets as Artistic and Cultural ...

291 Pages·2017·4.48 MB·English

aa
nn
ee
mm
oo
nn
ee
hh
PP

ll
aa
rr
uu
tt
ll
uu
DDoollllss aanndd PPuuppppeettss
CC

dd
nn
aa aass AArrttiissttiicc aanndd CCuullttuurraall

cc
ii
tt
ss PPhheennoommeennaa
ii
tt
rr
AA

ss ((1199tthh –– 2211sstt CCeennttuurriieess))
aa

ss
tt
ee eedd.. bbyy KKaammiill KKooppaanniiaa
pp
pp
uu
PP

dd
nn
aa

ss
ll
ll
oo
DD
TThhee AAlleekkssaannddeerr ZZeellwweerroowwiicczz NNaattiioonnaall AAccaaddeemmyy ooff DDrraammaattiicc AArrtt iinn WWaarrssaaww
TThhee DDeeppaarrttmmeenntt ooff PPuuppppeettrryy AArrtt iinn BBiiaałłyyssttookk
Dolls and Puppets
as Artistic and Cultural
Phenomena
Dolls and Puppets
as Artistic and Cultural Phenomena
(19th – 21st Centuries)
ed. by Kamil Kopania
Reviewers:
Dr. John Bell - Associate Professor,
Dramatic Arts Department University of Connecticut;
Director of Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry
Prof. Florian Feisel - Staatliche Hochschule für Musik
und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart
Proofreading: Dr. Timothy Williams
Layout, typesetting and cover design: Jacek Malinowski
Copyright © 2016 by Kamil Kopania
Copyright © 2016 by the Publisher
Publisher:
The Aleksander Zelwerowicz
National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw
The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok
Sienkiewicza 14 Str.
15-092 Białystok, Poland
www.atb.edu.pl
Publication supported by:
The Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw
www.ihs.uw.edu.pl
Print and binding by:
ARGRAF Sp. z o.o.
Jagiellońska 80 Str., 03-301 Warsaw
www.argraf.pl
Print run: 300
ISBN: 978-83-938151-9-7
Dolls and Puppets
as Artistic and Cultural
Phenomena
(19th – 21st Centuries)
ed. by Kamil Kopania
The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw
(The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok)
Table of Contents
Kamil Kopania – Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw
The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw
– The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok
Prof. Henryk Jurkowski – in memoriam 6
Sara Ayres – Research Associate, Kingston University, United Kingdom
At The Uttermost Limit of Vision:
The Wax Dolls of Lotte Pritzel (1887-1952) 10
Samareh Mirfendereski – University of Tehran, Iran
Puppetry Elements in the Works of European Surrealists 18
Russell Stephens – University of British Columbia, Canada
Paul Klee: Protected Children, Broken Puppets
and the Problematization of Modernism 34
Elise E. Cowin – Independent Scholar, Chicago, USA
Puppets and Paradox:
On the Bauhaus Stage with Oskar Schlemmer 58
Esra Plumer – Independent Scholar, Cyprus
The Living Doll: A Look at Hans Bellmer’s Later Work
from the “Puppet’s” Standpoint 66
Justin Wadlow – Centre de Recherche en Arts et Esthétique (CRAE)
Université de Picardie Jules Vernes, Amiens, France
A Different Kind of Intimacy. Greer Lankton and the New York Dolls 80
Marguerite V. Hodge – University of California, San Diego, USA
The Transnational Adventures of the Kewpie Doll:
Mediating Nostalgia in Pre-War Japan 92
4
Anna Seidel – Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
”Woolita”: Crochet Doll as Representation
of Interwoven Discourse Understanding
”Being-as-Playing-a-Role” 110
Mirjam Dénes – Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
Inspire the Naïf! Marinka Dallos’ Collection of Dolls 122
Milica Stojanov – Museum of Childhood, Belgrade, Serbia
Museum of Childhood – From Play to Art 136
Paweł Orzeł – Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
The Doll as Femme Fatale in L. G. Berlanga’s Life Size 152
Anaëlle Impe – FRESH, F.R.S.-FNRS/Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium
The Grotesque as a Paradigm of the Puppet Theater
in the 21st Century. Through an Analysis of Ilka Schönbein’s
show, The Old Lady and the Beast 164
Noémie Lorentz – University Paris-Sorbonne, France
The Puppet as a Paradigm of the Contemporary Living Body
– An Inquiry into the Traditional Question of Artificial Life
in Contemporary Puppetry 180
Kaliane Ung – New York University, USA
Mechanical Affections. A Reconfiguration of Love
by Fin-de-Siècle Decadent Dolls 200
Illustrations 211
5
Kamil Kopania – Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw,
The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw
– The Department of Puppetry Art in Białystok
Prof. Henryk Jurkowski – in memoriam
The introduction to this volume was originally intended to take
a different form. However, on January 3, 2016, during the final
stages of work on this publication, I received the sad news that
Prof. Henryk Jurkowski had died in Warsaw at the age of 89.
Jurkowski was an outstanding theoretician, critic, playwright,
translator, scholar of the history of puppet theater, president of
UNIMA (Union Internationale de la Marionette) from 1984 to 1992
and honorary president since 1992, lecturer for many years in art
schools both in Poland and abroad (including the Department
Prof. Henryk Jurkowski
of Puppetry Art at the Białystok branch of the Aleksander
Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw),
and a penetrating observer of the postwar development and
transformation of this area in the arts, who remained active as
a scholar through the last days of his life; his special rank in the
discipline is attested by his bountiful contribution to it, consisting
of several dozen books, printed in numerous languages, and
many articles.
What was the essence of the Henryk Jurkowski phenomenon? This Polish
scholar embodied a quality of particular importance to those involved in
the puppet theater broadly defined and issues relating to dolls and puppets
6 in world cultures; a quality that unfortunately has become increasingly rare
in recent decades. Prof. Jurkowski was a real, old-fashioned (in the best sense
of that term) humanist. He did not focus, like most contemporary scholars,
on a narrow area of knowledge, nor was his scholarship fragmentary. His work,
though seemingly focused on the relatively narrow subject of the puppet
theater, was inextricably linked with an effort to place the problems he dealt
with in the widest possible cultural context and to create comprehensive,
erudite studies of ancient, modern and contemporary culture.
Prof. Henryk Jurkowski’s voice was a singularly important one in contempo-
rary discussions about the puppet theater. It is hard to think of another
scholar who provided such a far-reaching analysis of problems, processes,
and changes perceptible in European culture. The range of his gaze was made
possible, to a considerable extent, by the fact that the Polish and broader
Central-Eastern European perspective allowed him to perceive many cultural
phenomena left unnoticed in the West. Can you imagine finding a scholar at
one of the most famous and reputable universities whose work chronicles the
history of the theater in Europe and encompasses developments not only
in Spain, France, Germany and Great Britain, but also in the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Russia and the territories comprising the former Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth? You will search in vain for any such person. At the same
time, Prof. Jurkowski knew how to produce such syntheses, and did so, as
we can see from examining his monumental two-volume History of European
Puppetry (1996 and 1998), as well as Ecrivains et marionnettes. Quatre siècles
de littérature dramatique en Europe (1991), Métamorphoses. La marionnette
au XXe siècle (expanded 2nd edition, 2008) or Przemiany ikonosfery. Wizualny
kontekst teatru (Transformations of the Iconosphere. The Visual Context of
Theater Art, 2009). Writing works in the areas of theory and aesthetics of
puppet theater, he approached them from a broad, pan-European perspec-
tive, as demonstrated by his Aspects of Puppet Theatre: A Collection of Essays
(1988). He was also the creator, and for many years an editor, of the Encyclo-
pédie mondiale des arts de la marionnette (2009).
In discussing the breadth of Henryk Jurkowski’s intellectual horizons, it is
important to underscore the interdisciplinary nature of his scholarship. The
professor was not only a scholar of the puppet theater; he was above all
a scholar of culture, interested in puppets, their meaning, history, functions,
and aesthetics. When performing his analyses of theatrical subjects, he re-
ferred not only to the findings of historians or theoreticians of the theater;
but also sought out the works of art historians, literary scholars, historians
of religion, and ethnologists. Various kind of sources of knowledge and 7
confrontation with diverse scholarly points of view enabled him to create
truly broad, bold interdisciplinary analyses, by which we can recognize a
real, thoroughly educated, thinking humanist. In a time when increasing value
is placed on specialization, when studies are expected to be fragmentary
and as predictable, and subjects as uncontroversial, as possible, Jurkowski
outlined comprehensive panoramas of problems, delineated areas for fur-
ther research, and shaped the way we look at the puppet theater. In essence,
he was interested in almost every kind of activity relating to the animation
of things, but in particular their use in forms of ritual, whether theatrical or
para-theatrical. This is amply shown in his book Materiał jako wehikuł treści
rytuału (Material as Vehicle for Ritual Content, 2011), as well as the earlier
Przemiany ikonosfery… (Transformations of the Iconosphere…) mentioned
above. A two-volume work, now in manuscript form, with the promising
title Lalka w kulturze (The Puppet in Culture) is waiting to be published.
We can only hope for it to be edited and published without hindrance or
delay.
In Paris in 1852, the first-ever history of the puppet theater in Europe, was
published: entitled Histoire des marionnettes en Europe depuis l’antiquité
jusqu’à nos jours (History of Puppets in Europe from Antiquity to the Present),
it was written by Charles Magnin. This book may properly be called ex-
ceptional, and the kind of book every scholar dreams of writing, in that over
150 years after its publication, far from being an oddity or curiosity, it remains
a valuable, substantial work, an indispensable prerequisite for seriously
pursuing the study of the history, forms, and essence of the puppet theater.
I have no doubt that the two volumes of Prof. Henryk Jurkowski’s History
of European Puppetry, and many other publications of his, will likewise serve
scholars as useful sources of knowledge and inspiration for many decades
to come.
I will close on a personal note. The scholar we have just lost is one to whom
I am particularly much indebted. Prof. Henryk Jurkowski’s passion for the
history of the puppet theater proved contagious to me when I was still an
art history student, and he later offered his full support for my work, always
insisting that broad horizons of thought were more important than academic
specialization. He was also a reader of my doctoral dissertation, and proved
ultimately to be the rescuer of its defense in 2009. As it happened, the second
of my readers was unable to arrive on time, since unfortunately the train by
which he had hoped to travel to Warsaw became the weapon used in a sui-
8 cide... Prof. Jurkowki was recovering from an operation in the hospital, but
had asked me to telephone before the defense. I called and mentioned
that the defense would not take place (in accordance with Polish law, which
stipulates that at least one of the dissertation’s readers must be present
at its defense). Prof. Jurkowski went silent for a moment, after which he de-
clared that in that case he would check himself out of the hospital. My wife
took a taxi to the professor’s house and both came to the National Museum
in Warsaw, where the defense took place. He was thus not only a great scho-
lar, but also a man of great kindness and character. In Poland, we often speak
of individuals from his age group as representing the generation of the
Warsaw Uprising, and thus a generation of people loyal to a cause, with a
strong backbone, upright and honest (and it is true that Prof. Jurkowski was
a soldier in the Warsaw Uprising, one of the most tragic events in the Second
World War). And that is precisely how I will remember him. Let the present
volume be a tribute offered to the memory of Professor Henryk Jurkowski,
one of the greatest authorities in the field of studies in animation.
9