Anna Kałuża

The article constitutes and attempt to outline such a conception of art criticism which would take into consideration post-modern transformations concerning the functioning of the arts in various societies. The category of criticism is understood by me in a broad sense which enables one to accept utopian thinking and an evaluating attitude. In my research I deal with the issue of defining what is art/poetry in the context of modernday knowledge about the interpretative character of critical activities; I put forward a hypothesis that at the present moment, arguments and contentions between researchers, critics and commentators concern the very possibility of interpretation. I also opt out for perceiving positive consequences of critical work.

The article traces the history of the relationship between linguistic (textual, verbal, discursive) elements and graphic, visual, and pictorial elements in Polish poetry after 1989. The subject of interest here are various phenomena, such as: artistic books (by Natalia Malek, Kira Pietrek, and Justyna Bargielska), reference to painting/film/ photography, experiments with visual and verbal representation, using a language mark/text by visual artists. The goal is not so much to catalog the relationships between text and image, but to describe the difference between artistic activities in the era of intermedia (twentieth-century avant-garde) and artistic activities in the era of transmedia.

The article attempts to answer the question asked by Nelson Goodman, about the moment when something becomes poetry/art. This article describes the change of communication situation that has taken place in the Polish culture after 2000. It draws attention to the aesthetic potential of poetry by such authors as Justyna Bargielska, Szczepan Kopyt, and Krzysztof Siwczyk.