Les activités artistiques de la galerie Foksal et du groupe "Actions collectives": stratégies de recherche d'une autonomie

Abstract

The question of the autonomy of art is discussed through a comparative study of two artistic milieus - the Foksal gallery opened in Warsaw in 1966 and the "Collective Actions" group which appeared in Moscow in 1976. These artists' work develops inside the socialist system which functions differently in Poland and in Soviet Russia. The strategies adopted by the artists to create and defend an autonomous zone of creation are particular to the socio-political and cultural situation of each country. The way these artistic milieus identify themselves in the complex cultural landscape and the position they take towards the public space determine the form of their practice - the Foksal gallery's institutional critique and the "Collective Actions" group's more ephemeral and marginal practice of actions. Self-reflexive and inseparable from the mechanism of its exhibition, their work explores its relation to the space, to the spectator, to the context. In order to understand its specificity, the problem of autonomy is analysed under two angles: as the autonomy of a confined zone of creation and of distinctive artistic means, and as the autonomy of the relations and interactions inside a social group.