Władysław Strzemiński’s The Theory of Vision and Marian Minich’s For the New Organization of Art Museums, or How to Look at Art

The theme of the article is a new methodology for art history studies proposed in Władysław Strzemiński’s book The Theory of Vision and Marian Minich’s For the New Organization of Art Museums, the texts which are still valid today and were actively used for many years – in teaching of art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz and in the permanent exhibition of the Art Museum in Lodz. Both publications have their roots in pre-war activities of their creators, but have been refined after World War II, during reign of social realism. Thus they can be seen in the context of assimilation of the dominant ideology as well as a resistance to it. The author discusses the circumstances of writing both texts and the texts themselves, and analyzes the strategies they used, trying to find their disjoint elements to the dominant ideology as well as their reference to the theory of Heinrich Wölfflin. This leads to the conclusion, that the fact that both authors where focused on formal aspects can be understood as their strategy to regain the independence of the art from political propaganda, as well as their attempt to legitimize the existence and emphasize the importance of avant-garde art.