Nursing and Reading. Affective Realism in Andrzej Wróblewski’s Painting

Abstract

Andrzej Wróblewski’s painting has already achieved the status of a cult classic. His works
are usually interpreted as a confrontation with war, the system, or totalitarianism—that
is, as “political.” Understanding politics in this way—separating its “public,” “general,” or institutional aspects from direct, lived experience—is at odds with dialectics, whose complex trajectory the young Warsaw-based painters attempted to follow shortly after the war. Zbigniew Dłubak quoting György Lukács, the manifestos of the first exhibitions of modern art, and Wróblewski’s notes and texts all clearly indicate the necessity of moving beyond the classical (at least in liberal-conservative political thought) division between the public and the private in the analysis of avant-garde art of that period. From a feminist perspective, which I will develop here, I can only applaud the overcoming of this separation.