\u201cFolkness\u201d is a category in which intellectuals projected their longing for the \u201csincerity of the primitive\u201d and the \u201croots of the nation\u201d. The concept of \u201ctwo souls\u201d was meant to connect the romantic fantasy of the people\u2019s art with the realities of folk-art production in the People\u2019s Republic of Poland. Aleksander Jackowski, one of the most important figures in shaping the idea of folk art, used it to describe a situation in which rural makers followed two different aesthetics: \u201cone for their own use, the other for moments when, for some reason, they were expected to return to traditional forms\u201d. Such makers referred to items intended for urban buyers as \u201cfolk\u201d, while those created for rural clients they simply called \u201ctheir own\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Authorship of folk art<\/strong> Objects on display<\/strong> The metaphor of \u201ctwo souls\u201d<\/strong> \u00a0The exhibition space of \u201cTwo Souls of a Folk Artist\u201d offers:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The selection of content translated into accessible formats was developed through a consultation process that included perspectives of self-advocates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr hab. Ewa Klekot<\/strong> is a cultural anthropologist, translator and graduate of archaeology and ethnography, holding a doctorate in art studies. Her research focuses on the anthropology of design, art and making. She works on anthropological approaches to heritage and museums, as well as the anthropology of design and art. Her interests include interdisciplinary links between the humanities, social sciences, design and artistic practice. One of her areas of research is the relationship between makers and their environment. She is a professor at SWPS University in Warsaw. She was also the curator of the exhibition \u201cEthnographers, Anthropologists, Professors\u201d, presented at the museum from 18 October 2022 to 29 October 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amudena Rutkowska<\/strong> is a graduate of ethnology and cultural anthropology at the University of Warsaw and completed doctoral studies at the University\u2019s Institute of Polish Culture. She is curator of the art collection at the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. Her interests include safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in the context of intellectual property. She is the author of ethnographic documentary films and vice-president of the Warsaw branch of the Polish Ethnological Society. She is the co-author of the exhibition \u201cTwo Souls of a Folk Artist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition was co-financed by the Mazovian Voivodeship Government, which is the organizer of the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About the exhibition Folk art is a cultural phenomenon that emerged from the encounter between two distinct social groups. One group consisted of educated inhabitants of a rapidly modernizing world, the other of uneducated rural communities still rooted in feudal relations. In Poland, the modern invention of folk art became an inseparable part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":30590,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31965","wystawy-lista","type-wystawy-lista","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wystawy-lista\/31965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wystawy-lista"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/wystawy-lista"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wystawy-lista\/31965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31974,"href":"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wystawy-lista\/31965\/revisions\/31974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The figure of \u201ctwo souls\u201d shows, on the one hand, that folk art cannot exist without the involvement of the intelligentsia, and on the other, that the artistic creativity of rural communities extends far beyond the limits of what is labelled \u201cfolk\u201d. Although the authorship of folk art is attributed exclusively to rural makers, not everything created in the countryside counts as folk art. Only those rural products that an intellectual deemed \u201cfolk\u201d were included. A work of folk art always has two authors: the person who made it in the countryside and the person who, upon arriving there, selected it as folk. For many folk pieces, the selector also provided instructions on how they should be made and demonstrated to rural makers what he considered beautiful because it was \u201cfolk\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The exhibition draws exclusively from the collections of the State Ethnographic Museum. Alongside well-known and previously published works, it presents objects that have never been shown before or only rarely exhibited. The display includes textiles, paper paintings, cut-outs, painted wall hangings, ceramics, sculpture, painting and woodcuts, as well as elements of traditional dress and objects of a commemorative or decorative character. Archival materials and photographs from the museum\u2019s archive are also used.<\/p>\n
Why, then, does a change in style by a folk artist provoke concern and require explanation through the metaphor of \u201ctwo souls\u201d, while the stylistic and formal diversity found in Picasso\u2019s work is understood as artistic development? This stems from the constructed figure of the folk artist, whose \u201cstylistic primitivism\u201d is viewed as the \u201cnatural\u201d result of living conditions rather than an artistic choice. Formed within the modern field of art, this figure stands as the Other to the modern artist, constrained by learned conventions and making conscious stylistic decisions. The myth that once fueled the imagination of avant-garde artists soon began to unravel in the material realities of producing folk art. The exhibition presents folk art as the result of a social relationship marked by many asymmetries, while also pointing to the various forms of agency exercised by the makers of what came to be labelled \u201cfolk\u201d.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ethnomuseum.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/PME_1455_Walczak_1-scaled.jpg\")
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