It all comes down to the taste of Catherine Kasia that aesthetic experiences do not should be about beauty, says Michał Suchora

We arranged for a conversation about beauty at the fresh office of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. It's been a long time since any building has raised a lively discussion like the white MSN. Why do you think this is an aesthetic national boost?

I think, first of all, she played a request for another public discussion. For me, it was so amazing that we had known the MSN task for a long time. No 1 kept it from me. After all, MSN did not grow in Warsaw in 1 night. The museum was built for many years and 1 could guess what its form would be and that it would alternatively be a denial of the block of the Palace of Culture than any replica of it. So frankly, I don't realize those critical voices. But on the another hand, people frequently repeat that it is simply a substance of taste, and taste is not discussed. That's the biggest bullshit you can make, due to the fact that the only discussions that truly decision us are about taste. And tastes are different and all man defends their independence. Although it may seem to be a side issue, irrelevant, I think most of our fascinations, disputes and large public debates are about tastes. Vaccinate or vaccinate. This is also, in fact, an aesthetic discussion, due to the fact that it simply forces us to think about who we are closer to: whether to the individual who is the highest of fashion and, let's say, the work considers wearing aluminium foil berets to defend ourselves from 5G radiation, or to people in another headgears. And this is yet always a discussion about tastes, due to the fact that supporters and opponents mostly have a very mediocre thought of what they are supporters, what they are opponents. MSN is emblematic due to the fact that it's kind of comic how everyone knows about architecture. For example, they all knew about genetically modified foods. Nobody talks about it anymore. After all, protests against GMOs were powerful and people went to them. I erstwhile asked students, "Well, what do you know about GMOs?" What is genetically modified food? Suddenly, no 1 knows anything. The architecture of the fresh museum is an even easier victim, due to the fact that the modified gene has never been seen before, and the white body of MSN is impertinently stinging in the eyes in the very center of the capital

And she's so simple, not fancy, she won't do Bilbao! Is this what the fresh icon of Warsaw is expected to look like, a bear to the degree of our capabilities?

That would be unbearable. I like this building precisely due to the fact that it is simply a denial of ornamentalness, due to the fact that behind it is the Palace of Culture. Help, this is besides much! And I'm glad he's calming down. The center of Warsaw, the vicinity of the Palace of Culture, the Defilad Square, it is simply a very hard part of the city, due to the fact that I always feel that it is the deepest wound in our beaten Warsaw, the very center, the very middle, which is empty at the same time, in which nothing works together. I think that this MSN building someway has a chance to be an oasis of peace in this urban chaos and perhaps, with a bit of luck, will give direction to the improvement of the Warsaw centre, besides erstwhile it comes to the amount of greenery around the museum.

Apart from the building itself, there is besides a comment on the legitimacy of the establishment and financing of this institution, due to the fact that the treasures of Polish art have long been painted by Matejka,
Malczewski, Grottger and hang on Wawel and in national museums. All the laity have arrived at the window. What function do you see for MSN and more, contemporary art in today's Poland?

Well, here I would add 1 more crucial argument. I hear quite a few voices asking, why do we request another contemporary art institution? After all, in Warsaw we have Zachęta and CSW Castle Ujazdowski with their rich collections and exhibition program. But first of all, I think that 3 modern art institutions for a large European capital are not besides much. Let's see how many places there are in Paris, Berlin or London. A lot more. Secondly, MSN is simply a peculiar institution on the cultural map of Poland. First of all, due to the fact that it is simply a self-government institution. The Ministry of Culture, due to the construction costs, gave this institution to the city due to the fact that it was 50 by 50 before. Only due to the fact that it is simply a self-government institution, it managed to save its character through all these dark PiS years. And indeed, the MSN has become specified a place that, in addition to being a museum and collecting works of art, it besides supports and in any sense runs a much more modern collection of artistic movements. There we have the Public Protest Archives, the Social home of Culture “Sunner”, which the museum took care of and sheltered after the war in Ukraine. We have many different initiatives that can take shelter there and have their own space. I think at this phase of art improvement this is more crucial than artifacts in the form of works. Although we can't complain about his collection either. He yet has a space where he can be exposed. And 1 more thing that's highly crucial to me. With this location, MSN and its open nature, there is indeed a chance that people can look there out of curiosity, along the way, without having to plan a peculiar expedition. Expanding the scope of contemporary art is an highly crucial mission.

The participants of this debate besides rise arguments specified as: "It is not time to regret roses erstwhile forests burn". possibly it's better to spend the state budget on the Shield of the East or build bunkers for civilians? Or was Churchill right, who thought planet War II (and all another wars) was a war on culture just like that?

We build the Shield of the East, we build the grids. What precisely are we expected to defend if we don't have museums? If we don't have a culture that can make through specified institutions? It may sound high-pitched, but I think that patriotic education, upbringing to love this place where a man was born and where he lives, is culture education. Only. No 1 will encourage you to love the place where you live, by teaching you from childhood various songs that are not in line with your temperament, with the age where you live, with the situation where you are. The large cultural power of contemporary art is very much rooted in its actuality, in that it refers to what hurts us now, what we confront, what is most applicable to us today. Grids, barbed wires, bombs, mines, rifles are truly lateral erstwhile it comes to protecting what is most crucial – a certain core of our identity, a way of reasoning that we could consider to be Polish. And for me, the museum, the institution that aims at collecting and protecting collections, is the best investment in national identity that can be made at all.

In a time of “beautiful hair without dandruff”, the ubiquitous academy of beautiful nails and cabinets of aesthetic surgery has a moral dimension?

Beauty is simply a category that is utilized in various contexts, not necessarily knowing it. For thousands of years, mankind has known what beauty is. There was a large explanation of beauty. Pythagoras said beauty is about proportions. And we have a gold divided to this day. If we go with the ruler to the museum, we can just measurement which work is beautiful and which 1 isn't. Then in the early centuries of our Common Era, a category of radiance was added to this category. So it worked for many, many years, until it abruptly turned out that art is not about beauty in the sense of specified symmetry and clarity. And the stairs started, but it got interesting too. This is the minute of change that abruptly makes these aesthetic values more. We do not gotta prosecute 1 thing, art does not gotta focus solely on the classical symmetrical perfect of beauty, but it can decision us in very many ways and it does not cease to be art. Art doesn't should be beautiful, and referring to the category of beauty to things in turn non-esthetic, that's an adjective like any other. "Beautiful Behave" or "beautiful do," they carry the meaning of nobility. And I am not talking about the esthetic qualities of the act, although they may besides be important, but above all about moral values.

How can we talk about beauty present without touching on kitsch, commerce and deficiency of Inclusion? Is it easy for you to usage that word?

Yeah, due to the fact that beauty hasn't been a fetish to me in a long time. I'm not like Oscar Wilde, I don't concentrate on looking for beauty. I think in today's world, there are quite a few underrated, more likely ugly than beauty. We request to learn to love rotting, decay, love all that's old, just unsymmetrical, changeable. What is connected with the situation of our planet, which has been radically destroyed by us. We request to learn to derive aesthetic sensations not just from what is uniquely beautiful, but to grow the pool. For me, aesthetics are always much more the discipline of sensual experience. due to the fact that beauty itself is rather boring, it is alternatively cold and very often, although it moves, it besides leaves small behind. On the another hand, aesthetics as discipline deals with all sensory experiences, tries to categorize them, look erstwhile they occur. There are 2 conclusions. First of all, these experiences do not should be experiences of beauty, due to the fact that the experience of ugliness is besides a very powerful aesthetic experience. And secondly, these experiences request not lead to a feeling of pleasure, pleasure. They are very frequently the origin of something that is sad, dismissive.

For respective months, national museums in Warsaw, Krakow and Poznań will show monumental monographic exhibitions by Józef Chełmoński. His work is an unquestionable canon of classically understood Polish national culture. I visited the Warsaw exhibition with a friend of the climate movement. She was amazed at how many animal species he painted, erstwhile common, present stand on the brink of extinction. Like many landscapes, even fields covered with snow or iced rivers, will not see future generations of Poles and Poles. Can beauty and art aid us fight the top threat to humanity, or climate disaster?

You touched a very crucial topic. erstwhile Chełmonski painted, the planet was completely different. It was a much more complex world. Above all, in terms of biodiversity. It was a planet that had already entered the industrial era, but the effects of its improvement had not affected it so much. And I think the art that changes over time must hold the value of responsibility. It is not that art has the luxury of being separated from the world, from life, from everything around us. erstwhile we look at Chełmonski's painting, Falat, Kossak, this classical 19th century Polish school, we will see that they documented a certain planet for us. Maurice Merleau-Ponty erstwhile wrote that the difference between photography and painting is that the photograph stops motion in any peculiar second, millisecond, stops motion, while the painting captures the object from many perspectives at once, besides settling it in a minute that is longer lasting than only a flash of photographic snapshot. And in this sense I think that this is simply a immense and frequently underestimated value of painting just, especially academic, that it had to do with itself, that it could capture the minute in which it was created. I think of contemporary art in this context, that it can also, if it is immersed in this pulsating rhythm of the world, in what hurts us now, which is very crucial to us, but besides what is passing away. This can become specified a testimony, a evidence of the change that is being made. I'm reasoning about Diana Lelonek and her work. The fact that Diana is actually leaving completely from the creation of any fresh artifacts, due to the fact that the planet is saturated with it, that her works are very frequently based on sounds just released by dying species. This is besides documented by scientists. And for me, it's very crucial that artists and artists scope out to show the last treks of the last male, who will never have a female again and have no children. He's the last typical of his species. In this respect, it is very moving, due to the fact that it is moving talks about art into an ethical dimension.

Speaking of beauty, do Poles truly know how to disagree beautifully? due to the fact that I think it's the concept of a lock. If we don't want to admit that we're throwing mud at each other, we're putting it on specified a beautiful term. You should be very different.

Just like in that celebrated Wolter phrase, I hatred you. I don't like your views. With nothing, I disagree with you at all, but I would have been killed so you could preach all this. This is simply a very crucial attitude of openness, which I feel is frequently lacking. We have deeper and more tribal divisions in our society. All the more valuable is to talk to 1 another. You know, I get the feeling that we've lost, for example, our ability to not insult each other, both in terms of not insulting each another and not insulting each other. Things can be said in the midst of discussion, but dialog should continue. And that is the primary value of being people with each other, the existence of a community. It's just this dialogue, that in conversation, even if it's a large deal and we totally disagree, it's not about us going out the same way and signing any protocol of conformity, it's about listening to each another and doing 1 thing, reasoning for a second about why the another individual thinks that way, and not being satisfied with the answer that he's an idiot, just thinking. After all, if you presume that a priori I respect you due to the fact that you're human due to the fact that we're talking to each other, then I can't just throw you away. I gotta ask, think, and yet say, that's what you're right about, but I don't agree with you about that, and we're different here. Or I disagree with you at all. But I will do whatever it takes for you to preach. Just as I have the right to preach my views.

KATARZYNA KASIA – doctor of philosophy, journalist. Scholarship holder of the Kościuszkowski Foundation at Princeton University (USA). He works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw at the Faculty of Artistic investigation and Curatory Studies. Author of essays and books, translator of texts of Italian philosophers. Group member
Expert squad Europe Direct and artistic collective Channel Poland. Co-creator and programme leader “Polish Flowers” in TVP Info. He co-hosts Thursday mornings on Radio fresh World, co-creates podcasts “Political Gold Seekers” and “Philosophy is for girls”. He writes a column for the weekly “Newsweek Polska” and monthly “Mrs”. In 2023, in 2024, she was awarded the Mariusz Walter Award in the category of “media personality”, Master of Polish Speech. Michał Suchora – art historian, cultural manager, since 2022 a Green press spokesman. He runs the BWA Warsaw art gallery and the BWA Sokołowski residence space. associate of the Board of the Association of Friends of the National Museum in Warsaw. In his artistic, social and political practice, he focuses on the interplay between art, the form of contemporary societies and green transformation. Behind Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, he says, “There is nothing I care about.”

KATARINE KASIA – Doctor of Philosophy, Publicist. Scholarship holder of the Kościuszkowski Foundation at Princeton University (USA). He works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw at the Faculty of Artistic investigation and Curatory Studies. Author of essays and books, translator of texts of Italian philosophers. associate of squad Europe Direct expert group and artistic collective Channel Poland. Co-creator and programme leader “Polish Flowers” in TVP Info. He co-hosts Thursday mornings on Radio fresh World, co-creates podcasts “Political Gold Seekers” and “Philosophy is for girls”. He writes a column for the weekly “Newsweek Polska” and monthly “Mrs”. In 2023, in 2024, she was awarded the Mariusz Walter Award in the category of “media personality”, Master of Polish Speech.