Going underground is always a political decision. The world below opposes the one on the surface and undermines its order, creating an alternative underground realm. Polish history over the last 200 years illustrates well the interaction between the surface and the underground—succeeding generations of oppositionists, debaters, and conspirers, who refuse to submit to conquerors, occupiers, and enemy powers, ensure the continuity of a ‘Polish underground state,’ which probably constitutes one of the key elements of the Polish identity.
To go underground also means to step into the realm of the dead. It is to delve into the debris of a past that is buried far below the surface to find building blocks for constructing a future, or, conversely, for reconstructing history. These two contradictory political applications of archaeology emerged—as mirror images—during the Enlightenment and have survived until this day.
The Print Room collection contains various images of phantasmic archaeology and fantasies of the underground world. Among the exhibits you will find the designs and drafts for a utopian underground garden for Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, a member of the Targowica Confederation and an opponent of the Constitution of 3 May. There are also traces of the archaeological interests of Stanisław Kostka Potocki—the pioneer of both the history of art in Poland, and a politician and a thinker of the Age of Enlightenment. A different vision of archaeology leads to a different definition of what is political. Just like the artists and thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment the Sarmatian tradition also turned to the antiquity, looking for its roots.
- Art After the Internet:
- A Great Tumulus on a Steppe near the Ostra Mogiła Farm, An Inn among the Steppes Unknown artist, 1783
- Interior Views of Etruscan Tombs in Tarquinia Christopher Norton, 1765-1767
- Underground Mikołaj Sobczak, 2018
- Design for a Garden in the Basement of Franciszek Ksawery Branicki’s ‘Smaller’ Palace in Warsaw—projection and sections of the interior Szymon Bogumił Zug, 1775-1777
- Underground part of an Egyptian pyramid where the remains of the ancient Sarmatian civilisation were found Nomadic State (Karolina Mełnicka, Stach Szumski), 2018
- Fantasy of Ruins with a Statue of Minerva. Frontispiece from the 2nd volume of the series Views of Rome (Vedute di Roma) Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1740-1778
- Ruins of the Antonine Baths from the series Views of Rome (Vedute di Roma) Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1740-1778
- Measuring Drawings of Vases Johann Heinrich Müntz, 1749-1772