Censorship in Polish Art After 1989: Art, Law, Politics

Censorship in Polish Art After 1989 is a pioneering work on censorship in Polish art after the fall of the USSR available in English for the first time with a skilled translation by Lukasz Mojsak. Polish Art Historian Jakub Dabrowski, with contributions from Anna Demenko, offers the first comprehensive study to analyze the problems of restricting the freedom of artistic expression in the Third Polish Republic. Censorship in Polish Art After 1989 includes two complementary approaches - legal and historical (including political and social aspects of the phenomenon). The first section of Dabrowski's thought provoking book contains an analysis of the issues of freedom of artistic expression in the Polish legal system, against the background of international context. This unprecedented approach allows a new look at the issues being addressed and helps to develop insightful conclusions. This section includes reflections on the meaning of art in the context of general principles of criminal responsibility and a detailed analysis of selected criminal law regulations, which most often become the cause of conflicts between artistic expression and the law. Section Two is an attempt to narrate the history of censorship in Polish art after 1989. Based on the collected factographic material, Dabrowski captures the characteristic qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the phenomenon studied in time. He enters his considerations in a wider social, political, artistic and media context, at the same time pointing to symbolic breakthroughs, precedents, sequences or correlations of events. The book closes with a detailed study of censorship cases.

Jakub Dabrowski is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Visual Culture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw where he lectures History of Contemporary Art and Copyright Law. His main field of research covers ever-existing relationships between art and law as well as history of Polish art after 1945. Jakub completed his PhD thesis at the History of Art Faculty at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan in 2013.In 2010 he won Polish Art Historian Association award for scholarship for young members of the Association and in 2015 he won The Award of the Polish Art Critique for a book Cenzura w sztuce polskiej po 1989 roku(Censorship in Polish Art after 1989). Jakub lives in Warsaw, Poland Anna Demenko is an Assistant Professor in the Chair of criminal law at the Law Faculty of the Adam Mickiewicz University, where she lectures about criminal law. She graduated from the Law Faculty of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and the Law Faculty of Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. She is a member of the European Criminal Bar Association and has an individual law practice. In her research she concentrates on the relation between criminal law and freedom of speech as well as on transnational criminal law. Lukasz Mojsak studies in applied linguistics and art history at the University of Warsaw, studies in contemporary art theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has worked as a translators (Polish - English, English - Polish) for over ten years and has translated texts on art and culture for a broad range of major institutions and publishers, such as the National Museum in Warsaw, Museum of Warsaw, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Muzeum Sztuki in Lo´dz´, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Sternberg Press, 40000 Malarzy. Lukasz is also a curator of exhibitions, film screenings and art projects.