ANALYSIS: A painting, an artist and a case for restitution (07/22/01)

ANALYSIS

A painting, an artist and a case for restitution

by Nicholas Sawicki

Earlier this winter the German director Benjamin Geissler traveled to Drohobych to conduct research for a film about the life of the writer and artist Bruno Schulz. In the course of his visit he uncovered a mural that had long been thought to be lost, painted by Mr. Schulz during the last weeks of his life in 1942 after he and his family had been interred in the Drohobych ghetto.

In late May of this year Yad Vashem, one of the foremost institutions of Holocaust study and commemoration, sent its representatives to examine the mural. In the course of three days they removed approximately five sections of the mural, which was painted as a fresco, and transported them to the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem.

The story was closely followed in the Polish press as it was happening, and when The New York Times picked up on the report on June 20, a dynamic debate ensued that has thrust both Mr. Schulz and his native Drohobych out of their relative anonymity. It centers on both the legality and the ethics of the removal of the fragments from their original location.

Born in 1892, Bruno Schulz was the third child of a family of Jewish merchants in Drohobych, when the city was still very much a part of Austria-Hungary. His father was a tailor and operated a dry goods store on the market square, and it was in this street-level apartment of Baroque townhouse that Schulz lived for the early part of his life.

Trained first in architecture at the Lviv Polytechnic, Schulz became a teacher of art at the gymnasium in Drohobych after passing a series of examinations at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 1926. The teaching position took time away from his own work, but for financial reasons he never abandoned it. Working largely at night, he feverishly wrote and sketched.

The first of his two books of fiction, "Cinnamon Shops," was published by the Warsaw publisher Roj in 1933-1934, and it was followed in 1937 by "Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass." Both were written in Polish and earned substantial critical acclaim as soon as they appeared. As an accomplished graphic artist, Schulz showed his work frequently at exhibitions in Lviv, Krakow, and Warsaw.

In both his literary and artistic work, the realities of life in Drohobych are woven together with dreams. Behind the thick, ornate passages in his texts and the fantastical narratives of his drawings, much more is revealed about their creator than would have ever been flatly stated.

I first had a chance to study Schulz's artistic career in 1999 when I was conducting research in Warsaw and Lviv on a fellowship from the Shevchenko Scientific Society. My impressions then were very much as they are today: here was an artist who bore out, in pencil and paint, a number of very private anxieties. More specifically, much of his work dealt with the worry and unease of life as an assimilated Jew in interwar Poland. Torn between the reality of a public life that was largely Polish and close friendships with Polish intellectuals such as the dramatist and painter Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Schulz was still quite conscious of the fact that many of his acquaintances regarded him as culturally different. And history suggests that they very well may have.

We are often told that ethnic divisions in this corner of the world were quite marked during this period, and there is a real ring of truth to this, particularly in the political and public arena. Yet if Schulz's work and that of many of his contemporaries is any indicator, the private understanding of this issue was for many people altogether different: that these divisions were not and could not ever be drawn in black in white. This was part of the problem then, and it is at the heart of the debate that surrounds the recently uncovered fresco today.

Whether or not Schulz can neatly be described as Polish or Jewish has everything to do with the claims of ownership surrounding the fresco, for it is along these lines that commentators in Poland and Israel have begun to argue for their right to the painting.

For many Polish observers, Schulz is still very much a Polish artist and author. Since the 1950s the vast majority of his manuscripts, letters and drawings were collected by the Polish poet and critic Jerzy Ficowski, and the largest collection of Schulz's work is today housed in Warsaw.

For officials at Yad Vashem who stated in a news release that they believe the museum has a "moral right" to the painting, the fact that Schulz was a Jewish artist and created the painting during the Holocaust is sufficient defense for having removed the work and transported it out of Ukraine. The museum has a sizable collection of art created during the Holocaust, and under normal circumstances there is no reason to believe why such work, when it is found, should not be considered for inclusion in the collection. Yet these are far from ordinary conditions, and they are largely aggravated by the uncertain legality of the export of the painting and the ethical defense offered by Yad Vashem, which opens a Pandora's box of enormous dimensions.

Allowing the fresco to remain in Jerusalem would set an unworkable precedent, in which irresolvable and competing claims of moral and ethical right threaten to dislocate the world's cultural and artistic monuments. Although not overtly stated, implicit in Yad Vashem's case for keeping the painting in Jerusalem, is an opinion that has been voiced by many commentators in the last several weeks: that Ukraine and its eastern neighbors are not capable of caring for their monuments, much less those of ethnic or religious minorities.

It is now largely believed that fragments of the Schulz fresco were removed illegally, in defiance of Ukrainian laws preventing the movement of cultural artifacts created before 1945 across its borders. Yet officials at Yad Vashem maintain that they received clear approval in Drohobych for the removal of the painting; both from the office of the mayor, as well as from the owners of the home in which the painting was found.

Indeed it is hard to imagine that the fragments of the fresco could have made their way out of Drohobych without a series of implied agreements, and these could not have come without a price. The removal of the painting was in some way permitted to happen, even if not explicitly, and here I think is where we arrive at what is a fundamental issue, if the safe return of the fresco to Drohobych is to be discussed with any plausibility.

Although the Ukrainian government has made inroads in controlling the movement of stolen art across its borders, the situation on the local level looks very different. Artwork is regularly looted from museums and churches and transported out of the country to be sold abroad. A recent government register of items seized at Ukraine's borders in the last year lists over 60 cases of apprehension, but this is mere window dressing. (Of the items seized, icons, manuscripts and Jewish religious art predominate).

This sad reality has cost museum professionals in Ukraine their credibility, and it threatens to unravel the decades of collective effort they have expended in the struggle to preserve cultural artifacts in Ukraine - first in the face of their destruction and annexation to collections in Moscow and today in the face of commercial looting.

To complicate matters, many smaller museums in Ukraine today remain closed, and those that are open operate on a shoestring budget, without the state, commercial and private support enjoyed by their neighbors in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, or for that matter, in the years under communism when the upkeep of museums was much more of a state priority.

For anything more than a hollow case for the restitution of the painting to Ukraine to be made, much more needs to happen. For one, Ukraine's already fragile government must ensure the international community that political uncertainties need not affect certain fixed ethical commitments. This seems like a rather implausible mandate, yet I think it is worth revisiting. For it is precisely by demonstrating that the protection and study of cultural and religious monuments within Ukraine's borders is a universal cultural priority which it shares with its Western neighbors, that some kind of ethical continuity can be foreseen. Legislation and enforcement are certainly critical here, but tangible deeds play an important role.

I can think of several possibilities, all equally consequential and none which has yet been adequately explored: the reopening of a long closed museum; the founding of a new museum to house the vast collections of Jewish religious art in western Ukrainian museums; providing tax incentives for those who wish to contribute their income to cultural institutions, or to those willing to restore historical buildings in their own community; opening Ukraine's borders to allow for greater tourism in beleaguered Zakarpattia and western Ukraine, such as is already thriving just outside its borders, or inviting western institutions to form direct partnerships with museums and institutions in Ukraine.

This latter alternative seems to offer the most for our present quandary, and it has been proposed by several commentators, although to my knowledge not from the Ukrainian side. Indeed, the return of the Schulz fresco to Ukraine will be prudent and valuable only if it is entrusted to a working and reliable institution that will care for it. A museum to Jewish art and culture in Drohobych? This is not a far-off possibility. Drohobych was home to several prominent artists besides Schulz, including the graphic artist Efraim Moses Lilien and the painter Maurycy Gottlieb, a student of Jan Matejko.

By announcing its wish to create such a museum, Ukraine could open the door to international cooperation and rightfully place a measure of accountability in the future of its cultural monuments on the shoulders of those who must play a role in bearing it collectively: Yad Vashem and the number of other museums which have benefited from the annexation of collections once belonging to Ukrainian institutions.

Whether the removal of these objects was or was not legal is important, but it is not in my opinion the most critical aspect of the debate concerning these works, or the recently uncovered Schulz painting. For foreign museums to devote collective professional attention in the areas of fund-raising, research, publication and exhibition planning to their neighbors in Ukraine is just as essential as the return of looted or spuriously acquired artifacts, and maybe even more. For their part, the fragments of the Schulz fresco have every reason to be returned to Drohobych, and I write this not only because of the symbolic value of the painting or of the artist himself, whose work embodies the brilliance, dismay - and I would argue, historical reality - of this part of Europe.

Looking back at the last decade, the spotlight of international visibility which the painting offers is one of the first clear opportunities for Ukraine and the international community to set a precedent for a new and bilateral commitment to culture in the region.

Nicholas Sawicki is a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently living in Prague on a Fulbright grant.

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