Polish Dances: Jewish

Z. Stryjeńska. Polish Dances: Jewish. Galeria Polska, Kraków.

This motif, created by the versatile non-Jewish Polish artist Zofia Stryjeńska (1891–1976), raises interesting questions of interpretation. It is a reproduction of one of ten prints based on paintings she created in 1927—during the arguably most successful phase of her career when, following her award-winning contribution to the Polish pavilion at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925, she received numerous public commissions, inter alia, for patriotic painting cycles. These prints, associating individual dances with specific social, regional and ethnic groups, were first published in 1929 and subsequently circulated widely—usually with the exception of this particular image—in various forms.

Viewed in isolation, this particular image may seem to give no particular cause for concern. The facial features of the two figures are obviously exaggerated in a way reminiscent of wooden puppets of the kind one might expect in a Punch and Judy show—but then this is clearly meant to be (albeit a sophisticated form of) folk art. Yet a comparison between this image and the others in the cycle leads to a rather more troubling diagnosis. The plain and frumpy appearance and exaggerated facial features of the two Jewish figures stand in marked contrast to Stryjeńska’s characteristic exuberant use of colour and the means of characterization she deployed in the portrayal of the other figures. Should it have been her intention to display an inclusive attitude towards Poland’s Jews, she very effectively achieved the precise opposite: her portrayal strikingly set them apart from the other social, regional and ethnic groups she covered. Not to mention, of course, that mixed-sex dancing would have been totally anathema to the traditional or Hasidic Jews Stryjeńska presumably had in mind.