Between the Stage and the Art Gallery: “Artistic Actions” at the Lublin Theatre Spring in 1973 and 1974

Abstract

In this article, I have undertaken an analysis of the visual arts section “curated” by Zbigniew Warpechowski at the student festival Lublin Theatre Spring in 1973 and 1974, where many artists, later known as precursors of performance art, performed. Experimental happenings within the field of student theatre, referred to as “artistic actions”, are mentioned by many sources as an event marking the start of performance art history in Lublin. The aim of this article is to reconstruct individual actions, collect scattered archival materials (brochures, descriptions of actions, memories, photographs, excerpts from press reviews), and analyse the reception of these actions among the audience and theatre critics based on press reviews. These events are placed in the context of the simultaneous emergence of avant-garde theatre represented by Jerzy Grotowski, Tadeusz Kantor, and Józef Szajna, as well as student theatre. This contextualisation illustrates how this new art form, later defined as performance art, negotiated its position and sought its place between the theatrical stage and the art gallery in the mid-1970s. The article also demonstrates how these new theatre models converged with the reflection on action art. Moreover, the research highlights the local and transmedial specificity of the development of this artistic direction.