Bottom-Up Postmodernism

Abstract

In Bottom-Up Postmodernism: Unauthorized Church Architecture in Socialist Poland, Florian Urban discusses rural and semirural Roman Catholic churches built in socialist Poland under the direction of local parish priests and financed through informal means, such as in-kind donations, volunteer work, and financial support from partner congregations abroad. In the politically unsettled climate of the 1970s and 1980s, these buildings were grudgingly tolerated by political authorities, who feared further confrontations with an increasingly unruly population. The churches evidence the efforts of priests and bishops to strengthen the Catholic Church’s spatial presence and social influence while also revealing tensions within the church hierarchy. Postmodern neohistoricism was the style of choice for many of these churches, three of which are analyzed here: St. Lucia in suburban Warsaw (1972–93), St.Michael the Archangel in Kamion in central Poland (1978–90), and St. Francis of Assisi in Mierzowice, Lower Silesia (ca. 1977–90). These buildings’ distinct, localized postmodernism emerged fromsociopolitical transformations occurring under a declining authoritarian regime and represent a historically situated struggle over the symbolic occupation of public space. 372