The Grass is Greener: Władysław Hasior in an Ecocritical Perspective

Abstract

The text offers an analysis of selected works by Władysław Hasior from an ecocritical perspective. The focus is placed on Hasior’s best-known work, The Organ, as well as on several parts of his Photo Notebook. The analysis seeks to demonstrate that an application of an ecocritical perspective to the reading of Hasior’s work may help fill in the blanks in the environmental history of art in Poland. Several recent publications and exhibitions that concern the relationship between art and nature focus on uncovering the “prehistory” of ecological art in Poland or the local tradition of Land Art. The text is meant as a preliminary study of possible research perspectives that the proposed reading may open up, as well as a consideration of whether ecocriticism could serve as an opportunity to bring the tenets of horizontal art history into the practice of rereading the work of Polish artists and their relationship with the landscape.