Śmierć przed obrazem. O sztuce, starości i zanikaniu

Maria Poprzęcka is a doyenne of art history and art criticism in Poland. She has taught many generations of art historians and her writing is held in high esteem. Her latest book is a thought-provoking collection of essays that analyse death, old age and disappearance, both as directly depicted in art and in a broader cultural context.

The title of the book alludes to her examination of cases of deaths that happened in front of artworks. Some of those are real, such as the assassination of Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz in the Zachęta gallery five days after he took office in 1922, while others are fictional, as depicted in the work of Poe, Zola and Proust, but also Dan Brown, among other writers. The essays refer to numerous cultural touchpoints from classical art and literature, including rebellion against the process of ageing in Wilde and Camus, and the influence of age on the creative output of artists such as Titian and Louise Bourgeois.

Poprzęcka is able to write with absolute clarity about difficult things and things that are difficult to capture. She poses questions rather than trying to answer them, inviting the reader to participate in the analysis. Her language is simultaneously precise and poetic, never hermetic. Terminal Lucidity is not just another book on the history of death, but focuses on the interrelations between art, philosophy, literature and old age, as well as cultural memory and trauma.