The Avant-Garde of Socialism in the Prehistoric Jungle: The Temporalities of Coal Mining in 1950s Upper Silesia

This article examines the temporal narratives embedded in the artistic representations of coal mining in post-war Poland, specifically focusing on the 1950s Upper Silesian region. By analyzing artworks from the period, including heroic socialist-realist representations of miners and practices of non-professional artists, supplemented by the insights from press, popular literature and documentary film, this article highlights how different cultural expressions engaged with both the prehistoric past of coal formation and the envisioned future fueled by its continuous extraction. The discussed visual sources not only recorded the extractive labor of miners but also shaped ideological narratives of socialist progress, negotiating between geological deep time, the rhythms of industrial work, and political visions of the future. The article situates those practices within the broader framework of political and geological transformations, examining how the aesthetic strategies and their ideological framing mediated experiences of time, labor and natural environment. By exploring the timescapes embedded in cultural production—from geological deep-time to the immediate, destabilizing impacts of coal mining—this article bridges art history of socialist Poland and history of temporality for a broader understanding of the paradoxes within temporal politics related to fossil-fueled socialist modernity.

ARTMargins, Volume 14, Issue 2, pp. 60-83.

doi:10.1162/artm_a_00413

https://direct.mit.edu/artm/article/14/2/60/131440/The-Avant-Garde-of-Socialism-in-the-Prehistoric

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