The problem of modernism in the weekly Tygodnik Ilustrowany in 1898–1907

Abstract

In the early 1890s the traditional allegiance of the readers of Tygodnik Powszechny to the realistic creed of the Polish Positivism began to falter. As the decade wore on their attention was increasingly attracted by the new, modernist approach to the arts, propagated by Ignacy Matuszewski in Tygodnik Ilustrowany. It was in fact a moderate modernist aesthetics, rooted in conservatism and tailored to fit the tabloid profile of that weekly. Unlike the more highbrow Cracow periodicals Tygodnik Ilustrowany cultivated an image of a moderately progressive magazine with a popular appeal. Its editors sympathized with the ideas of the Young Poland movement and its patriotic and romantic revivalism. Theirs was a modernism stripped of elitist aestheticism and tilted heavily towards a social and national engagement practiced by Stanisław Wyspiański and Stefan Żeromski.