ANDA ROTTENBERG, DECLINE: JOURNAL 2019-2022 [2024].

Description

Anda Rottenberg – art historian and critic, curator and long-time director of the Zachęta Art Gallery. For years he has kept diaries, to which he returns, publishing selected records of successive periods of his life. Decline is a record of the years 2019-2022 -. a time marked by pandemonium, social change and personal experiences of the passage of time, aging and the fragility of the human condition.

The author shares her reflections on a body that gradually refuses to obey, the limitations imposed by illness and isolation, but also on her need to be active, to work and to have contact with culture and people – spaces that have always been an important part of her life. The diary also covers a period of pandemic confinement, isolation from the art world, and observations of the changes taking place in Polish socio-cultural reality.

The book’s narrative is stretched between dramatic contemporary events – from the Notre Dame Cathedral fire in Paris to the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – but its greatest strength is its personal layer: honest, unfiltered, at times bitter, but balanced by the author’s distance from herself and characteristic sense of humor.

The copy is hand-bound in leather in the bindery of the Polish Antiquarian, with the utmost care taken to ensure durability and security for generations.