Uwagi o podstawach teoretycznych ochrony zabytków

At the outset of his discussion of the background for the theory of restoration and conservation the author presents the situation of history of art in times when at the end of the nineteenth century the first programmes were formulated by restores and censervators. While reverting to those days a theory by A. Riegl which had enormous effect upon the history of art should be mentioned in the first line. Nonetheless, the attitudes taken by the overwhelming majority of researchers in those times were romantic by their nature which had its reflection in metaphysical tradition adopted in conceiving the sources of art as a „sacrum” for which a „temple museum” could be considered the only appropriate place. The elitarian character of history of art took its source from the above tradition and concept mentioned above and the prevailing views have led to both absolutisation and isolation of a historical prodect of art which in our days is regarded as a historical monument. The absolutised work of art was taken over from history of art by historical monuments protection which in turn grew to a source of an apparent conflict between an isolated historical monument and a given civilizational situation. More and more apparent became the crisis resulting from the above attitudes which gave birth to numerous reactions chiefly in the area of practical activities. The opposition, in the first line, arose at problems of reconstruction where the historic matter comes in touch with the modern civilizational system. According to the author both, i.e. protection of historical monuments of institutional character and history of a rt have proved unable to meet these changes in a due way and they further compete for that legaty left by the nineteenth century. Such a situation makes it indispensable to take some revolutionary measures. The chief problem consists in the concept alone of historical monument; its conceiving as a monument or relic of the past makes it impossible to handle it as an active component of a contemporary cultural and civilizational formation. On the other hand, however, elimination of term ’’historical monument” would necessitate the full reconstruction of a discipline known as historical monuments protecion which in turn would lead from its isolation to the most close interlocking with the cultural and civilization framework. There exists the need ihat the following questions be thoroughly vented: the problems of protection of historical monuments, i.e. all problems relating to historical monuments, the concept and the sense of the term ’’historical monument”, the objectives and purposes of activities connected with protection of historical monuments, the methods of operation and the tasks of institutions involved in historical monuments protection and preservation as well as the problem of their organization. It is an indispensable condition for the proper solution of problem of historical monuments protection to take into account the dialectal interrelations existing within the contemporary social and economic formation.