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Czech Cubism and Fin-De-Siècle Prague

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Bruce Garver
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska

Extract

Growing scholarly and popular appreciation of achievements in the arts, letters and technology of early twentieth-century Europe reflects an increasing conviction that these achievements laid the groundwork for Western culture and sensibility in our century. Continuing interest in early twentieth-century European social and political problems also testifies to an appreciation that these problems very much resemble, and have in some instances conditioned, the development of comparable problems today.

Type
Peoples and Culture
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1983

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References

1 Langui, Emil and Cassou, Jean, Les sources du vingtième siècle (Paris: Éditions des Deux-Mondes, 1961)Google Scholar; Rheims, Maurice, The Flowering of Art Nouveau (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1956)Google Scholar; Selz, Peter and Constantine, Mildred, Art Nouveau: Art and Design at the Turn of the Century (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1959)Google Scholar; Clay, Jean, Modern Art, 1890–1918, Rosin, Arnold, trans. (New York: Hachette and Vendome Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Rosenblum, Robert, Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art, rev. ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966)Google Scholar; Russell, John, The Meanings of Modern Art (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1981).Google Scholar

I thank Professors Martin Rosenberg and William Wright for their critical evaluation of this paper and suggestions for its improvement.

2 Among the American historians who have written extensively on these problems are Eugene Anderson, Peter Gay, H. Stuart Hughes, Carl Schorske, and Eugen Weber. This article and others in this issue of the Austrian History Yearbook are especially indebted to the work they are designed to complement, Schorske's, CarlFin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Knopf, 1980).Google Scholar A recently published study that nicely supplements Schorske's work is Varnedoe, Kirk, Vienna, 1900: Art, Architecture & Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986).Google Scholar

3 Representative of this view are the pertinent articles in Slavík, F. et al. , Československá vlastivěda, 13 vols, and index (Prague: SFINX, Bohumil Janda, 19291936).Google Scholar See also Krofta, Kamil, Dějiny Československé (Prague: SFINX, Bohumil Janda, 1946), pp. 614723Google Scholar, and Odložilík, Qtakar, Nástin československých dějin, 2nd ed. (Prague: E. Beaufort, 1937)Google Scholar, part III, “Nová doba.” My paper on “Fin-de-siècle Prague” presented at the December 1980 meeting of the American Historical Association surveyed developments in politics, literature, music, and Secession-style art and architecture with emphasis on similarities between Czech and Viennese developments. Czech politics and society in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century are addressed by my book The Young Czech Party, 1874–1901, and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

4 Typical are Říha, Oldřich and Mésároš, Julius, eds., Přehled československých dějin, 3 vols. (Prague: Čs. Akademia Věd, 1960)Google Scholar, vol. II, 1848–1918, and Křížek, Jurij, T. G. Masaryk a česká politika (Prague: Státní Nakladatelství politické literatury, 1959).Google Scholar

5 Mráz, Bohumír and Mrázová, Marcela, Secese (Prague: Obelisk, 1971)Google Scholar; Lamač, Miroslav, Moderne tschechische Malerei, 1907–1917 (Prague: Artia, 1967)Google Scholar; Dostál, Oldřich, Pechar, Josef, and Procházka, Víězslav, Moderní architektura v Československu (Prague: Nakladatelství československých výtvarných umělců, 1967)Google Scholar; Šolle, Zdeněk, “Masarykova idea československého státu,” Dějiny a součastnost, X, no. 6 (1968), 1421Google Scholar; Machovec, Milan, T. G. Masaryk (Prague:. Svobodné Slovo, 1967)Google Scholar; and Pichlík, Karel, Bez legend (Prague: Svoboda, 1968), pp. 1142, among others.Google Scholar

6 The most comprehensive of a number of studies on this subject is Skilling, H. Gordon, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).Google Scholar

7 For example, of the Czech avant-garde artists discussed in this paper, Jean Clay, Modern Art, 1890–1918, discusses only František Kupka. Edward Fry's Cubism mentions one exhibition of cubist art in Prague, but does not discuss individually any of the leading Czech cubist artists. Fry, Edward, Cubism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).Google Scholar See also Kozloff, Max, Cubism/Futurism (New York: Icon Editions, 1973).Google Scholar The outstanding recent work on Polish constructivism is Stanisławski, Ryszard, Ładnowska, Janina, Ojrzyński, Jacek, and Zagrodzki, Janusz, Constructivism in Poland, 1923–1936 (Otterlo: Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, 1973)Google Scholar, Graff, Piotr and Krasińka, Ewa, trans. The Russian avant-garde of the early twentieth century is most fully treated in Barran, Stephanie and Tuchman, Maurice, eds., The Avant Garde in Russia, 1910 to 1930: New Perspectives (Los Angeles: L. A. County Museum of Art, 1980)Google Scholar, and an entire issue of The Art Journal, vol. IV, no. 3 (Fall 1981), devoted to the Russian avant-garde.Google Scholar

8 Miroslav Lamač, Moderne tschechische Malerei, see footnote 5 above.

9 Kubišta, F. and Čeřovský, F., eds., Bohumil Kubišta: korespondence a úvahy (Prague: Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury, hudby, a umění, 1960)Google Scholar; and Hlaváček, Luboš, Životní drama Bohumila Kubišty (Prague: Miada Pronta, 1968).Google Scholar See also Muzika, F., Filla, Emil and Träger, Josef, Bohumil Kubišta (Prague: S. V. U. Mánes a Melantrich, 1941).Google Scholar

10 Mráz, and Mrázová, , Secese, p. 67.Google Scholar

11 Matějček, two works cited in footnote twenty, for photographs and a discussion of their paintings and sculpture for the National Theatre.

12 Neumann, Jaromír, Die neue tschechische Malerei und ihre klassische Tradition (Prague: Artia, 1958), p. 106Google Scholar, and plates 24–30 in color, on Chittussi.

13 Tomeš, Jan, Antonín Slavíček (Prague: Odeon, 1966)Google Scholar, plate 12 and page 46. This is the most thorough study of the works of Slavíček to appear to date.

14 After Slavíček's suicide at forty, his continuing influence was also evident in the works of contemporaries, who, like Jan Preisler (1872–1918) and Vojtěch Preissig (1873–1944) moved respectively toward symbolism and expressionism. Preissig, who subsequently won fame for his Czechoslovak recruiting posters in the United States, died in 1944 in the concentration camp at Dachau.

15 For a survey of Polish developments, see Miłosz, Czesław, The History of Polish Literature (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1969), pp. 322379Google Scholar; Wandycz, Piotr S., The Lands of Partitioned Poland (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), pp. 371380Google Scholar; Kridl, Manfred, A Survey of Polish Literature and Culture (The Hague: Mouton, 1956), pp. 403471.Google Scholar Quoted from Schorske, , Fin-de-siècle Vienna, p. 84.Google Scholar

16 Mráz and Mrázová, Secese, plates XIV, XV, pp. 65–68.

17 Bílek even worked as an architect. Mucha's colossal Slavonic Epic of 1910–1919 is his best known painting on Slavic themes.

18 Outstanding examples are pictured in color in Mráz and Mrázová, Secese, plates XXI–XXIII. Stained glass was obviously a favorite of the artists of art nouveau or of the Secession because it had traditionally been composed by necessity, as some Secession paintings were by choice, in bold blocks of color set apart by heavy lines.

19 Hlaváček, Luboš, Životní drama Bohumila Kubišty (Prague: Mlada Fronta, 1968), photographs 3–5, and 10, and p. 14 ff.Google Scholar

20 Photographs of these statues appear in Janáček, Josef, Dějiny, pp. 519, 524.Google Scholar Rodin's Balzac and Szymanowski's statue of Chopin are comparable examples. Other outstanding examples of Secessionistic sculpture in Prague include Šaloun's statue of The Iron Man and the Rabbi Löw Ben Becalela that stand at different corners of O. Polívka's Secessionistic Prague Town Hall. See photographs in Volavka, Vojtěch, Pout' Prahou: dějiny a umění (Prague: Nakladatelství československých výtvarných umělců, 1967), pp. 98, 218219.Google Scholar

21 Dostál Pechar and Procházka, Moderní architektura, plates 6–9; Volavka, Pout' Prahou, p. 107.

22 On Otto Wagner, see Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna, “The Ringstrasse and the Birth of Urban Modernism,” ch. II.

23 Several examples of such blocks can be found in the vicinity of Hakenovy sady (formerly Kaizlovy sady) in suburban Prague-Karlín. The Municipal House is pictured in Dostál et al, Moderní architektura, plate 12. Architects were Antonín Balšánek and Osvald Polívka. The building dates from 1905 to 1911.

24 Mráz and Mrázová, Secese, photograph no. 55. The station was called Franz Joseph Station upon its completion and Wilson Station (Wilsonovo nadraží) from 1918 to 1938.

25 See for example, Rudé Květy, vol. I, no. 1 (June 1, 1901), front page, and Socialistická Revue Akademie, vol. XII (1908), passim.

26 Hoffmeister, Adolf, Sto let české karikatury (Prague:. Stání nakladatelství krásné literatury, hudby a umění, 1955), pp. 240267Google Scholar on Kupka, and pp. 268–295 on Hradecký.

27 Such organizations were absolutely necessary in fin-de-siècle Prague, given public indifference or hostility to the new art and similar attitudes on the art faculties of the Prague Academy and the University.

28 The Mánes Art Society (Spolek Výtvarných Umělců “Mánes”) was named for a family that produced three generations of artists, most notably Josef Mánes (1820–1871) of the second generation. The most complete discussions of the organization's development will be found in Hlaváček, Životní drama Bohumila Kubišty.

29 Lamač, , Moderne tschechische Malerei, pp. 916Google Scholar; Hlaváček, , Životní drama Bohumila Kucišty. p. 71 ff.Google Scholar

31 The “Group of Eight” included four Czechs (Emil Filia, Otakar Kubín, Bohumil Kubišta, and Antonín Procházka), three Bohemian Jews (Friedrich Feigl, Georg Kars, and Max Horb), and one Bohemian German (Willi Nowak). Brod, Max, Der Prager Kreis (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1966), pp. 5657.Google Scholar

32 Fry, , Cubism, p. 13.Google Scholar

33 Especially in the cases of Kubišta and Kubín (who painted in France under the name “Coubine”) was this association fruitful.

34 Czech participation in the “synthetic phase” was much less evident than in the first two phases. The most complete study of Czech cubistic painting will be found in Lamač, Moderne tschechische Malerei, passim.

35 Mráz and Mrázová, plate XXIV for Piano Keyboard—Lake; the other paintings cited appear in Clay, Jean, Modern Art, 1890–1918, pp. 27, 186187, and 286287Google Scholar, and in the three recent scholarly studies of Kupka: Ludmila Vachtova, František Kupka (Prague: Odeon, 1968)Google Scholar; L'oeuvre de Kupka (Paris: Musée nationale d'art moderne, 1966)Google Scholar; and František Kupka, 1871–1957: A Retrospective (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1975).Google Scholar

36 Karel Čapek wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1915 on “Objective Methods in Esthetics.”

37 Josef Čapek died in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 after surviving more than five years incarceration. For a survey of his life and a study of his illustrations see Thiele, Vladimír, Josef Čapek a kniha: soupis knižní grafiky (Prague: Nakladatelství československých výtvarných umělců, 1958).Google Scholar

38 Almanach na rok 1914, Čapek, Josef, Čapek, Karel, Hanuš, Otokar Fischer Stanislav, Hofman, Vlastislav, Kodíček, Josef, Neumann, S. K., Novák, Arne, Špála, Václav, Štěpán, Václav, Theer, Otakar, and Wojkowicz, Jan z, eds. (Prague:.Přehled, 1914).Google Scholar

39 On Karel Čapek, see Harkins, William, Karel Čapek (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 150Google Scholar on the pre-war years. See also Čapek, Karel, Pozdravy, Pohorský, Miloš, ed. (Prague: Mlada Pronta, 1979), pp. 1117.Google Scholar

40 Dostál, et al. , Moderní architektura, p. 49Google Scholar, quotations from Janák's articles, “The Prism and the Pyramid” and “The Facade Revival.”

41 Chochol's works are pictured in ibid., plates 58–60. Bílek's villa, now a museum, is pictured in Mráz and Mrázová, Secese, plate 56.

42 Dostál, et al., Moderní architektura, plates 46–48, and Volavka, Pout' Prahou, plates 10 and 13.

43 Fry, , Cubism, pp. 133135.Google Scholar