Czech art

Abstract: National identity can be expressed in many ways by individuals, groups and states. Since the nineteenth century, Central Europe has been undergoing rapid changes in the political, social and cultural spheres, which was reflected in the self-definition of the nations living in this region, and in their definition by others. The Czech people, who until 1918 were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, gave birth to a national revival movement in the nineteenth century and eventually emancipated themselves to create an independent Czechoslovakia. The idea of „national identity“ was, therefore, crucial and this was enhanced in many areas of human activity, including the construction of a historical legitimacy for the nation. The struggle for recognition of the historical existence of the Czech nation was also projected into the discourse adopted for historical and contemporary art writing and exhibition practice. In this thesis, I focus on the ways in which Czech national identity was constructed in the historiography of art. I shall argue that the various ideologies which influenced the writers led to an understanding of Czech art as epitomising certain qualities of the Czech nation. At the same time, the Czech nation was presented as highly advanced because of its artistic achievements. I shall explore how art historians, historians, artists, archaeologists and philosophers created their notion of a Czech national art on the basis of either negotiating a compromise with the various ethnic groups, methodologies and political affiliations, or by emphasising their opposition to the same. Another contested area was the concept and political uses of artistic quality. It will be my aim to examine broader circumstances of these contestations in the Introduction and more specific ideological motivations behind Czech art history in the subsequent chapters. In Chapter One, I shall outline the main places where art history was practiced in Bohemia and Moravia which were crucial for constructing the discourse on national art. Chapter Two examines the texts of the first Czech art historians in the second half of the nineteenth century who became interested in the national aspects of Czech art because of the political and cultural climate. In Chapter Three, I shall examine the nineteenth century debates between Czech and German authors on the origins of mediaeval art, confirming Czech or German national identity 3 respectively. Chapter Four studies the rise of Czech art history as a “scientific” discipline in Prague and the attempts of Czech art historians at its professionalisation, which – nevertheless – did not abandon a nationalistic discourse. The main focus of Chapter Five is the co-existence of nationalistic views of Czech art with the attempts of artists and art critics to bring Czech art into a dialogue with Western art. In the following chapter, Chapter Six, this practice is explored in the context of the Viennese university and the so-called Vienna School of art history, particularly the work and legacy of Max Dvořak. The influence of the School on Czech art history is the topic of Chapter Seven, which again brings up the question of the divide between international and national perspectives of Czech art. Criticism of the Czech Vienna School followers from various groups of art historians is examined in Chapter Eight. Finally, in Chapter Nine, I conclude with the exploration of the rise of a new concept of art historical identity, the concept of Czechoslovak identity.

Abstract: Since the Czech 'revivalist' movement of the last century, Czech art – along with the roles assigned to its artists – has been undergoing a continual process of definition and redefinition. The question of what constituted and what should constitute Czech artistic identity has often proved politically charged, with artists and art historians on opposing sides attacking each other for their political views. More often than not, debates on the issue have been part and parcel of wider social contexts in which artists and art historians have competed for influential positions and artistic prestige within the art world itself.

Abstract: The half a century that passed last year since the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968 provides the basic prerequisite for historicising the event: many of those involved have already passed away and the archive collections are now accessible. Yet the number of historical publications evaluating the events is growing slowly. Apart from biographies, only one historical analytical monograph was published in the jubilee year, and that was a translation from German1. The reason for this caution or diffidence is the uncertainty of how Czech society perceives the historical moment when Czech (and Czechoslovak) history reached something of a climax, although it was only one landmark moment in the long period of fourdecade-long Communist Party dictatorship and authoritarian rule. Despite the rhetoric of the Communist victors of the conflict, political liberalization, which was forcibly suppressed by the troops led by the Soviet Union and by Czechoslovak “conservative” forces, did not seek to abolish a dictatorship, but to strive rather for its economic, cultural and social transformation, a process that was dubbed “socialism with a human face” by those whose attempts were thwarted. In the following text, I will look at the subject from the benefit of historical distance, and referring to Jasper’s famous philosophical view on the attitude to the totalitarian regime, I will not, however, deal with moral criticism of individual people. I specify the object of my study as a scientific discipline in the sense of a self-defining epistemic community whose members work in the institutional complex of universities, the Academy of Science and museums, and as experts on the preservation of monuments, restoration-conservation, and the art market.2 Its boundaries distinguish the discipline from historiography,

Abstract: In 1919, a year after the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic, two influential Czech journals, Volne s nier y (Free Directions) and Umelecky list (The Artistic Gazette) published a debate on the origin of early medieval art and architecture in Bohemia and Moravia.1 The basic question, which also appeared in the title of the polemical articles on this topic, was 'West or East' and reflected the search for the origins of medieval architecture and its affiliation with either eastern or western paradigms in Czech art history. The main cause of this particular debate was a book on the early mediaeval architecture Ravenna that had been published in 1916 and written by Vojtech Birnbaum (1877-1934), a Czech art historian and a former student of the Vienna Institute of Art History.2 Birnbaum was concerned specifically with the question of origins, not only of the architecture of Ravenna but, more generally, of the early Christian basilicas and rotundas in Bohemia. For him the latter could be traced back to models in western Europe, namely, Italy, France and Germany.3Discussion of the consequences of his main thesis was delayed due to the effects of the First World War, but the debate was particularly heated in the setting of the newly formed state. The topic was nothing new, though, because in Bohemia, the different arguments on the origin of early medieval art had already been addressed by a number of art historians of Czech or German origin in the nineteenth century. The more famous dispute, however, took place in Vienna in reaction to Josef Strzygowski's book Orient oder Rom (Orient or Rome) published in 1901, which criticised Franz Wickhoff's view that early Christian art was a stylistic development of the art of Rome. Strzygowski had also argued against the assumption, promulgated by, amongst others, Wickhoff and Alois Riegl, that Near Eastern art was dependent on Greek and Roman culture.4 Following the ideas of Viennese teachers, Birnbaum opposed Strzygowski's claims, arguing instead that early Christian architectural forms, and not only those of Ravenna, could indeed trace their origins back to prototypes in Rome, that is, in western Europe, and not in the 'East.'This was not unilaterally accepted by all Czech scholars, however. To summarize the main points of the argument, Birnbaum's critics accused him of being 'Pragocentric/ prejudiced, and arrogant; above all, he was accused of using a 'German method.'5 The debate that his book provoked was typical of the situation both of Czech art history, and of the broader political and cultural context after the First World War. Specifically, one can read it as a symptom of the political environment of the newly created Czechoslovak democracy.This article examines the debate prompted by Birnbaum in the light of the broader transformations Czech art history was undergoing. In particular, it considers the continuing legacy of the Vienna School of art history on the one hand and the political milieu of Czechoslovakia on the other. For the question 'East or West' was a topic of concern not only for art historians in Prague, but also for policy makers of the Czechoslovak state.Czechoslovakia and the CzechoslovaksThe Czechoslovak Republic was declared on 28 October 1918; its borders were confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 and its Constitution was adopted in February 1920. The new union of the two dominant national groups, the Czechs and Slovaks, was the result of relatively short negotiations between predominantly Czech representatives and the Entente powers held in the United States and in Paris during 1918. The initial discussions about the domestic composition of the state were marked by constant conflicts with the German and Magyar minorities in the proposed territories. These included attempts to establish German provinces within Bohemia and Moravia, a war between Romania and Hungary fought, in part, over Slovakia, and the redefining of Hungary's borders, ratified at the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, which ceded 'Upper Hungary' (Slovakia) to the new republic, leading to continued resentment and strong nationalistic sentiments in the region throughout the interwar period. …