Art:
Gneuhs, Geoffrey
SCARS OF MODERNISM THE EVOLUTION OF CZECH ART Coinciding with the historic visit to this country of the poet-playwright-president of Czechoslovakia, aclav Havel, the Brooklyn Museum recently...
...Otto Gutfreund's (1889-1927) bronze sculpture "Anxiety" depicts a woman with arms crossed, clutching herself...
...Entitled "Czech Modernism: 1900-1945," the exhibition was organized and initially presented by the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston...
...Since Americans know so little about Czechoslovakia, let alone the history of Czech art, an opportunity for opening this world was lost...
...Today, you enter a cold, stark, concrete-floored lobby and gallery-lifeless and boring...
...experimentation was its creed...
...On the other hand, his "Dance of Salome," done after a short visit to Paris in 1910, is attractive and displays greater effort...
...Like Kupka, Preissig was interested in spiritual themes-nature, creation, and regeneration...
...SCARS OF MODERNISM THE EVOLUTION OF CZECH ART Coinciding with the historic visit to this country of the poet-playwright-president of Czechoslovakia, aclav Havel, the Brooklyn Museum recently presented (through May 7) the first exhibition of its kind in the U.S...
...Its influence is reflected here in Vachal's etchings and engravings for the book In Memoriam Marie Vdchalove...
...In 1938 Preissig joined the resistance and helped publish the anti-Fascist journal Into Action...
...It seems not only the Czechs have paid a price for modernism...
...Bohumil Kubista (1884-1918), a cubo-expressionist, is represented by his "Hypnotist"-gray and depressing-and his equally enlivening "Murder" and "The Hanged Man...
...Painted in 1908, it is Van Gogh-like in its composition and odd use of colors-mostly greens and blues-that creates a strikingly mysterious image...
...It is interesting for what it conveys of one facet of Czech cultural history...
...The self-portrait of Emil Filla (1882-1953) is one of the exhibit's more interesting paintings...
...Trained as a bookbinder, the illustrator Josef Vachal (1884-1969) had an interest in theosophy, the late nineteenth-century school of the occult based on the thought of such illuminati as Rudolph Steiner and Madame Blavatsky...
...Ingredients, no doubt, for anxiety as well...
...He was arrested in 1941, imprisoned in Dachau, and died there three years later, far away from the tranquil villages of Bohemia...
...By definition, modernism broke away from the past, from MEXICAN & AMERICAN principles, form, and standards...
...Somewhat more cheerful is Josef Sima's (1891 -1971) "Double Landscape: Thunderstorm," a painting which projects an absorbing "land of Narnia" quality...
...Geoffrey gneuhs Geoffrey Gneuhs, artist and writer, has visited Czechoslovakia frequently.vakia frequently...
...Instead, it made me think of my friend Martin and his fellow Czech artists in the postmodernist era of a free, democratic Czechoslovakia...
...It is an apt image for Czechoslovakia in the first half of this century: two world wars, nazism, and communism would indeed cause anxiety...
...I happen to have two small prints done by a Czech friend, Martin Fabik...
...They were a pleasure to see...
...One of the annoying aspects of this exhibition is its failure to provide historical background on the artists, their times, and their works...
...documenting the evolution of Czech art during the first half of the twentieth century...
...Frantisek Kupka's (1871 -1957) "Cosmic Spring I" is painted in oils in bright, swirling colors, as is his "Disks of Newton...
...Who was Marie Vachalove...
...The Brooklyn Museum itself bears the scars of modernism...
...It includes over 100 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by thirteen Czech artists...
...For the greater parts of their careers, these artists worked in Prague, creating a uniquely Czech expression of modernism...
...He is especially remembered for his experiments in print-making and his collaboration with the graphic artist Alfons Mucha...
...His unusual "The Beginning of Life," part of his series "The Voices of Silence," depicts a human fetus, connected by its umbilical cord, emerging from the blossom of a lily pad...
...We are not told...
...If anything, this exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum should have made me think of the harsh history of the modernist era...
...Kupka was also a craftsman who worked in wood...
...and "Evening," ink and gouache on board depicting a village beyond a stream...
...Under the Communist dictatorship he was unable to exhibit or sell his works, as he was not a member of the Communist party...
...Apparently, it was a disastrous night of love...
...Filla's "The Night of Love" is of poor quality and lacks any sense of effort or ability...
...Like Kupka, Vojtech Preissig (1873-1944) was an experimenter who moved beyond the influences of symbolism and art nouveau that held sway at the turn of the century...
...But in the 1930s, at the height of modernism, its grand staircase and entrance were destroyed by some elite who thought they had the right to impose their modernist proclivities on the grand building...
...Yet, it does not have the same compelling directness of a Van Gogh portrait...
...The exhibit is a mixed bag, often bleak, if not claustrophobic...
...On view here are two charming pieces: "Landscape," an etching of cottages in the distance with tall, slender trees in the foreground...
...Designed in 1893 by the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, it was created in the classical style...
...But Gutfreund's sculpture says something about modernism itself...
...On display here are twenty-five of his fine woodcuts from the series "Four Stories in White and Black...
Vol. 117 • June 1990 • No. 11
