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Avant-Garde Anachronisms: Prague's Group of Fine Artists and Viennese Art Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Naomi Hume
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Abstract

The Czech Group of Fine Artists published their journal, Umělecký měsíčník (Art Monthly, 1911-1914) to justify their abstraction and their interest in French cubism in response to criticism that denigrated their work as incomprehensible and foreign. In this article, Naomi Hume argues that the Group's strategy was fundamentally at odds with how avantgardes have been understood to operate in scholarship on modernism. Rather than asserting a break with the past, the Group applied new Viennese art historical approaches—particularly those of Alois Riegl, Max Dvořák, and Vincenc Kramář—to draw parallels between their work and prior art objects that departed from mimesis. They equated their radical style with what Riegl called anachronisms in art's development, moments when an independent will to form emerges from the mainstream. By bringing French cubist ideas into dialogue with the inherent spirituality of their own national tradition, the Group saw themselves as reinvigorating Czech art.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , Fall 2012 , pp. 516 - 545
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2012

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References

Research for this article was supported by a College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Research Fellowship from Seattle University. Earlier versions were presented at the conference, “The Vienna School and Its Legacy,” at the British Academy and at the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies Conference at Ghent University. I am grateful to audiences at these venues as well as participants at the Czech Cultural Studies workshop for their feedback. I would also like to thank Sabine Wieber, Slavic Reviews, anonymous reviewers, and editor Mark D. Steinberg for valuable comments and suggestions.

1. Mádl, Karel B., “Two Exhibitions,” trans, unattributed, Umělecké sdružení Sursum 1910-1912 (Prague, 1996), 263-64.Google Scholar Originally published in Zlatá Praha 30, no. 7 (October 1912): 83.

2. The first volume was published monthly from October 1911 until September 1912. The second volume began publication in fall 1912, but the twelve issues were published irregularly, sometimes as double issues, until at least March 1914. The third volume likely began in April 1914 and included only two issues, ending publication in June 1914. Jiří Šedík, ed., Otto Gutfreund: Zázemí tvorby (Prague, 1989), 152-57.

3. F. X. Harlas, “Rozhledy po umění výtvarném,” Osvěta (1912): 780-84. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

4. In 1921, painter and Group member Václav Špála recalled that the Group's room at the back of the exhibition with Mánes andjednota had been referred to as the “Lachkabinet“ in his notes for an article, ‘Jak to bylo” intended for Veraikon, 1921, vol. 8. Transcription of Špála's notes, 1910-12, National Gallery Archives, Zbraslav, Fond Lev Nerad a Rudolf Rysaní (Collection of letters and other materials from 1908-1941). One satirical response even accused the group of “looking things up in some French magazine.” [Josef Skružný], “Původní zprávy Venouška Dolejše: Výstava obrazův Representačním domě,“ Humoristické listy 55, no. 5 (19 January 1912): 57.

5. These art historians all taught at the Kunsthistorisches Institut at Vienna University in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, along with a number of other scholars, have come to be known as the “Vienna School” of art history. Bakos, Ján, “The Vienna School's Hundred and Sixty-eighth Graduate: The Vienna School's Ideas Revised by E. H. Gombrich,” in Woodfield, Richard, ed., Gombrich on Art and Psychology (Manchester, Eng., 1996), 234.Google Scholar

6. Clegg, Elizabeth, Art Design and Architecture in Central Europe 1890-1920 (New Haven, 2006)Google Scholar; Piotrowski, Piotr, “Modernity and Nationalism: Avant-Garde Art and Polish Independence, 1912-22,” in Benson, Timothy O., ed., Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-30 (Boston, 2002).Google Scholar

7. Gutfreund, Otto, “Dvě poznámky o Donatellovi,” Umělecký měsičník 2, no. 4-5 (ca. May 1913): 137.Google Scholar

8. In his theoretical writings, Filla praised Pablo Picasso and denigrated the more popularly visible artists who showed their cubist works in the Parisian salons, even though the latter, especially Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, and Roger de la Fresnaye, incorporated narrative and symbolism into their work as did the Czech artists. These so-called Salon cubists tended to be left out of canonical histories of cubism until the 1980s.

9. Volavkova, Zdenka, “La Revue mensuelle des Arts’ de Prague,” in Brion-Guerry, Liliane, ed., L'Année 1913: Les formes esthétiques de l'oeuvre d'art à la veille de la première guerre mondiale (Paris, 1971), 991 Google Scholar; Padrta, Jiří, Osma a Skupina výtvarných umělců: Teorie, kritika, polemika (Prague, 1992)Google Scholar; Doubravová, Jarmila, “Umělecký měsíčník a hudba,” in Pomajzlová, Alena, ed., Expressionismus a české umění (Prague, 1994), 147-48Google Scholar; Lahoda, Vojtěch, “Moderní revue a Umělecký meěícník: K proměně ‘duchové povahy doby,'” Moderní revue, 1894-1925 (Prague, 1995), 103-11Google Scholar; and Lahoda, , Český kubismus (Prague, 1996), 49–51 Google Scholar; Lloyd, Jill, German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (New Haven, 1991), 51.Google Scholar

10. Hofman, Vlastislav, “Duch moderní tvorby v architektuře,” Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 5 (February 1912): 127.Google Scholar

11. Beneš, Vincenc, “Čin Paula Cézanna,” Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 9 (June 1912): 261.Google Scholar

12. Piotr Piotrowski and Andrzej Turowski discuss Polish examples. Piotrowski, , “Modernity and Nationalism,” 315-17. Piotrowski cites both Turowski, “Czym byt kubizm w Polsce,” in Awandgardowe marginesy (Warsaw, 1998), 59 Google Scholar, and Łukaszewicz, P and Malinowski, J., eds., Ekspresjonizm w sztuce Polskiej (Wroclaw, 1980), 7–11.Google Scholar

13. Anonymous [probably Josef Čapek], “Odpověd,” Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 2 (November 1912): n.p. [after 58]. Josef Čapek edited the first six issues of the first volume of Art Monthly.

14. Jas’ Elsner, “The Birth of Late Antiquity: Riegl and Strzygowski in 1901,” Art History 25, no. 3 (June 2002): 358; Mosche Barasch, Modern Theories of Art, 2: From Impressionism to Kandinsky (New York, 1990), 149.

15. Bakos, “The Vienna School's Hundred and Sixty-eighth Graduate,” 234-35.

16. Clegg, , Art Design and Architecture in Central Europe, 26.Google Scholar

17. Srp, Karel, “Art on a Different Basis,” in Vincenc Kramář: From Old Masters to Picasso (Prague, 2000), 130.Google Scholar

18. Švácha, Rostislav, The Pyramid, the Prism and the Arc: Czech Cubist Architecture, 1911-23 (Prague, 2000), 34 Google Scholar; Vlček, Tomáš, “Art between Social Crisis and Utopia: The Czech Contribution to the Development of the Avant-Garde Movement in East-Central Europe, 1910-30,” Art Journal, 49 no. 1 (Spring 1990): 28, 35.Google Scholar

19. Hlobil, Ivo, “The Reception and First Criticism of Alois Riegl in the Protection of Historical Monuments,” Framing Formalism: Riegl's Work (Amsterdam, 2001), 184 Google Scholar; Janák, Pavel, “Moderní regulace a regulace Malé Strany,” Styl: Měsičník pro architekturu, umělecké řemeslo a úpravu měst 1, no. 1 (1908): 155-59Google Scholar; Riegl, Alois, Der moderne Denkmalkultus: Sein Wesen und seine Entstehung (Vienna, 1903).Google Scholar

20. Worringer's status as part of the Vienna School is contested, but his work was widely influential. His dissertation, Abstraktion und Einfühlung, was published in a private edition in 1907 and in a trade edition in 1908. Hilton Kramer, “Introduction,” in Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, trans. Michael Bullock (Chicago, 1997), vii. Václav Štech wrote his book in 1909-10 in response to Worringer's Abstraction and Empathy (1908). Štech, “Předmluva,” O Projevu výtuarnou formu (Prague, 1915), v. Jiří Šetlík discusses the Group's plans to publish the book, the publication's delay, and its 1915 publication by Laichter in “Skupina výtvarných umělců: jeho historie a význam“(PhD diss., Ústav dějin umění, 1963), 73.

21. Kramář graduated in 1902. Pavla Sadílková and Lada Hubatová-Vacková, “Chronology,“ in Vincenc Kramář, 217.

22. Kramář, Vincenc, “O Videňské škole dějin umění,” Volné směry 14, nos. 1-5 (1910): 41–43, 75-78, 110-12, 170-74, 209-10Google Scholar; Lahoda, Vojtěch, Emil Filla (Prague, 2007), 664.Google Scholar Lahoda cites a letter from Filla in Prague to Procházka in Ostrava, 19 February 1911, referred to in Marcela Macharácková and Lubomír Slavíček, eds., Antonín Procházka, 1882-1945 (Brno, 2002), 256-57.

23. Kramář, Vincenc, “Kapitola o-ismech: K výstavě Le Fauconnierově v Mnichově“ and “Picassovy výstavy v r. 1913,” Umělecký měsíčník2, no. 4 - 5 (ca. February 1913): 115-30 and 142-43.Google Scholar

24. See, for example, Lahoda, Český kubismus, 49-51, and Lloyd, German Expressionism, 51. It is not known whether Kandinskii and Marc knew of Art Monthly as they planned their almanac. They also intended to produce a serial publication, but only one volume was published.

25. Barasch, Modern Theories of Art, 2 149; Neil H. Donohue, “Introduction,” Invisible Cathedrals: The Expressionist Art History of Wilhelm Worringer (University Park, 1995), 2-3; Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, 51, 78, 106.

26. Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, 4.

27. Ibid., 15.

28. Ibid.

29. Čapek, Josef, “Kandinsky: Über das Geistige in der Kunst,” Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 9 (May 1912): 269-70.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., 270.

31. Beneš, “Čin Paula Cézanna,” 262.

32. Tietze, Hans, “Der Blaue Reiter,” Die Kunst für Alle 27 (1911-12): 543.Google Scholar Cited in Klaus Lankheit, “A History of the Almanac,” in Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac, new documentary edition, ed. Klaus Lankheit (New York, 1989), 44.

33. Hofman, “Duch moderní tvorby v architektuře,” 127.

34. Ibid.

35. Beneš, “Čin Paula Cézanna,” 261.

36. Alois Riegl, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,” trans. Benjamin Binstock, October 74 (1995): 4.

37. Janák, Pavel, “Výjimky ve vývoji,” Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 8 (May 1912): 237-38.Google Scholar Pavel Janák was visual art editor and Frantisek Langer edited the texts in the journal from April 1912 on.

38. Wood, Christopher S., introduction to Riegl, Alois, “The Place of the Vapheio Cups in the History of Art,” in Wood, Christopher S., trans, and ed., The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s (New York, 2000), 104.Google Scholar An excerpt from the first chapter was published posthumously in 1906: Alois Riegl, “Zur Kunsthistorischen Stellung der Becher von Vapheio,” Jahreshefte des oesterreichischen Instituts 9 (1906): 1-19.

39. For illustrations of the Vapheio Cups, see Wood, trans, and ed., Vienna School Reader, figures 2.1 and 2.2.

40. Riegl, “Place of the Vapheio Cups in the History of Art,” 111.

41. Vincenc Kramář, Kubismus (Brno, 1921). Filla thanked Kramář for his “precise knowledge and information about the whole [cubist] movement [which has] clarified our foggy impression.” Emil Filla, letter to Vincenc Kramář, 22 October 1911, National Gallery Archive, V. Kramář collection, inventory no. AA 2945/133 (Vincenc Kramář correspondence 1900-1960). Lahoda cites this letter in “On the History of the Search for a Czech Picasso, Bringing Warmth to Cubism: Vincenc Kramář and Emil Filla,” in Vincenc Kramář, 139.

42. Srp, “Art on a Different Basis,” 130.

43. Kramář, Vincenc, “Abstraktnost a věcnost současného umění,” Volné směry 28 (1930-31): 212.Google Scholar Cited in Srp, “Art on a Different Basis,” 131.

44. Janák, “Výjimky ve vývoji,” 237.

45. Ibid., 237-38. Emphasis in the original.

46. Ibid., 238.

47. Holly, Michael Ann, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History (Ithaca, 1984), 69–96.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., 70-71.

49. V. V. Štech, “HedviČina sklenice, Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 8 (May 1912): 238.

50. Štech wrote the book in 1909-10. Štech, “Předmluva,” v.

51. Riegl, “Place of the Vapheio Cups in the History of Art,” 119.

52. Kemp, Wolfgang, “Introduction,” to Riegl, , The Group Portraiture of Holland, trans. Kain, Evelyn M. and Britt, David (Los Angeles, 1999), 8 and 16Google Scholar; Riegl, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,” 24.

53. Wood, introduction to Riegl, “Place of the Vapheio Cups in the History of Art,” 104.

54. Dvořák, Max, “Von Manes zu Švabinský,“ Die Graphischen Künste, vol. 27 (1904): 31.Google Scholar

55. Riegl, Alois, “On the Modern Cult of Monuments,” Oppositions 25 (1982): 22.Google Scholar

56. Elsner, “Birth of Late Antiquity,” 362.

57. Riegl, “On the Modern Cult of Monuments,” 23.

58. Štech, “HedviČina sklenice,” 238.

59. Riegl, “Place of the Vapheio Cups in the History of Art,“109.

60. Štech, “HedviČina sklenice,” 238.

61. Kurt W. Forster and Diane Ghirardo, “Translators’ Note,” to Riegl, “On the Modern Cult of Monuments,” 50-51.

62. Riegl, “On the Modern Cult of Monuments,” 22.

63. Christopher Wood, “Introduction,” in Wood, trans, and ed., Vienna School Reader, 27.

64. Riegl, “Place of the Vapheio Cups in Art History,” 106.

65. Ibid., 117. Emphasis in the original.

66. Schmidt, Robert, “Die Hedwigsgläser und die verwandten fatimidischen Glas und Kristall-Schnittarbeiten,” Schlesiens Vorzeit in Bild und Schrift (1912): 53–78.Google Scholar The image in Umělecký měsíčník is very likely reproduced from page 55 of this article.

67. Riegl, “Place of the Vapheio Cups in Art History,” 118.

68. Umělecký měsíčníkl, no. 11-12 (ca. August 1912): n.p.; Riegl, “Place of the Vapheio Cups in Art History,” 119.

69. The African head is labeled “Madagascar” in Umělecký měsíčník, but it is a Fang funerary carving from Gabon. See Louis Perrois, Fang, (Milan, 2006), 128. The sculpture is currently in the collection of the Musée Dapper, Paris.

70. Vojtěch Lahoda, “The Primal Head: Picasso's Head of Fernande (1909) from Vincenc Kramář's Collection, and Czech Cubism,” Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague, nos. 3 - 4 (1993-94): 94.

71. Weiss, Jeffrey S., Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier (Washington, D.C., 2004), 11.Google Scholar Weiss quotes Roland Penrose, The Sculpture of Picasso (New York, 1967), 19.

72. On the history of photographs of Picasso's Head, see Weiss, Picasso, 17. The photographs in Umělecký měsíčník were likely dealer photographs sent to Kramář. Pavel Janák drafted a letter to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in 1912 to request reproduction rights. Pavel Janák, Deníky, 1912. Archive of the National Technical Museum, Prague (Collection of Janák's journals).

73. Weiss, Picasso, 20-21. Weiss cites Charles Baudelaire, “Pourquoi la sculture est ennuyeuse,” in Baudelaire, Curiosités esthétiques (Paris, 1923), 187-88, and Adolf von Hildebrand, The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture (New York, 1907).

74. Gutfreund, “Dvě poznámky o Donatellovi,” 137.

75. Weiss, Picasso, 12.

76. Ibid., 15.

77. Lahoda, “The Primal Head,” 94-95.

78. Beneš, Vincenc, “Nové Umění,” Uměkcký měsíčník 2, no. 6-7 (after June 1913): 176-87.Google Scholar

79. Vincenc Beneš, “Nové umění pro Nového člověka,” Skupina výtvarných umělců, 3. výstava, Obecní dům města Prahy, květen-červen 1913 (Prague, 1913), not paginated.

80. Beneš, “Nové Umění,” 176-87.

81. Janák, Deníky, 1912. Archive of the National Technical Museum, Prague.

82. Riegl, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,” 19.

83. Max Dvořák, “Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder van Eyck,” cited in Kramář, “O Videňiské škole,” 209.

84. Elsner, “Birth of Late Antiquity,” 360.

85. Ibid., 359; Suzanne L. Marchand, “The Rhetoric of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical Humanism: The Case of Josef Strzygowski,” History and Theory 33, no. 4 (December 1994): 115.

86. Elsner, “Birth of Late Antiquity,” 372; Marchand, “Rhetoric of Artifacts,” 127.

87. [Skružný], “Původní zprávy Venouška Dolejše,” 57.

88. Michael Scholz-Hänsel, El Greco, Domenikos Theotokopoulos 1541-1614 (London, 2006), 90;Julius Meier-Graefe, “Das Barock Grecos,” Kunst und KünstlerlO (1911): 78-94.

89. F. X. Harlas, “Umělecký měsíčník,” Národní politika, December 1911 (no page number on clipping), from Památník národního písemnictví, Prague, Jan Thon Fond, Výstřížky týkajíci se výtvarného Umění (Clippings relating to fine art).

90. “Our era does not want to accept Greco whole, but rather … only that which one needs.” Filla, “Domenico Theotocópuli, el Greco,” Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 1 (September 1911): 7.

91. Ibid., 5.

92. Franz Marc, “Spiritual Treasures,” in Kandinsky and Marc, eds., The Blaue Reiter Almanac, 59. Emphasis in the original.

93. Dvořák conceived of mannerism as “an all-embraČing style and a symptom of the spiritual crisis of the age.” Bakos, “The Vienna School's Hundred and Sixty-eighth Graduate,” 237. By contrast, Filla “considered [El] Greco an artist who proceeded from the Middle Ages direcdy to baroque art.” Karel Srp, “Domenico Theotocópuli El Greco,“ Umění38 (1990): 520. Dvořák, Max, “On El Greco and Mannerism,” trans. Hardy, John, in Schiff, Gert, ed., German Essays on Art History (New York, 1988), 191.Google Scholar Originally published as Dvořák, “Über Greco und den Manierismus,” in Karl M. Swoboda and Johannes Wilde, eds., Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur Abendldndischen Kunstentxvicklung (Munich, 1924).

94. The essay on El Greco “is in actual fact the manuscript of a lecture given in October 1920 at the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry.” Gert Schiff, “Introduction,” in Schiff, ed., GermanEssays on Art History, li. Dvořák's published writings commonly stemmed from ideas in lectures developed over years. Karl Maria Swoboda, “Preface,” to Max Dvořák, Idealism and Naturalism in Gothic Art, trans. Randolf J. Klawiter (Notre Dame, 1967), xxiv. It is likely that Dvořák's thoughts on El Greco were familiar to Kramář long before the 1920s and diat Kramář would have discussed them with members of the Group.

95. Dvořák, “On El Greco and Mannerism,” 200, 203, 205.

96. Ibid., 205.

97. Ibid.

98. Kramář, Vincenc, “Domenico Theotocópuli El Greco: Příspěvek k popsání podstaty a historického významu jeho Umění,” UměníS8 (1990): 511-19.Google Scholar The article was composed in 1937 or 1938 but never published in Kramář's lifetime.

99. Srp, “Domenico Theotocópuli El Greco,” 519-20.

100. [Skružný], “Původní zprávy Venouška Dolejše,” 57.

101. Alois Riegl, “Das holländische Gruppenporträt,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 23, pt. 1 (1902): 71-278; Max Dvořák, “Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder van Eyck,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 24, pt. 1 (1903): 161-317.

102. Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, 64.

103. Riegl, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,” 19.

104. Ibid.

105. Dvořák, “Das Rätsel der Kunst der Brüder van Eyck,” cited in Kramář, “O Videňské škole,” 209.

106. Janák, Pavel, “Hranol a pyramida,” Umělecký měsíčník 1, no. 6 (March 1912): 162-70.Google Scholar Translated by Alexandra Buchler as “The Prism and the Pyramid,” in Timothy O. Benson and Éva Forgács, eds., Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930 (Los Angeles, 2002), 86-91. Where I have modified Büchler's translation, I cite both translation and original.

107. Janák, “The Prism and the Pyramid,” 86-87; Janák, “Hranol a pyramida,” 163.

108. Janák, “The Prism and the Pyramid,” 86-87;Janák, “Hranol a pyramida,” 163.

109. Janák, “Hranol a pyramida,” 163.

110. Janák, “The Prism and the Pyramid,” 88.

111. Ibid., 89.

112. Ibid., 88.

113. Beneš, “Čin Paula Cézanna,” 261.

114. Riegl, “Excerpts from The Dutch Group Portrait,” 4.

115. Beneš, “Čin Paula Cézanna,” 260.

116. Gutfreund, “Dve poznamky o Donatellovi,” 137.

117. Beneš, “Čin Paula Cézanna,” 261.