Page 28 - Studio International - June 1971

In the last two decades contemporary art has systems interfere with each other and all of graveyard, and regretted that the sculptor had
fallen victim to commercialization. But what is them are equally valid. The meaning of the abandoned his previous style. The reaction is
the situation in a country where this has not picture lies in the dissimilarity of these systems, symptomatic. Palcr did figures stylized in
happened? in the gap between them, in a different possibility abstract stelae with undulating outlines and
In Czechoslovakia there are no collectors or which the viewer alone can form. gently modelled surfaces. But over the years
dealers or speculators in modern art. It is At the same time the pálova Gallery (which these sculptures, confined in his studio,
common enough to have pictures on one's until recently showed work by avant-garde and increased in number and began to live a life of
walls, but this is in general a conventional experimental artists—today there is no gallery their own. The sculptor divided them, joined
interest; exceptions—an interest in experimental of this kind in Czechoslovakia) showed along them together again, and created different
work, for example—are rare. In the past few with Kopecký work by Václav Cigler, who beings, further and further removed from the
years, virtually only public galleries have bought demonstrates an equally unreasonable original figural stimulus. What he subsequently
works by modern artists, and this has hardly meticulousness. Cigler produces sculptures cut exhibited proved something of a shock. White
been sufficient to provide the artists with a from optical glass, executed entirely by himself. shapes, sometimes straining upwards, sometimes
living. Very few have found collectors abroad; Anyone who knows how glass is worked on the crouching, sometimes freely reclining; very
an artist 'usually makes his living from grinder's wheel will appreciate the effort simple, unobtrusive, and yet genuinely
commissioned decorative work, illustrating, involved when the rough block weighs up to terrifying. As they slowly come to life through
book designing, posters, restoration of old sixty-five pounds and the sculpture itself organic growth, through division, association,
works of art, small grants, or some non-artistic during the final polishing weighs up to fifty multiplication, they become an image of
work. pounds. One could almost call it a form of nature's unseen life—graceful, cruel, inhuman.
Under these circumstances it is surprising asceticism, a sacrifice of such exceptional effort Not even in the exhibition did they become
that the number of practicing artists has not that the artist seems determined to remain just statues. They were not completed and
declined; on the contrary, there are even more isolated and obscure. Cigler's work, unique probably never will be.
artists than before the last war. Almost all the even from the point of view of the glass-maker's n Plisková's exhibition in the
trends well known in the rest of the world can craft, has quite different intentions. His glass pálova Gallery was a surprise of a different
be found here, but this is not imitation. If sculptures can be regarded as a kind of minimal kind. A graphic artist, she produced refined,
modern Czechoslovak art resembles current art, but the emphasis is on contrast of shapes, precise and manneristically cruel compositions;
styles elsewhere, this is because the problems of and the light which fills them concentrates in then she began to treat them ironically,
contemporary art are the same everywhere. them, refracts, scintillates : the artificial and presenting her etchings and dry-points as
Yet the atmosphere in which this art arises, the natural here condition each other, pervade cut-outs for children; finally, she drastically
that which it creates, is unique. and identify with each other. And Cigler moves simplified their content—one of her most
What first strikes one is that here the work on from here. He makes parts of the surface recent pictures is a glass beer mug faithfully
itself is gaining significance. The care the artist reflect, then substitutes pure mercury for the represented and reproduced six times in a
devotes to his work is remarkable. Much mercury amalgam, and places it inside the glass comic serial, gradually emptying, and, in the
graphic work is produced, usually with great so that it pulsates. Glass by itself is frozen last frame, refilled once again. She also designed,
craftsmanship and painstaking exactness; often fluid: a short step from here to flowing water. had cast and placed in the centre of her
one plate will take weeks of work. Paintings There are plans for static barriers on moving exhibition three huge ordinary metal soup
are given the same care. At a recent exhibition water, for furrows in solid earth filled with spoons six feet long, and from them served
of Vladimir Kopecký's work (in the Špálova water so that somebody walking across them visitors to the gallery with goulash, a common
Gallery) there were a number of large pictures would have to avoid them or step over them dish in Prague beer halls. The data in the
where extensive areas were executed by pencil and through the movements of his body would catalogue about the material read with
hatching. This is a technique which Sol perceive the work. Another possibility is to appropriate exactness : 'aluminium, stainless
LeWitt too has used, but LeWitt's hatching substitute natural light for artificial. Cigler steel, stewing beef, onion, fat, sweet paprika,
lines are sporadic and are often done by his wants to install neon tubes, luminous furrows potatoes, tomato paste, salt'. Pliaková mocks
assistants, while Kopecký himself traced the and markers in the landscape, coloured lights the outside world and gallery visitors alike with
lines carefully with a ruler, creating a grey spurting out of an opening in the earth, walls the cool cruelty of her style. Yet this cruelty is
surface sparkling with graphite. In one of these of light. Finally, he dreams of work created not her final meaning. The formal care she
pictures there are more than 400,00o such only from immaterial force fields, through gives to her work suggests something suppressed.
lines in one of these pictures, and in others which a person could move and which in turn Opposite graphics of the Mona Lisa in curlers
there are almost as many. But this is only a would move through him. stood a statue of Mona Lisa prepared for
technical detail for Kopecky. For the conception Art has outgrown the gallery even though it casting, a clumsy, angular shape, with only the
is unusual. The cold, geometrical principles remains within it. The restful room designed crossed hands uncovered—an irony which is not
whereby he constructs the picture are at for showing and selling pictures and sculptures just irony.
variance with the dynamics of the idea; the suddenly becomes a very disturbing room. It Ladislav Novak, a well-known poet and
strict perspective contradicts the flatness of the remains in the centre of the city, in the heart of artist, has come up with another conception of
bare, patterned linoleum which he uses as a everyday life, but the connecting link has an 'exhibition' : a demonstration of 'zoological
foundation and background: the space isn't in disappeared; there is no longer anything for art'. It was to have been presented in Špálova
space. Even those areas of hatching have no sale, nor anything to be marvelled at, nor Gallery but was never realized. This is the
other function. They contrast with the exact anything useful and instructive. An exhibition proposal, which the artist offers to any gallery:
coats of colour and the freely painted areas, is no longer a social occasion—there is nothing `Swarming. Dig up a large ant-hill in the woods,
just as the whole of that elaborate and refined to explain or excuse the exhibition. Whoever put it into a polythene sack, seal it and the
work is in abrupt disharmony with the clumsy enters the gallery steps out of everyday time same day transport it to the gallery, whose walls
crudeness of the design and the textures of the and space into a time and space originating in must be white. Beforehand, coat all doorways
linoleum base. These are not just contradictions, different experience. The visitor is confused. leading into the room with a solution of DDT,
however. It is impossible to suspend them, to Zdenèk Palcr's exhibition in Nova Sin (New thus creating an invisible, but, for the ants,
offset them, to annul them. They are absurd Hall) was described in one newspaper review as impassable barrier. Then dump the ant-hill on
paradoxes. The internal unity of the image has `morbid' and 'pessimistic'. The reviewer saw in the floor in front of the main wall of the room
been systematically broken. Different plastic his dazzling white sculpture something of the and cover it with a low platform, which should