Page 44 - Studio International - June 1972

of art as something strictly set apart from the Smidras. Smidra is the traditional comic
rest of the world, a cultivated object, policeman in Czech puppet theatre. The
elaborately finished and materially valuable. Smidras held private exhibitions, cabaret
The constructivist protest was an attempt to concerts, theatrical performances; they wrote
break through this passivity and to make art an collective prose, made films, and they also
activity. had a brass band. At the beginning it might
Some years ago Karel Malich began with have seemed like normal student amusement.
lyrical abstraction which was in reality a But in fact it was the beginning of a new
schemata of landscapes, and although today he orientation in Czech art, which we have called
makes constructions of metal, glass and Surrealist-Dada. Two factors were important
plastic, he remains fundamentally a landscape here : in the first place the principle of the game,
artist. From the outset, he considered landscape carried through consistently with its intellectual
as the tension and transformation of physical distance from the given reality; and
forces; and likewise now he sees his secondly an equally consistent descent into the
constructions as dynamic space created by realm of 'urban folklore'. It was no coincidence
invisible forces. 'I would like to make sculptures that the Smidras' first enterprise, a combination
in air-currents, coloured environments, concert, cabaret and exhibition in the
under-sea currents, winds and storms', he says ; winter of 1954, included the performance of
it should be an architecture or rather a a composition by three young musicians, called
meta-architecture which would be 'an Eine Kleine Dadamusik. Like the Dadaists,
understanding of the elements and these young artists as well were reacting against
cooperation with them.' I think that would be the following years he created his sculptures the gravity of their time with frivolity and, like
Cezanne's problem were he alive today. At the chiefly of chrome-plated geometrical bodies, the Dadaists, they deliberately separated
present time, Malich has an exhibition in the mainly spheres and hemispheres. The themselves from 'high culture'.
provincial museum in Louny. In recent years ultimate significance of the sculptures was By the sixties, all that remained of the
his works have consisted of pieces which are once again not in their obvious shape; this time Smidras was a group of three artists, Dlouhy,
half sculptures and half fantastic projects for it was in the immaterial and serially repeated Nepras and Vozniak, who would occasionally
architectonic landscapes. In his most recent space in the reflections. Recently he has been exhibit together. But about that time, from
work he has got rid of this irresolution. The occupied with structures that arise when the same circle of artists and from the same
objects are still decidedly sculptures, but sculptural elements are thrown into the air: need to play, or rather to play at playing, arose
sculptures in which he has been able to work not the almost uncapturable configurations at the Paleta Vlasti. They decided, this time with
with three-dimensional material, but with moment they overcome gravity. Like Malich, some young film-makers, to found a sports team
non-Euclidian four-dimensional space. Demartini's sculptures move into meta- and hockey was chosen, simply because the
Matter is present as the aspect of energy architecture : he speaks of the dematerialization hockey-player's gear seemed to them the most
which creates space. of sculptures, of space formed by music, light, picturesque and playing hockey the most
Hugo Demartini's Constructivism is no smells, colours, temperature. The important absurd thing they could think of. They thought
more orthodox. Fifteen years ago he began to thing, he adds, is the quality of the artist's up a grotesque name for their club which
make his 'imprisoned sculptures' as he called idea, and not the quality of the thing he creates. evoked the naivity of Czech nationalist
them in which abstract sculptures constructed Constructivist materialism becomes conceptual associations of the last century. A game
of welded metal plates were at the same time immateriality. wouldn't be a game if it weren't taken seriously,
boxes inside which other sculptures were Conceptual art itself is today developing into and so after a time they managed to arrange
enclosed and thus made forever invisible. In a kind of esoteric doctrine; the differing matches with real sports clubs. Recently they
conditions in Czechoslovakia lead elsewhere. decided to form a brass band and they also
The museum in Louny, already mentioned, began to put on amateur theatrical
specializes in Czech Constructivism. In the performances. Their wives and girl-friends
autumn of 1971 it arranged a small exhibition even went so far as to dance Swan Lake.
for Demartini and, as the invitations indicated, With their hockey, their amateur theatre,
the brass band of Paleta Vlasti (Palette of the and their brass band, Paleta Vlasti, like the
Homeland) was to take part in the opening. Smidras before them, have made themselves a
The guests were invited to a hall in a nearby part of 'urban folklore' (and sometimes even of
village inn. The inn was well-supplied with rural folklore). It is not persiflage; for them it
good beer and sausages and the band which is a refuge where they feel safe from present-day
everyone had been waiting for performed on `high culture' with its falsified values and its
stage. It was a septet of painters, sculptors, false life. It is not easy, however, to preserve
graphic artists and architects, among them the integrity of this game. Perhaps it is not even
Hugo Demartini on the drums and cymbals and possible. It does not seek to belong to the culture
Bedrich Dlouhy, whom we have already of educated people, but in fact it does not
mentioned, on the trombone. I must admit that belong to popular culture either. How does one
I don't like beer, country inns, or even brass go on from here ?
bands. But then where did that feeling of Not long after the opening of Hugo
freedom suddenly come from, a freedom which Demartini's exhibition, Paleta Vlasti put on an
everyone felt, joyful, undeniable, certain. amateur theatrical performance. Once again,
The prehistory of Paleta Vlasti begins they kept to the example of popular subculture.
almost twenty years ago with a group of painters They chose a banal dramatization of The
and musicians, at that time still students in Count of Monte Cristo. Dlouhy played the
their various art schools. They gave themselves title role and Demartini played Danglars.
a grotesque and untranslatable name— They made themselves elaborate costumes and

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