Page 36 - Studio International - June 1973

brightly coloured pictures painted during patient and watchful intellectuality, more self- extent that they were almost empty. Non-
John's fatal illness. And Alena Kucerová is a control, a wider awareness and range of figurative paintings dated 1941 and 1942
somewhat similar case as well. It is knowledge than does the sophisticated art followed them closely. The ones from 1941
inappropriate to write at any length about the which is so widespread today. But it is a were a succession of greyish pictures whose
private fortunes of artists : suffice it to say that different intellectuality, one which makes no single subject is softly painted cubes or
for several years after she finished her studies attempt to conceive a model and then to test it parallelepipeds (which are in fact reductions
she led a very difficult life. Yet there is not a against reality. Quite the contrary, it derives of the human figure), and the 1942 group were
trace of this in her work. Quite the contrary, it from the naive spontaneity of our sojourn in the pencil, india-ink and water-colour lyrical
seems to have come from the hand of an existing world and leaves to intellectuality the abstractions (which originated as reductions of
artist who derives her pleasure from her task of accompanying, controlling, forming, landscapes). The former have no parallel; the
imagination and delights in playing with her informing and making clear-sighted that latter could be chronologically and stylistically
material. Alena Kucerová is a graphic artist spontaneous and naive activity. For neither compared with the calligraphics of Michaux,
and she has discovered her own special spontaneity and naivety alone, nor mere who at that time, however, was completely
technique. Since zinc or copper plates were too intellectuality and discipline can lead unknown.
expensive for her, she began to use ordinary civilization out of the labyrinth into which it None of these pictures was exhibited,
tinned plates which were considerably cheaper. has led itself. It has become lost precisely however, and for years to come Bostík's name
It was impossible, or extremely difficult, to because intellectuality and spontaneity have no longer appeared in the catalogues of any
engrave on them, and so it occurred to her to become so mutually exclusive, and therefore so Prague art shows. The painter continued to
perforate them and then to print or press the distorted, that their separation seems work and develop his ideas, but no one wanted
rough side of the plate on to paper. The original inevitable and permanent. We must try new to exhibit his pictures. They were undoubtedly
plate is in fact an haut-relief and the off-prints ways of being human, and art ought to lead us, or the product of a pure, painterly intuition, of
are bas-reliefs in paper. This technique freed at least point the way. It provides one of the few that highly intellectual spontaneity which is so
her at one stroke of everything superfluous and, opportunities in our time to overcome this typical of modern art, but because a theory for
more important, from everything she was ever schism between intellectuality and spontaneity. that type of abstraction did not yet exist there
taught. The form became most primitively Yet today, this immensely powerful civilization was no one who could explain them to the
clear and legible and even when she began swallows its own art as well, assigning it a public, to other artists, even to the painter
using colour she chose a very simple gradation place in its own huge schemata, confronting it himself. The abstraction of Fautrier, Bryen,
of full hues. For a short time she was influenced with the same intellectual and programmed Wols and others did not begin to appear in
by abstract art, but then she returned to her inhibitions as it does all activity, and thus it public until 1945-7, and the supporting terms
original figuration. Among the first of her new blocks art, preventing it from moving into `lyrical abstraction' and 'tachism' were coined in
graphics there were erotic subjects expressed untried and unknown fields, towards discoveries, 1947 and 1951 respectively. Along with it, the
with a cleanness and matter-of-factness which is that is, towards the lost or forgotten spaces of theory gradually developed, giving general
purely feminine, and the later themes were as life. There are books today which claim that currency to the efforts of a large number of
simple as the techniques used to express them : creativity can be programmed on punch-cards, artists who arrived at this new orientation just
people swimming, a sauna, children playing, an and there are those who believe that, to be as intuitively and just as privately as Batik.
airport, the landscape seen from a car, modern, art should be derived from theory, Bostík, however, lived in Prague and news of
forests and the animals in them. even that it should be the theory itself: art as its this new development, given the exceptional
I would say that this art, more than anything own model. What remains, then, is no longer situation at the time, did not reach here until the
else, is a challenge to our care-worn world: the anything needful, but rather sophisticated second half of the 1950's, and theoretical
groundless, irresponsible joy which carries it is amusement, a self-enclosed game which commentaries were even longer in arriving.
perhaps the only thing which can still save us. has no meaning outside itself. It is quite If Bostík's work could only have originated from
For this art is not from this world, or at least it is possible that without our noticing it, modern a rejection of all programmes and theories, then
not from what our civilization has made of it. art has already come to its end. it is also true that it required a programme and a
It comes from purer sources. Our civilization But what in fact is the importance of theories theory to ensure its further existence. At every
differs from others in what we term its and programmes to modern art ? What step, modern art in its modern world finds itself
rationalism and what is essentially an attempt to brought the group UB 12 together was in the midst of absolute estrangement, and
create intellectual models to explain and precisely a distrust of programmes, even those theory ought to create a kind of artificial climate
control the world. Even art succumbs to this which were or are obviously pressing. For this in which not only would the art become
fallacy and therefore it is usually considered reason, they have often been regarded as comprehensible to others, but also, and more
necessary to subject it to some preconceived conservatives in disguise. But programmes in important, the artist would be helped to find
programme, to some model of a work of art — modern art exist as the consequence of a himself, acquire confidence and go on. Bostík
whether it be socialist realism or some form of situation too complex to permit their mere never abandoned the convictions he had
abstract or conceptual art or anything else. acceptance or rejection. If the art of earlier expressed in 1941 and 1942, but his work from
The artist is bound either by the social times knew nothing of programmes and theories then on is only a groping indication of what it
obligations placed upon him, or by it was obviously because it did not require them. might have been — almost two whole decades,
sophisticated theories meant to guide his And if in the modern age they have become an from 1942 to 1962, is contained only in drawings,
activity as an artist. Certainly, art is neither a inseparable part of art, it can only be because sketches, and small pictures, often
neurotic monologue nor an explosion of purely they fulfil an important function. extraordinarily interesting, but lacking a firm
creative spontaneity. It is always addressed to In UB 12 there is a very interesting person sense of purpose. The fact that the artist was
others and it is always a highly intellectual whose work demonstrates both the uselessness unknown only made matters worse, for it
activity. But just as this social need for art is and the usefulness of artistic theories and meant that he could only devote himself to his
different from the usefulness of technology, so programmes : Václav Bostík. Batik created a work at odd times.
its intellectuality is different from the stir with his very first pictures, which he Thus Bostík did not begin to produce his
intellectuality of science. Even the feminine art exhibited in 1940 and 1941. They showed a proper work consistently until he was fifty.
of which we have spoken cannot come into distant relationship to impressionism, but at the Its basis still lies in that period of discovery in
being from merely irresponsible playfulness same time the pictures were built up using the early forties, a combination of
and joyousness: it requires perhaps far more abstract constructions of the image to such an impressionistic pantheism and intellectual
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