Page 38 - Studio International - June 1973

perform these customs properly. One of the
most striking of these had to do with the
`pánca' — a huge red phallus filled with several
litres of borovicka (a variety of gin). The
purpose of this object, carried in the wedding
procession, was to 'soften up the bride', and
when they reached the country restaurant where
a large wedding feast had been prepared, the
upraised 'pánca' was tipped so that the bride
and groom and the wedding guests could drink
from it. Several of Mlynárcik's friends from far
away came as well, and the ceremonial speech
was delivered by Pierre Restany. Before the
banquet, the newlyweds received wedding gifts
from Kosice, Bertini, Chryssa, and many
others. The wedding was concluded with
fireworks at night. 'Eva's Wedding,' wrote
Mlynárcik in his invitation, 'is both in form and
content a natural social gesture. It is a celebration
of life and joy, hope and love. At the same time,
it becomes a manifestation of the international
nature of artistic creation and cooperation.'
The entire event cost Mlynárcik the equivalent
of a monumental cast bronze sculpture.
Artistic attempts to restitute festive holidays
are understandable. Our civilization is the first
one ever which does not acknowledge 'holy
days', and divides time into 'work-days' and
`weekends', and human activity into 'labour' and
'recreation'. But art, while it belongs essentially
to festivals or 'holy days', has nothing to do
with 'recreation'. Festivity and recreation may
often appear, from their external similarity, to be
interchangeable terms. On 'holy days', everyday
work is forbidden, and recreation is meant, for a
time, to free man from his daily labour. But the
forbidding of work for holy days was not
intended as a rest and an opportunity for
physical and psychic recuperation; the inactivity
of the 'holy day' was meant to free time for
meditation. It was sacred time, as opposed to
profane time. It was an occasion for man to
recall his place in the universe, the place of his
small consciousness in the great universe of
non-consciousness; an occasion to remind
himself that he had to remain in awe of this
universe. For the same reason, a 'holy day'
was unthinkable without what we call art, nor
did art really exist outside this context.
In so far as it persisted in the everyday world —
the church in the town, or tattoos on the face —
even there its function was to recall sacred
human obligations. Our art is really the last
trace of the sacred in our civilization, and the
essence of the conflict between art and
civilization is that this civilization lacks
any sense of the festive and the sacred
whatsoever.
But how are true holy days to be restituted ?
Through art ? But our art is precisely what Alex Mlynárcik
Eva's Wedding 1972
remained when the sacred was taken away
(Top) The wedding procession
from it; art-as-decoration, art-as-entertainment.
with the 'pánca'
Pious ages did not even have a name for what we
(Centre) The borovicka is flowing
call art, and our word art, in those times, had
from the 'pánca'
quite a different meaning. Should we return to
(Below) Pierre Restany between
religion ? But European religion itself had to
the bride and groom at the
degenerate in order to make way for our banquet
268
rationalism, and itself would require help to
become regenerated. Can the meditative
eastern religions or the ecstatic archaic religions
be of any assistance ? No, these religions are
even less capable of fitting into the context of
our civilization than the degenerating religions
of Europe. We do not require teleology, but
rather ritual. Yet just as the words 'art' and
'religion' themselves are debased and lead us
into a cul-de-sac, so too we must beware of the
word 'ritual.' Alan Kaprow is well aware of
this and so has coined a new word 'ritus'.
But what then ? Nothing in human history
arises from nothing: it must always necessarily
connect with something that came before.
But with what ? Is there something which is still
alive enough, unspoiled enough to go on
existing in the future, something which may
even become part of the very foundation of the
future ?
Mlynárcik has returned to something which is
still alive. Eva's Wedding was dedicated to
Ludo Fulla, now a seventy-year-old artist, the
founder of Slovak modern art, whose picture
Slovak Wedding, transposed into tapestry, now
hangs in the wedding hall of the Zilina town hall.
Those who are considered the 'representatives of
Slovak culture' were — again! — scandalized, or
at least they claimed to be. It was a piece of
profanity, they said. But the ordinary people of
Zilina accepted the whole action with simple
understanding. In Slovakia, with its ancient
agrarian culture, a continuity with neolithic
ritual still remains, and Mlynárcik's restitution
of the old-fashioned wedding was naturally felt
and accepted with grateful enthusiasm. But how
long will this continuity last ? Can it be extended
into the future ? The newlyweds and the
wedding guests were modern people, similar to
young people all over the world. And those
who performed the old wedding customs
dressed in traditional folk costumes were
members of a folklore society, but when they
sat down to the wedding banquet, they took off
their folk dress : and so, after all, it was only a
change of clothes, a performance, a piece of
theatre. Mlynárcik attempted, in the form of
wedding gifts, to connect an ancient ceremony
with modern art, but I don't know what the
newlyweds got from those incomprehensible
presents. They themselves, like the whole of
Slovakia, and like the whole of our modern
world, have already been swallowed up in the
terrible current of modern history where there
is room neither for old customs nor for
modern art.
What is to be done ? I don't know; no one
knows. There are no theories, no programmes.
Perhaps we must try everything, and even if
nothing works, at least we can tell our
consciences that we have tried everything.
The artist, above all, must try, for he retains
within himself that unity of feeling and thought,
of spontaneity and intellectuality which our
world has lost. The modern world may
annihilate even the artist. But if it does, who can
help it ? q