Framing of Art

Edited by Michal Koleček

FRAMING OF ART

FRAMING OF ART Barnabás Bencsik Vladimír Beskid Michal Koleček (ed.)

Margarethe Makovec & Anton Lederer Darko Šimičić Barbara Steiner

© Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem and authors, 2007 ISBN 80-7044-0730-3

Framing of Art Editorial Michal Koleček The situation of art existing in the post-totalitarian environment of Central Europe over the past fifteen years has undoubtedly been radically transformed. It is different in terms of its position in contemporary society, its means of expression as well as the institutional context in which it is produced, interpreted and ultimately presented to the public. In “Western” countries the ways of dealing with contemporary artistic production transformed step by step in connection with the development of Postmodern art in the 1970s and 1980s. A new type of exhibition institution was established (museums of modern and contemporary art), the production framework expanded (centers of contemporary art and various artist-in-residence programs), new interdisciplinary specializations emerged (in particular curatorial studies) and presentation platforms that made contemporary art attractive in the eyes of the general public (such as public art interventions as well as various exclusive exhibition projects of the biennale type) also spread.

However, it was not possible in the hybrid situation of cultural transmission to count on the existence of such an institutional structure since the situation in museums and galleries accurately reflected the unsettled atmosphere of the complicated process of political transformation. Although mainly young artists tried to establish immediate communication with the global cultural context and adapted contemporary strategies of expression into their art, they remained in a certain vacuum in “their” milieu, lacking feedback from the part of society as well as lacking a flexible production and presentation background. Today, when we are able to view this political and cultural rebirth with hindsight, it is clear that those institutional limitations had a decisive influence on the development of contemporary art. They manipulated artists into certain strategies of expression (in terms of production limits), became the consequence of art’s isolation and loss of social prestige, and last but not least restricted representatives of local scenes forming part of the international context.

The very effort to reflect on the development of the institutional framework of contemporary Central European art between 1990 and 2004 provided the impulse for work on the publication Framing of Art. (Individual contributions in principle respect the defined interval, although they often mention substantial facts from the preceding stage and in some cases the most topical information from 2005 and 2006 as well.) From the beginning of discussions concerning the concept of this project, it was clear that the view applied by the editor and individual contributors on the given issues lacked the necessary detachment. The fact is that all of them were actively involved in the process of establishing standards for the operation of art in the period in question as representatives of specific museums and galleries, freelance curators or administrators of various cultural programs. This logically led to the approach of using their practice as a starting point and trying to project it into the broader context of the institutional artistic development within the Central European scenes. This methodology made it possible to 5

deal with unquestionable specific features of particular artistic worlds and apply the rich – and to a certain extent – different experience of each participating author. This has produced a kind of mosaic, which unsystematically, albeit in a plastic and interesting way, points out key issues of administration, “musealization” and socialization of contemporary art in selected Central European countries (Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Germany, Austria and Slovakia).

In view of the subjective selection of participating authors (I have worked with all of them on joint projects) as well as the above-mentioned committed nature of individual texts, the publication Framing of Art has a very personal, almost participation character. It can be considered a continuation of our network, as its new plane which reflects the joint effort to be involved in crucial developments as well as in linking the institutional framework of contemporary Central European art.

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In the Trap of Frozen Structures Barnabás Bencsik The collapse of the institutions of the arts in the late communist era and their consolidation in a liberal market economy Artless political changes During the years preceding the political changes, contemporary artists were not very active participants of the (illegal) opposition movements whose members would later, in the 1990s, come to dominate political and intellectual life in Hungary. Visual artists at the end of the 1980s were not partners, either intellectually or in terms of visual innovation, for the political “alternatives”.

While the samizdats, the forums of the anti-party “second publicity”, were potentially a medium with a coherent and interesting visual world, they failed to live up to such expectations with their unsophisticated and awkward design. Hungarian visual artists or designers never offered a style, face, or character for the political changes, either in the publications, leaflets, and posters, or the banners of mass demonstrations. With the exception of a few cases (István Orosz’s poster, and to some extent, the visual design of Imre Nagy’s reburial ceremony), there are no visual emblems for the years of the transition, the fervent political and intellectual atmosphere of those years.

Artists in the late Kádár era This condition must have originated in the circumstances in which the artists of the 1980s – the late Kádár era, the time of “soft dictatorship” – lived. Institutionally and sociologically, the most important feature of these times was a labyrinthine system of privileges associated with the status of the artist: whoever graduated at the only arts academy in the country, the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, was officially considered an artist. This was important because whoever failed or refused to earn a diploma there practically excluded themselves from the institutions of the visual arts: was not allowed to exhibit, and could not hope to represent themselves publicly as an artist. In contrast, a diploma meant, regardless of the quality of the subsequent artistic production or the development of the oeuvre, a lifelong guarantee of a stable livelihood: one automatically received the permanent lease of a studio flat from the local council, one’s works were unconditionally bought, on a weekly or monthly basis, by the state-run art dealer company (Képcsarnok Vállalat). Public appearances were possible through regular exhibitions which were sanctioned by juries set up by the Central Arts Council (Lektorátus), in venues that belonged to a state-owned network of galleries and exhibition places. Sculptors and mural artists could rely on lucrative state commissions, thanks to an act that obliged state-run construction projects to devote 2 per cent of the budget to purchase works of the visual and applied arts. Artists were entitled to stay, several times a year and almost for free, at artists’ colonies: full board 7

István Orosz, poster 1990.

Used as a campaign poster of Hungarian Democratic Forum for the first free election in 1990. © Courtesy of the artist

accommodation at what were once the mansions of the now declassed aristocracy, converted into resorts in the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike other citizens, artists were not obliged to have a legal place of employment, because their membership in the Artists’ Fund of the Hungarian People’s Republic automatically entitled them to social security and pension. The Fund was directly supervised by the Ministry of Culture, ensuring total ideological control in exchange for social safety.

Nonconformists, neo-avant-gardes and the heralds of market economy There were of course many who were not willing to identify with this spoon-fed art scene, and stayed, whether by choice or necessity, on the margins, or else left the country. These strategies, however, were more typical of the 1970s. During the decades of the regime, there was a peculiar dynamic to ideological repression, the liberty or restriction of artistic creation, which depended on power politics, the current state of the Cold War, power and ideological conflicts within the 8

Soviet Union. The possible attitudes of the party state to all cultural and artistic phenomena can be conveniently summarized with what is commonly associated with chief cultural policy maker György Aczél, the practice of the “3 Ts”, so called after the first letter of the three Hungarian words meaning “forbiddance, tolerance and support”. The ideologically more relaxed second half of the 1980s saw the Kádár regime become, under the influence of Gorbachev’s glasnost, more lenient, on the one hand, and on the other, less attentive to the visual arts than to what was politically more sensitive: literature, film, and theater. It was under such circumstances and with an awareness of the growing importance of painting (trans-avant-garde and the heftige malerei) in the international art market, that young art historian Lóránd Hegyi could develop, with a reliance on the institutional background provided by Műcsarnok, a strategy of curatorship, and a theory which helped a number of Hungarian artists appear on the Austrian and German art scene and market. Numbering fifteen to twenty, the rather exclusive group presented their works at group exhibitions, which also demonstrated, as it were, the liberal cultural policy of the late Kádárian socialism. The German-language public appreciated these gestures, and collectors bought a great many Hungarian works. 1 Thanks to his widespread connections and international prestige, Hegyi became, after the transition, the director of the Museum Moderner Kunst (Ludwig Stiftung) in Vienna, and gave up this particular manner of promoting Hungarian artists abroad.

The conflicting consequences of the political changes The logic of parliamentary democracy and of the liberal market economy, appearing in the wake of peaceful negotiations in 1989–1990, could not leave untouched the institutions of the visual arts as described above. The transformation, however, took years, and was exposed to constant scandals, the distorting effect of interlocking interests, gain-seeking, and pressure from political parties.

Transformation had to proceed in two directions: first, the freedom of artistic creative action from ideological pressure had to be attained, and those institutions had to be established that would guarantee the livelihood of artists and would encourage people to start on artistic careers; and second, the conditions of a market-based working model had to be created, one that would provide, in a self-regulating and self-sustaining manner, the economic foundations of artistic creation. Mechanisms which in western societies had had decades to develop organically were to be naturalized in a context that was void of such traditions, in a situation where no one actually studied the models of other countries. The institutions of the visual arts fell in that shady zone of culture, itself quickly devaluated amidst the socio-political changes, which no one really cared about. It was not a very attractive destination for investment: a small market, low profits, high risks. Politically, from the point of view of the powers that be, it was negligible, even irrelevant: the number of people having an interest in it was small, no more than a few thousands, its social prestige low, as was its potential to exert influence through lobbying, etc. It further complicated matters that throughout the first years of the transition there was no one in the profession with sufficient prestige and the knack of creating a consensus, who could represent the special interests of the field for the public and for the political decision makers. Under these 9

circumstances the changes effected were not sufficient for the appearance of a contemporary art scene that was modern, an integral part of the international scene and capable of sustaining itself in a market economy without state subventions. Far too often personal interests had the upper hand over those of the profession. Institutional leaders who got their seats in the 1980s are still in position, barring new generations and new approaches from proving their quality in different leadership practices. Anachronistic institutions are surviving socialism only to serve prestige considerations in a new era. Institutional structures and employment policies tailored for the needs of a socialist cultural policy and a planned economy continue to exist, almost intact, even in this new EU member country.

The social status of the artist in the 1990s With the transformation of the Artists’ Fund – soon to be described in detail – artists lost their privileges. Their new status was one of complete insecurity: state commissions disappeared, buying art became a luxury very few could afford; artists were left to their own resources in the jungle of social security, as most became self-employed, or “forced entrepreneurs,” to use that cheerful neologism. The new, free market and the lack of subvention meant all services and materials had to be bought at much higher prices. Artists’ decreasing living standards were coupled with an erosion of their social standing.

In the course of this process, lasting until the end of the 1990s, two groups became distinguishable: the small class of those who were capable of adapting to the new conditions of the market and the new system of subventions, engaging in art for a living; and the many who now created original visual art only as a hobby. Furthermore, two subgroups exist within the first group: those, chiefly of a younger generation, who are recognized internationally, and those who appear only on the local art market.

The legal framework As the political, economic and social transformation of Hungary was brought about through the continuous modification of the legal framework from the late 1980s on, so the laws providing the legal context of artistic activities have been the result of a long process. In fact, there are no laws that would specifically define the status of the artist, the creative individual, no regulations take into account the special circumstances and conditions of creative activity in the visual arts.

As for taxation, artists enjoy no privileges, they are either private entrepreneurs like lawyers or architects, or have small businesses. Works of art fall into the highest VAT bracket, and artistic services are not free of VAT either. It took fifteen years to harmonize the social security payments of freelancers with real life conditions, and allow them to deduct expenses connected to the creation of works of art.

The Act on Copyright recognizes the legal institutions of “droit de suit” and “public domain peyant”, which provide considerable income for Hungart, the collective copyright agency of visual artists. Since 1996, 5 per cent of the price of every art piece sold on the market must be transferred to Hungart, which the agency returns to the artist or his/her heir (“droit de suit”), or uses, in the 10

absence of a legal claimant, to fund competitions and grants, to support other artists (“public domain peyant”). By 2002–2003, the funds returned by Hungart exceeded 100 million forints.

The legal context of art is provided by the following laws: the acts on museums, on cultural heritage, on copyright, on partnerships, on private entrepreneurs, on taxation, on associations, on public utility, and the parts of the Civil Code which regulate foundations, associations, etc.

Though the Constitution guarantees the freedom of artistic creation and prohibits censorship, there have been cases in the past fifteen years when political forces tried to transgress these freedoms: e.g. Sándor Bernáth/y/’s paraphrase of the national escutcheon became the subject of parliamentary interpellations, and a district mayor banned the poster of the Andres Serrano exhibition.

Incomplete deregulation Thanks to pro-art policies, state support for the visual arts is quite common in Western European countries, unlike, say, in the United States, where private sponsorship is traditionally the rule. In post-transition Hungary these attitudes found their surrogate in the coexistence of decade-old practices – paternalism, excessive centralization and regulation – and the principle of laisser-faire, which would have surrendered art life to the severe logic of the market. Since both principles were active in the reshaping of the institutions of the visual arts in the 1990s, at present neither the mechanisms of the market, nor the system of state subventions function properly. Though the available institutions provide for a minimum of functionality and livelihood, they are incapable of international integration and are far too inflexible to adopt new ideas innovatively.

Liquidation and reorganization Let me now describe the most important phases and features of this process in some detail.

The first step was the privatization of companies which belonged to the Artists’ Fund of the Hungarian People’s Republic, ones working in or near the field of the visual arts and overseen, in effect, by the Ministry of Culture. The broader context of this move was a general tendency in the economy towards the establishment of the foundations of a market economy, through privatization and the reduction of state ownership. In truth, these economic changes had already started by the time of the first free elections in 1990, and thanks to loose legal safeguards and the lack of social control, these transactions constitute the shadiest chapter of the economic transition. On the verge of bankruptcy, it was in the best interest of the state to get rid of its insolvent, unproductive companies, which provided the more ingenious members of the party apparat with an opportunity to take over state property for pennies. This is what experts of transitology call pre-privatization, or with a sardonic paraphrase of the Marxian term, the “quite original accumulation of capital”.

Képcsarnok Vállalat This was the time businesses providing the technical foundations of art were privatized and turned into small limited companies. They included workshops, statue foundries, publishers and distributors 11

of arts publications, and Képcsarnok Vállalat (this was the name of the company), a chain of art dealerships, which up to that point had an absolute monopoly. The state thus withdrew from the market section of the visual arts, which may be a prerequisite for a healthy market, but led, under the circumstances, to the collapse of a field hitherto sustained by subvention. The exhibition spaces were closed down, the trade venues leased out, the workshops liquidated. At the same time, the state stopped buying works by Artists’ Fund members, terminating a source of their steady income. There were attempts to sell the incredible amount of artworks, usually of questionable quality, which had accumulated over the decades, but the targeted East Asian hotels and office buildings were not too enthusiastic. Most of these works still gather dust in the storage rooms of state institutions.

The Division of the Hungarian Creative Artists’ Fund The next important move was the transformation of the Creative Artists’ Fund of the Hungarian People’s Republic. This was an umbrella organization for all creative artists: composers, writers, applied artists, photographers, and visual artists, some 7000–8000 people. As mentioned earlier, official recognition for an artist was only possible through Fund membership. The departments of photographers, applied, and visual artists had 5000–6000 members.

As a result of the social and political changes, this system had to be reformed, to put an end to dependence on the state, to guarantee the freedom of creative work and the conditions necessary for it, and to ensure artists could exhibit before the public. Relying on the new act on associations (1988), which incidentally provided the legal framework of grass-roots civil movements, the ministry chose to divide the organization into two independent legal entities: a society (the National Association of Hungarian Creative Artists, MAOE) and a public foundation (Hungarian Creative Arts Public Foundation, MAK). Members of the Fund were automatically awarded membership in the society, which, similarly to its predecessor, had different sections for the various arts, but offered only a fraction of the services and benefits the Fund had provided.

This move actually legitimized one consequence of the country’s economic woes, what had for years been the state of affairs, the disappearance of artists’ privileges. The public foundation was established so that the real estate and other assets of the Fund, funded over the years by membership fees, public dues and personal work, could be managed rationally, and the profits be used in social benefit and professional support funds for MAOE members.

What seemed theoretically a workable, self-sustaining model functioned poorly in reality.

Formally and legally independent, the two institutions failed to live up to the expectations of their designers in the ministry. For years following the 1992 transformation, constant scandals accompanied the activity of the two organizations: the managers of the foundation, who did not always consider the artists’ interests supreme when dealing with those vast assets, used up and squandered much of the initial capital. Court actions and lawsuits were initiated, some of which are still ongoing. This poor management failed to provide MAOE with the necessary funds, the foundation needed to request state subventions to be able to fulfil a minimum of professional and social responsibilities. The model has essentially remained unchanged to this day, though a modicum of cooperation now exists between the foundation and the association. The members 12

of the latter, the great majority of visual artists in the country, have reconciled themselves to the new situation, and have learnt, willy-nilly, alternative strategies which enable creative work even amidst these conditions.

Central Arts Council (Lektorátus) Employing almost 30 people, this organization occupies a special position among the institutions of the visual arts in Hungary. In it, the censorship bureau of the communist regime received a new lease on life. Having lost its ideological function, the Council and the Ministry spent a decade in a desperate search for new responsibilities – and were not disappointed in their attempt: the leader and staff of the Council survived the transition almost unscathed. The most important task of the Council in the old regime was the preliminary judging of all exhibitions in the country, with the purported rationale of guaranteeing artistic quality, and the obvious one of ensuring ideological purity. The organization now offers services and expert opinion, like appraisals or judging at second- and third-rate artistic events.

Another function of the old Council was to do the actual commissioning on behalf of the state; announcing competitions and commissioning and overseeing the execution of sculptures for public spaces and artworks for public buildings. The artists involved usually belonged to the same restricted circle currently popular with the party. One of the most spectacular gestures during the transition was the removal, in the early 1990s, of the ideologically motivated monuments from public spaces, and their transference, rather than destruction, to a special theme park or touristic attraction, called “Statue Park–Gigantik Memorials from the communist Dictatorship”, a solution unique among the post-communist countries of East and Central Europe.

As a result of the transition, the entire responsibility of erecting public statues was handed over to municipalities, centralized governmental control ceased to exist, and the “2 per cent rule” was abolished. The Council has lost all its authority in this respect, and all it now does, when asked, is assist local governments in drafting competitions, and it offers expert opinion at the evaluation process. It may attempt to fight the bad taste of municipal offices and counter visual pollution with its own, rather conservative, aesthetic norms, but it has had little success in this regard.

In a last attempt to bolster its legitimacy, the ministry also assigns the task of announcing and administering the competition for state grants for young artists and art historians.

State-run venues The political changes had the least impact on the high-profile state-run institutions. The Hungarian National Gallery and Műcsarnok are supervised by the ministry of culture – whose name occasionally changes, and is now the Ministry of National Cultural Heritage. (About the third most important, Ludwig Múzeum–Kortárs Művészeti Múzeum, a newly founded institution, more later.) These two exhibition places of contemporary art, made to be the most important by their size and traditions, have almost completely retained the structure and 13

Statue Park, Budapest, opened in 1993 After the change of political system the statues were removed from Budapest’s streets to this open air statue park. This is the world’s only such collection from the period of communist cultural politics.

Photo: Barnabás Bencsik

working attitude developed under the conditions of the party state. Their staffs have not become very much younger, and since their employees are public servants, it is rather difficult to bring in a new, high-quality workforce. 2 They, of course, have adapted themselves to the new conditions as far as was necessary: they have involved large corporate sponsors to complement insufficient state subventions, they have organized exhibitions that attract hundreds of thousands, their educational programs have become more and more professional, and they have leased out their elegant spaces for business events at market prices.

At the same time they fulfil the functions that derive from their special position insufficiently or not at all. The acquisition policy of the National Gallery does not guarantee that the best of contemporary production be preserved for posterity in a museum, nor does its exhibition program fulfil an essential function that comes from the institution’s position, the influencing of value judgments concerning contemporary works and the process of their canonization.

Műcsarnok, a kunsthalle-type institution founded in the 19th century, does not collect works, but its size and architectural features make it a perfect candidate for a center of the contemporary art scene in Central Europe. A succession of directors in the past fifteen years 3 has failed to exploit these potentials. Though it has been home to a few exhibitions that were important in local terms, it is essentially a characterless, intellectually isolated, provincial exhibition venue on the periphery of the international scene.

Several of the provincial towns, like Pécs, Szombathely, Győr or Miskolc were home to institutions of the contemporary arts during the decades preceding the transition, but they have failed to become important even in the new era. Székesfehérvár is the only town of national significance, where art historian couple Márta Kovalovszky and Péter Kovács have been working 14

since the mid-1960s, which has presented the most important artists of postwar Hungary at a series of exhibitions, and has created, in collaboration with the county museum, a unique collection and permanent display of contemporary Hungarian art.

Studio of Young Artists Association (FKSE) Despite its long history as an important organ of the communist cultural policy, the Studio of Young Artists Association became one of the most important forums of the young, posttransition generation of artists, whether involved in public exhibition or socializing. The Studio was founded by young party activists in the late 1950s, shortly after the crushing of the revolution, to provide organized ideological and art policy control over the least reliable and, consequently, least predictable section of the arts community, young artists at the beginning of their careers.

It fulfilled this function throughout the decades of the Kádár regime with varying degrees of success, though there were certainly periods when even the most progressive trends found shelter under the umbrella of the Studio. For self-taught artists seeking recognition and opportunities to exhibit, 4 membership at the Studio provided the only alternative to a position in the abovedescribed caste of official artists. Institutionally, the Studio was a section of the Artists’ Fund before the transition, an organization for the young, much in the way KISZ (Hungarian version of Komsomol) was a youth chapter of the party, with the same strict age limit of 35.

In 1990, preceding the transformation of the Artists’ Fund and actually providing a prototype for the new model, the Studio metamorphosed into an independent professional organization democratically managed by artists and art historians. In seceding from the Fund, it received the real estate it had been using, the office, five studios and Studio Gallery, which had been the most important venue for the solo exhibition of young artists since the 1970s. From that point on, the Studio, like any other artist-run institution in the West, defined its own goals and raised funds for its activity. The organization maintained its age limit, which at first sight may seem curious, but proved, in the event, to be conducive to the maintenance of fresh approaches and the integration of new generations, through the fluctuation of members. A key aspect of the policy the Studio developed in the 1990s is the provision of as much help as possible to artists beginning their career: they have access to a studio for a year, they can apply for social benefits and job opportunities, have solo and group exhibitions, present their works-in-progress and portfolios to foreign curators, have access to fresh information, etc. The annual series of one-night shows – “Gallery by Night” – began in 1991, and has become an institutionalized testing ground for contemporary art, greatly forwarding, as a result, the naturalization of the curator’s function.

The greatest achievement of the Studio in the 1990s was the development of international relations, the establishment of professional integration. It was vital for young artists, almost completely isolated from foreign – both Western and East-Central European – art scenes before the transition, to get to know the figures, institutions and practices of the international world of art, to familiarize themselves with a context they would need to act in later on. The first exchange exhibition was organized in collaboration with the SKUC Galerija of Ljubljana, in 1995, and was followed by a number of long-term artist-residency and exhibition programs with 15

the participation of artists and institutions from London, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, Switzerland, Italy and France. In the course of a few years, the Studio found its niche within the international system of non-profit and independent arts centers, and now boasts one of the most extensive networks of international relations of all Hungarian institutions.

State funding: a question of priorities National Cultural Fund (NKA) The first democratically elected government decided to provide dedicated support for contemporary culture and art, and in 1993 established, by an act of Parliament, the National Cultural Fund (NKA) under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture. The paternalistic and directly masterminded decision-making practices of the party state were replaced with a democratic, public, and transparent subvention policy. The annual competitions are open to anyone, and the decisions are made by boards whose artist and specialist members are nominated by the professional organizations of the given field. The NKA now has 16 sections, covering almost all fields of culture and the arts, from music through film, dance, librarianship, museology, and handicrafts to photography and the visual arts.

NKA is financed from a separate fund within the budget of the ministry. Its source of income is a special tax, the so-called cultural excise. The law defines hundreds of goods and services, and a portion of the price of these – between 1 and 25 per cent – must be paid into the fund. They include cultural consumables, such as books, CDs, periodicals, videos, and advertising brochures, as well as consumer electronics and a variety of services from broadcasting to video rental. The highest, a 25 per cent levy, is the so-called “kitsch tax” payable on the sale of pornographic material and other materials containing violent content. Total subventions paid out by the Fund in 2003 exceeded 7 billion forints (28.7 million euros), about 400 million (1.6 million euros) of which was given to the visual arts.

NKA has, at present, the largest budget among institutions supporting the arts, and consequently its subvention policies have a decisive influence on contemporary visual arts.

Support is given to projects, and winners have the whole of the grant available in advance, but there are now plans of changing to a model of reimbursement, which, thanks to widespread liquidity troubles, would disqualify most applicants. Support is only given to legal entities, and though artists can apply individually, they can have access to the money only via an organization which becomes responsible for the settlement of accounts. All this has encouraged the regularization of the visual arts scene in the 1990s, the establishment of foundations and associations. Since board members are constantly changing, the visual arts college cannot claim to follow a coherent policy, and the funds tend to be spread evenly: less and less money is distributed among more and more applicants, and the grants tend to vary less in amount.

(In 2001, 666 projects received support, out of 1130 applicants.) The minister has sole authority over one third of all funds, which he or she uses to further his/her own policy – an additional hindrance to the appearance of a unified and efficient strategy.

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State-funded grants and scholarships Support from the state provides opportunities for professional development to only a relatively small class of artists. These grants mostly consist of one of three types: monthly stipends young artists can draw for three years at the beginning of their careers; scholarships to Hungarian institutes abroad; support given to residency programs abroad and study trips and projects in foreign countries.

Scholarships to foreign countries are coordinated by the Hungarian Grants Committee (MÖB), set up by the government in 1991. The MÖB, which judges applications for co-funded bi-governmental scholarships, for scholarships to the 17 Hungarian Institutes abroad, and for the Eötvös Award of the Hungarian State, also oversees grants offered to artists. The decisions of the Committee are based on the recommendations of a college of seven independent authorities. The Eötvös Award consists of support given to outstanding practitioners of any art forms who are under the age of 40 and who want to spend three to eight months in a foreign country.

Visual artists and art historians at the beginning of their careers can apply for the same stipends in a field – the visual arts, applied arts and photography. The stipend is a monthly 70,000 forints for a term of one year (about 280 euros; the minimum wage is 57,000 forints), which can be extended to an additional three years upon the success of the end-of-term exhibition. The system provides a regular small income for 50 to 70 artists and 5 or 6 curators or art historians annually.

Changes in the institutional landscape in the 1990s SCCA and C3 At the time of the political changes, Hungarian contemporary visual arts were almost completely isolated from the international scene. Whatever international relations existed were under the monopoly of state institutions. Customs regulations made the export of artwork a veritable ordeal. Most artists did not speak foreign languages, had no personal contacts abroad, and only very few arts professionals could boast relationships with the international profession. In this situation the first breakthrough came with the establishment of SCCA. Hungarian-born American stock exchange guru and philanthropist George Soros established his foundation based on the idea of Karl Popper’s “open society”, which later proved to be the first in an entire empire of NGOs, in 1984, within the framework of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Providing support chiefly for the social sciences and the arts, the Soros Foundation launched its contemporary arts program, the Soros Foundation – Visual Arts Documentation Center in 1985, in cooperation with Műcsarnok. Starting with a 12 member international board of trustees, the chief goal of the Center was to prepare comprehensive documentation of contemporary Hungarian artists, as well as to build a database of the arts, though it also provided actual support for artists neglected, tolerated, or even banned by the official cultural policy, by giving stipends and purchasing their works for museums.

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It was in response to the new conditions brought about by the transition that the center extended its activities, and received a new name and director in 1991. Under the directorship of Suzanne Mészöly, the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts (SCCA) continued documenting the arts scene, and started organizing an annual exhibition, as well as providing contemporary artists and arts institutions with financial aid to put on exhibitions and publish catalogues.

Following the model of the Budapest SCCA, twenty new Centers were opened, from the end of 1991 on, all over East and Central Europe and in some states of the former Soviet Union, either as programs of the local Soros Foundations or as independent organizations, with support from the Foundation. In several countries these institutions served as the sole points of orientation for foreign, especially western, curators wishing to understand the local scene. In 1999 the SCCA network took up the name ICAN, but soon lost its function, and has by now practically ceased to work. However, the informal network of former partners, curators, and institution leaders still functions, and has been instrumental in integrating the art of the former Soviet block in the international scene. The comprehensive, pan-European exhibitions of the 1990s – Europa, Europa, the Manifesta biennales, the After the Wall exhibition – would not have been possible without the cooperation of the associates of this powerful network.

From the middle of 1996, the functions and responsibilities of SCCA Budapest were taken over

by C3, the Center for Culture and Communication. C3 wished to respond to the new challenges of the mid-1990s, including the widespread availability and influence of the internet. It went beyond the boundaries of contemporary art when exploring the spread of new technologies and their effects on grassroots movements, and made its own contributions to these processes.

The main objectives of its programs, developed with the cooperation and support of Matáv, the largest local telecommunications company, have been research into how new achievements and innovations in science and technology can be used for creative purposes, employed in culture, and exploited for their innovative artistic potentials. They have worked on creating new projects, initiating programs in the arts, sciences, communication, education, and culture, furthering the contact and cooperation of art, science, and technology. Like its peers abroad, ZKM or V2 in Rotterdam, C³ was highly influential in the development of network culture in the second half of the 1990s, in forwarding the widespread and innovative use of new technologies.

Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art The history of the Budapest Ludwig Museum began with a selection of about a hundred works which the eponymous German arts collector couple entrusted to the National Gallery, Budapest.

Meant to be a long-term display, the exhibition opened in a wing of the Buda Castle, formerly the home of the Museum of the Workers’ Movement, and had to be compatible with the ideology such a locale represented. Hungarian contemporaries were added to the selection, thus providing an international context for the local art of the 1980s. The museum became an institution with a distinct image, one with an exhibition policy of its own, when Katalin Néray took charge after release from the directorship of Műcsarnok for political reasons. In time, Ludwig Museum Budapest became an important node in an international network of museums that relied on the 18

The entrance of Ludwig Museum (renamed as “lumú” after the transference) in the recently erected new premises of the Palace of Arts.

Photo: Barnabás Bencsik

private collection of the Ludwigs, and enjoyed, through travelling exhibitions and the network, all the benefits of access to the western scene. In 1996, following an openly political decision, the Ministry of Culture set up a new, de jure independent institution, the Museum of Contemporary Art, which utilized, with an adroit move, the staff, building and infrastructure of the Ludwig Museum. Though this legal nonsense was later resolved, it was emblematic of the weightlessness of the legal lobby in the face of political arbitrariness. Buttressed with extensive PR work, the establishment of this institution was the first instance when corporate sponsors were invited to contribute to a public arts collection. Unfortunately, the initial enthusiasm soon ebbed, and ever since, acquisitions have been possible only with the meagre funds provided by the ministry.

The only way to acquire foreign artworks is by means of donation. As a result, the museum is hard put to accomplish the goal it set for itself, the presentation of Hungarian and foreign works of art on the same platform, with their mutual connections brought into relief. 2005 will probably open a new chapter in the history of the institution, when it exchanges its residence in the Buda Castle for a sublet in the cultural complex erected on the Pest bank of the Danube, called the Palace of Arts, where it will have a hard time retaining its institutional independence and autonomy.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros (ICA-D) ICA–D is the most important forum and public collection of contemporary art outside the capital. Built from scratch in the 1950s, Sztálinváros (Stalintown), later renamed Dunaújváros, was the most complete example of the communist utopia of forced development in heavy industry. During the decades of communism a fruitful cooperation existed between the metal works and the artists, especially the makers of public statues. This was where the first statue 19

park in the country was set up, on the bank of the Danube, with works made in the foundries of the plant. The history of the ICA–D goes back before the transition. It was probably with an awareness of the local traditions mentioned before that the local council decided, in 1989, to establish “a museum of modern art”. The decision was put into effect only by the successor of the council, the new municipal government, in 1991, which created the Public Foundation for Modern Art, whose board of trustees supervised the contemporary arts program of an exhibition venue in the center of the town, the Uitz Hall. The next phase in the institutionalization of the gallery, which earned national renown with its quality programs, was when leadership was taken over by two young professionals, Lívia Páldi and János Szoboszlai, who founded the Institute of Contemporary Art. Since 1996 the ICA–D has engaged in a number of international projects, campaigning for the cooperation of Central European countries with exhibitions co-organized with Croatian, Slovenian and Czech institutions. The past few years, however, have seen the common fate of successful progressive institutions funded by local municipalities but active on the international scene descend upon the ICA–D: the local government has begun decreasing funding while actors in the local arts scene demand more of a say in the exhibition policy.

Trafó Arts centers and other cultural institutions taking up residence in abandoned industrial buildings claim a decades-long history in Western Europe. By reclaiming an empty transformer substation built at the beginning of the 20th century, Trafó (“transformer”) became the first example of this practice in Hungary. Opened in 1998, the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts is an arts center much like the ICA of London, where most events belong to the performing arts.

However, the progressive visual arts program of Trafó Gallery has made the institution one of the hottest spots in the country in recent years. Trafó is a public benefit company owned by the Budapest Municipal Government, and is the legal successor of the Young Artists’ Club (FMK), which was closed in 1995. (In the communist era, FMK was a popular meeting point for young artists and alternative intellectuals, as it provided an illusion of freedom and breathing space for thought, with a tolerance of anti-communism and alternative arts that was actually confined to its premises.) Founder-director György Szabó presents the best of international contemporary dance in Trafó, nor does the exhibition policy of the gallery aim for less. The well-equipped, 130-square metre basement gallery presents Hungarian and foreign artists at solo and group exhibitions, emphasising their position within the European discourse of art. Ever since its opening, the gallery has always made a point of offering independent, freelance curators with opportunities to realize their projects, and to cooperate with others.

A new type of artistic strategy: artist-run spaces and artists’ initiatives In the early 1990s, Budapest saw certain types of exhibition places appear, with increasing frequency and emphasis, which derived their character from their association with certain individuals or groups, and never became, throughout varying lengths of existence, proper institutions – whether by necessity or choice. The appearance of this independent scene could, 20

on the one hand, be considered a critique of the available institutions, and was, on the other, representative of the enthusiasm that inspired creative individuals’ thinking in the wake of the political transition. For artists, political freedom also meant being at liberty to conquer “spaces”, public and private, physical spaces, which explains why the most typical genre of the period was site-specific installation. If one took the trouble, one could have access to any of the many unused or abandoned places in the city, which could be converted, with the least investment of time and money, into temporary exhibition venues. The succession of ad hoc galleries, the joining of forces for the sake of actions, the intellectual buzz lasted for a few years. By the second half of the 1990s, ownership, in the case of most properties, had become clarified, which coincided with an ebb in the enthusiasm of the scene, since the projects which were intitiated did not seem to have any particular goals.

The first and most influential of artists’ initiatives was the Újlak Group (1989–1995). It was in the summer of 1989 that a group of young visual artists put on their first joint exhibition in the foyer of the dilapidated Hungária Bath. That same summer they appropriated the unused Újlak cinema in Óbuda for a number of one-night solo and group exhibitions and concerts. The group of seven to eight artists went on to search for an adequate and independent scene for their ongoing collaboration, for presenting the products of their collective strategy, and chanced upon a former pasta factory in a run-down Budapest neighbourhood, in 72 Tűzoltó Street. This was where, for five years, they ran the most impressive and most inspiring venue of the 1990s, relying chiefly on their own and their friends’ resources. Here they also organized exhibitions for guest artists from Hungary and abroad. A few members of the dispersed group later tried to keep the Újlak spirit alive with another, more formal, venue called Uff Gallery (1997–1999).

Far shorter-lived was the attempt of Gábor Császári, who returned from emigration and squatted in an apartment house in Buda, 3 Fő Street, opening an exhibition place, an illegal bar, and studios for artists. He received no support for his project, and in a few years’ time the municipal government, the owner of the building, forced him to leave and closed the building.

Similar principles applied to a few other important venues: the unused vaulted interior of the Turkish Bath housed a few beautiful installations, and painter Tamás Kopasz used his windowless studio on the ground floor of an apartment building as an exhibition gallery between 1992–1996.

When NKA was founded, these projects naturally applied for support, but the subvention awarded was hardly enough to provide for the foundation of a more formal and regular activity. The general economic depression made the investment of private resources a luxury few could afford, and consequently this kind of artistic activism had lost all of its vigour by the middle of the decade.

It was at the end of the 1990s, in the activity of two young artists who called themselves Little Warsaw that this strategy of creation and operation saw its revival, if in a different ideological context. When setting out to create new venues they could call their own, Little Warsaw wanted to be the originator of the entire social and architectural context, to be completely independent, intellectually as well as financially, from existing institutions. At the first two locations they exhibited only their own works, while the third place, in Hajós Street, already offered the opportunity for public discourse about art, as a response to what they felt was a lack of forums 21

Opening exhibition of Újlak Group at Tűzoltó 72 on March 30, 1991 Photo: G. Farkas © Courtesy of Újlak Foundation

within the scene which could enable the public exchange of thought about art. Running for years, their “Artwork of the Week” was a series of moderated discussions about concrete works of art with the participation of their creators.

Two more projects require mentioning. They were initiated by artists who realized the dysfunctions of the local scene and were capable of developing long-term solutions, ones that still function, thanks in no small part to their creators’ successful fund-raising activity. Attila Menesi and Christoph Rauch (a Hamburg based German artist), who had been cooperating on a number of conceptual projects which involved elements of institutional critique, decided in 1998 to publish, as part of their Budapest exhibition, a guide to galleries in the city. Including maps and program listings, the guide, called Index, was to have the same function as similar publications in other European cities: a guidebook for those interested, as well as an attempt to secure media attention for contemporary art. The project has been running successfully ever since, and the initiators have secured financial support and the technical necessities for its bimonthly appearance and circulation.

Index is now the most relied upon source of information for gallery programs. The other project, launched by artist Endre Koronczi in 1999, also addressed a problem common to the activity of galleries and exhibition places: the fact that opening nights at art venues often coincided, further dividing a not very large audience. The website Ikon now enables the exhibition venues to publish their programs and minimize the number of conflicting events. The site also has a mailing list, and offered, well before e-flux, an efficient source of information about local visual arts events.

Galleries in Budapest The Budapest gallery scene has been a fine indicator of the position of contemporary art for the past fifteen years, a veritable litmus paper of its social and economic status. The rise and fall of 22

non-profit and trading galleries, the alternately growing and decreasing value of certain locations, the gradual solidification of the arts market and the classic gallery system, the appearance of an ever more prosperous class of collectors, and the artistic response to their demands, are all highly illustrative of the tendencies of the period in question.

In the 1990s, non-profit galleries, among them those owned by municipalities, were instrumental in providing new artistic approaches and giving younger generations opportunities for public exhibition. Thanks to an underdeveloped market, private galleries at the time had little importance, their main profile being the representation of established artists. This had changed by the end of the decade, when changes in staff and other conditions caused previously significant galleries to lose their standing, while private establishments ready to acknowledge the logic and value scale of the market attracted more and more of the slowly increasing demand.

As a result, Stúdió Galéria and Trafó, opening at that time, soon became the only places to admit independent artistic attitudes, artists not fitting in any market trend. The roots of the present situation go back to only a few years ago, when private investors began to bring in capital and develop the infrastructure of contemporary art, seeking at the same time to influence its work according to their own needs and interests. The other institutions, described above, have been hard put to counterbalance these tendencies, as there is, unfortunately, no exhibition place, larger than the galleries, smaller than the large museums, which could also function as a reliable professional filter. There is, nonetheless, some hope that a healthy balance may be reached between the non-profit sector and the market, and that mutual interests will give rise to cooperation from which the artists can also benefit.

Non-profit exhibition places and galleries Small was the weight of contemporary art institutions in the 1980s, those small staterun exhibition places which were typically not independent units, either architecturally or administratively, but parts of a larger organization. They were often associated with the community centers of city districts, as Bartók 32 Galéria in the 11th District and Liget Galéria in the 14th District. Others were parts of artists’ associations or “clubs”, as those working in Fészek Artists’ Club, an old-standing club of performing artists and writers, and in the Young Artists’ Club, mentioned above. Student hostels often had their own galleries (e.g. Bercsényi Klub), as did the Young Communists’ Clubs and cultural centers of large companies (GANZ-MÁVAG, for instance, one of the largest industrial firms in Budapest at the time). Most often these were not so much galleries in the modern sense as instruments of a more general cultural policy, and only on the rarest of occasions – when under the management of a dedicated and fanatical leader – did they acquire real character and have their exhibition policy gain significance.

Political changes and privatization swept away most of these venues, though some went on to become very important in the 1990s. Other than the two municipal galleries mentioned above – Bartók 32 Galéria and Liget Galéria –, the Óbuda Club Gallery also earned respect and attention from the Budapest art scene. For years, they were home to consistent and wellconceived exhibition policies, and featured thematic series, group, and solo exhibitions. Tibor 23

Gallery by Night 2004, Studio Gallery, Budapest Photo: T. Kaszás © Courtesy of FKSE

Várnagy, himself an artist, used Liget Galéria from the mid-1980s to present progressive, experimental artists, both from Hungary and other countries, like Poland and Germany. The Bartók 32 Galéria was first led by Tamás Szentjóby, who returned from his decade-long Swiss emigration, and later by Erzsébet Tatai. The architectural features of the venue make it most suitable for impressive solo exhibitions, indeed its most important function, where the most talented young artists could present projects they could realize nowhere else in Budapest. The director of the Óbuda Club Gallery, Gábor Andrási, each year dedicated a thematically linked series of exhibitions to current problems and tendencies in art, presenting, thus, a nuanced and contrasted view of artistic positions. The 1995 series, Water Ordeal, for instance, was the first comprehensive overview of the female subject and gender-based artistic positions in Hungary.

In 1996 Pro Helvetia, a Swiss cultural foundation, launched a three-year program to support non-profit exhibition galleries. The beneficiaries, four Budapest galleries (Bartók 32, Liget, Óbuda Club and Stúdió Galéria) and two from provincial towns (the ICA in Dunaújváros, and a private foundation, Első Magyar Látványtár) – which together founded the League of Independent Art Workshops Foundation – could for the first time plan for years ahead, realize international exhibition projects, initiate cooperation with foreign professionals, and substantially develop their infrastructure (reconstructions, new projectors, etc.).

Private galleries and private collectors Years had to pass after the state monopoly was abolished in contemporary art trade before private galleries could become well-established and working standards, exhibition policies, and 24

“The Art Piece of the Week”, series of public discussions about current works at Little Warsaw’s temporary premises on Hajós Street, Budapest, 2001. © Courtesy of Little Warsaw

represented artists were of a quality the international scene could recognize as being on a par with the exacting requirements of art fairs.

Only a few of the galleries established at the beginning of the 1990s have survived, the rest closed after a couple of years in operation. One of the first private galleries in Budapest was founded by Viennese gallery owner Hans Knoll; the opening show was an installation by Joseph Kosuth, and for years the gallery remained the most important link to the international scene.

Várfok Galéria, which opened at around the same time, now features its artists in several venues in the eponymous street leading up to the Castle, and is a regular participant at international art fairs. Dovin Galéria, another early bird, experimented with several locations in the city before finding what now seems a permanent residence in the city center. The artists it represents include both established names and young talents.

The economic recession in the mid-1990s was destructive for the local art market, which was still in the making, and apart from the few enterprises mentioned above, none of the early galleries survived. With the return of economic stability at the end of the decade, a more prosperous middle class encouraged a new wave of gallery establishments, thanks to which there are now a dozen commercial galleries in Budapest which sustain themselves from trading in contemporary art, and several of them are active in the international market as well. Vintage Galéria is the first private gallery to deal exclusively in photography. It exhibits, in addition to Hungarian masters of classic modern photography, contemporary artists whose medium of choice is photography, and represents them at the most important international fairs. Deák Erika Galéria and acb Galéria, which opened two years ago, offer exclusive contracts to young and middle-aged Hungarian artists, and work systematically on their careers to ensure long-term success. These examples show that both artists and buyers are now ready to acknowledge the gallery as a professional mediator.

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MEO–Contemporary Art Collection, Budapest, view of the buildings after the shutdown at the end 2004.

Photo: Barnabás Bencsik

The past few years have seen the appearance of an increasing number of private collectors and buyers, which is probably related to the boom of 19th and 20th-century classic modern painting at local auctions. Despite the economic depression, since the mid-1990s there has been phenomenal demand for works from this period, even forcing the wider public to acknowledge that a work of art can be a good investment. This was coupled with the tendency of the younger well-to-do favoring the works of their own generation, creating considerable demand for contemporary art. It was with an awareness of this demand that a few successful businesspeople set up well-publicized establishments like MEO (opened in 2001 and declared bankrupt three years later) or Kogart (opened in 2004).

September 2005

Notes: 1 Hegyi, Lóránd: Új helyzetben új identitás (New Situation, New Identity). In: Knoll, Hans (ed.): A második nyilvánosság (Second Publicity). Budapest: Enciklopédia, 2002, p. 272.

2 Loránd Bereczky, director of the Hungarian National Gallery has been in position since 1982.

3 Katalin Néray, until 1992; Katalin Keserü, 1992–1995; László Beke, 1995–2000; Julia Fabényi, 2000–2005.

4 Later successes included Imre Bukta, László fe Lugossy and Viktor Lois among others.

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Zwieschen(t)raum – Changes and Challenges in the Slovak Version Vladimír Beskid I. GloBal-kans culture and the Central European Space In the wider Central European framework, the space we are talking about is perceived as Zwieschen(t) raum – the Space Between, the Space In Between Dreams. It is understood as the Space Between, both in the geographical and cultural sense (i. e. between the East and the West), and also in the historical sense (between the totalitarian and information societies). The residues and consequences of previous regimes and of the operations that were carried out between Berlin and Moscow penetrated through to the period that came after them. In the ninth decade of the twentieth century we tried to get rid of this “Eastern Block” unfortunate label and join the cultural context of Western Europe – and at the same time we tried to establish ourselves as a constituent of Central Europe. We are looking for both our lost and our suppressed identity. Our central position from the territorial point of view, however, does not automatically guarantee a position in the cultural center – rather the opposite is true. We are not the proverbial “crossroads of cultures”, but rather an emptied center, no man’s land and cultural interface in the gravitation field of stronger entities – this is our territory. It seems that our natural space is between two chairs. This decade is also stigmatized by a big metaphorical movement within the same locality: from the East to the Center of Europe. We are leaving the “Eastern Block” and arriving at the re-created image of Central Europe. We have to re-define this territory, revitalize the traditions, values, and our own identity. How shall we stir up this faded and discolored “Euro-anonymous space”? How shall we retrieve its face and its energy? It looks like people in the entirety of our region are trying to disentangle themselves from the allocated role of mere viewers or observers to a feast for others. Their efforts are sometimes hit and miss. Even if the meaning of the word “periphery”, defined as the residue of old industrial times with a central structure, is being made more and more relative, fragmented and diluted due to multi-dimensional communication, still, the Central European territory stays in the Space Between, Shadow Zone, the seismic band between two Blocks of economical, commercial and cultural flows. It looks like the historically transferred scattering, despondency, closeness and the slowness of our nervous systems does not allow us to create a wider social and cultural platform and lay out our own prerequisites and solutions.

Zwieschen(t)raum thus represents the dreamy (and perhaps also sleepy) Space Between. It represents Waiting for a Change, for a Utopia, day-dreaming about The Better Tomorrows. And these come once in a totalitarian guise, and other times in the guise of a consumer’s society. It is good that there is always a wake-up and eye-opener after every such dream – but they further 27

traumatise our community (after all, in the German language, Traum (dream) and Trauma (trauma) come from the same root). Our nation dreamily looks at the designer goods, but actually purchases goods at flea markets and second-hand sales – this is also a reflection of today.

It is our well-known old home, our Zwischen(t)raum. Raum zwischen Ost und West. Raum zwischen Traum und Trauma.

Looking back to the ninth decade of the twentieth century in our part of Europe will inevitably bring us back to 1989 – both the break-through and the starting point for Central Europe.

Actually, two key events happened in the 1990s in the political and social arena of our country: the fall of “real socialism” (i.e. communism) (1989) and the split of Czechoslovakia (1993).

Bratislava became the capital of the local scene, both the old and new center of the periphery. The break-up of communism brought not only the collapse of one ideological Block, the end of both a utopian dream and a big experiment, but also the dispersion of territorial unity. It brought the end of the Warsaw Pact, the satellite countries dispersed in their efforts to find their own position and independence in the new situation. It started with the declaration of independence in Estonia in 1991. It continued with the break-up of the “indestructible” Soviet Union, the split of Czechoslovakia (1993) and, as events in the Balkans show, this process has not finished yet.

This post-totalitarian period is tainted by the tearing of the old bonds, disintegration, and division: it is the political “post-Chernobyl” effect. It was probably inevitable to re-define the state and national identities, traditions, and the hierarchy of cultural values. The EU accession (May 2004) moved us again into the society of European culture where the integration program is the common denominator, but there is also the awareness of everybody’s own characteristics and differences. It has installed yet a new situation, the need to re-define the national, local and international codes that work in this environment.

Let us start with a quotation then – for the quotations of ideological documents, referrals to saintly texts, or short slogans, constituted the all-pervading tools for political practise and propaganda. 1 Russian artists Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky elaborated a text: Kunst ist Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln (Art is the continuation of politics through different means), and posted it in a Berlin department store in 1991. This is a telling paraphrase of the Karl von Clausewitz utterance in which the word “war” was substituted by the word “art”. The whole period of the 20th century contains abundant examples of art becoming an ideological weapon stationed at the frontline of propaganda. If one party has all the power in the state, it induces a power disease resulting in total domination of the art arena. Art thus becomes a sovereign political territory, an ideological space. As a counterpart to the Kopystianskys’ statement, the inscription by Ben Vautier from 1984 in a plant in Cologne can be mentioned: “Kunst ist eine tote Geschichte”. “Art is a dead history” – and possibly it is a dead story in the states that are dead today. Or is this narration wrongly set from the very beginning? The aforementioned statements by the Kopystianskys and Vautier also determine our view – or the presentation of – works of art as the political and social constructions of a period. Naturally, art functioned in certain power 28

fields in the past as well – but the modern totalitarian structures want to absolutely rule over the aesthetic and artistic spheres to the extent of making them identical. That is why Boris Groys considers Stalin not only to be a politician who disposed of the aesthetic power, but also the only artist and at the same time the only total artwork of the “socialism” of his times – the only “Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin”. 2 Fascism and communism were the two strongest totalitarian systems with epicenters in Berlin and Moscow. Their influence continued not only during the last century, but it still seeps through to the present. We believe that the demonstrating message of the official power aesthetics at the international scene, and the following coming to terms with it in the post-totalitarian period can be manifested by two model examples. One dates back to Paris in 1937 and the other to Venice in 1993. The former were the pavilions of Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the World Exhibition in Paris. These two came face to face by the shore of the Seine, built in the form of high monolith towers demonstrating indestructible unity, titan strength and unconquerable power. The German pavilion, with the fascist Eagle emblem at the top, was designed

by Albert Speer, the official architect of the regime. The statues at the entrance were made by Josef Thorak. The Soviet Union’s pavilion was designed by the architect Boris Jofan in cooperation with the sculptress Viera Muchinova. Her sculpture, Worker and Soviet Farm Girl – with the triumphal gestures of their hands holding up the hammer and sickle – was installed upon the top of the major tower (later it became the official emblem of the Mosfilm studio for decades). The strongest answer to this arrogance of power which had melted into the official art was the design of the German and Russian pavilions at the international Biennale in Venice in 1993. Russian artist Ilja Kabakov created an atmosphere of busy construction work in the Russian pavilion, as if it was being built. In the garden behind the building he built Red Pavilion, a small communist style plinth with the USSR coat of arms, flags, and loudspeakers amplifying the slogans and farreaching motivational statements for building communism. Through this he produced a striking contrast between the past and the chaos that occurred after the deconstruction of the Realm of Illusive Order and Forced Happiness. In the “divided” German pavilion, Hans Haacke exhibited an enlarged image of a German Deutschmark coin and a photograph of Hitler from his visit to the Biennale in 1934. Behind the photograph, in the main hall, the artist had the floor ripped up and put silent black letters DEUTSCHLAND on the wall. In the second part of the German exhibition, Nam June Paik presented a media power play artwork called Electronic Super Highway, comprised of many screens, TV channels, and computer graphics emitting mixed and interfering sounds. It represented a lifelike reflection of the destructive role Germany played during the two world wars, its past ambitions and propaganda, and its current economic power and media manipulation. In relation to the declared devotion to the fatherland of totalitarian times let us recall the fact that none of the three artists lived in their homeland any longer: Kabakov and Haacke emigrated to the U.S.A. and Paik moved to Germany.

A characteristic feature of the past years could be their hybrid character: lack of form and transparency, an obscure and strangely paradoxical co-existence of old and new ideas and 29

situations. 3 After all, these features occur in any transition period. The hero of the last two decades could be an imaginary “Ma(ra)donna” – a hybrid celebrity that would symbolise the double face: the highs and lows of the star system in sport and show business. Each period has its own slogan, a keyword, a “magic charm” that is submitted to people. In the postwar time there was a rapid succession of these: collectivisation, electrification, democratisation, perestrojka, privatisation. The latter was the official version of the pending transformational processes of the 1990s. But the next word after privatisation, the word “tunnelling” could follow, meaning, in the Slovak newspeak, illegal disposing of the newly privatised companies’ assets, the smart economical misuse of resources through misinterpretation of legislation. Or the next word could be “hybridisation” – the clash of the old and new times in the Space Between. The hybrid character of today can have different forms and emerge in various situations. In the suburbs of towns, a maze of supermarkets and shopping centers arose, but the major shopping center in each town is the flea market: the official fair with grey-economy goods on sale, where you can get Vietnamese tennis shoes, Turkish textiles, Taiwanese Hi-Fi electrical goods, Ukrainian watches and cigarettes, as well as pirated CDs, DVDs, blank tapes, etc.

In the Space Between a total sell-out was launched: the clearout of ideas, products, symbols, illusions and obsolete technologies. The flea markets are the best proof of this, as they can be found in all of the regions that are situated at the interface of cultures and the border zones of various wealth (from Germany to Ukraine). The failed project of Modernism, personified by purist concrete real estate and high rise apartment buildings, became a tragicomic spectacle as the people who live there are now trying to humanise the environment, thus ruining the symmetry by adding half-circle arches, pointed mansard roofs, refurbished balconies, sticking portals on the facades, etc. A similar spectacle is offered by the architecture of New Times – the crippled post-Modern or neo-Baroque style buildings of banks and the villas of nouveau rich where money and lack of taste are found in partnership. We are still burdened with the residue and remnants of previous times that are, currently, blended with the new signs and emblems. 4 We would like to quickly forget the past regime, and all of the manifestations of “real socialism”, like the anti-regime jokes for which one could go to prison and which were therefore known as “the Golden Bars Jokes”, the waiting lists for Soviet made Zhiguli cars, plastic East German Trabants, queing for Christmas tangerines and for toilet paper. We would like to forget that canned beer was only available in the Tuzex shops since foreign goods could only be bought there, and only with special Tuzex “currency” vouchers. We would like to forget the Clubs of Soviet Film Fans where the system expected us to socialise, Foreign Currency Promise Applications that were necessary for travelling beyond the Iron Curtain, the “right” ideology guarding committees, and the Communist Party policy of preparing prospective candidates for their future high positions in the system by brainwashing, bribery, and blackmailing. We would like to forget all of that, throw it away and cover it up with effective “American touch-ups”. 5 The ideology of yesterday has given way to “image-ology”, 6 where there are no dogmas, no rational system of ideas, but just “a succession of suggestive and hypnotic images and slogans” and their quick interchanging that makes up the ever fresh and new “face” of the present period. Milan Kundera, the Czech author, 30

Illustration 1 – The McDonald’s building in Košice (1999) with a miniature of the Empire State Building on its facade. An example of the post-colonial “conquest” of the area using its own signs and symbols. Photo: Vladimír Beskid

has said, “In the last decades, image-ology has conquered ideology and enjoys its historical victory.

All the ideologies lost; their dogmas were, at the end of the day, de-masked as mere illusions, and people ceased to consider them seriously”. 7 Communism has given way to consumerism and the rule of the image-makers. After ridding ourselves of one ideological pressure, we must accustom ourselves to the other model of post-colonial “drive”. Enough of the Soviet dictatorship – long live “Coca-colonisation”! An attractive common prosperity and personal wealth is the magic formula for new expectations in our Zwieschen(t)raum (Illustration 1).

We shall say openly that the political turnover and the changes of structures or titles did not automatically generate a new quality of art. The newly set paradigm is not directly mirrored in the artistic world. For the time being it even means crippling the art scene, loss of direction, disintegration of the mental axis. It caused contemporary art to lag behind and thus not be able to work in its full range. It looks like the cultural models and formulas are functioning in a different stratum of time: they take longer to work their way through the changes, they are based in continuity, in inherited cultural “memes”, they transfer signals only by interpreting traditions.

They are based on inertia and not on interruptions, breakthroughs, or revolutionary changes.

Art was, in a short space of time, confronted with a change of axis, the paradigm, but also with the rapid development and introduction of new media. The situation that developed in visual art can be called “dispersed”, or “airbrush focused”. This term defines the process (because it would be difficult to call it a status quo yet) within which it is not possible any longer to speak “the language of the period”. The unity of the language is broken, atomising. The language is ambiguous, it is impossible to focus it on one central problem, to find a common platform or to grasp reality from one viewpoint. Just the opposite is happening: deviations from the imaginary center emerge, growing numbers of different languages occur. There are new procedures and 31

stories, they overlap and get mixed. The discourse of approaches and of media makes up the networking structure of today, unfocused perceptions where you cannot find a solid shape, but rather a sprayed out stain, a spot, a diffused point structure. In this hybrid visual environment, many new problems and issues emerge as themes, different ways of thinking, minority groups and sub-cultures (like ethnic specifics, graffiti phenomenon, art in public places, gender issues and the art of gays and lesbians, internet art, interactive projects, virtual communities, etc.). The distraction is further amplified by unheard of crossbreeds of different media, by combinations of different techniques and by the trespassing and/or blurring of the borders between them, by a multitude of interdisciplinary research, and multi-media, projects.

So the past period of time can be labelled by the hybrid notion “GloBal-kans culture” which is made up of the coexistence of two tendencies: on one side, the progressing process of globalisation, super-national uniformity, and the conformity of the “moving pictures” of advertising and mass media, and on the other side, the marks of certain degree of balkanisation – the process of splitting, dispersion, increased conflict potential, controversial communities that attack the established context (like ecological activists, politically engaged art, computer hackers), these make up unique sub-cultures, or they just defend their traditional values and local specific signs and symbols. We believe that in the near future we will witness more and more “iconoclash” 8 – the encounter between different definitions of authoritative images and their push throughout the world. Iconolatry and iconoclasm represent the joined vessels of dependence on the images. The question is, what images can be submitted by our own environment and how we will manage to push them through in the new “iconowar” situation?

The fact is that Western art, in the sense of American and Western European postwar development, constitutes the dominant environment, and we are more and more confronted with its “Hellenistic” dissemination and western “narratives”. It is still the West that represents the reference field to which our environment refers to. During this time, we here in Central Europe have not yet managed to establish our own platform for new structures, institutions, and identity, a platform that could stand for itself, strong in an international framework, and make up stronger bonds for its market functioning and the presentation of its contemporary art. The acceptance of visual artwork from our part of Europe is still problematic for the Western art market. Let us admit that the Western drive that occurred right after the Velvet Revolution, with individual “national selection” exhibitions, met with a friendly welcome, but stayed without due professional acknowledgment or even interest. These were polite visits rather than a laying of the foundations for future cooperation. The artistic manifestations coming from the Central European region were accepted only if they carried the signs and codes of Western thinking and substantiated Western artistic language, or if they represented the artwork of those visual artists who had immigrated to Western Europe and had been living there for some time (a typical example was the spectacular exhibition “Europe, Europe”, Bonn 1994). In the West, several retrospective exhibitions which have taken place recently have focused on former Eastern European art and mapped its development in the last decades. 9 It is hard for us to come to terms with another fact that even in this context of art from the East with Slovakia being in the shadow 32

of neighbouring countries, it is presented and represented insufficiently and to a smaller extent than it deserves, or it is completely omitted. 10 The Slovak art community will have to deal with this handicap in the near future.

The common denominator of the visual art scene in Central Europe can be labelled as the undernourishment of cultural institutions and their functioning at the margin of both the priorities and the interests of society. Here, in comparison to the previous regime, the artistic sphere has declined in the hierarchy of social status. The individual national or local art scenes are still closed. The art market is weak, the legislative framework for the support of art is insufficient, and there is a lack of supportive foundations, funds, and grant schemes. 11 Along with this new development in the traditional cultural centers, some regional scenes, visual communities, and contacts out of the established cultural axis have been empowered and are growing (e.g.

Dresden, Ústí nad Labem, Gdańsk, Ostrava, Košice, and Odessa). This may develop into a wider cultural network within the framework of Central Europe. It may give rise to authentic signs and utterances that might, through its “local dialects”, enrich the other scenes, in particular, and the “universal” Western art language in general. We are a part of “GloBal-kans culture” with mixed universal and local codes, with problematic self-presentation and self-colonisation.

The new public space – institutional frame The situation in Slovakia which has unfolded since 1989 should be termed a journey from the “Velvet Revolution” to the “Velvet Divorce”. 12 This “Velvet Divorce”, the splitting of Czechoslovakia, fortunately passed peacefully. After the divorce we transcended from “the Velvet” to many misdemeanours. The amount of pure ideals decreased and they were replaced by dirty money. The prominent figures of the old regime “soaked into” the society again and even put themselves in presidential chairs – after all, all the Slovak presidents so far were somehow connected with the totalitarian regime and were members of its destructive political parties.

All in all the public space has been opened – freedom of speech, travelling, publishing and even in the sense of the urban environment – it was necessary to fill the free space in the streets and squares with something of a conceptual and material nature. The issue of the nation, national values, and domestic products passed through “the comeback period” as a certain response or a counterpart of the coming globalization and exaggerated the “import” of foreign and western ideas, technologies and products. This standpoint strengthened under the influence of the political situation – by declaring state sovereignty. A need to “recode” and codify the national element emerged, the need for language “purity” arose along with a recognition of the national element as a counterbalance to growing and “accelerating” hybridization. The issue of the nation had run through Slovak art during the entire 20th century. It has been one of its determining factors but it has various accents and gradations. In the 1990s it mostly showed the signs of the conservative powers. Many nationally orientated organisations emerged, which emphasised and defended domestic tradition and historical roots. However, in visual art they preferred the 33

reliable, verified language of yesterday, compositional clichés, sentiment, and ethno-icon-ography taken from the archive of the national antiquities. The association of conservatism and clericalism (i. e. the intertwining of the nation and belief) very often brings change from defensive positions to attacking and hostile ones, against everything “new and alien” and everything cosmopolitan.

This conflict of the local and the global, the national and the international element, is being incarnated in the character of a hero. Naturally, each era creates its own heroes and their idealistic images. Those characters are important and they feature in the main historical and ideological roles. Thanks to those characters the official history becomes a heroic story about their heroic achievements. In this case the role models for heroes were changed. The heroes parted, went through the velvet divorce, and finally two different parts, or camps, were generated. In the previous regime “the building hero” was formed according to the slogan “Be ready to build and defend!”, (i.e., a brawny iron worker, a Stachanov-like miner, a woman tractor driver, a young communist-to-be, etc.), and also his or her defensive counterpart (a guerrilla soldier, a Soviet army liberator, a member of the armed workers units, the current soldier on duty protecting socialism, etc.). After the regime had been changed, the 1990s brought in a completely different embellishment of personalities and adored figures. On one side, the “star system” is staged (movie stars, pop singers, celebrities, models, athletes, hockey players – sons of the nations, politicical leaders), and on the other, the model of those who protect the nation, chosen “icons” of the nation – characters of national history (Milan Rastislav Štefánik, Andrej Hlinka, Ľudovít Štúr, Štefan Moyzes, Saints Cyril and Methodius, and many others). What is extremly important is not only their silent co-existence, even though they might have come from different worlds (again a sort of hybridism), but also the imaginary division of their field of influence. While the former group of stars occupy the mass media space by means of motion pictures, the other group of nationally established stars occupies the public space as static sculptures (Illustration 2). While the first one brings comedy, entertainment, and action heroes, the other calls for pious respect and retrospective adoration. These two avenues are also manifested as a visible generation gap – while the young identify themselves with the stars, which is natural, the older usually identify “defensively” with the national heroes.

The most important moment of the heroic story is the fact that in recent years we have witnessed the vanishing of the hero typology in classical visual art. After we have seen many monumental versions, mutations, and changes of the national heroes we now observe their removal or complete disappearance. We think that this loss of (national) hero or heroine contributes to the loss of the current social status of art. Our previous non-official art rejected the hero altogether with socio-realistic iconography and has not offered any alternative. The representatives of this art have not even taken advantage of their own heroic position in society. The patriarchal characters of poor people and brave working heroes have been replaced with ever-smiling stars from the screen (i.e. media space). Current art does not deal with heroes at all. That is why the national communities and communities of citizens build iconic sculptures in the squares as a protection of the national identity and raise their “saints” on the throne (thus occupying the public space).

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Illustration 2 – An example of the “bronze age” in the 21st century – the creation of national heroes’ memorials, during the process of building “control memory signs” and their hybrid coexistence with mass culture buildings.

The statue of Andrej Hlinka in Žilina, by Ladislav Berák, 1994.

The text on the pedestal: Andrej Hlinka – A Father of the Nation. Photo: Vladimír Beskid

Moreover, those sculptures are put on a pedestal that was rejected by current and avantgarde art. This means that current artistic tendencies do not carry the icons and symbols of the collective experience (on the contrary, they are built on an individual program, the attitudes and values of artists, on their own mythology – if you like). The artists are not even able to translate their values into the language of their own group or community, which inevitably causes them to choose a means of communication from the approved register. Visual art has thus departed or has been pushed out from the media or public space. It remains in the private space of galleries and it is again in the position of the “velvet underground”, resting on the periphery of social communication (Illustration 3).

However, the community does have its common heroes – the new cult characters which are picked up from the area of motion pictures, comics, cartoons, movies, PC games or effects: Mickey Mouse, the Terminator, Spiderman, Rambo, Pokemon – Pikatchu, all headed by Batman and Lara Croft stare at us from small pictures and billboards. The “cursed” public space remains one of the attributes of the period following 1989. A great number of memorials, busts, and sculptures of the same kind and of low quality, without a current artistic language, have been erected in the squares during this period. A forest of bronze figures and figurines has flooded our public space in the most sensitive spots – the historical cores of the cities and towns. However, contemporary art has not been invited to this celebration. Paradoxically, the current regime is removing the symbols and signs of the past in an iconoclastic effort to get rid of the power icons altogether. At the same time the contemporary government orders new visual representations, signs, and symbols in the 19th century style from the very same, approved artistic propagandists of the past (namely Ján Kulich, Ladislav Berák, Arpád Račko, etc.). Iconoclasm of signs (or of 35

Illustration 3 – The metaphoric expression of the current position of fine art – a beggarly performance of Fajnor taking place in various cities throughout Slovakia as a certain demographic and social probe into these days. Richard Fajnor: Poorperformance, Bratislava 2000, as a part of the international public art project – Public Subject. Text on the cardboard: I am an artist, please contribute to my new exhibition, thank goodness. Photo: Vladimír Beskid

content, if you wish) goes hand in hand with the iconolatry of the form. We suppose that certain groups or communities compose their own supporting points in the visual culture, let us call them “control memory signs” – these are reliable codes and symbols in the back-ups of the collective consciousness; certain archives or sign collections in the social memory registers which are, in the case of uncertainty, danger, or instability, chosen again, and are then checked and referred to by this community to verify its own position, identity, and self-identification.

We consider them to be a kind of constant symbol, a stable power, an inner core of commonly shared identity (Illustration 4). In the register of the control memory signs, the leading position is occupied by winning historical events and by national heroes as positive community role models.

Their sculptures cast in bronze are erected on the squares as a manifest, they are the emblems of communities justifying the historical support and today’s justness. Long lasting materials confirm long lasting values and past forms justify tradition and “historicity”. These conservative solutions omitting the current art language of squares represent a kind of weird “Bronze age” at the beginning of the 21st century (Illustration 5). In the end, from the standpoint of visual art, the commissioned production of memorials is a mostly archaic (dead) issue, though still living and required in the community. That is why the issue of national identity as expressed by the production of memorials leaves a bitterish taste.

The issue of the nation is also displayed in the field of cultural institutions. We talk about their being built on a national principle. Even their internal dynamics function within the national framework: we witness the acquisitions of masterpieces for the national and regional collections of only Slovak art, arranging exhibitions using domestic artworks excluding 36

Illustration 4 – Inserting traditional features and national symbols into political propaganda (bread with a national sign) – presidential election campaign of Vladimír Mečiar, a former Prime Minister of the Slovak government, Bratislava, spring 2004. Photo: Vladimír Beskid

the Czech and Hungarian context from our cultural tradition, etc. Thanks to this our art is still accepted as a national product. Upon entering the European Union, as cooperation and communication increasingly develops in smaller units (subcultures, regions) and at the same time in the larger European area and even in the global economic and media space, we can expect a painful process of redefining our national identity, and a long-term coping with the crisis of our national framework.

After 1989 we have noted a step forward in the institutional sphere where current visual art is developing. This is visible mostly in the following positions: the training of professional artists (academies of the creative arts and universities), the official presentation of art (a network of predominantly national galleries and museums), and a newly formed platform of non-state culture (non-governmental organizations, non-commercial activities, private activities, etc.). Most of all, the educational institutions of creative art were strengthened. On the high school level of creative arts, compared to the three schools of this kind in existence before 1989 (Bratislava, Kremnica, Košice), we now have more than twenty specialized state or private schools of various visual art orientations. It is necessary to add that this growth also results in the variable quality of such schools.

As far as the universities are concerned, it is necessary to emphasise that in comparison to the other cultures from the Central European region, 13 in Slovakia the founding of an Arts Academy was delayed – as late as in the 20th century, no sooner than after World War II. The University of Fine Arts was founded in Bratislava in 1948. In the end, this school survived the previous regime 37

Illustration 5 – A gesture of protest – an illegal painting of the star in the lap of the bronze statue – Greeting from 1995 (!) by Jan Kulich, a prominent sculptor of the former regime, on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the students’ revolution. Erik Binder: Akcia Z (Action Z), Bratislava, November 17, 2004, performance in front of the Slovak Parliament building, Photo: Erik Binder

as the only academy of this type and played a key role in the formation of the Slovak postwar scene. In the new political situation during the 1990s, the school staff was radically replaced (1990), and in a very short course of time after that the new Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica (1997) and the Faculty of Arts at the Technical University in Košice were founded (1998). In the previous century the discussion as to how to teach art, how to define the educational process in the studios, and how to create the structure of the school became very topical. Despite the massive boom of new media in the sphere of contemporary visual art in this period, it was not sufficiently implemented in the educational process. Generally, the structures of the schools are built on the classical disciplines and traditional divisions. The future will show how the new schools and the new graduates will stimulate the scene.

Official galleries also went through many changes, especially during the process of decentralisation, when the majority of state galleries moved from the administration of the Ministry of Culture into the hands of regional administrations or private galleries and exhibition halls. It is worthwhile looking at the solitary project of Mečiar’s government, from 1996 to 1999, of putting together all of the institutions in the city, or region, under one administration, under one roof, and of creating so-called state commissaries. 14 Fortunately, this forceful step did not pass but still reminded us of existing efforts of the state to control the culture according to an old pattern. It was a blast from the past, from the old times and methods. The disconsolate situation of Slovak galleries as the institutions of museum character (shortages of money, activities, personalities, and ideas) shows the entire state of society. Galleries are not strong enough to fight against the general “acid-like” cultural and commercial environment. This kind 38

of environment does not only exist in the soil or mouth, but also in culture. The poor activities of the galleries contribute to the creation of this environment. Let me just add the fact that in Slovakia no modern or contemporary art museum has yet been founded. Neither has an exhibiting institution of the German Kunsthalle type, which would communicate and operate in the international context, been established. From the list of official galleries, we would highlight those that presented themselves with much better than average activities: — The Ján Koniarek Gallery in Trnava (since 1994 mainly by the opening of the Synagogue – Center for Contemporary Art, under the curatorship of Jana Geržová since 1995, and its international projects by Viera Jančeková and Vladimír Beskid) — The Považská Gallery of Art in Žilina (mainly from 1992 to 1997, under director Katarína Rusnáková) — The State Gallery in Banská Bystrica (under director and curator Alena Vrbanová) — The Tatranská Gallery in Poprad (since 1993, opening the former Power Station [Elektráreň] and later the House of Photography [Dom fotografie]) — The Museum of Vojtech Lőffler in Košice (from 1993 to 2000, the main curator Vladimír Beskid).

A couple of collective exhibitions took place in the Slovak art scene and also contributed to contemporary art language. We can certainly say that there is a shortage of curator projects and interesting exhibitions 15 which would shape and stimulate the domestic scene. One of the causes of this situation is the fact that in the departments of art history at the universities (Bratislava, Trnava) there are no special subjects or programs for curatorial or art critic studies. Fortunately, in the past a few succesful exhibitions were accomplished and they represented Slovakia abroad and in an international context. 16 In addition, for many known and famous representatives of the older generations a lot of young artists 17 introduced their neo- and post- conceptual tendencies and they were able to further develop the artistic styles of the 1960s and 1970s, especially those who introduced and developed conceptual thinking in our quite conservative environment.

The characteristic moment of the 1990s was the search for alternative premises and the production of activities that would differ from the neutral framework of the galleries and utilise the specifically different atmospheres of non-conformist locations and public places (Illustration 6). Leaving the premises of the galleries and searching for other forms of communication with the audience and the space created the strongest moment of the past period. This process of nonclassical presentation is also closely connected with the development of the “space-related” forms of current art, like modelling the ideas via 3D – typical objects, installations, video-installations, site specific works, interactive art, etc. They were basically single actions and projects which presented installations and used various non-traditional sites: basements (Suterén, Bratislava 1989), a swimming pool (Bazén, Bratislava 1992), deserted middle class high street historical town houses (Laboratórium I, Prešov 1992, 60/90, Bratislava 1997), a fortification bastion (Barbakan, Banská Bystrica 1992), a former psychiatric clinic (Laboratórium III, Košice 1996), the brush factory Cosmos (Interior vs Exterior, Bratislava 1996), abandoned flats in the city center (Real 39

Illustration 6 – A concise comment on the fever in 2000 and the risk of computer failure.

Marko Blažo: Y2KO, Ústí nad Labem (Czech Republic), entrance to the ZOO, 1999, within the framework of the international project Public District.

(E)state, Bratislava 2000), and public spaces: a market place, a square, billboards, toilets (Public Subject, Bratislava 2000), etc. On the other hand, many successful projects were performed in these alternative premises and they are still developing long term programs in designated places: a former steam power station (Tatranská Gallery Poprad since 1993), Synagogues in Trnava (Jan Koniarek Gallery since 1994), and in Šamorín (At Home Gallery since 1996), a former nuclear fallout shelter (Gallery Space (Priestor), Bratislava 1999), an abandoned railway station (Stanica Záriečie, Žilina since 2003), basement premises (Open Gallery, Bratislava 2001, Galéria HIT, Bratislava 2004), an industrial park (Transit workshops Studená 12, Bratislava, 2004), etc.

Some foreign foundations and companies also contributed to the formation of contemporary art, above all the following two foundations, which played a key role: swiss Pro Helvetia (from February 1993 to June 2005) 18 and the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Bratislava (March 1993, since 1999 as The Center for Contemporary Art foundation) with an extended grant program, publishing activities and, of course, with their own annual exhibitions (1993–2000) and Oskar Čepan Prize. 19 The Slovak Union for Visual Art in Bratislava was an unsuccessful enterprise in recent years. It was a sort of successor to the Union of Slovak Fine Artists of the former regime. Its aim was to function as an umbrella organization with international ambitions, but it was unable to develop its activities. 20 The Slovak private sector, and a market for visual art, is just at its beginning. A lot of small, private galleries have been founded and they offer the common standard of mainstream art.

So far there is no commercial gallery operating in Slovakia, which could succesfully promote and sell good quality contemporary art. Among the major private projects we can mention the opening of the Museum of Milan Dobeš in Bratislava (November 2001), which was initiated by 40

the European Culture Society foundation. The museum is focused on presenting geometric and constructive art, op-art, and the kinetic production of Milan Dobeš, and it closely cooperates with the Komart gallery in Bratislava (2002) with a similar orientation.

It is worth mentioning Vincent Polakovič, a gallery owner and supporter. He took the initiative of opening the Yellow House devoted to Vincent van Gogh in Poprad-Veľká in 1993.

With Dutch support he also opened the Danubian Meulesteen Art Museum in Čunovo, near Bratislava. Although the main program is concentrated on mainstream art and commercial activities, it is very important to mention that this building was constructed in a new architectural style and that it was the first gallery built after World War II solely for this purpose (if the Gallery of Ľudovít Fulla in Ružomberok with a permanent exhibition of his artwork is not taken into consideration). Among activities in the private sector it is worth mentioning the creation of the Soga auction hall in Bratislava (1996) which has almost a monopoly on the market. It primarily offers antique furniture, porcelain, and traditional wall hangings. In September 2003, Soga and The Center for Contemporary Art foundation organised a special 41st auction of Slovak art and its yields were to support the grant program of the foundation, thus giving rise to a special circumstance where artists supported themselves via a private salesmen. A new Art SK auction hall in Bratislava came into being in 2004. It concentrates on selling modern and contemporary art.

Within the discipline of art history, the area of theory and creative art reviewing has not been the strongest side of art-historical thinking. This is also reflected in the level of specialized visual art magazines. However, it is important to mention that growth has recently been observed in the production and distribution of such magazines and newspapers. Although the traditional magazine, Výtvarný život (Fine Art Life), which had been published continuously since 1956, vanished in 1995, a new publication, Profil, has been published instead, despite several interruptions (1991–96, and again since 2000). It is a quarterly that is focused on theory and deeper studies in contemporary life. Other new periodicals also came into existence at the end of the last century. DART (1999) focused on the young scene, Vlna (1999) was an urban magazine covering a wider range of literature, music, and art, and ¾ Revue (2000) was concerned with new media and technologies. The journals are not published regularly due to the bad grant policy of the Ministry of Culture, and they are published in reduced editions for a small number of people. In 2003, the publishers of DART tried to change this situation by changing their strategy.

They advertised that every sixth week there would be 5000 free issues of the newspaper circulated and distributed in galleries and chosen book stores. The reality is that they are still a couple of steps behind their goal – only a few issues are published during the autumn of each year (due to the delayed allocation of grant money from the ministry). The basic aim, accessibility and the improvement of the communication of contemporary art with the wider public, has not been fulfilled. Observations of the domestic and foreign art scenes are, therefore, insufficient and fragmentary. In spite of this, the existence of magazines constructs a necessary bridge between the world of art and media space.

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Media Space, Media Overpressure After 1989, a new strong visual field opened in the visual culture – mass-media and the digital world of the Internet. It offered a media space of electronic and digital images that could not compare with traditional media in its density. We can call it media overpressure.

Media overpressure represents an unusual invasion of mass and electronic media into our visual space and also the complete overproduction of technical images. It not only “clashes” with traditional art culture, but it also has the ambition to be dominant in reflecting reality and its transcription into its own language systems. Electronic media and its visualization, which is based on a different reality scanning, bring unheard-of technical grammar (RGB television systems and the computer binary code). A specific mechanical structure, editing, montage, narrative, story compressing, etc., are the means by which it has emerged on the scene. A static image develops in an unstable form as an everchanging image, or a screen-specific image – “screenimage”. While 2D pictures (a painting, a photograph, a reproduction) represent a certain stable relationship, capturing a motionless world or casting a moment into final form, the screen-image represents the flow of pictures and a constant change of images. 2D artwork, and also objects, installations and site-specific realisations have their own physical presence, corporeality, and anchorage, whereas the image-screen is dematerialized with no constant relation to any place or territory. 2D images can be perceived in one viewing but the screen-image must be perceived in time. The visual structure of 2D media has a central hub, as it is based on attracting constituents to the center (a newly perceived element is incorporated into a complete structure and absorbed by it). The screen-image passes through time, the final image is made up of a number of shots, its structure is formed by arranging one after another, by adding and gradual chaining – which is closer to an alphabetical code than to non-linear visual thinking. After all, there have been many occasions of the dispersal of the above-mentioned media boundaries by combining certain techniques and by switching media. There might be a painting at the begining, then its motive is processed through a computer graphics program and then its representation can occur on canvas again. It is possible to create a printed, still copy of moving images, not to mention the strategies of manipulation, interactivity, and the permeation of other life and research spheres (genetics, ecology, medicine etc.). We are too immersed and fascinated by the magic of moving image and electronic technologies. We do not keep the necessary distance and for this reason it is difficult to see and read all of the differences, the new structures and also their effect on the present imagery. We must finally admit that we have found ourselves in the process of our visual world’s restructuring (via media overpressure). The old image capturing status quo, the image as an icon, has changed into the image-time. It is a paradox, but the more focused the shot is, the more obscure is the image of reality we get. We witness the disintegration and fragmentation of the image into a spraypoint structure.

In the last decade of the twentieth century, there was an entrenchment of electronic and digital media naturalized in all of the spectrums of our scene. This new media represented a complete 42

visual paradigm change in our geographical and electronic space. We were somewhere between classical visual culture and the digital image empire. Generally speaking, the present state can be expressed by a metaphor of our community’s transition from Absurdistan, through Kaufland to Computerland, and we see that we are back in our Zwieschen(t)raum, the Space Between, within which we have been passing from a totalitarian, through a consumer, to a digital society. It is the space of expectations and utopian visions.

Print and electronic media play a more and more important role in the present society. But the terms these media emphasize are more problematic: these are issues like the objectivity, detachment, and neutrality of information, and the high credit of media itself. The characteristic aspect is the slogan of the Slovak News Television TA 3: “The Reality. No Comment.” Despite the slogan’s impact, we believe that this slogan does not correspond with reality. Television brings its own simulated reality in the selection, editing, and placing of it into a context. Thus, it can easily manipulate information and also the viewer. It is important to realize that this form of media also considers a situation from only its own point of view. It has its own program set, its picture sequences are edited and its event contexts are put together. There is so much illusiveness, advertising and fiction hidden behind all television factography. This combination strategy, resulting in the inability of the viewer to differentiate information from illusion, to distinguish fact from fiction – since it is packed into one TV product – is a part and parcel of the mass-media space. Due to the accelerated time period within which these electronic and digital images have settled and disseminated in our environment (and, like software piracy, have become “a national sport”), we hardly realize the seriousness and speed of the change that has occured. I would like to mention the process of electrification in former Czechoslovakia that was completed in 1960.

The achievement of electrification was celebrated in Zlatá Baňa, a small village, with a great show program called “220 Volts ahead”. Slovak public television started broadcasting in 1956 and color broadcasting was introduced in 1970 (the World Ski Championship in the High Tatras was the first program broadcast in color). The characteristic feature of the past decade was the boom of mass-media. Electronic media, especially, secured their position because they quenched the thirst for undistorted information, commercial films, and soap operas. The most important moment for the TV world was the loss of its state monopoly in the mass-media market, especially because of the formation of a dual system. This space has been opened for commercial television and radio broadcasting companies within the national domain, but also for many local and cable television companies. There were other televison stations created, apart from the two Slovak Public Television channels. 21 The radio broadcasting structure is standard: a short news program followed by a lot of empty words between pop songs. The same holds true for the structure of television programs: TV news, TV shows, series and, recently, the popular reality shows such as Big Brother (since 2005 on TV Markíza), or the British music competition Pop Idol (since 2001; its Slovak version is called “Slovakia is Looking for a Super Star”, and it has been on the air since September, 2004 on STV 1). Its key purpose is the possibility of influencing the music chart position of those who compete and this gives a new dimenison to the show. It is the way in which 43

Illustration 7 – A current billboard message of the new (non)culture media stars – the words of the intellectuals about the need of having our own national culture are put into the mouth of an ice hockey representative, the finalist of the show “Slovakia is Looking for a Superstar” and a hero of the disgusting reality show. The picture features an arrogant and non-cultural parvenu Mrs. Nora Mojsejová from the reality show. The text reads as follows: “The fact that the culture nowadays is not a part of the priorities which society values is a deep social misunderstanding which is proved by the gradual loss of social consciousness” ( Tóno Popovič). The title of the work: All you want to know about culture (but you were afraid to ask), team: Mira Keratová, Katarína Kucbelová, Marek Kvetan, Lucia Tkáčová. Bratislava, June 2005, within the framework of the project Billboart Gallery Europe.

an ordinary person can enter the world of TV stars, a way to touch them, even an opportunity to participate in “creating” a Super Star. Televison has its own visual world of entertainment, its eternal smile, and its fulfilment of our desire to “amuse ourselves to death”. 22 It does not reflect reality. It only creates its own reality – its events, affairs, stars, and celebrities – figures well known by the media (Illustration 7). Under such conditions, the present visual art is out of the game since it does not fit this structure or broadcasting arena. It would be naive to suppose that there will be some change in the near future. Commercial television does not broadcast any art programs at prime time, and art as a theme is hardly ever a topic in the news. If, during the former regime, politics used art for its own promotion, today politics uses mass media for this purpose. This indicates a very important turn as it creates the authoritative examples of today and the new image-ologists’ and imagemakers’ territory.

Every single decade of the postwar period has had its own small technological toy to symbolize itself. Let us put aside the once so fashionable Rubik’s Cube, tamagotchi etc. Let us say, with some exaggeration perhaps, that these toys were represented by tape recorders in the 1960s, pocket 44

Illustration 8 – A fostering of advertising strategies by visual art. Outdoor promotion of the international METRO exhibition, Gallery Space for Contemporary Art, Bratislava, 2004. (note: there is no subway in Slovakia, in fact). Photo: archive of Space

calculators in the 1970s, and Walkmans in the 1980s, whereas the symbol of the 1990s is definitely the mobile phone. It became a toy of the decade and has developed from the “Be Wireless” message to “You are either easy or not,” (Eurotel’s advertising slogan for their Easy Card). Since the first mobile operator entered the Slovak market in 1991, the mobile phone has changed from a huge “telephone brick” into an essential toy. The mobile phone has other functions (camera, SMS, MMS, Internet) and is becoming a digital, mobile station. Trendy USB keys and MP3 players are intended especially for a young e-generation. However, it is a pity that telecommunication technologies do not often appear in Slovak art works and projects.

Growing rapidly, the mass media culture has been deluging us with hypermarkets, commercial spots, billboards, the cult of the body and misogynic or sexist movies. Such media overpressure causes constant informational pressure on new products and hot market news, and generates the stressful factor of having to be “in”. According to Olivier Toscani, the advertisment, in the form of a “Smiling Carcass”, penetrates into visual culture aggressively favoring its own language and its original appearance made up of visual and textual clichés. As a strong support for selling new products in the 1990s markets in the last century, the billboard emerged (Illustration 8). Later there were bigboards – overdimensioned areas for excessive image and product usage. Billboards made the A1 format posters history. There is a unique project, made in Slovakia, dealing with just this current phenomena – it is an international project called the “Billboart Gallery Europe”.

Because advertising is a huge field, I will select only one characteristic feature of the 1990s, and it is misogyny, or sexism. Generally speaking, misogyny is a way of exploiting eroticism, female nakedness, sex appeal, and sex presentation in a public and media space to an unimagined 45

Illustration 9 – A commercial billboard for the non-alcoholic beverage, Kofola, Trnava, 2003. An example of sexism in the public arena. The slogan says: When you love her, there is nothing else to be solved – an ambiguous slogan expressing either the love for a woman or for Kofola, the drink. Photo: Vladimír Beskid

extent. It is not so much about an ever-present world of erotic and pornographic pictures as it is about the commercialization of female sexuality in the advertising billboard world. Advertising is a place where the powerful, masculine, macho-man attitude still survives. Misogyny offers pictures that reduce the female body to a depersonalised sexual object, to a material that one should seize, a must-have product. Sexism appears when double entendres occur and even when the body has nothing in common with the goods on offer. Although the product is intended for both sexes, the slogan is made using only a masculine grammar (Illustration 9). Advertising misogyny is flourishing and it maintains and supports the gender stereotypes about gender parity. On the other hand, the positive side of this period is the new desire to face gender studies problems, questions of the feminist movement, and different sexual orientations. It signifies a crucial break in what has been the patriarchal monolith, the male dominance, in visual arts. Regardless of these gender questions, a great number of talented female artists have now appeared on our scene (Illustration 10). Their presence and their ability to assert themselves on the labour market bring a new quality and perceptiveness, representing different points of view and approaches in the forming of new art ideas.

Video art has become entrenched during the monitored period and a new “McGeneration” 23 of artists has arisen. This generation has grown up with Macintosh and Big Mac, its thinking has been developed in the new corridors of digital technology. The leading metaphor will be “to be in the net” – to connect to existing structures even at the cost of using illegal software. Even if there is a proclaimed global village, it is going to be more and more difficult for those small villages and peripheries. It is essential to point out the establishment of new international festivals in Slovakia within the new 46

Illustration 10 – The Influence of Show Business on Fine Art – an exhibition project where it is possible to communicate with selected young and beautiful female artists from the Central European region. Project “Pretty Communication” / Agata Bogacka, Anna Baumgart, Gabika Binderová, Veronika Drahotová + Kriszta Nagy, not in the photo, Gallery Space, Bratislava, 2003.

media culture. These have mainly been the wide-spectral, The Month of Photography (since 1991), or the festival of digital media, Multiplace (since 2002). Multiplace is specific because it does not have only one organiser – there are several institutions and associations that coordinate their activities. There is also a specific digital community, or subculture, as we can say, that takes part in club life and similar activities (Buryzone, Burundi datalab, Atrakt Art association, Spojka club, etc.)

There is a term, “minority culture,” which is often used at present and is connected with the national, gender, and religious communities. I am inclined to apply this term to presentday, minority art. This is the “problematic” minority group curbed by shallow media programs and aseptic gallery work. With some exaggeration, I would state that these “minority” artists or curators should be protected from extinction just as seals are. Otherwise, we cannot achieve the protection and cleaning up of our contaminated cultural environment. The “invalid social space” we share is, on one hand, affected by the past with its visible residues, and on the other hand, influenced by the inability of intellectuals to name and discuss major issues in our society.

There is a lack of leaders and money, and there is also an undeveloped art market in this region.

However, this nonstandard environment can be considered a challenge to ferment and generate change, and also an open space for the planting of new ideas and activities. It is a challenge for the “Space Between” to become a part of a broader European community with a standard cultural background and infrastructure.

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Having summarized the latest period problems, we can perceive the social and artistic problems by means of the computer keyboard. First we pressed “Backspace,” which brought us into the turning point of two changing periods, into the Space Between. This has resulted in the “Shift” – the launching of an undisputed change, a transfer from the institutionalized field to the public and media space. Finally, we have to press “Enter” – to open up new opportunities and the adventures of coming days when our keywords will open unknown realms of c-worlds (cultural, copy(right), collide, commercial, cosmopolitan, cyber-worlds, etc.).

February 2006

Notes: 1 The term “propaganda” itself, in current perception, comes from the “Congregatio de Propaganda Fide” initiated by the Pope in 1622. Propaganda lost its neutrality during World War I. Its negative meaning was a result of the totalitarian regimes in the 20th century. In the position – “political art” it gains the new nuances of the protest movements (pacifist, feminist, AIDS). In the 1990s several exhibitions focusing on the phenomenon of the mixture of propaganda with art in totalitarian regimes were arranged, e.g.: Kunst und Diktatur (Architektur, Bildhauerei und Malerei in Ősterreich, Deutschland, Italien und der Sowjetunion 1922– 1956), Künstlerhaus Vienna 1994; Art and Power: Europe Under the Dictators, 1930–1945, London, Barcelona, Berlin, 1995–96; Berlin–Moscow, 1900–1950, Martin-Gropius Bau Berlin 1995 / Pushkin’s State Museum Moscow 1996; Kunst in der DDR, Neue National Galerie Berlin 2003; Traum Fabrik Kommunismus, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt upon Main 2003, etc. See also: Schuster, P. K. (ed.): Nationalsozialismus und “Entartete Kunst”: die “Kunststadt” München 1937. Prestel-Verlag, München 1987; Barron, S. (ed.): Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany. Los Angeles 1991; Taylor, B.; Cullerne, B.: Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917–1992. Manchester 1993; Clark, T.: Art and Propaganda. London 1997.

2 See: Groys, B.: Gesamtkunstwerk Stalin. Vienna 1988.

3 This text is also composed as a hybrid construct, built as a collage, stratifying previous texts and notes with entries and instructions.

4 Paradoxical coexistence of old and new signs can be observed all around the middle-European region: the last Russian aircraft, the TU 154, was finally removed from the Czech airlines fleet in January 2000. The last landmines were removed from the former West German-East German border in May 1995. The tiny western broadcasting interference devices in Lvov (Ukraine) together with the church of St. George still create the most beautiful works of dominance in the town. In Prešov (Slovakia) the age-old statement “We will protect socialism,” over the gate of a barracks was replaced by another: “We will protect freedom and democracy”. In Dresden (Germany) the huge Burger King building has a side facade covered with smiling socialist workers, doves, and a star. In Mikulovice (Czech Republic), a new brand of vodka is being made which bears the name “Stalinovy slzy” (Stalin’s tears) – a genuine “East-block” brand. The socialistic Russian national anthem was revitalised in December 2000. In Zvolen (Slovakia), the movie theater MIER (peace) shows mostly action films with violent content, etc.

5 For example, in 1996, 135 total films were presented in Slovakia, 95 of them coming from America , 10 of them from Great Britain, while there were no films from Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, etc.

6 A term from the Czech writer Milan Kundera.

7 Kundera, M.: Nesmrtelnost (Immortality). Atlantis, Brno 1993, pg. 188.

8 According to Latour, B.: What is Iconoclash? Or is There a World Beyond the Image Wars? In: Latour, B.; Weibel, P. (ed.): Iconoclash (beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art). ZKM Karlsruhe / MIT Press Cambridge 2002, pg. 14–38.

9 Exhibitions: Europa, Europa – the Century of Avantgarde in the Middle and East Europe. Kunst und Ausstellunghalle der BDR Bonn 1994; After the Wall (Art and culture in post-Communist Europe). Modern 48

Museum Stockholm 1999; Aspects/Positions –50 Years of Art from Mittleeurope 1949–1999. MMKSL Vienna 1999; Body and the East. Modern Gallery Ljubljana 1998 etc.

10 For example, in the huge publication of Mansbach, S. A.: Modern Art in Eastern Europe (from the Baltic to the Balkans, ca 1890–1939). Cambridge University Press 1999, Slovakia and its art scene cannot be found at all . There is no text except for one manifest Happsoc in the publication: Hoptman, L.; Pospiszyl, T.: Primary Documents (A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s). MoMA New York / The MIT Press Cambridge 2002, (pg. 85–87).

11 The opening of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest and the Veletržní Palace (Grand Fair Palace) of the National Gallery in Prague can be considered a big contribution to the development of a visual arts arena. These two institutions joined the system of the top Central European art institutions comprising Ujazdowskich Castle and Zacheta Gallery in Warsaw, Mücsarnok in Budapest and others. Several private galleries were established that crossed the borders of local scenes (e.g., the Knoll Gallery in Vienna and in Budapest, the Jiří Švestka Gallery in Prague, Starmach and Zderzak Gallery in Krakow).

12 According to the article: Abercrombie, Th. J.: CzechoSlovakia – The Velvet Divorce. National Geographic, September 1993, pg. 2–37.

13 As a comparison, the founding of some art academies in the middle European region can be mentioned: Berlin 1696, Vienna 1705, Prague 1799, Munich 1808, Krakow 1818, Budapest 1871.

14 For example, the state premises in Košice, the second largest city in Slovakia, were called the Abov Cultural Center and included a museum, a gallery, a public library, an observatory, an educational center, a music cabinet, a puppet theater, and The Romathan and The Thalia theaters.

15 Out of curatorial projects and exhibitions in Slovakia the following ones can be mentioned: Suterén (The Basement), Bratislava 1989 (curator: R. Matuštík); Barbakan, Banská Bystrica 1992; Alternative Slovak Graphics, Banská Bystrica 1997 (curator: A. Vrbanová); Between the Object and the Installation, MAO Dortmund 1992 (curators: J. Geržová, A. Krnáčová–Gutleberová); Space ’93, Piešťany 1993 (curator: Ľ. Kára); Geometria viva, Bratislava 1993; Laboratory I–IV, 1992–98 (curator: V. Beskid); Fragments, Vienna 1994 (curator: M. Orišková); Physical/Mental, 1995, Paradigma Woman, 1996, Between the Man and Woman, 1997, all Žilina (curator: K. Rusnáková); Pars pro toto, Bratislava 1995; Limitlos, Dresden 1997 (curator: Z. Rusinová); Interiér versus exteriér (SCCA), Bratislava 1996 (curators: M. Hlavajová, M. Smolíková); 60/90, Bratislava 1997 (curators: P. Hanáková, S. Kusá); Public Subject, Bratislava 2000 (curators: D. Brozman, V. Beskid, A. Vrbanová); Relocation, GJK Trnava 2002–4 (curator: V. Jančeková).

16 Let us mention, at least, the following international exhibitions: Kunst Europa, Lingen 1992; Europa, Europa, Bonn 1994; Riss im Raum, Berlin 1994; Naturally, EM Budapest 1994; The artists of East and Europe, Mattress Factory Pittsburgh 1995; Manifesta I–III, 1996–2000; Body and the East, MG Ljubljana 1998; Distant Similarities…, NG Prague 1999; After the Wall, MM Stockholm 1999; Aspekte/Positionen, MMKSL Vienna, 1999; International Biennial in Venice 2003; Check Slovakia, NBK Berlin 2004.

17 The main personalities of conceptual art in Slovakia are: Stano Filko, Alex Mlynarčík, Peter Bartoš and Július Koller. In the 90’s a new, strong generation of neo- and post conceptual art has appeared: Roman Ondák, Denisa Lehocká, Boris Ondreička, Marko Blažo, Erik Binder, etc.

18 Its director, Dušan Brozman, plays an important personal role in supporting alternative subjects and activities.

In addition to visual art, the foundation also supported some other subjects (The Association of Film Clubs, The Stoka Alternative Theater, Aspekt Feminist Magazine, The Museum of Vojtech Lőffler in Košice), etc.

19 Since 2001 this Center, in cooperation with the American Civil Society Foundation, has annually been organising the Oskar Čepan’s Prize (founded in 1996), which is focused on young artists up to 35 years old. The winner is granted a fellowship in the USA, and the winner and two runners-up can organise their individual exhibitions in Slovakia. This is one of a small number of incentives in the young artistic scene and it also enriches contemporary art.

20 The failure to maintain The Gallery of Cyprian Majerník for Young Artists, unsatisfactory exhibition planning in the traditional building of “Umelecká beseda”, the bad relationship with professional magazines, they stopped the production of Fine Art Life (Výtvarný život) magazine, they expelled the Association of Historians, Theorists, and Art Critics of Visual Art from the Union, etc.

21 It was “Your Television” (Vaša Televízia, VTV) which gained its licence first (in 1993) and started to broadcast in April 1995, but it was not successful, and ended in bankruptcy (in January 2000). The same happened to TV 49

Luna (November 1999–October 2001). There have been other new television stations established: TV Markíza (in August 1996), the news channel TV TA (in September 2001), and the latest has been TV JOJ (in February 2000). TV Markíza has had a dominant market share and it also shows its ambitions to power – not only in connection with the market but also in society.

22 See Postman, N.: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Viking Penguin, New York 1985.

23 The key personalities of video art in Slovakia are: Peter Rónai, Peter Meluzin, and Jana Želibská. From the younger generation in the area of new media the following representatives have emerged: Richard Fajnor, Marek Kvetan, Dušan Zahoranský, Pavlina Fichta Čierna, Aneta Mona Chisa, and others.

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Art In Motion – The Czech Path of Cultural Transformation Michal Koleček 1. In Lieu of an Introduction – Generational Stratification of Czech Art after 1989 Contemporary Czech art is still undergoing a process of gradual transformation from a totalitarian and restrictive model of operation to an open and multilateral cultural system.

Although it might seem that the period of more than fifteen years that has passed since the change of the political and social paradigm in the late 1980s and the early 1990s is a sufficiently long time for the realization of fundamental socio-cultural restructuring, the opposite is true. In addition to focusing on the content of individual artists’ positions or specific works of art, which, however, is not the subject matter of this essay, it is possible to monitor most systematically the persistent lack of stability and the hybrid nature of Czech post-totalitarian art in the sphere of its institutional framework. The operation of art on all its levels (the education of artists; production, presentation and contextualization of artifacts; gallery activity and musealization; socialization as well as expert reflection on art) faithfully reflect contradictory, undefined or even counterproductive movements on the Czech artistic scene and, in a broader sense, also within all local civic society, which is slowly establishing itself.

It is an undisputable fact that contemporary Czech art was not sufficiently prepared for the fast and radical disintegration of the totalitarian regime in the end of the 1980s. The point here is that in Czechoslovakia, in contrast to a number of other former socialist countries (such as Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union itself), there was no marked wave of “perestroika”, i.e., at least a partial freeing and democratization of society and systems of its cultural representation.1 Czech and, of course, also Slovak art remained until the last days before the Velvet Revolution in 1989 strictly divided into the official scene and the unofficial “gray zone”. At the same time, the institutional establishment only presented artists who openly collaborated with the regime of “real socialism” and fulfilled its ideological pseudo-modernist aesthetical canon. Artists resistant to this political power were left with the limited space of cultural ghettos, ones pervaded with a sense of mutual belonging and a kind of sub-cultural conspiracy.2 The possibilities of these artists to communicate with the broader public, become involved in programs, be represented in official gallery and museum collections or even participate in the international exhibition context were drastically limited.

The result of this state cultural policy and the ostracized activity of individual institutions was, unfortunately, a growing gap between contemporary artistic production and the decisive section of the public. Visual art unstoppably fell into social isolation, both in comparison with intense socialization tendencies of “Western” art of the 1980s and with the development of other spheres of culture (in particular literature and theater) in our country.

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Changing this unfavorable trend was the aim of the first “post-revolutionary” generation of Czech visual artists. Although established in part before 1989, they did not fully emerge until the new situation of political and social transformation came about. They formed two groupings defined by interest: Tvrdohlaví (“The Obstinate Ones”), featuring slightly older artists with a loose program, which came into being as early as 1987; and the small group called Pondělí (“Monday”) with clear objectives that was founded by students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1990.3 Despite tangible differences, particularly in terms of the age gap, both associations were united by their effort to systematically reflect on contemporary international development.

With The Obstinate Ones, this was manifested by their inclination towards “European” versions of Postmodernism, in particular Trans-avant-garde personal mythologies. On the other hand, the members of Monday joined Neo-Conceptual trends characterized by material purism, an intermedia character and a social focus. Other characteristic features of these two prominent groupings and a number of their generational peers (Martin John, Vladimír Kokolia, Jan Merta, Vladimír Skrepl, Antonín Střížek and Jiří Surůvka) were the striking entry they made into official exhibition institutions, their collaboration with newly founded independent galleries as well as their first partial successes on the emerging art market.4 Another breakthrough on the Czech visual scene came in the second half of the 1990s, when a very strong generation of artists born around 1968 emerged.5 Most of them had already graduated from institutions of higher learning in the liberal post-totalitarian situation and took advantage of the inspirational atmosphere that prevailed after the radical change of teaching staff at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. This relatively numerous and, at the same time, highly individualized and unfocused society of artists was characterized by a systematic inclination towards new expressive strategies and media. Through their production, elements of design, visual communication, various types of technical images (in particular digital prints or video projection) as well as “public art” interventions appeared for the first time in the local contemporary art and definitively asserted themselves. Another substantial aspect of this generation was their tendency towards the decentralization of artistic practice as a number of their members became initiators of the development of local artistic scenes (such as in Brno, Ostrava and Ústí nad Labem). Together with the disruption of Prague’s absolute cultural dominance, which was a residuum of the totalitarian social unification, Czech visual art began a discussion about issues of multiculturalism, gender, subcultures as well as the relations between the center and the periphery.6 The most recent generational stratum on the Czech scene was formed at the beginning of the new millennium. It is characterized by a multi-genre contextual quality, natural internationalism and an effort towards subversive aesthetic infiltration into social structures.7 A generator of creative tension inside the circle of these youngest artists was the seemingly contradictory interference between the declared affiliation to the global institutional framework and awareness of one’s own cultural traditions, often covered by a sarcophagus of period ideological clichés. This painful, albeit inspirational continuation of the lost connections manifested itself in a sophisticated redefinition of the Modernist legacy of local unofficial art mostly of the 1970s, but also of the 1980s.8 52

However, a typical feature of all the above-mentioned generational waves, which have to be seen merely as an orientation point because they emerged within the relatively short period of the last fifteen years, is the intense quest for a new model of institutional functioning. In the changed or (as the case may be) constantly changing political and social paradigm, visual artists were forced to use different production and presentation strategies and establish new communication codes compatible with the pulsating language of the society under transformation. The following chapters of this essay will try to answer, at least partially, questions as to which extent contemporary Czech art’s system of operation has helped them, and where, on the other hand, it has limited them in a negative way.

2. Development of Art Institutions of Higher Learning – A Driving Force of Transformation of Contemporary Czech Visual Scene Czech art schools providing higher learning were strongly centralized before 1989 and were subject to the systematic ideological control conducted by means of political power, unconditionally exercised by the ruling Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Future artists were trained in Prague at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design; in Bratislava at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. As far as teaching and opinions are concerned, throughout the 1970s and the 1980s at Czechoslovak academies there was a hidden, but fierce clash between representatives of the still living tradition of late Modernist art, rooted in the liberal atmosphere of the 1960s, and unscrupulous exponents of real socialism of the normalization period.9 Study programs intentionally ignored information about the development of contemporary “Western” art and the local progressive scene. Authentic artistic activities of teachers and students were pushed from schools into the “gray zone” of unofficial meetings or semi-illegal workshops and symposia.10 This situation accelerated directly after the Velvet Revolution, when the students used their temporary influence, which they acquired as one of the harbingers of political change, and together with a number of hitherto unofficial artists principally changed faculties as well as the orientation of their schools. Within the framework of all Czech universities and colleges, the most systematic was the revolutionary transformation in 1990 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under the administration of its newly-elected rector and internationally renowned Conceptual artist Milan Knížák.11 Following on from the radical character of his performances from the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he exchanged the heads of almost all specialized departments and invited to his Academy key personalities of Czech visual art (such as Dalibor Chatrný, Stanislav Kolíbal, Karel Malich, Karel Nepraš, Jiří Sopko, Stanislav Zippe as well as the theorist Jiří Ševčík).

Thanks to this unprecedented step, the profile of the Academy of Fine Arts became markedly polarized, its quality increased and it opened itself to tendencies and trends of Czech and international contemporary art. At least until the late 1990s this inspirational atmosphere was enhanced by distinct internationalization of students, which was to a certain extent connected with the development of the predominantly American sub-cultural community in Prague.

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Another key process in the development of Czech schools of art on the university level was the establishment of regional art colleges. In addition to the natural diversification of specializations offered to applicants for art studies and a higher number of creative personalities on teaching positions, the development of these schools resulted in a substantial enhancement of vitality of local art scenes. This applied to the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno, whose founding within the Brno University of Technology in 1993 represented one of the highpoints in the emancipation efforts of the local artistic milieu.12 In case of Brno, the opening of the art college “only” confirmed the autonomous character of the local scene rooted in the rich tradition of local modern art, which developed in a promising way during the totalitarian era as well (culminating in the generation of unofficial artists in the 1960s) and was supported by strong institutions (the Moravian Gallery, the Brno House of Arts and a number of independent and commercial galleries).13 The situation in Ostrava developed in a different way. In 2001, the Institute for Art Studies14 was established at the local university; in 2000, the Faculty of Art and Design15 began to operate within the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. The cities of Ostrava and Ústí nad Labem are connected to a certain extent by their industrial character, lack of historical roots due to the expulsion of most of the original German inhabitants after the Second World War, economic and environmental exploitation at the time of the totalitarian regime and persisting tension in the social and ethnic spheres.16 The establishing of art colleges initiated in a substantial way the development of these artistic scenes, which until then had a marginal character and depended only on the activities of individual artists. Both art schools gave employment to a number of local artists, brought artistic education closer to applicants from these regions (and, on the other hand, attracted talented students from the whole Czech Republic to Ostrava and Ústí nad Labem), but above all played a key role in the process of institutionalizing contemporary visual production at these cultural peripheries. At the same time, to their credit these art schools substituted non-existent artistic professional organizations, represented a basic production and technological background and co-organized principal presentations in the form of exhibitions featuring the local scenes in these cities on the nationwide scale and often also abroad (in particular in the Central European cultural area).17 In addition to the above-mentioned art institutions of higher learning, the 1990s saw the establishing of a number of other schools, and at present study programs in the sphere of fine and applied arts, design, photography and new media are offered at more than 10 colleges, institutes and departments of various Czech universities. (Let us mention at random the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Technical University in Liberec, the Institute of Art and Design of the West Bohemian University in Plzeň and the Faculty of Multimedia Communication of the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín.)

Of no less importance were the efforts of individual institutions of higher learning to take an active position in the process of critical interpretation of contemporary art production, which culminated in the founding of the Academic Research Center of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague; the master’s study program ‘History and Theory of Design and Inter-media’ and the following doctoral study program ‘Curator and Critic of Design and Inter-media’ at the 54

Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague; as well as preparation for accreditation of the master’s study program ‘Curatorial Studies’ at the Faculty of Art and Design of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem.18 All the above-mentioned steps resulted in the situation that the system of art education has been fundamentally democratized, adapted to the demands of the post-totalitarian society under transformation both in terms of institutional representation and positive internationalization of Czech visual art, and at the same time has taken responsibility for the course of contextualizing and socializing contemporary artistic production.

3. The Case of the National Gallery – Horizons of Expectations and Lost Hopes The situation at the National Gallery and its Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, based at the Trade Fair Palace in Prague, is a model case of the possibilities and limits of state cultural policy in the sphere of institutionalizing contemporary visual art. It is a monumental structure, a prominent landmark of Czech modern Functionalist architecture.19 In 1974 this building was badly damaged by a disastrous fire, and in the 1980s (in the middle of the ongoing “normalization” of political and social life) a political decision was taken to reconstruct it for exhibition purposes.20 The reconstruction was accompanied with a number of technical and organizational problems and was finished under the new political circumstances during the early 1990s. The exhibition space of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Trade Fair Palace was opened in 1995. However, the overall concept of this undoubtedly highly ambitious permanent exhibition caused universal frustration, which manifested itself both in contradictory critical responses and a rather tepid acceptance from the part of art experts and the general public alike.21 The selection of individual exhibits revealed the massive lack of balance of the collection, in particular in the sphere of the development of art after the Second World War, which was of course caused by the political and ideological control exerted over the purchase policy of the National Gallery by the totalitarian power. This defect, which can be understood to a certain extent, was unfortunately deepened by the systematic division of the exhibited collection into the Czech and international sections, even in places where it was not necessary with regard to the quality of the collected material. This approach was truly startling in sections devoted to avant-garde art, where it would be certainly worth comparing the quality of contemporary Czech art with works of international provenience from the famous Kramář collection and later acquisitions realized in the 1920s after the founding of Czechoslovakia.22 Other serious mistakes were committed by the authors of the concept in the concluding section of the permanent exhibition devoted to contemporary art.23 Here they made no attempt to include even the slightest indication of international connections, which could have been realized at least within the post-totalitarian Central European context through limited purchases or long-term loans from institutions of a similar focus. A truly shocking aspect was the almost total absence of new media, in particular static and dynamic technical images.24 The lack of 55

understanding of the intermedia aspect by the institution, which, in view of its mission, should deal with all forms of artistic expressions of contemporary visual culture, was also reflected in the overall concept of how the Trade Fair Palace functioned. It has not become an open social structure, which would, in addition to its collections, also offer a rich range of accompanying programs (such as a library, video archive, reading room, concerts, film screening, conferences, workshops) or supplementary activities (a restaurant, coffee house, representative premises, sales gallery). On the contrary, the Trade Fair Palace has fallen into an almost impenetrable seclusion consisting, on one hand, of exhibitions unattractive to viewers, and on the other hand its own incapability to define in an understandable way the mission of a museum of modern and contemporary art to the general Czech public.

Unfortunately, the mixed reaction which accompanied the opening of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art has not disappeared even after more than ten years of its operation. Although several directors changed place at the management of the Trade Fair Palace and many changes and revisions were made in the exhibitions, this institution has never managed to wake up from a kind of post-totalitarian lethargy. The preparation of a new permanent exhibition which was to be opened in 2000 as an integral part of programs connected with the project ‘Prague – European City of Culture’ looked promising. Unfortunately, the work of the team of curators led by the then director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, Jaroslav Anděl, was interrupted by Milan Knížák, who became the head of the National Gallery in 1999.25 Milan Knížák pushed through his own distinctly national, subjectivist and in a number of aspects even highly distorting concept of a new permanent installation, on which he closely collaborated with another well-known Czech artist, Stanislav Kolíbal. The collection under his patronage (with the new director Tomáš Vlček as its head) continued to deepen its own professional and social isolation, neither discussing nor publishing a clear concept of further development. The National Gallery was not able to supplement its collection by purchases of international contemporary art, to collaborate with prominent foreign institutions in the production of exhibitions that would present the global scene in the Czech lands and, on the other hand, contribute to placing local artists in the international context. Even the “look” of the Trade Fair Palace has not changed very much; it remains a Kafkaesque castle of contemporary Czech art.26 This being the case, the only event connected with the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art to achieve a local and international reaction was the PRAGUEBIENNALE, organized for the first time in 2003.27 The National Gallery at that time joined forces with the Italian journal FlashArt and brought to Prague works by more than two hundred foreign artists.

It was the first mass manifestation of the global artistic scene in the Czech milieu, which, thanks to a number of contacts established during “opening days” (abundantly attended by foreign artists and curators) undoubtedly facilitated the internationalization of the local artistic environment. An important contribution of this mega exhibition was the fact that thanks to the marketing collaboration with the producer of Mattoni mineral water it was able to assert itself on a universal scale. The advertising campaign for PRAGUEBIENNALE was presented in 56

nearly all kinds of media and employed various means including artistic projects for billboards and bigboards. The exhibition itself as well as the strategy of its public presentation activated a substantial part of society, rehabilitating in its eyes the concept of contemporary visual art since they were able to grant it the status of social and media exclusiveness.

However, the indisputable positive features of PRAGUEBIENNALE were made relative by the chaos during the preparation as well as installation of the exhibition, a number of conflicts between main organizers and individual artists and eventually also a deep rift between its initiators Giancarlo Politi and Milan Knížák, widely presented in the media. This schism turned out to be permanent, since in 2005 there were two biennials taking place in Prague. The second round of PRAGUEBIENNALE, organized by the Italian journal FlashArt, found refuge at the industrial complex Karlín Hall; the International Biennale of Contemporary Art organized by the National Gallery had its center at the Trade Fair Palace.28 However, none of these shows avoided fundamental mistakes in their conceptual approach (I mean the trite repetition of the theme of Central Europe as a periphery) and particularly in the process of organization, which often represented an unprecedented institutional manipulation of contributions by curators and artists.

4. Museums of Art – From Totalitarian Directives to Institutional Anarchy In addition to the National Gallery, the Czech Republic has a rich network of collecting institutions focusing on modern and contemporary art, which are administered by the Ministry of Culture (the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the Museum of Art in Olomouc) as well as regional and municipal authorities.29 This network was founded and developed on the ruins of earlier collecting activities throughout the entire duration of the totalitarian regime, and its main task was to collect, maintain and publicly present works of art from various historical periods. Like other facilities dealing with cultural assets and working with the general public, museums of art before 1989 were under systematic ideological control and to this day they have not yet recovered from this sinister legacy.30 The composition of the art collections kept by these mostly “regional” galleries is diversified and reflects the character of original local collections, which were either bequeathed to public institutions or confiscated. These confiscations took place in three subsequent waves: during the Second World War as part of the holocaust of Jewish inhabitants; immediately after the war during the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans; and after the Communist coup d’état in 1948.31 The collections were subsequently developed by continuous purchases, which, however, mostly followed the official cultural line of the totalitarian regime, in particular in relation to topical contemporary art. Despite this, it can be said that in a number of regional museums there was a much more liberal atmosphere in the 1970s and 1980s (i.e., during the period of real socialism) than in highly exposed central institutions. This manifested itself in their collecting policy as well as in programs of temporary exhibitions, often featuring names of representatives of the unofficial “gray zone”. Such islands of limited freedom included in the 1980s the Aleš South 57

Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou, the Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny, the Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice nad Labem, the Gallery of Fine Art (today the Museum of Art) in Olomouc, the Orlice Gallery of Fine Art in Rychnov na Kněžnou and, at the very end of the totalitarian regime, the City Gallery Prague as well.32 In the course of political and social transformation after 1989, institutions included in the network of art museums became partially diversified, mostly based on the professional and personal dispositions of their individual administrators. As a whole, their development and collecting and exhibition activities were limited by persisting totalitarian stereotypes, financial conditions and the marginal position in which visual art (and especially its contemporary expressions) found itself from the point of view of the general public’s interest. These limitations were particularly felt at peripheries, and they concerned the museums in smaller towns and industrial regions. Proof of the stagnation of the Czech art museum system in the 1990s is, inter alia, the almost total suspension of its quantitative development as well as minimum investment in the exhibition and technical facilities of individual institutions. The freeze on these costs markedly slowed down the steps that could have reflected developing demands on the very character of musealization, technological aspects of contemporary art and active socialization work with visitors. In addition to these problems there was the fact that Czech exhibition institutions virtually abandoned the idea of possible collaboration in the sphere of producing artworks. It became an unwritten rule that an artist should be happy to be included in an exhibition program, and in exchange for this “honor” would take on the substantial part of the costs of realization of his works of art. This immoral and often rather undignified atmosphere had an adverse impact on the relative social status of the artists in addition to their economic exploitation.

From the point of view of acquisition and exhibition programs, a decisive part of regional museums in the years 1990–2005 concentrated on the generation of artists who had established themselves on the art scene as early as the 1960s and 1970s. Although during the era of real socialism most of these artists were members of the unofficial “gray zone”, betting on them was a sure thing which uncritically complied with the contemporary social consensus. On the other hand, the production of the youngest artists was systematically ignored, in particular that part which focused on new media. Exhibition plans of Czech museums featured foreign artists only exceptionally and none of them expressed an interest in building its collection of contemporary art on the international level, albeit in the limited Central European or bilateral (such as CzechGerman, Czech-Slovak and Czech-Polish) context.

Of course, even in this institutional desert there were oases which tried to achieve contemporary standards of presentation of visual art. A special chapter is undoubtedly formed by the Moravian Gallery in Brno and the Museum of Art in Olomouc (administered by the Ministry of Culture) together with the City Gallery Prague.33 They are museums with vast and heterogeneous funds covering a considerable thematic and historic span, but at the same time all of them systematically collect and exhibit the most recent art. Their collections of modern and contemporary art have been continuously expanded and presented within the 58

framework of quality exhibitions located in historical buildings, which in the 1990s underwent costly reconstructions. Their highly ambitious acquisition activity within the Czech context is unfortunately limited by their focus on the Czech milieu. Their visitors again encounter a closed view on the development of the most recent art, built on a national basis, which undoubtedly prevents an understanding of global consequences and makes the interpretation or placement of individual artifacts more difficult.

However, more important for spontaneous development of Czech contemporary visual art than the collecting activities of these three institutions are their programs of temporary exhibitions. In particular the City Gallery Prague has played one of the key roles in the monitored period on the Czech scene, since it has four clearly defined exhibition venues. A small hall at the Old Town Hall is dedicated to monographic projects by the youngest, mostly Czech artists; the basement of the Golden Ring House, which at the same time hosts the permanent exhibition of Czech modern and contemporary art, is designated for small topical group exhibitions; the impressive Gothic premises of the Stone Bell House serve, inter alia, to present the ‘Zvon’ (‘Bell’) Biennial of Young Artists; and finally the exhibition halls in the building of the Municipal Library in Prague, the best in the city in terms of quality, host retrospectives of the most prominent figures of Czech postwar art as well as prestigious monothematic group shows.

From the point of view of the most contemporary art, a key role in the activities of the City Gallery Prague is played by the ‘Zvon’ (‘Bell’) Biennial of Young Artists, the effort towards a transcending international dimension of the exhibition program and the targeted strategy of small-scale monographic exhibitions, which is connected with production and acquisition activity. Since 1994, when the first biennial took place, there have been five of them held already, and in the course of time the practice of collaboration with a guest (free-lance) curator has been established.34 Almost every time the biennial was a prominent event, duly presented in the media and reviewed by expert critics, and even attracted attention of the general public, which is quite rare in the Czech environment in connection with contemporary art.

In addition to regular presentations of the ‘Zvon’ (‘Bell’) Biennial of Young Artists, two curators at this institution, Karel Srp and Olga Malá, organized in the late 1990s and at the very beginning of the new millennium several ambitious projects that led to expectation of a deeper involvement in the global institutional operation (for example, the exhibition “Fly, Leave, Disappear” in 1996 and “Close Echoes” in 1998). Unfortunately, in the following period these international activities stagnated and the City Gallery Prague for unclear (apparently financial) reasons ceased to devote itself to presentation of contemporary foreign art and its interconnection with the Czech milieu. Nevertheless it continued smaller-scale monographic exhibitions of the youngest artists in a concept of quality, which is unique in the local context.

Most of the artists who had the opportunity to exhibit at the Old Town Hall venue convincingly asserted themselves on the Czech scene, and some of them internationally as well (such as Jiří Černický, Milena Dopitová, Lukáš Jasanský & Martin Polák, Krištof Kintera, Markéta Othová, Michal Pěchouček, Jiří Příhoda and Kateřina Vincourová). The City Gallery Prague produced these artistic projects and published high-quality catalogues for individual artists, often the first 59

in their career. In view of the program of the exhibition hall at the Old Town Hall and the specific works of art exhibited within the first two rounds of the ‘Zvon’ (‘Bell’) Biennial of Young Artists, the most comprehensive and conceptually elaborated institutional collection of contemporary Czech art of the 1990s came into being, which was presented by the City Gallery Prague within its permanent exhibition at the Golden Ring House in 1998.35 The Moravian Gallery in Brno also focused in its exhibition projects on reflecting the development of contemporary visual art. Monographic shows by younger artists have been presented mainly in the impressive hall of the Atrium at Pražák Palace since 1994, when, following major reconstruction, a permanent exhibition of Czech modern and contemporary art was installed in this building. In addition to continuous exhibition activity, curators of the Moravian Gallery also realized ambitious group exhibitions exploring contemporary art from various points of view. These projects often radically expanded the thematic as well as methodological range of Czech history of art, because they successfully tried to use Postmodern contextual approaches and interdisciplinary overlaps in the curator’s practice. These innovative strategies were to be found, for example, with exhibitions such as “Repeated Stories”, 1996; “Melancholy”, 2000-2001; as well as the historical though highly inspirational project “Medusa’s Stare”, which freshly interpreted the collections of the Moravian Gallery spanning the period between Gothic art and the mid-19th century.36 The Olomouc Museum of Art concentrates its activities in the sphere of contemporary artistic production at an autonomous building of the Museum of Modern Art, which underwent costly reconstruction in several stages beginning in 1992 that enabled it to be used for exhibition purposes. It hosts a permanent exhibition and, at the same time, a rich program of temporary exhibitions mostly dedicated to more recent Czech art, often reaching out internationally.37 Its clearly declared concept of the development of the acquisition activity of the Museum of Modern Art in Olomouc seems quite promising for the future with its plan for building a collection of contemporary Central European visual art. In the Czech lands this would represent an unprecedented move, opening new horizons in the sphere of contemporary museum practice as well as the contextualizing of local artistic production.

In addition to the above-mentioned galleries, several other collecting institutions stand out for their systematic interest in presentation and musealization of contemporary art. They include the Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny, which has a high-quality collection with a clear focus. In connection with the important “Louny” circle of artists with Conceptual and Constructivist orientation, which was established in this town as early as the 1950s, the local museum aimed its collecting policy at these lines of contemporary Czech visual production. The uniqueness of this gallery was subsequently enhanced during the 1990s, when the premises of the former town brewery were radically rebuilt by the renowned Czech architect Emil Přikryl and opened in 1998 as a venue for the gallery’s permanent exhibition.38 The collecting and exhibition program of the Klatovy/Klenová Gallery in western Bohemia has been characterized by an even more distinct orientation towards the most recent visual art since its founding in 1991. The credit of this institution is intensified by its plentiful accompanying 60

activities because every year it holds the international competition for graduates of schools of art of higher learning “Start Point”; based on a detailed questionnaire filled by Czech artists and curators it declares “The Personality of the Year” for the most prominent artistic act in the given period; it operates a residential center and publishes the journal PARS mapping the situation of contemporary art in the surrounding region. As one of the few Czech artistic institutions the Klatovy/Klenová Gallery comes close to the current concept of a museum of art as a collecting, exhibition and, at the same time, production and socialization center.39 The Regional Gallery of Fine Art in Zlín has asserted itself in the eyes of the general public by systematically developing its core mission. Its most significant activity is the organization of two triennials: “The New Zlín Salon” and “The Zlín Youth Salon”. The tradition of the Zlín salons has been deeply rooted in this city since the 1930s and 1940s, when similar shows were held under the patronage of the internationally renowned shoe-making company Baťa, which was based there. The first renewed salon took place in 1996 and its objective (fulfilled by the subsequent salons as well) was to present a broad range of contemporary art while focusing special attention on comparing the dominant Prague cultural environment with art created in other Czech regions. In the course of time, the Zlín Youth Salon proved to be more focused and more beneficial to the immediate development of Czech artistic production (being staged four times thus far, in 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006). Thanks to the ever-changing team of curators, the Zlín Youth Salon has been repeatedly able to provide an inspired report on trends to be found in the upcoming generations of Czech visual art.40 The numerous, but rather indistinct and unbalanced range of collecting institutions in the Czech Republic is complemented by several private museums of art. Worthy of note is Museum Kampa, which presents the collection of Jan and Meda Mládek. This collection came into being during their exile in the United States of America and includes a number of key works of prominent figures of Czech modern art, in particular František Kupka and Otto Gutfreund.

Beginning in 1967, when the Mládeks were allowed to visit Czechoslovakia again, they began systematically to expand the collection with contemporary Czech as well as Central European art. After 1989, Meda Mládek tried with tremendous obstinacy to find a permanent home for her collection in Prague. Following difficult negotiations, she obtained for this purpose the dilapidated building of Sova’s Mill in the Kampa district of Prague, which, after reconstruction, opened to the public in 2003. In addition to presentation of its collections, Museum Kampa organizes temporary exhibitions focused mainly on the broad range of Czech and foreign representatives of Conceptual late Modernism.41 The newly founded Czech collecting institutions also include the Wannieck Gallery in Brno, which has, since 2006, been presenting its permanent exhibition of Czech painting (from the late 1980s to the present), put together over the course of years by the private collector Richard Adam. The founding of this collection documents the development of the relationship between contemporary artistic production and the context of collecting activities. The initiator of this collection began building it prior to 1989 based on long-term contacts with a narrow circle of painters representing the first generation of Czech Postmodernism. At the beginning of the new 61

millennium Richard Adam definitively reached the limit of an individual collecting concept and began to seek other institutionalized possibilities for securing his collecting activity. These efforts resulted in collaboration with a private investor, who provided the capital for the further development of the collection as well as building its permanent venue.42 The example of the development of the private collection of Richard Adam can be seen as a metaphor of transformation of the institutional framework of contemporary post-totalitarian collecting activities. Without any great and clear victories, but slowly and surely, Czech museums are coming closer to the standards of similar foreign institutions. It seems that in addition to restructuring the organizational and financial framework of collecting activities, the decisive element on this path is the change of the cultural paradigm, i.e., seeking new links between artistic production and the life of society. It is a change represented by the upcoming generation of artists, cultural administrators and in particular consumers of art.

5. Kunsthalle and Galleries – Despite a Lack of Criteria an Undeniable Success The artistic practice realized by a broad range of various exhibition institutions represented in the period of social transformation a key moment of presentation activities of the contemporary Czech art scene. The process of change of the organizational framework and the situation of non-collecting galleries, which began immediately after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, naturally became its driving force. In the meantime basic legal norms have been established in the Czech lands for regulation, based on which organizations are divided into those receiving contributions from the state budget (mainly of the district or regional type) and independent entities (civic association, beneficial societies, limited liability companies, foundations and private entities owned by individuals).

From the point of view of continuity of the institutional development, the framework of kunsthalle and independent galleries represents an entirely new situation. The thing is that initiatives in this sphere only exceptionally continue long-term projects launched during the totalitarian system of the 1980s. (This used to be characteristic of those collecting institutions, whose basic structure did not change even under the new post-totalitarian circumstances.) Like museums of art, kunsthalle and smaller galleries were under a strong ideological and repressive pressure of the totalitarian regime before 1989. However, in contrast to them they were not managed directly by the central administration because they were mostly founded by municipal or regional authorities. They were often managed through cultural centers in charge of various spheres of artistic activities (musical productions, amateur theater, dance lessons, etc.). The Exhibition Halls of the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists, i.e., its service organization of the Czech Fund of Art in charge of direct management and political control over the contemporary Czech art scene, formed a separate chapter. An integral part of this Fund was the enterprise Dílo (Artwork), which had a monopoly over the sale of artworks to the general public through the network of its galleries and at the same time took part in allocation of state commissions to the approved artists, who respected the socialist cultural doctrine.43 Despite the omnipresent 62

censorship this rather confusing gallery system allowed for certain diversions from the official line thanks to personal braveness of curators and other people working in the organization of the cultural life of the time.

As has been already said, the independent artistic life in the 1980s consisted mainly of semiofficial or outright illegal one-time appearances, which often had the form of symposia, workshops, hidden interventions into the public space or exhibitions on various alternative premises. Nevertheless, in this period there were several institutions outside of Prague (where the ideological pressure and censorship were the most intense), which to a certain extent were able to create and defend an independent exhibition program. The most prominent of them was the Brno House of Arts. This typical kunsthalle founded by this Moravian metropolis organized in the period before the fall of the totalitarian regime a number of solo exhibitions of artists belonging to the unofficial “gray zone”. The House of Arts subsequently featured Dalibor Chatrný, Stanislav Kolíbal, Jiří Malich, Zdeněk Sýkora and Adriena Šimotová, whose shows played an important role as the link between the liberal atmosphere of the 1960s and the emerging young Postmodernist generation, growing from the depth of the totality of real socialism. In the late 1980s, one of the first private and of course unofficial exhibition activities in the Czechoslovakia of the time took place in Brno in the Na Bidýlku Gallery.44 Its organizer, curator and “owner” Karel Tutsch oriented his program mainly to the youngest artists, thus establishing a unique institutional platform of Czech topical late totalitarian art. Other independent exhibition initiatives of this period were carried out by the Opatov Gallery in Prague and the Exhibition Hall of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences, the Půda Gallery in Český Těšín, the Small Exhibition Hall in Liberec, the Music Theater in Olomouc and others.45 After 1989 the structures and activities of various exhibition institutions markedly expanded.

In addition to a few galleries, which after the transformation continued their operation under new circumstances (such as several larger kunsthalle or the Exhibition Halls of the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists), a countless number of institutions emerged and disappeared, some of which played a key role on the Czech scene at the time. Given the above-mentioned limits of museums of art, this flexible environment became an inspirational laboratory of contemporary Czech art, providing a continuous space for experiments, mutual communication and later also links within the broader international artistic context.

The most significant institution, which stimulated the situation on the Czech art scene from the beginning of the 1990s, was the Soros Center for Contemporary Art, opened in 1992 (in 1999 divided into the Foundation for Contemporary Art and the Center for Contemporary Art). It focused mainly on direct support of artistic production, building of extensive archives, internationalization activities as well as organization of exhibitions. The Soros Center for Contemporary Art has provided grants every year for specific artistic projects (in the 1990s it was one of very few “non-governmental” systems of support of contemporary culture), in collaboration with a number of foreign partners it organizes residence activities and between 1993 and 2002 it held in total six annual exhibitions. These exhibitions in their thematic focus undoubtedly accelerated the development of contemporary Czech art created by the youngest 63

artists by bringing new impulses into their sphere of operation. Since 1999 the Center for Contemporary Art has presented its own continuous program in the Jelení Gallery and within the public art project entitled “ArtWall” (since 2005). The Jelení Gallery has operated as a kind of permanent workshop monitoring the most recent movements on the art scene, and from hindsight it is apparent that this gallery has launched the career of a number of the youngest artists through their first solo exhibitions. The “ArtWall” project is one of the few permanent programs of public artistic interventions organized in the Czech Republic, and in the selection of artists or specific themes it does not avoid open social discussion.46 From the point of view of organizational structure, a very exceptional position among exhibition institutions is held by the Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague, which is part of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and is therefore run directly by the Ministry of Culture. This “state kunsthalle” began to operate in 1994, and especially in the late 1990s it featured a number of ambitious projects aimed at confrontation of the international context and the contemporary Czech art scene.

Locally important exhibitions by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith and Nan Goldin were unfortunately followed by a kind of decline. The subsequent program series of the Galerie Rudolfinum presented many indistinct exhibitions by Czech artists, actually quite successful with the viewers, including the retrospective exhibition of the icon of Czech modern art Mikuláš Medek; solo shows of the members of the cultic Postmodern group The Obstinate Ones – Jiří David, Petr Nikl and František Skála; and a group variation on the theme of Impressionism entitled “Impressions”, totally mismanaged by its curator Simona Vladíková.

There are many reasons why this institution, which has a solid organizational support and great exhibition premises, does not meet the expectations, but the most important ones are an unclear curator concept, insufficient production flexibility and a limited ability of active and creative cooperation on prestigious international artistic projects.47 Another Prague institution, which by its exhibition space and program ranks among kunsthalle, is the Mánes Exhibition Hall.48 After the tender organized in 1993 by its incorporator of the time, the Czech Fund of Art Foundation, it was managed by the curator Vlasta Čiháková Noshiro.49 The noble Modernist premises of the Mánes, opened by the eponymous art society for exhibition and social purposes in 1930, presented in the early 1990s a stimulating retrospective show of Czech action art entitled “Action Art” (1991). From the point of view of acceleration of the youngest Czech artistic scene, the most significant project realized on the premises of the Mánes Exhibition Hall consisted of two major group exhibitions prepared by curators Jana and Jiří Ševčík (Test Run, 1997; Reduced Budget, 2000). These shows established and asserted the topical form of Czech art, which from the point of view of their themes and means of expression more and more intensely referred to the contemporary international context.

In addition to the Mánes, in the 1990s there were great exhibitions also in the Royal Summer Palace Belvedere (under the curator Ivona Raimanová),50 in the Riding Hall of Prague Castle and the Riding Hall of the Wallenstein Palace. However, all these premises lacked a solid concept and organizational support in the form of long-term collaboration with some established exhibition institution.

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In the monitored period, however, the most important Czech kunsthalle was the Brno House of Arts.51 Whether its program was markedly oriented to Neo-Conceptual art under the influence of Jiří Valoch (the late 1990s), to prestigious foreign projects under the director Pavel Liška (1997–2002), or straddled between the needs of the regional scene and the international artistic practice under the management of Radek Horáček (since 2002), it has always represented high quality and at the same time the all so needed standards of institutional and curatorial work. The activities of the House of Arts have been constantly produced in collaboration with foreign institutions and free-lance curators and its exhibition program has a systematic international character and shows a long-term interest in the youngest Czech artists.

In the 1990s, a dominant position among smaller exhibition halls in Prague was held by the Václav Špála Gallery with its curator Jaroslav Krbůšek.52 Between 1994 and 2002, this gallery situated in the very center of Prague with rich history presented many younger Czech artists (mostly through their first solo exhibitions), systematically and knowledgeably mapping the local scene. Jaroslav Krbůšek in his exhibition program employed a number of collaborating free-lance curators and within the given financial limits tried to realize international projects. His departure from the position of the curator of the Václav Špála Gallery (which was taken over by the Czech Fund of Art Foundation) can be viewed to a certain extent as the end of one stage of the institutional development of Czech art. It has turned out that from a long-term perspective it is not productive to build independent activities on the ruins and within the context of neo-totalitarian organizations.

Almost symbolically, in 2002 several independent galleries or off-spaces began to emerge on a “green field”, which presented the most recent development of contemporary Czech art and its institutional background. These small-scale and temporal, albeit highly flexible exhibition projects were often managed by the artists who were members of the up and coming youngest generation. Although due to their alternative character they were not able to offer standard production support to these artists, they could quickly respond to movements on the Czech art scene, significantly contributing to its diversification, dynamism as well as internationalization.

The most fundamental in this context was the project of the Display Gallery led by four young curators and artists (Zbyněk Baladrán, Ondřej Chrobák, David Kulhánek and Tomáš Svoboda).53 The program of this gallery was built on two basic principles – the systematic international orientation (Czech artists were presented only within short-term sub-labels) and the emphasis on the maximally possible participation in the institutional production of individual exhibitions.

This strategy, quite unique in Prague, met with lively response of the local art scene as well as a number of similar foreign institutions. The Display Gallery (as well as several other independent projects such as the NoD Gallery, HOME Gallery, A.M. 180 Gallery, Etc. Gallery and Entrance Gallery) played for the whole period of their operation the role of a key communication channel between the international artistic context and the local scene, and to a large extent even substituted in this sphere for activities of the official institutions designated for this purpose.54 In 2003 the Prague scene was stimulated by the founding of the Futura Center for Contemporary Art, which represented a totally new type of strategy – private activities oscillating 65

between non-commercial exhibition activity and an effort to break through to the art market with a certain circle of artists. Grand-scale and variable premises of this gallery in Prague-Smíchov have hosted since its establishment many outstanding international group exhibitions, often prepared by local and foreign free-lance curators. Since 2005 the activities of the initiators of the project of the Futura Center for Contemporary Art (mainly Alberto di Stefano) have included the founding of the Karlín Studios – reconstructed premises serving as an exhibition center, artistic studios and offices of a number of institutions operating within contemporary Czech art.

Many galleries during the 1990s operated outside of Prague. They were either established by municipal authorities (municipal galleries) or were independent from the point of view of their legal status. Let us mention at random the G99 Gallery and the Eskort Gallery in Brno, focused on the youngest artists; the 761 Gallery in Ostrava representing the unprecedented boom of the local scene in the late 1990s; the short-lived, albeit ambitious project of the Galerie die Aktualität des Schönen in Liberec; the Šternberk Gallery functioning as if in spite of the local context; the Caesar Gallery in Olomouc; the Plzeň City Gallery; and the Sýpka Gallery, a half-forgotten family gallery in the remote hamlet of Vlkov in Moravia.55 Model institutions among these exhibition facilities are the House of Art of České Budějovice and the Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem. The former has developed under the curatorship of the sculptor Michal Škoda and it reflects leading European representatives of current NeoConceptual and Post-Minimalistic tendencies, complementing this specific focus with an open program dedicated to the young Czech scene. In its selection of individual artists and the longterm concept, the House of Art of České Budějovice is a unique institution not only in the Czech lands, but in the overall context of Central European post-totalitarian art.56 Since the late 1990s the Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem has systematically mapped Central European art representing the social, political as well as economic transformation of this region. In connection with this concept, its program is oriented mainly to the artists systematically dealing with reflection of the social context. Thanks to this focus, the Emil Filla Gallery has slowly got itself into the international network of independent Central European institutions, which has resulted in the production of a number of ambitious projects, some of which were intended mainly for abroad where they contributed to the establishment of Czech artists on the international scene.57 A separate segment, which can be discussed in this text only to a limited extent, is the issue of private commercial galleries. Their development in the monitored period was undoubtedly limited by the problematic position of contemporary art in the totalitarian context, economic barriers (at first the low living standard of the middle class and later the slow development of the market economy), uncompleted socio-cultural transformation and last but not least the insufficient interconnection of the local scene with the global art market. In spite of this several commercial institutions emerged in the Czech lands which mediated sale of contemporary art and significantly contributed to the cultivation of local private collection and collecting as a social phenomenon.

The first such facility was the MXM Gallery established in 1991. It was managed at first by Tomáš Procházka, and after his tragic death in 1992 taken over by Jan Černý. However, the 66

program of this gallery was principally determined by Jana and Jiří Ševčík, who focused on artists from the groups The Obstinate Ones and Monday and their generational peers. The MXM Gallery was oriented to Czech collectors, and despite several appearances at foreign art fairs it did not assert itself in any significant way on the international market. The vagueness of the program and the lack of international clientele eventually led to its closing in 2002.58 A different program was presented by the Ruce (Hands) Gallery headed by Jaroslav Krbůšek, which operated from 1994 to 1997. It presented leading representatives of the Czech Conceptual, Minimalist and Geometric generation of the 1960s and the 1970s, complemented by the youngest Czech and Slovak painters. Its activity has been continued by the Jaroslav Krbůšek Gallery on the Internet (since 1997), which aims at building its own clientele and collaborates on the concept of individual private collections.

The most important Czech commercial gallery in the monitored period has been the Jiří Švestka Gallery. Since its founding in 1996 it has systematically interconnected Czech art with the international scene and presented itself at many international art fairs (Art Basel, Art Brussels, Art Cologne, Art Chicago, Art Moscow, Artissima Torino, etc.). This gallery represents prominent representatives of the middle and younger generation of Czech artists (Jiří Černický, Milena Dopitová, Jakub Hošek, Krištof Kintera, Jan Jakub Kotík, Markéta Othová, Michal Pěchouček, Lukáš Jasanský / Martin Polák, Kateřina Vincourová) as well as outstanding representatives of the international scene (Siah Armajani, Michael Biberstein, Rafal Bujnowski, Markus Huemer, Katarzyna Kozyra, Juliao Sarmento, Ann-Sofi Siden, Mark Wallinger). In addition to its work with individual collectors and participation in international art fairs, its strategy also includes realization of projects for corporate clientele.

Despite many limits, the local gallery system is still remarkably viable. Thanks to personal engagement of a number of organizers and exhibition curators (often artists themselves), an institutional structure has been built capable of providing the basic platform for the development of contemporary Czech art. This fact is one of the most pleasant findings about the local scene over the last fifteen plus years since it signalizes the desire, determination and potential of its members to fulfill (often in spite of unfavorable conditions) their own uncompromising visions about the development of contemporary art.

6. In Conclusion – A Note and Perhaps a Summary If I try in conclusion to assess the situation of the institutional framework of contemporary Czech art, there is disproportion between the hybridism of formal (official) structures and inspired activities of their individual members. The limiting factors of the local artistic practice include the alarming lack of effectiveness of the overall majority of collecting institutions, which have at their disposal a decisive part of the public funds earmarked for art. Most of these institutions concentrate only on maintenance of their own collections, which, however, they fail to expand adequately. On top of that, their acquisition and exhibition activities are oriented outside the sphere of topical art and they mostly bet on the certainty represented by an unspoken canon of 67

the generations from the late 1950s and the early 1960s. The crushing majority of Czech collecting institutions is not capable in terms of organization, space and technology (and probably even mentally) of a systematic presentation of various forms of contemporary artistic production. In this connection it has to be pointed out that the critical discussion about Milan Knížák as the head of the National Gallery in Prague is unfortunately only the tip of the imaginary iceberg. The thing is that public exhibition and museum organizations, which approach the collaboration with topical art in the same way, can be found in every region.

Another apparent shortcoming is the limited funding, particularly in the sphere of independent galleries and other institutional activities. It is partially also caused by the insufficient production aspect of individual projects because of course it is not possible to rely on local finances only or on contributions from the local self-government. From this point of view it is startling how little Czech art institutions associate themselves with foreign partners, through which they could participate in European or other international funding. In addition, such collaborations make it possible to expand institutional networks and contribute to the establishment of Czech artists in the global artistic context. A number of Czech galleries (including those focused on topical visual art) thus remain more or less locked within the local scene, which often results in organizational, financial and program stagnation.

An obvious handicap of the local scene is the lack of a strong national center for contemporary art, which would support postproduction of individual artistic outputs, organization of demanding international projects, scientific and research collaboration with similar foreign institutions, publication activities as well as exhibition activities in the environment ready for technological features of the most recent art. Such center would certainly contribute to diversification and internationalization of contemporary Czech visual art scene.

The undeniable gains of the local artistic scene are its repeatedly manifested flexibility and internal dynamism. Despite protracted crisis of public exhibition institutions, it has always generated a number of independent activities which substituted for the basic functions of the institutional artistic framework. It has been achieved through great amounts of empathy, which is undoubtedly connected with the fact that a number of exhibition projects were initiated by artists acting as curators. This moment has enhanced the social autonomy of the contemporary artistic scene to its definitive liberation from the residua of totalitarian or post-totalitarian systems of financing of artistic activities and the related efforts for political and ideological cultural direction.

Certain optimistic expectations can be connected in this respect with the development of the system of Czech art institutions of higher learning, which have become more democratic over the past period and sensitively responded in a number of cases to the situation of contemporary visual art. This has been apparent not only in changes of the focus of individual study programs or disciplines, but also in establishment of research centers and other research programs oriented to professional reflection of topical art. Many schools of art providing higher learning have become, in addition to basic education, active players in the sphere of production, presentation and theoretic assessment of topical artistic trends, particularly at the Czech cultural margins.

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The outline of the development of the institutional background of Czech art in the years 1989– 2006, focused on the system of art education on the university level and the context of museums and galleries, is of course not complete. The scope of this text has not made it possible to deal with the complex issues connected with the contemporary art market and the development of commercial galleries. Left out from consideration have been the issues of professional or media reflection of contemporary artistic production and publishing of art periodicals. Last but not least it has not been possible to focus on the themes of socialization of art and gallery teaching, public art activities, various awards, symposia, grants and residence programs. All these partial aspects would certainly significantly supplement the plastic map of the turbulent posttotalitarian development of contemporary Czech art.

I hope, however, that even without them the presented text can be considered a contribution to the discussion about starting points, conditions and expectations connected with the institutional support of the most recent Czech (and in the broader sense also Central European) art representing the uneasy path of social, geopolitical and economic transformation of this region.

February 2007

Notes: 1 From about 1988 the situation in the then Czechoslovakia was partially influenced by expressions of open civic dissent with the official political line, which in addition to dissidents was joined by the general public. In addition to the “Palach Week” in Prague (January 1989) and environmental demonstrations in Teplice, Northern Bohemia (the fall of 1989), the most mass expression of the growing resistance was the petition “Several Sentences” disseminated in the summer of 1989. Official representatives of the late stage of real socialism were President Gustáv Husák, Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec and the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Miloš Jakeš. In the last years of communist totality Adamec and Jakeš tried in vain for the proclamation policy of vague connection to Gorbachev’s “perestroika”. Under the pressure of revolutionary events, which were a reaction to the brutal suppression of a student manifestation on 17 November 1989, the first to resign to his political function was Miloš Jakeš; in December the same year Gustáv Husák abdicated from his President post. Ladislav Adamec became a temporary Prime Minister of the fist government after the coup d’état, which was accepted neither by the public nor the new political representation.

2 See: Slavická, Milena; Pánková, Marcela (eds.): Zakázané umění (Prohibited Art). Občanské sdružení pro podporu výtvarného umění, Prague, 1995 See: Chalupecký, Jindřich: Na hranicích umění (On the Border of Art). Prostor, Prague, 1990 See: Chalupecký, Jindřich: Nové umění v Čechách (New Art in the Czech Lands). H & H, Jinočany, 1994 3 The group Tvrdohlaví (The Obstinate Ones) (1987–2001), which affiliated itself with the program of European postmodernism and mainly the Italian trans-avant-garde, was founded by Jiří David, Stanislav Diviš, Michal Gabriel, Zdeněk Lhotský, Václav Marhoul, Stefan Milkov, Petr Nikl, Jaroslav Róna, František Skála and Čestmír Suška. These artists tried to create independently from the political dictate, being active in the society transforming itself after the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. The artistic group Pondělí (Monday) (1990– 1991) chose its non-traditional name from the mostly oppressive and negative feeling, with which inhabitants of the then Czechoslovakia returned from their weekend to the working process. Members of this group included very young artists (mostly still students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague) Milena Dopitová, Pavel Humhal, Petr Lysáček, Anna Neborová, Michal Nesázal, Petr Písařík and Petr Zubek.

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Important group exhibitions of the early 1990s undoubtedly included the projects Popis jednoho zápasu (Description of a Struggle). Orlice Gallery of Fine Art, Rychnov nad Kněžnou, 1989 (curators Jana and Jiří Ševčík); Tvrdohlaví III (The Obstinate Ones III). National Gallery, Prague 1991; Mezi Ezopem a Mauglím (Between Aesop and Mowgli). Václav Špála Gallery, Prague, 1992 (curators Vlasta Čiháková Noshiro and Milena Slavická).

Outstanding artists who were solitary figures in this period included Jiří Surůvka, Martin John, Vladimír Skrepl, Martin Mainer and Jan Merta.

5 This circle of artists includes, for example, Veronika Bromová, Jiří Černický, Lukáš Jasanský / Martin Polák, the group Kamera skura, Krištof Kintera, Pavel Kopřiva, František Kowolowski, Pavel Mrkus, Markéta Othová, Michaela Thelenová and Kateřina Vincourová.

6 Curator concepts responding to these nationwide phenomena brought about the exhibition projects such as I. Bienále mladého umění ZVON (First ‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists). City Gallery Prague, 1994 (curators Karel Srp and Olga Malá); Zkušební provoz (Test Run). Mánes Exhibition Hall, Prague, 1997 (curators Jana and Jiří Ševčík); Sever (The North). Václav Špála Gallery, Prague, 1997 (curator Michal Koleček); Ostrava – Umjeni...?

(Ostrava – …Art?). Mánes Exhibition Hall, Prague, 1998 (curators Jana and Jiří Ševčík); Umělecké dílo ve veřejném prostoru (Artwork in Public Spaces). National Gallery, Prague, 1998 (curator Ludvík Hlaváček).

7 Members of this generation of artists include Zbyněk Baladrán, Josef Bolf , Barbora Klímová, Jan Jakub Kotík, Alena Kotzmannová, Ján Mančuška, Milan Mikuláštík, Jan Nálevka, Michal Pěchouček, Kateřina Šedá, Jan Šerých and Tomáš Vaněk. The theoretical cover and institutional support has been provided to this circle of artists, for example, by the Display Gallery (since 2001).

8 These tendencies were contained in projects Akce slovo pohyb prostor, experimenty v umění šedesátých let (Action – Word – Motion – Space, Experiments in Art of the 1960s). City Gallery Prague, 1999–2000 (curator Vít Havránek); Insiders. The Brno House of Arts, 2004 (curator Pavlína Morganová); V. Bienále mladého art ZVON (Fifth ‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists). City Gallery Prague, 2005 (curator Karel Císař). They are apparent also in the direct reaction of the youngest artists to the artistic statements of members of the independent visual scene of the 1970s and the 1980s – a typical representative of whom is Jiří Kovanda.

9 The responsibility for fulfilling the Communist Party directives lied in the mid-1980s in the Czech environment mainly with rectors of both art academies – Miloš Axman at the Academy of Fine Arts and Jiří Mikula at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. The apathetic lethargy on one hand and the political dependence on the other one were present in the orientation of all local teachers such as Oldřich Oplt (Academy of Fine Arts) and Quido Fojtík (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design).

See: Pachmanová, Martina; Pražanová, Markéta (eds.): Vysoká škola uměleckoprůmyslová in Prague (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague). VŠUP, Prague, 2005 10 As spontaneous reaction to the rigid atmosphere at schools of art of higher learning, most often students themselves organized group exhibitions on unofficial premises accessible to the public (studios, private apartments and family houses). The best known event of this type were Konfrontace I – VI (Confrontation I – IV) (1984–1987) and Minulost a budoucnost (The Past and the Future). Vinohrady Market Place, Prague, 1989.

11 Milan Knížák, born 1940 in Pilsen; artist, initiator of happenings, performer and designer; member of the group Fluxus; 1990–1997 rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and since 1999 the Director of the National Gallery in Prague. A similar transformation, albeit less spectacular and more gradual, took place between 1994 and 2000 under the art historian and theorist Josef Hlaváček at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.

12 The Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno was founded upon the initiative of the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture of Brno University of Technology Ivan Ruller, who at first opened within this university the Institute of Drawing and Painting, which was transformed at the beginning of 1993 to a regular faculty.

Its first Dean was Vladimír Preclík. This faculty from the very beginning has been oriented to painting, sculpture, drawing and graphic art, Conceptual art and video art, visual communication and design. The Cabinet of Art Theory and History was founded and headed at first by the prominent Brno theorist and fine art teacher Igor Zhoř.

13 The Brno intellectual circle has grown from the multicultural milieu of this city, which was formed by the intersection of Czech, Jewish and German elements as well as the strong tradition of the local prewar Functionalism and postwar Conceptualism. This place stands out by extraordinary pieces of Modernist architecture (such as Villa Tugendhat built by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) and the long-term 4

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quality activities of the Brno House of Arts and the Moravian Gallery. Of the personalities who shaped the atmosphere of this cultural center in the late 20th century, worthy of note are Radek Horáček, Dalibor Chatrný, J. H. Kocman, Gerta Pospíšilová, Jiří Valoch and Igor Zhoř.

14 The Institute for Art Studies came into being by a slow transformation from departments for teaching art and music of the Pedagogical Faculty of the Ostrava University, which began their activities in the early 1990s.

Leading personalities of this academic institution include František Kowolowski, Petr Lysáček, Eduard Ovčáček and Jiří Surůvka.

15 In Ústí nad Labem as well a new school of art of higher learning came into being by a split from the Pedagogical Faculty of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University. The first step consisted of establishment of the Institute of Art Culture in 1993, which was later transformed into the Faculty of Art and Design. The important personalities working at this faculty are Pavel Baňka, Svatopluk Klimeš, Martin Kolář, Martin Kuriš, Štěpánka Šimlová and Michaela Thelenová.

16 Ostrava and Ústí nad Labem are situated on the territory of the former Sudetenland, where historically more than 80% of inhabitants were of German nationality. In most cases they were expelled after the Second World War, and new settlers from the Czech inland and Eastern Slovakia came in their place. Often they were unqualified laborers who took up work in developing mining, metal work or chemical industries. The economic and environmental exploitation of both regions was supervised by central state bodies as well as representatives of the Soviet power. In the 1980s both places faced one of the worst environmental disasters of the whole Europe. The 1990s brought about social depression connected with the post-totalitarian transformation and restructuring of economy.

17 The Ostrava scene was formed very quickly at the very beginning of the 1990s. Its best known representatives include Jiří Surůvka, the group Kamera skura, Petr Lysáček, Jaroslav Koléšek, Katarína Szanyiová and Jiří Šigut.

This circle of artists managed to build in this industrial city without sufficient cultural tradition the necessary gallery support (Fiducia Gallery, Jáma X Gallery, 761 Gallery). The non-Conceptual scene in Ústí nad Labem in the 1990s developed activities of local artists from the unofficial “gray zone” of the 1970s and mainly the 1980s (Jiří Bartůněk, Jaroslav Prášil, Miloš Michálek, Jiří Kubový). Of the generation of artists born in the late 1960s, those who asserted themselves in a broader context were Jiří Černický, Jitka Géringová, Martin Kolář, Zdena Kolečková, Pavel Kopřiva, Jan Řezáč and Michaela Thelenová. The principal place for presentation of topical artistic tendencies was the Emil Filla Gallery, whose program was created by theorists and curators Michal Koleček, Eva Mráziková, Zbyňek Sedláček and Anna Vartecká.

See: Ševčíková, Jana; Ševčík, Jiří (eds.): Ostrava – Umjeni...? (Ostrava – …Art?). Mánes Exhibition Hall, Prague, 1998 See: Koleček, Michal; Mráziková, Eva (eds.): Devadesátka pokračuje (The 1990s Go On). Lidé výtvarnému umění – výtvarné umění lidem, o.p.s., Ústí nad Labem, 2000 See: Koleček, Michal: Okraj obrazu (Margin of the Image). Faculty of Art and Design, Ústí nad Labem, 2005 18 The Academic Research Center of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague was founded in 1997. It deals with systematic research of Czech modern and contemporary art (with a focus on fine art created after the Second World War). Its activities are coordinated and managed by Jiří Ševčík. The Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague has offered since 2004 the follow-up master’s study program ‘History and Theory of Design and Intermedia’ and the doctor’s study program ‘Curator and Critic of Design and Intermedia’. The followup master’s study program ‘Curatorial Studies’ is currently seeking accreditation. In case the accreditation is granted, the Faculty of Art and Design of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem is ready to offer it since the academic year 2007−2008.

19 The concept of the building of the Trade Fair Palace was one of the greatest functionalist projects in all of Europe. The architects Josef Fuchs and Oldřich Tyl constructed it in the years 1925−1929; originally it served as a sample trade fair. It consists of 8 floors above the ground and 2 floors underground.

20 The burnt Trade Fair Palace was reconstructed by architects Otakar Binar, John Eisler, Karel Hubáček, Miroslav Masák and Emil Přikryl. It was brought back to life by Jiří Kotalík, Director of the National Gallery in the years 1967−1990. The palace officially reopened on 13 December 1995. At present the exhibition area of this building is 13,500 m2.

See: Švácha, Rostislav (ed.): Veletržní palác v Praze (Trade Fair Palace in Prague). National Gallery, Prague, 1995 21 The original idea of Jiří Kotalík, consisting of creation of a center for contemporary art, has not been fully met. The conception of the National Gallery diverted from its original direction and instead merged the 71

collections of contemporary and modern art into one joint permanent exhibition, which includes works of art representing the development of art in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

22 Vincenc Kramář (1877−1960) was an outstanding art historian and theorist and a pupil and follower of the Vienna School. His famous collection of works of art came into being at the time of a strong orientation of the Czech cultural élite to the French environment. A major part of this collection consists of works by French cubists, in particular Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and André Derain, whom Kramář socialized with in Paris before the First World War. In the 1950s the forced transfer of a significant part of this collection into the French collection of the National Gallery was interpreted as Kramář’s gift. His heirs tried in the 1990s to contest it and based their claim on the fact that it all took place under political pressure. They sought in vain a relevant court settlement.

23 The commissar of the first permanent presentation of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Trade Fair Palace was Václav Erben. Its core consisted of the exhibition of Czech modern art from the years 1900–1960, whose curators were Lenka Bydžovská, Vojtěch Lahoda and Karel Srp. Contemporary art in their concept was presented only marginally. A symptomatic fact remains that in contrast to other parts of the exhibition collection, its part focused on contemporary art has been never accompanied by a catalogue.

See: Bydžovská, Lenka; Lahoda, Vojtěch; Srp, Karel (eds.): České moderni umění 1900–1960 (Czech Modern Art 1900–1960). National Gallery, Prague, 1995 24 Multimedia strategies and use of digital or other information technologies in fine art projects have been systematically explored by a number of Czech artists (such as Veronika Bromová, Jiří Černický, Federico Diaz, Milena Dopitová, Richard Fajnor, Markéta Othová, Silver and Janka Vidová-Žáčková). A comprehensive show of media art, entitled ‘Orbis Fictus’, was presented in 1995 in the Wallenstein Riding Hall by the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Prague.

See: Hlaváček, Ludvík; Smolíková, Marta (eds.): Orbis Fictus. Nová média v současném umění / New Media in Contemporary Arts. Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, 1995 25 Conceptual efforts of the current General Director of the National Gallery, Milan Knížák, are often criticized by many art theorists and curators. The tension within this institution is testified by the fact that since the re-opening of the Trade Fair Palace in 1995, many directors changed places at the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art (Jiří Ševčík, Jaroslav Anděl, Martina Pachmanová, Katarína Rusnáková and Tomáš Vlček) and even more curators left it (Vít Havránek, Věra Jirousová, Marie Judlová-Klimešová, Magdalena Juříková, Kamil Nábělek, Alena Pomajzlová, Tomáš Poszpiszyl, Hana Rousová, Radek Váňa, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Jiří Zemánek and others).

See: Lindaurová, Lenka: Diskuse na věčné téma – Veletržní palác (Discussion on Eternal Theme – Trade Fair Palace). In: Umělec. 6–7/1998, Divus, Prague, p. 26−28 26 In 2000 the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art opened a new installation of the permanent exhibition, functioning up to this day, prepared by Milan Knížák and Stanislav Kolíbal. In this exhibition topical art has been “put away” into a “laboratory of contemporary art”, which does not have a permanent character. Although it has changed in recent years several times, it has never become a functional platform of current tendencies. On the insufficient premises, without corresponding technological support and with zero production means, this “boring” laboratory has become a sad symbol of the position of the most recent art in the Czech museum and gallery context.

Locally successful exhibitions focused on presentation of contemporary art, which at least aspired to reach out to a broader context, include the projects Jitro kouzelníků? Od mediálních kreseb k cyberspace (Dawn of the Magicians? From Media Drawings to Cyberspace). 1996−1997 (curators Jaroslav Anděl, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Ivona Raimanová); Vzdálené podobnosti. Něco lepšího než kosmetika (Distant Similarities, Something Better then Cosmetics).

1999−2000 (curators Jana a Jiří Ševčíkovi, Vladimír Beskid); La casa, il corpo, il cuore. 2000 (curator Lórand Hégyi); Split Points. Současná drážďanská scéna (Split Points. Contemporary Dresden Scene). 2002–2003 (curator Michal Koleček) and Nejmladší. Přehlídka výtvarného umění nejmladší generace z let 1995−2003 (The Youngest.

Show of Art by the Youngest Generation from the Years 1995−2003). 2003 (curators Milan Knížák, Tomáš Vlček, Jiří Valoch).

27 The concept of the Prague show of international art was a follow up of Tirana Biennale 1. Escape organized in 2001 by the Albanian curator Edi Muka together with Giancarlo Politi and Helena Kontová, publishers of the international art journal FlashArt. The organizers of PRAGUEBIENNALE1. Periferie se stávají centrem (Peripheries 72

Become the Center) tried to present a certain alternative to major international art festivals (Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel). The show consisted of autonomous blocks prepared by guest curators (Judit Angel, Laurence Dreyfus, Jacob Fabricius, Jens Hoffmann, Michal Koleček, Raimundas Malasauskas, Neil Mulholland, Marco Scottini and others).

See: Kontová, Helena; Politi, Giancarlo (eds.): PRAGUEBIENNALE1. Peripheries Become the Center. Giancarlo Politi Editore – Flash Art, Milano, 2003 28 The dispute between the organizers, which had great publicity in the media, culminated by an action filed by Helena Kontová against the National Gallery for its unauthorized use of the trademark PRAGUEBIENNALE. The National Gallery responded by subsequent organization of Mezinárodní bienále současného umění 2005. Druhý pohled (International Biennale of Contemporary Art 2005. Second Opinion) dealing with reflection of topical motifs of Postmodern culture, simultaneously with the second round of PRAGUEBIENNALE, the theme of which was the art as a political action.

See: Hartmann, Ivan; Michajlová, Světlana; Rybková, Katarína (eds.): International Biennale of Contemporary Art 2005. National Gallery, Prague, 2005 See: Kontová, Helena; Politi, Giancarlo (eds.): PRAGUEBIENNALE2. Giancarlo Politi Editore – Flash Art, Milano, 2005 29 Collecting institutions are at present associated in the Council of Galleries of the Czech Republic, which has over 30 members such as the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in Hluboká nad Vltavou, Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové, Gallery of Fine Art in Cheb, Gallery of Art in Karlovy Vary, Klatovy/ Klenová Gallery, Regional Art Gallery in Liberec, North Bohemian Gallery of Art in Litoměřice, Benedikt Rejt Gallery in Louny, Museum of Art in Olomouc, Gallery of Fine Art in Ostrava, East Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice, West Bohemian Gallery in Plzeň, Czech Museum of Fine Arts in Prague, City Gallery Prague, National Gallery in Prague and Regional Gallery of Fine Art in Zlín.

30 Official state collecting institutions were originally administered by Regional National Committees, but indirectly they occurred under the direction of the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists. For the purpose of political supervision and “scientific-critical” arbitration these institutions established program and acquisition commissions, which “objectively” assessed the ideological and artistic level of the artworks and the price of individual pieces. If the established system was disrupted, a responsible person was subject to various punishment – from cancellation of the exhibition and ban on publication activity, through official harassment and disciplinary proceedings up to repeated interrogations or sanctions imposed by the court for “subversion”, “incitement” or “defamation of the Republic and its representative”.

31 Acquisitions of all collecting institutions in the Czech lands were to a significant extent based on nationalization and expropriation of the property of many groups of inhabitants. The Center for Documentation of Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of Victims of the Second World War has been working on historical issues of Aryanization of Jewish property of artistic character. In the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, by comparing the lists of Aryanized property and acquisition books hundreds of items confiscated by the Nazis were identified. Other property transfers took place in accordance with the Decree No. 5/1945 Sb. of the President of the Republic of 19 May 1945 concerning the invalidity of some transactions involving property rights from the time of lack of freedom and concerning the National Administration of property assets of Germans, Hungarians, traitors and collaborators and of certain organizations and associations.

32 Progressive curator concepts had to be often masked in these connections by a generic title of exhibition, which could cover names of artists otherwise inconvenient for the regime. Thus it was possible to organize shows such as Současná česká krajina (Contemporary Czech Landscape). Regional Art Gallery, Liberec, 1984; Česká kresba 20. století (Czech 20th-century Drawing). Gallery of Fine Art, Olomouc, 1984; Mladí malíři ČR (Young Painters of the Czech Republic). North Bohemian Gallery of Art, Litoměřice, 1985; České umění 20. století (Czech 20th-century Art). Aleš South Bohemian Gallery, Hluboká nad Vltavou, 1986; Grotesknost v českém umění 20. století (The Grotesque in Czech 20th-century Art). City Gallery Prague, 1987; Zátiší v českém malířství 20. století (Still Life in Czech 20th-century Painting). Aleš South Bohemian Gallery, Hluboká nad Vltavou, 1988; Střední věk (Middle Age).

City Gallery Prague, 1989; Expresionismus (Expressionism). East Bohemian Gallery, Pardubice, 1989; Popis jednoho zápasu. Česká výtvarná avantgarda 80. let (Description of a Struggle. The Czech Artistic Avant-garde of the 1980s). Orlice Gallery of Fine Art, Rychnov nad Kněžnou, etc.

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After the National Gallery, the Moravian Gallery in Brno represents the second largest museum of art in the Czech Republic. The beginnings of this institution, which date from 1873, consist of the activities of the Picture Gallery of the Provincial Museum.

The Museum of Art in Olomouc was founded as an integral part of the Local History and Geography Museum in 1952, and at present it is the third largest institution of its kind in the Czech Republic. The City Gallery Prague was founded in 1963. Currently it has at its disposal eight exhibition premises, in which it presents various original collections of the Prague City Hall; it owns a collection conceptually built by both acquisitions and donations and also organizes a number of temporary exhibitions focused on Czech modern and contemporary art.

34 See: Malá, Olga; Srp, Karel: Bienále mladého umění ZVON ’94 (‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists ’94). City Gallery Prague, Prague, 1994 See: Hlaváček, Ludvík; Srp, Karel: Bienále mladého umění II. ZVON ’96 (Second ‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists ’96). City Gallery Prague, Prague, 1996 See: Malá, Olga; Srp, Karel (eds.): Blue Fire. III. Bienále mladého umění ZVON ’99 (Blue Fire. Third ‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists ’99). City Gallery Prague, Prague, 1999 See: Koleček, Michal (ed.): IV. Bienále mladého umění ZVON 2002 (Fourth ‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists 2002). City Gallery Prague, Prague, 2002 V. Bienále mladého umění ZVON (Fifth ‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists). City Gallery Prague, 2005 (curator Karel Císař) – without catalogue.

35 See: Malá, Olga; Srp, Karel: Contemporary Collection - Czech Art in the ’90s. City Gallery Prague, Prague, 1998 36 See: Chamonikola, Kaliopi: Opakované příběhy. Tradice v novém (Repeated Stories. Tradition in a New Light).

Moravian Gallery, Brno, 1996 See: Chamonikola, Kaliopi; Ingerle, Petr: Melancholie (Melancholy). Moravian Gallery, Brno, 2000 See: Chamonikola, Kaliopi; Wörgötter, Zora: Pohled Medúsy. Evropské umění šesti století (Medusa’s Stare. European Art of Six Centuries). Moravian Gallery, Brno, 2001 37 See: Daněk, Ladislav; Müllerová, Štěpánka; Valoch, Jiří: Mezi tradicí a experimentem. Práce na papíře a s papírem v českém výtvarném umění 1939−1989 (Between Tradition and Experiment. Works on Paper and with Paper in Czech Art 1939−1989). Museum of Art, Olomouc, 1997 See: Müllerová, Štěpánka: Tělo jako důkaz (Body as Evidence). Museum of Art, Olomouc, 1998 See: Müllerová, Štěpánka: Klasika 2000. Výběr ze současné malířské a sochařské tvorby nejmladší české generace (2000 Classics.

Selection from Contemporary Painting and Sculpture by the Youngest Czech Generation). Museum of Art, Olomouc, 2000 38 The Minimalist architectural approach of Emil Přikryl in the exhibition intersects the line of postwar as well as contemporary geometric abstraction (Václav Cígler, Hugo Demartini, Dalibor Chatrný, Vladimír Kopecký, Radoslav Kratina and Karel Malich), including works by artists of the “Louny School” (Kamil Linhart, Vladislav Mirvald and Zdeněk Sýkora). As one of the few this tendency in the pre-November 1989 art could not be exploited, and therefore it represented an oasis of creative freedom. In the 1990s this strong position of Czech art was followed up by the youngest artistic generation (Daniel Hanzlík, Pavel Mrkus, Jan Stolín, Jan Šerých, Michal Škoda, Kateřina Štenclová and Markéta Váradiová).

39 This institution is a successor organization of the Regional Gallery Klenová, which was established in 1964 and in 1973 became an integral part of the Regional Museum in Klatovy. In a transformed form and under changed social circumstances after 1989 it achieved fame for organizing shows of contemporary Czech (including exile) art Šedá cihla I−IV (Gray Brick) (1991−1994) as well as a long-term conceptual interest in presentation of the youngest Czech visual art.

40 Gallery activities in Zlín consisted of presentation of works at interwar salons. The purchases of exhibited works resulted in a collection which reflected topical tendencies of Czech (Czechoslovak) art of the 1930s and 1940s. This tradition was disrupted after the Communist coup d’état and the works were presented to the public as late as 1953, when the Regional Gallery of Fine Art was founded. However, their selection was based on the ideological paradigm of the time.

See: composite authors: I. Zlínský salon mladých (First Zlín Youth Salon). Regional Gallery of Fine Art, Zlín, 1997 See: composite authors: II. Zlínský salon mladých (Second Zlín Youth Salon). Regional Gallery of Fine Art, Zlín, 2000 See: composite authors: III. Zlínský salon mladých (Third Zlín Youth Salon). Regional Gallery of Fine Art, Zlín, 2003 See: composite authors: IV. Zlínský salon mladých (Fourth Zlín Youth Salon). Regional Gallery of Fine Art, Zlín, 2006 33

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The patron of art Meda Mládek belongs to the postwar wave of the Czechoslovak exile movement. In the late 1940s she lived in Switzerland, where she participated in the publishing of the revue Současnost, then she studied at Sorbonne in Paris. She eventually settled down in the United States. She systematically supported a numerous group of East European artists (by private purchases of their works). After 1984 she was denied access to her former homeland. Museum Kampa was reconstructed in Sova’s Mill in Prague-Kampa in the years 2000−2003 and opened in September 2003. It concentrates about 1200 works by 20th-century Czech artists and over 200 paintings and drawings by František Kupka. This exhibition represents the most important private collection of modern Central European art in the Czech Republic. (It includes parts of two other private collections: of Jiří and Běla Kolář and Jindřich Chalupecký.)

42 The Wannieck Gallery of Contemporary Art is situated in the gentrified industrial complex of a former foundry in the center of the city of Brno (the complex bears the name of its original owner). Richard Adam’s collecting interest is focused mainly on painting and its development in the Czech context over the last 20 years. The character of the collection has been strongly influenced by the specific artistic opinion of its founder and his subjective selection of the exhibiting artists.

43 The Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists (founded in 1970) functioned in relation to small galleries as an ideological body, while financing the operation of individual exhibitions (transport, insurance, installation, invitations, catalogues). The Czech Fund of Art, which was the main incorporator of sale and “ideologicaleducational” exhibition halls, provided the practical aspect of the operation – care for exhibition premises, lighting, ticket collection, etc. The enterprise Dílo was established as attached to the Czech Fund of Art which – as has been indicated – supported only socially engaged artistic production. Dílo represented a monopoly institution, which had the exclusive right to purchase and sale of works of art in Czechoslovakia. In case of an official sale of a work of art abroad, the identical function was carried out by Artcentrum. Any party interested in the purchase or sale of a contemporary work of art had to take up the only legal path through the Czech Fund of Art, whose commissions determined the price of such work of art. All active artists were forced to register in the Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists, i.e., the Czech Fund of Art due to the absolute economic dependence. In case of their registration they were exempt from the general obligation to work, gaining the status of a free profession (without which one could be criminally prosecuted). However, this also got them under direct political and ideological supervision.

44 In the late 1980s, artists exhibiting in the Na Bidýlku Gallery included Michal Gabriel, Vladimír Kokolia, Jiří Kovanda and Petr Kvíčala.

45 The Opatov Gallery in Prague was founded in 1984 at one of the Prague’s panel housing estates by the curator Jaroslav Krbůšek. In the last years of the totalitarian regime it featured a large majority of the then independent scene (Václav Boštík, Tomáš Císařovský, Milan Grygar, Ivan Kafka, Milan Knížák, Jan Kubíček, Karel Malich, Tomáš Ruller, Adriena Šimotová, Jiří Valoch and others). The first exhibitions were organized in the Exhibition Hall of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences as early as 1972. The certain independence of the Academy of Sciences made it possible to include in the program exhibitions by artists who were in opposition to the official cultural doctrine of the time. In the 1980s, the artists exhibiting here included Václav Boštík, Kurt Gebauer, Milan Knížák, Karel Malich, Karel Nepraš, Václav Stratil and Adriena Šimotová. At that time the reputation of exhibitions at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry outreached the borders of Czechoslovakia. The Půda Gallery in Český Těšín was from 1980 an integral part of the local Municipal Cultural Center. By its program it continued the series of exhibitions held by this institution in the foyer of the Těšín Theater. It presented many artists of the generation of late Czechoslovak Modernism (such as Kurt Gebauer, Věra Janoušková, Čestmír Kafka, Rudolf Sikora and the sisters Jitka and Květa Válová). The Small Exhibition Hall in Liberec is an institution with a tradition of thirty years. In the 1970s, when it became an integral part of the District Cultural Center, its activities were organized by the curator Karel Čtveráček. Michael Rittstein exhibited here as early as 1979; the photographer Josef Sudek in 1981. In 1989, the year of change, it hosted an exhibition by Adriena Šimotová. The Music Theater Gallery came into being as an integral part of the District Cultural Center in Olomouc as early as 1968. Its exhibition program was determined by Rudolf Pogoda and Pavel Herynek. The artists exhibiting here included Dalibor Chatrný, Jiří John, Eva Kmentová, Ladislav Novák and Adriena Šimotová. The activities of this institution were symbiotically complemented by the V podloubí Gallery in Olomouc, which officially became the Art Club of the Municipal Committee of the Union of Czechoslovak Youth and therefore focused on the youngest artists.

41

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The Soros Center for Contemporary Art was founded in 1992 as an integral part of the Central European institutional artistic network of the Open Society Institute N.Y. (under the patronage of George Soros). The aim of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art was to support contemporary art as an important aspect of the harmonically developing civil society. The Soros Center realized programs focused on internationalization of the local artistic scene, presentation of art in public space and support of quality and innovative artistic activities. In 1999 this institution was transformed into the Foundation for Contemporary Art (continuing to support artistic activities by grants) and the Center for Contemporary Art, a beneficiary society in charge of active organization of artistic life. The Jelení Gallery was founded in 1999 and is managed by the curator Gabriela Bukovinská-Kotíková. In 2004 the Jelení Gallery moved from its original location in Prague-Hradčany to a smaller place in Prague-Smíchov.

See: Hlaváček, Ludvík; Smolíková, Marta (eds.): Krajina / Landscape. Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, 1993 See: Hlaváček, Ludvík; Smolíková, Marta (eds.): Orbis Fictus. Nová média v současném umění / New Media in Contemporary Arts. Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, 1995 See: Hlaváček, Ludvík; Srp, Karel (eds.): Bienále mladého art II. ZVON ’96 (‘ZVON’ (‘BELL’) Biennial of Young Artists ’96). City Gallery Prague, Prague, 1996 See: Hlaváček, Ludvík (ed.): Umělecké dílo ve veřejném prostoru (Artwork in Public Spaces). Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, 1997 47 The Rudolfinum is an impressive Neo-Renaissance structure designed as a concert and exhibition hall in 1884 by the architects Josef Zítek and Josef Schulz. The building hosted the Picture Gallery of the Patriotic Friends of Art Society, whose collection (in addition to confiscates and donations) became the basis of the collection of the National Gallery; and also the Krasoumná jednota (Fine Art Union Society). After the First World War the Rudolfinum served as the seat of the Parliament of the Republic of Czechoslovakia. In the years 1990−1992 the building was reconstructed and on 1 January 1994 reopened for concert and exhibition purposes (exhibition space of 1,500 m2). It held a number of group and solo exhibitions such as Louise Bourgeois (1995), Kiki Smith (1995), Jiří Georg Dokoupil (1996), Cindy Sherman (1998), Nan Goldin (1999), Petr Nikl (2000), Bettina Rheims & Serge Bramly (2001), Jiří David (2001), Mikuláš Medek (2002), Czechoslovak Socialist Realism 1948−1958 (2002), Reality Check (2003), František Skála (2004), Alén Diviš (2005), Impressions (2005) and Rineke Dijkstra (2006).

48 The building of the Mánes was designed by the architect Otakar Novotný in the Functionalist style and opened as the seat of the eponymous Manes Association of Fine Artists in 1930. In the 1950s this society was administratively abolished and the house was transferred to the Czech Fund of Art. In the late 1970s and the 1980s its exhibition premises were reconstructed by the architect Bohumil Rychlink.

49 In 1993 the Czech Fund of Art Foundation (a post-totalitarian successor organization of the Czech Fund of Art) declared a tender for the organizational and curatorial management of non-commercial exhibition premises of the former Union of Czechoslovak Fine Artists. The tender was for the Čapek Brothers Gallery, the Václav Špála Gallery, the Nová Síň Gallery, the Mánes Exhibition Hall and the Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem. After the tender most of these galleries were managed by progressive curators (Karel Babíček, Vlasta Čiháková Noshiro, Michal Koleček, Jaroslav Krbůšek, Jiří Švestka). Particularly in the late 1990s these exhibition halls played a role of key presentation centers on the Czech art scene. However, around 2000 the lack of clarity of relations and competencies between individual curators and the Czech Fund of Art Foundation made itself felt. It eventually led to the resignation or even removal of curators, a takeover of these galleries by the Czech Fund of Art Foundation and the subsequent deep stagnation of their exhibition programs. (This does not apply to the Čapek Brothers Gallery, which ceased to exist in the meantime, and the Emil Filla Gallery, which extricated itself legally and organizationally from the Czech Fund of Art Foundation.)

50 The exhibition concept of the curator Ivona Raimanová focused on presentation of topical and fully established foreign art. The monumentality of her action was unparalleled in the Czech lands of the time thanks to the fact that her activities were shielded by the Prague Castle Administration and supported by President Václav Havel. The most beneficial projects were exhibitions by Mimmo Paladino (1991), Joseph Kosuth (1992), Milan Kunc (1992), James Turrell (1992) Jannis Kounellis (1993) and Christian Boltanski (1994).

51 The existence of the Brno House of Arts dates from 1911 when it launched its operation by an exhibition of the German-Moravian Artists Society. Its building was completed in 1910 according to the plans of Heinrich 46

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Ried in the style of Viennese Secession. At the end of the Second World War it was damaged by bombing; after liberation it was taken over by the state administration and its postwar director became František Venera.

In 1946 architect Bohuslav Fuchs rebuilt it in the Functionalist style. An important personality who shaped the character of the House of Arts in the late 20th century was Adolf Kroupa. This translator and organizer of the Brno cultural life was its director in the years 1954−1970. During his time in office the Brno House of Arts represented a center of the most topical artistic trends. There were exhibitions of Czech Modernism, presentations of foreign artists as well as performances of the avant-garde theater company Husa na provázku.

In 1958 the House of Arts was expanded by the House of the Lords of Kunštát, which accommodated premises for exhibitions of graphic art, architectural projects and a specialized area devoted to photography, the first of its kind in the Czech lands.

52 The Václav Špála Gallery was founded in 1957. In the years 1965−1970 its program was positively influenced by Jindřich Chalupecký. However, in the 1970s this most significant Czech postwar art historian was prohibited from working in public and this gallery subsequently featured only the art conforming with the official ideological doctrine. After a variegated and hazy program in the years 1989–1993, the topical curator concept was restarted in 1994 under the direction of Jaroslav Krbůšek. However, in 2002 this curator was removed from his office and the gallery has been again managed by the Czech Fund of Art Foundation.

53 The non-governmental and non-profit Display Gallery − managed by an eponymous civic association − came into being in 2001. It focuses on presentation of foreign artists of a younger generation as well as public-art presentations and lectures. The program of this gallery has been postulated by artists Zbyněk Baladrán and Tomáš Svoboda and theorists Ondřej Chrobák and David Kulhánek. Of realized projects we can mention the presentations of Josef Dabernig (2001), Tamás Komoróczky (2002), Monika Sosnowska & Wilhelm Sasnal (2002), Saskia Jannsen (2002), Oskar Dawicki (2002), Július Koller & Roman Ondák (2003), the Azorro group (2003), Andreas Fogarasi (2003) and Vangelis Vlahos (2004).

See: Baladrán, Zbyněk; Chrobák, Ondřej; Kulhánek, David; Svoboda, Tomáš (eds.): display book 01/03. Display, Prague, 2004 54 In 2002 the concept of the Václav Špála Gallery as well as functioning of two other Prague galleries − Nová Síň Gallery and Mánes – radically changed because they got again under the management of the Czech Fund of Art Foundation. At the same time, however, new institutions were established. In 1999 it was the Experimental Venue NoD − a gallery connected with a multifunctional hall, an internet café and a night club. The main curator of this project was the artist Krištof Kintera. In 2002 artists Veronika Bromová, Veronika Drahotová and Aleksandra Vajd founded the HOME Gallery. Its operation was terminated in 2004. In 2003 Štěpán Bolf, Dan Dudarec, Anežka Hošková, Jakub Hošek and Markéta Pecková established the A.M.180 Gallery. The Etc. Gallery was founded in 2004 by artists Jiří Franta and Jiří Skála. On the premises of the Karlín Studios, Tereza Severová and Tereza P. Velíková opened the Entrance Gallery in 2005.

55 The G99 Gallery was established in 2000 as a project of the Brno House of Arts; now it is situated in the House of the Lords of Kunštát. Its existence was preceded by two exhibition venues: the Good Shepherd Gallery and the Youth Gallery, which came into being in 1991. The curator of these premises was in the years 1993−1996 Terezie Petišková, and since 1997 up to this day František Kowolowski. The Eskort Gallery was established in 2000 and until 2005 its curator was Jana Kalinová. Since 2006 the program of this place has been coordinated by Jiří Havlíček and Petr Strouhal. The 761 Gallery came into being in 1996 upon the initiative of René Rohan, Stanislav Cigoš and Petr Lysáček. Its program focuses on reflection of the development at the contemporary Ostrava artistic scene. The initiator of the project of the Galerie die Aktualität des Schönen and its curator was in 1997 the artist Jan Stolín. This gallery has changed its place several times and at present it operates under the patronage of the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Technical University in Liberec. Since 2001 the curator of the Šternberk Gallery has been the artist Michal Kalhous. He has followed up the activities of its previous program director Pavel Brunclík. The Caesar Gallery came into being upon the initiative of the Olomouc Artists’ Association and in collaboration with the city of Olomouc in 1991. The main commissar of this exhibition venue is Miroslav Schubert who collaborates with other curators (such as Jiří Valoch and Ladislav Daněk). The curator of the Plzeň City Gallery is Václav Malina; he also often collaborates with guest theorists such as Zbyněk Sedláček. The private Sýpka Gallery is owned by Irena and Jan Velek. In view of the character of the building (a former granary) its operation is limited to summer months.

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The House of Art of České Budějovice has been managed since 1997 by the joint-stock company Municipal Cultural Houses. Since 1998 its curator has been the artist Michal Škoda. The concept of this gallery consists of current Neo-Conceptual and Post-Minimalist artworks as well as presentations of contemporary architecture.

The exhibition premises of the House of Art have the area of 180 m2.

57 The Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem was founded in 1985 and belonged to exhibition institutions of the Czech Fund of Art, from whose influence it extricated itself as early as the late 1990s. This gallery has changed its location several times, and eventually in 2006 it opened a new large place in the House of Culture of the city of Ústí nad Labem (it has 380 m2 of exhibition space). The gallery is managed by the beneficial society People to Art, Art to People, and its program is actively supported by the Faculty of Art and Design of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. The Emil Filla Gallery has presented prominent representatives of contemporary Central European art through their solo or group exhibitions (Roland Boden, Jiří Černický, Antal Lakner, Roman Ondák, Slaven Tolj and others). The gallery has also systematically collaborated with internationally renowned curators (such as Vladimír Beskid, Harald Kunde, Anton Lederer & Margarethe Makovec, János Szoboszlai, Barbara Steiner, Aneta Szylak and Darko Šimičić). As one of the few Czech exhibition institutions the Emil Filla Gallery successfully participated in international projects realized within the European grant systems (the program EU CULTURE 2000, European Cultural Foundation and others).

58 See: Šír, Vladan: Konec jedné éry – rozhovor s galeristou Janem Černým (End of One Era – Interview with Gallery-owner Jan Černý). In: Umělec. 2/2002, Divus, Prague, p. 14–19 56

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Framing of Art The Social and Institutional Context of Contemporary Visual Art in Central Europe We have decided to pass on the question of the “Social and Institutional Context of Contemporary Visual Art in Central Europe” to other people, i.e., the twenty-six colleagues from seven countries: Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Germany. In all these countries < rotor > has been working within the frame of an international network.

Principally, we have been interested in the question which people are thought to be capable of pushing art/the art scene forward. The answers are surprising and heterogeneous alike. The work and the initiatives of individual artists – and especially groups of artists – have been mentioned conspicuously frequently. These are followed by freelance curators and “art-workers” respectively. In so far as exceptional influence on the art scene is concerned, independent projects are clearly deemed most powerful. Institutions can be found as well but in the twenty-six statements, long-established institutions that have been able to give fresh momentum to the art scene are only mentioned three times.

On the whole, a euphoric tone prevails in the comments about the extraordinary achievements that speaks a clear language with regard to art as such: And yet, it moves!

Margarethe Makovec + Anton Lederer < rotor > association for contemporary art Graz Our question to you: Which initiative / institution / individual has recently shaped the art scene in a particular way – in the area / country you live? * * * Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany * * *

* Genoveva Rückert Curator, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Linz / Austria Crossing Europe – A film festival started in 2004 as the most recent initiative in the region.

Following the fiercely debated treatment of the Graz “Diagonale” Austrian film festival by the Austrian Federal Government, director Christine Dollhofer packed her bags and took up an invitation from Wolfgang Steininger (director of the Moviemento and City cinemas) to bring her visionary program to Linz. And an astonishing idea worked: in a period of young European filmmaking with a focus on South and Eastern Europe, she managed to attract supporters, a team, cooperation partners and sponsors. The festival was a success – it had a small budget, but numerous international guests, good press and substantial audiences. The fact that financial support for the festival in its second year was only marginally greater, despite the goodwill of 79

political decision-makers, presents a problem for the continuation of an event that Linz has already written into its program for “European Capital of Culture 2009”. While on the one hand these simply are the cultural-political framework conditions, it is on the other hand important to highlight the quality of this initiative, which was conceived from the start as a cooperative and open venture and which has itself become a framework for the development1 of the city of Linz and the Federal Province of Upper Austria.

XE as best practice for the balance between regional responsibility and international attention: In addition to networking with local partners, the mobilization of the local scene through the Local Artists Award and the ambition of providing a platform for young film outside the realm of conventional genres, Christine Dollhofer has also instigated a crossover link to the music scene with the KAPU Linz and to visual art. It is interesting that, despite artistic connections, these scenes are characterized by different discourses and remain separate. Together with the O.K a program was designed that presented young artists who are developing their work specifically in the charged field between film and art. XE demonstrates that, with a regional and international orientation, discussions about center and periphery, the orientation to a capital city and thus a national scale, have become irrelevant. And so this practice has become a significant model for cultural work in an expanded Europe.

* Walter Seidl Curator, critic, artist, Vienna / Austria Getting into Kontakt in the Central European Area As an initiative that has developed a transnational art sponsoring model in the area of contemporary art production, the cultural ventures of the Erste Bank Group represent an innovative working platform which offers a range of possibilities to carry out projects – especially with the protagonists of the recent and latest movements in art production.

Introducing Kontakt, the “Arts and Civil Society Program” in 2004, the Erste Bank Group’s intention was aimed at launching its own activities and enter into partnerships with institutions and artists that play an important role in the production of contemporary art, culture and theory in the Central European area. Hence, the Erste Bank Group does not focus on emphasizing its status as a business enterprise but tries to actively accompany the artistic and intellectual transformations in the countries where they take place.

Alongside this program, which derives from the sponsoring concept of the bank, the already three-year-old project tranzit – by means of annual funding set in advance – also enables curators in the Czech Republic, in Slovakia, in Austria since last year, and in the near future in Hungary too, to independently promote or develop institutions and projects that arise from local needs.

So, for example, the program of the Display Gallery in Prague is supported on a regular basis, and in 2004 a ‘kunsthalle’ and workshop environments were established on the site of an empty block of buildings in Bratislava. Both the non-existence and the maintenance of well-functioning spaces of contemporary art production still pose a big problem in the post-socialist countries, which the 80

Erste Bank Group is trying to address both structurally and in terms of their contents. www.kontakt.erstebankgroup.net www.tranzit.org

* Martin Krenn Artist, Vienna / Austria I would like to mention the IG Bildende Kunst and its gallery in Vienna. As a member of its managing board, I have observed that in recent years the IG has taken up a stronger political position and have also been able to contribute to this. This can also be seen in the gallery’s program, which features exhibitions – organized jointly with artists and activists – dealing with themes such as racism, anti-Semitism and the construction of history. Both the exhibition program and the services offered by the IG are supplemented with accompanying series of activities.

The “Survivaltraining für KünstlerInnen” series, organized by Daniela Koweindl and focusing on issues of social security and contemporary working conditions, has been attended by many artists and is particularly fresh in my mind. At the moment the IG has over 800 members and the number is still rising. In light of this, the IG Bildende Kunst can to a large extent act independently and is listened to whenever it makes its position clear with regard to socio-political issues, or stands up for artists and their respective interests.

* Nataša Petrešin Free-lance curator and critic, Ljubljana / Slovenia, Paris / France SilentCell Network is an international open research platform for interventions in public spaces, whose members are anonymous in name and identity. SilentCell Network describes itself as “a capital-free zone laboratory maintained by a group of multimedia artists and theoreticians.

It is programd to mine a corpus of cells for associated strategies or connections (linking between concepts as a tactic) – like connections between two unrelated concepts”. The group’s actions, interventions and performances operate in various physical and geographical locations (Ljubljana, Graz, Venice, Bordeaux), as well as in most existing media and distributive contexts (Internet, magazines, national and commercial TV channels). The accidental present audience, unaware of the actual artistic codification and context of these events, as well as the audience later on directed to the documentation of the events, is confronted with the group’s tactical manipulations of the thin line between real-time inserted fictions and constructed realities (in Graz, for example, the visitors and guards in the Kunsthaus encountered two men, one of whom claimed to suffer from electrical hypersensitivity – a certified medical disease that causes symptoms of weakness, headache, and chest pain or heart problems when exposed to electromagnetic fields. The man attended the museum in a special protective suit that shielded him from the electromagnetism generated by the artworks in the exhibition. The two men navigated with care through the exhibition, explaining and bantering with guards about the 81

technical aspects of each work in the exhibition). The documentation of the events furthermore questions the basic dilemma surrounding the truth and lies spread through various media networks and PR politics.

The act of appropriating public territory is a tactical method for claiming visibility in today’s disappearing public space, which is subjected to increasing surveillance and hyper-regulative legislation. SilentCell Network challenges the role of artists as reality-checkers who transgress certain models or boundaries in social relationships and offer an altered view of everyday life.

This is achieved through creativity and the potential that lies in small or larger scale interventions in it. As Jaques Rancière says, “the real must be fictionalized in order to be thought”. http://www.silentcellnetwork.org/

* Gregor Podnar Curator, director of Galerija Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana / Slovenia Irwin’s East Art Map From my point of view, the most striking artists’ initiative for the Slovenian context is the East Art Map project coming out of the intellectual effort of three members of the artist group Irwin, as it is of importance to a much wider public than just the local one.

The East Art Map is based on their experience of a lack of historical consciousness of avant-garde art practices and of historical strata that would support contemporary art production after the break-down of Socialism in Eastern Europe. Irwin made one of the first steps towards the East with their collaborative actions in Moscow in the very early 1990s, for instance. In a period when everybody else had turned their eyes to the West, their focus on the East was ahead of its time, and the East Art Map is as such an essence of their past collaborative work, showing important links between contemporary art and conceptual art movements of the past in Eastern Europe. The East Art Map is an artistic project and much more: it tries to hit the given power constellations in art with contributions of renowned art histories and critics collected in a publication that will question the Western dominance of contemporary art. The project is a logical continuation of Irwin’s interest in intertwining art and structures of power in politics and in the art system as well. At the same time, it is my belief that this project will, in the long run, reinforce and raise the level of artistic production in the local context in general and provide a more profound platform for the necessary private initiatives, such as non-governmental organisations and galleries for contemporary art, bringing greater dynamics into a stagnating art system in Slovenia, and reevaluate contemporary art in public, for instance.

* Marina Gržinić Free-lance media theorist, art critic, curator, Ljubljana / Slovenia Most recently, it is the work of the association for performing arts Maska, Ljubljana that should be highlighted within a context of importance for Slovenian cultural and social contemporary 82

space. Besides being a producer, the association is also the publisher of the quarterly magazine Maska, issued as a bilingual publication in Slovenian and English. Some distinctive people are members of Maska: Emil Hrvatin, Bojana Kunst, Rok Vevar, Katja Praznik, etc. The significance of this association lies in the way that they publish and raise a number of important questions regarding cultural politics in Slovenia, the relationship between having autonomous spaces of production and distribution and constructing, nurturing and initiating a platform for exchange between the international community and the writers, thinkers, critics and artists who want to establish a self-reflective attitude toward art and culture in Slovenia. Maska perceives art and culture as a social process and a political activist platform. A very important task today, as rightwing neo-liberal politics in Slovenia is at present drastically cutting and dismantling the space for independent culture in Ljubljana and Slovenia. Deterioration had already begun, paradoxically, under left-wing policy in Slovenia during the last decade. This implemented a disastrous situation regarding culture (taxes, less money for activists) and rights (socially excluded people, homosexuals). Bringing up a potential new generation of independent and critical activists, writers, thinkers and artists, and forming a platform for a possible critical mass is therefore an essential task in such a situation. Maska is doing this precisely and consciously.

* Nevenka Šivavec Curator, Center of Contemporary Art Celje / Slovenia A group called The Group My work in the field of contemporary art is probably most recognizable within the context of cultural decentralization in the sense of cultivating and popularizing local or even marginal and marginalized artistic practices and phenomena. Hence I will also use this opportunity to write about the local phenomenon called The Group, which, in my opinion, effectively produced social and artistic events in its environment and made them much more dynamic.

As a result of global and local changes that decrease the power of the state, smaller cultural environments such as the town of Celje and the Celje region are in a position of continual deterioration – especially as regards state regulation and cultural financing.

The Group from Celje is a group of artists and other professionals who formed organically and through self-initiative during a period of rapid social change in Slovenia (in the year 2000).

The reasons for the formation of the group were mainly political, for during the transitional processes the town of Celje adopted a neo-liberal model of economy without any sort of public debate or broader social consensus, thus creating the conditions for unchecked privatization of the public domain.

The following is typical of the operation of The Group: horizontal hierarchy, member fluctuation depending on the nature and demands of individual projects, connecting at various levels and their great influence on the local social and spatial processes. Among other things, The Group drew attention (within the international exhibition Celje Blow Up) to the degraded urban areas within the town and prepared a public debate provocatively entitled I Hate Celje. On the 83

eve of a state holiday, The Group covered the town center with bilingual (literal and humorous) English and Slovenian names of bars and institutions, with which they drew attention to the sensitive history of the once bilingual town of Celje as well as the current globalization of language. Amongst their newer projects one can find the construction of a new home and establishment of a more appropriate status for their mentally and socially maladapted artistic colleague, who until recently had lived in impossible existential conditions. A lack of space here prevents me from describing other projects they implemented in the local environment, however, it is clear from the above that The Group represents an important social collective on the micro level and that it directly influences other local artists and art institutions.

I see the appearance of The Group – a contemporary collective that creates links within the local environment – as a positive symptom and a useful model of highly ethical, self-initiative, collaborative, provocative, critical, yet generous, open and evocative artistic operation, which can succeed in breaking through the membrane of the elitist artistic enclave and truly connect to its everyday environment.

* Branka Stipančić Free-lance curator, Zagreb / Croatia What, How & for Whom (WHW) is the most vivid and important initiative today in Croatia.

WHW is an independent curatorial collective of four curators: Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, and designer and theoretician Dejan Kršić. It was established in 1999 in Zagreb, Croatia. Based on the principles of collective creativity and on the new models of collaboration with cultural organizations of various backgrounds, WHW projects explore issues related to the public relevance and social involvement of contemporary art. Since May 2003, WHW has directed the non-profit Gallery Nova in Zagreb, whose focus is on presenting contemporary visual art through exhibitions of very young and established artists, extensive group exhibitions, relevant lectures and discussions. WHW organized many of the exhibitions outside the Gallery Nova such as the international exhibitions “What, How & for Whom, on the occasion of the 152nd anniversary of the Communist Manifesto” (Home of Croatian Artists, Zagreb, 2000 and Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, 2001), “Broadcasting Project, dedicated to Nikola Tesla” (Technical Museum, Zagreb, 2002), “Looking Away” (Apex Art, New York, 2003),“Side Effects” (Salon of Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, 2004), and “Collective Creativity” (Kunsthalle Friedericianum, Kassel, 2005). All of the events organized by WHW involved comprehensive research undertaken by the team beforehand. Book publishing is an important part of their activity (they recently edited a catalogue and reader to accompany “Collective Creativity”).

As curators they are smart, competent and enthusiastic. They are good writers as well. More than any other art institution in Croatia, WHW is capable of producing a great program within a low budget. And in doing so they bring about international co-operation at such a level and scope that they deserve to be recognized and admired.

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* Branko Franceschi Director, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka / Croatia The most significant phenomenon on Croatia’s lively art scene in the past few years was a new multidisciplinary cycle by David Maljković. It brought a fresh insight into the local cultural heritage, thus disclosing the painful issue of discontinuity that has burdened it for the last century. Furthermore, its huge international success served as a vehicle in disseminating information on forgotten and unappreciated monuments, artists and art practices to both a local and global audience. This rare attitude, recognizing the specifics of one’s own tradition of modernism as a valuable source of inspiration, guidance and originality, demonstrates a new approach that will hopefully become a model for many to follow creatively.

Maljković gained extraordinary local success as a young painter who proved able to support himself solely from his work immediately after graduating from the Zagreb’s Academy of Fine Arts in 2000. Without compromising his artistic vision and high standards, he managed to create a rare consensus between curators, art critics, general public and collectors. Maljković’s forte has always been his unique conceptual approach realised in compositions and ambiences when investigating a status of contemporary painting and its existential trinity of presentation, institutionalization and consummation. Maljković was intrigued by despised but commercially successful styles such as romanticism or a petty bourgeoisie universe of kitschy motifs. His reinterpretation included these in cynically humorous commentaries on what is successful.

His interest next focused on the troublesome motif of an empty painting. This mystical object centerd in the heart of paintings and drawings, where the eluding essence of art failed to appear, depicts a grim burden of expectations forced upon contemporary painting.

The surreal, dark and moody cycle was followed by complex site-specific spatial structures composed of drawings, low-budget pseudo-futurist SF videos, ready-mades, photographs, scrappy constructions, performances-on-spot, racing cars and motorcycles… This heteronomy of disciplines was compressed into the time machine in Again for Tomorrow (2003) bridging over a century of inf luences from Dada and Futurism to the chameleon-like aesthetics of today and tomorrow towards a prolific mixture that is his personal cultural map. Finally, the Scene for a New Heritage (2004), a homage to the abandoned, neglected, forgotten and dilapidated late masterpiece of Vojin Bakić’s 1981 Partisan Hospital Memorial on Petrova Gora south-east of Zagreb, announced a series of videos and ambiences dealing with the local tradition of modernist architecture.

Maljković’s oeuvre developed in a unique freestyle, zigzagging amid the exotic masterpieces of the local modernist tradition and failed international avant-garde movements, compiled in observations on fragility of creation within the referential political context. Maljković doesn’t pretend to be a cultural sociologist, nor does he appropriate scientific methods. His intuitive approach and poetics work with mental attitudes and habits defining creation and perception, rather than with specific objects, thus elevating local dilemmas to universally understood human patterns.

More about the artist at www.davidmaljkovic.net.

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* Ana Dević Curator, WHW, Zagreb / Croatia Over the past few years, the independent cultural scene in Croatia has grown remarkably active. By opposing the dominant models of representation, mostly based on national identity, the independent scene has been intensifying progressive, collaborative and socially engaged cultural production, parallel to developing innovative models of cultural policy, solidarity and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Multimedia Institute [mi2] sprang up as the spin-off of the Internet program of the Open Society Institute Croatia, and started to work in 1999, using new technologies and contemporary theory as a platform offering new models of socio-cultural events, collectivity, exchange and active audience participation. The Multimedia Institute [mi2] activities and projects include the following: net.culture club [mama], mi2lab, egoboo.bits, annual exhibitions and Otokultivator.

Multimedia Institute [mi2] has brought together an emerging generation of civil and urban culture activists, media practitioners and social and media theorists to provide education in media and technological practices relevant to the operation and expansion of the social and cultural sector, as well as developing socially inflected approaches to new technologies.

Since the late 1990s, Multimedia Institute [mi2] has played a particularly important role in the process of intensification and strengthening of the whole independent visual and media cultural scene. They are among the initiators of several intensive collaborative platforms such as clubture, policy forum and Zagreb Cultural Capital of Europe 3000, which today include a number of cultural non-governmental organizations and initiatives.

Multimedia Institute [mi2] is not chosen here as an isolated representative of the overall local scene, but as one of its most active participants, cornerstones and influential catalysts, actively initiating structural changes in a wide range of areas (non-institutional culture, informal education, technology, intellectual property rights, access to public resources, etc.).

* Antonia Majača Director, Galerija Miroslav Kraljević, Zagreb / Croatia One of the most intriguing initiatives on the Zagreb urban cultural scene in the last decade was undoubtedly “Operation: City” – a ten-day event featuring a variety of cultural activities (theater and dance performances, art installations, exhibitions, performance art, film screenings, music events, workshops, lectures and others), which temporarily occupied the premises of the abandoned industrial complexes of the former “Badel” factory and old “Zagrepcanka” slaughterhouse. Two years ago, in the organization of the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery and architectural collective Platforma 9,81, Swedish artist Carl Michael Von Hausswolff made a light installation entitled “Red Empty: Zagreb” inside the old Badel Factory. Besides its great aesthetic charm, this work also focused on the question of the fate of the old industrial buildings, once on the periphery of the city and today abandoned to decay due to problems concerning their ownership and lack of money or interest.

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The organization of temporary settlement through Operation:City was a collaborative project by [BLOK] – Local Base for Refreshment of Culture and Platforma 9,81, while the program and activities were the result of a collaboration between all of the major initiatives and organizations active on Zagreb’s independent cultural scene, who moved all their activities to these locations. Amazing enthusiasm together with a high level of know-how resulted in new dynamics within the process of negotiation with the City of Zagreb.

The project actively related to the spatial issues of contemporary culture and ways in which culture can impact the processes of city planning and developmental processes in the city. The temporary appropriation of these spaces through various cultural programs has temporarily closed the void left in the transition process. Through the transformation of unused spaces into dynamic urban zones, culture becomes a catalyst of change. www.operacijagrad.org

* Hajnalka Somogyi Curator, Trafo Gallery, Budapest / Hungary Today is the 6th of July. As usual, I’ve been procrastinating about writing this statement right up until the last minute. And for once this has turned out for the best, since recent events have helped me to formulate it.

One of the initiatives I’ve had in mind is a series of public talks that the Studio Association of Young Artists started recently as a club activity. This might sound like a rather ordinary idea; it is only the general lack of open talk and feedback on our scene that makes this modest program something of potential importance. The first occasion entitled “For whom are you making/doing it?” focused on the audience of contemporary art; the second dealt with the role of the curator.

The third, latest discussion, organized on the occasion of the upcoming appointment of the new director of Műcsarnok, aimed at presenting the candidates’ programs.

Műcsarnok is one of the most important state-run venues for contemporary art in Hungary; a Kunsthalle type of institution with an exhibition space of 2300 sqm. Have you heard of it?

There isn’t room here to go into an evaluation of its performance, but it has certainly instigated some rather fierce debates, at least locally, over the past few years and especially the last few months. Finally, Studio managed to acquire three people for the public presentation and talk, among them the present director 2. This quite simple and logical step toward discourse and transparency not only attracted remarkable interest on the spot but has also stirred up various long-suppressed emotions, generated quite contrasting opinions and challenged the scene on its divisions and unwillingness to debate openly.

The role of Műcsarnok could be crucial, not only for the Hungarian art scene but also for the whole region. Contemporary art is far too insignificant a sector for politics to pay attention to professional discourse. The scene is hampered by paranoia and conspiracy theories. The results will be clear tomorrow and the debate will continue. Studio has a long way to go if it wants to moderate and elevate it.

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* Zsolt Petrányi Director, Mücsarnok, Budapest / Hungary When I consider the word “recently” in the question, then I would actually like to look back a few years. The reason for this is that I feel that the origin of the current fine art activities underwent a “renewal” at the beginning of the millennium. This is closely linked with the activities of one artist group, the Little Warsaw (Bálint Havas – András Gálik). It is not just their works that should be mentioned here, but more their open studio, which has run in various locations in the city of Budapest from 1996 onwards. The role of their workshoplike spaces was to open up the structure of the Hungarian contemporary art scene. The programs they have organised give an open platform for theoretical and very practical questions. This activity widely spread a discussion of art itself, which was the focus of criticism directed at the big institutions. The point of Little Warsaw was to prove that dynamism, speed and alternative views can lead to different and new forms of artistic expression. The open talks, presentations and events organised within this framework gave us the opportunity to react openly to art itself, to find paths towards a new criticism and self-consciousness of the Hungarian scene and to identify our position better on the international art scene. On the other hand, the works of the Little Warsaw underlined this attitude of open discussion by generating situations where the production itself has closer and longer effects, which every participating partner must consider. Sometimes this leads to conf lict which raises the issue of the definition of art; thus their activities, their open spaces and disputed works become a complex notion of contemporary culture itself.

* Judit Angel Curator, Mücsarnok, Budapest / Hungary Two or three years ago I’d have talked about the alternative space run by the Little Warsaw group in Hajós street in Budapest, which aimed at generating a discursive context around art(works) or the KMKK group’s regularly organised presentations dealing with “attention recycling”, i.e., with artists, works, phenomena situated at the periphery of the general attention. I could have also spoken about the Manamana free newspaper and project, which succeeded in creating new channels of communication between various people operating in the field of art, civilian activity and political activism. While the first two groups appeared as a reaction to the lack of systematic changes at an institutional level, the third initiative’s intention was to open up the rather isolated Budapest art scene towards society.

Looking at it from this perspective, I do not see at the moment any enterprise strong enough to have visibly shaped the art scene in the last 12 to 18 months. There are, however, positive signs coming from the community-building potential of some individual initiatives that will hopefully have lasting effects. Last November, the first Hungarian professionally organised squat came into being in the abandoned building of a former department store in the center of Budapest.

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The squatters were young critics of globalisation, artists, defenders of the environment and of the city’s old buildings who demonstrated against current urban policy. Although it was an extremely short-lived establishment, the idea of an alternative cultural center has survived and materialised in the “ak57” in Dohány street. The newly opened “Tūzraktár” in the empty building of a former factory in Tūzoltó street in Budapest is another private initiative for an independent art center. Within the context of an institution system still resistant to change, I find these examples of self-organisation very empowering.

* Balazs Beöthy Artist, Budapest / Hungary Shaping the commodification process For some time now I have thought of art as a collective product; the collaborative potential among the different players becomes an important factor in this view.

Looking around the Hungarian scene, there is plenty to develop in this sense.

Collecting contemporary art is one of the problematic territories. There are no organic relations between collectors and institutions. Sometimes random rumours appear in the press that a (well chosen) painting is an excellent investment, as its value will increase dramatically in time. Most of the few commercial galleries also promote this idea by offering only painted matter.

The general public is not aware of contemporary art, due to gaps in the educational system and the frequently manifest communicational incompetence of the underfunded institutions. Most of the (existing few) collectors want to choose personally what they buy, without real established communication channels to specialists who could help their choices. Subsequently what they buy is almost exclusively painting.

Under these circumstances, the Horváth Art Foundation has set an example. The foundation was established two years ago without publicity. They became visible only at the beginning of this year, with the public announcement of the first purchased items. A photo, a drawing and a pseudo-training object were the selected ones. The decision was made by an advisory board of specialists (including curators and artists). They also awarded a prize to a prominent art critic.

This was a well-publicized, good example of harmonious collaboration on a balanced scale.

After the collapse of the first private art institution, MEO, and the terminal leave of the advisory board of Kogart, we needed good news in this respect.

* Viera Jančeková Levitt Director, Jan Koniarek Gallery, Trnava / Slovakia Because of its influence on the arts scene in Slovakia, I have a particular space in mind. However, I wouldn’t call it an institution since the term can imply an inability to be flexible as well as the existence of e mployees and hierarchy. This space, formerly called Buryzone, was between the years 2001 and 2003 situated in a kind of living room in Bratislava.

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Every Friday evening an art program was presented, connecting art, music, theater, literature, science, new media or whatever else one might understand as a part of culture. If we can imagine space as a communication and networking node, Buryzone definitely served this function and attracted especially young people from different fields as a “gallery, club and idea rental”.

The follow-up to this initiative was called BURUNDI datalab studio displej press (2004– 2005), staged in the interesting creative atmosphere of A4 (Zero space) in the center of Bratislava. The common link here is their leader, Mária Rišková, around whom the scene and people have been concentrated and who put an incredible amount of energy into inspiring them and organizing the program for this non-profit initiative. As another node within the network of spaces, communities and people, Burundi generates the world at the edge of science, art, technology and society, where their borders begin to blur. As in Buryzone, the term “meeting-point” is definitely not a cliché; it served international visitors as a platform for networking and finding artists, art activists or other partners for their projects — or just friends.

Interestingly, Maria Riskova is seeking a new name and space for an independent organization at the moment. While certainly a confusing transition when observed from the outside, this new initiatives will not allow the previous incarnations to be institutionalized, get entrenched and gain solid structure and hierarchy. So the attractiveness of these activities where participants and visitors exchange roles in a natural way is moving forward to other unexpected forms.

* JuraJ Čarný Gallerist / curator, SPACE / Gallery Priestor for Contemporary Arts, Bratislava / Slovakia Mária Rišková has been called “Spidergirl from Bratislava” by new media theorist Denisa Kera.

She is a woman who talks to her Mac. Her multimedia perception goes far beyond the boundaries of the digital and the real. She senses and reflects the world around in an experimental and innovative way. We could call her the inspiring spirit, initiator, communicator. She is the hidden leader and thinker, an animator, a persistent and tireless founder of something new and different.

She is the founding mother of hundreds of projects, co-operations and workshops. Her activities in the kitchen of a cute little house not far from Bratislava’s city center demonstrated that ideas of “open society” can be applied to the world of art as well. The kitchen was open to people of different ages, sexes and artistic appetites, people who thought and perceived differently. It was an independent state with its own currency, the “buryzondollar”. Despite the difficult working conditions – no system support, no adequate technical equipment, no authorship, no theoretical or audience approval and no comprehension of the new media – she succeeded in presenting, promoting and co-creating the new media. The co- prefix is what defines the very essence of her alternative creative and professional activities. The co-founder, co-initiator, co-inspiring spirit.

Buryzone, Burundi – most of her artistic practice was based on small-scale teamwork.

Mária Rišková is the femme fatale of the Slovak alternative art scene.

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* Mária Rišková Free-lance curator, co-founder of 13m3 association, Bratislava / Slovakia Always reaching for a new experience. This I would say first about a group of highly creative people working together in Bratislava under the name Atrakt Art. Their professional interests lie at the overlap of various domains: experimental music, new media, independent film, urban projects – generally speaking, all of the contemporary cultural phenomena that shape our reality so markedly today. This focus on up-to-date cultural issues comes naturally to them because they have an active attitude towards the life of a community they help to create and that is becoming one of the main attractions of life in the city. Since 2000, the Atrakt Art association has organized concerts, screenings and performances, and created or assisted in projects of various kinds. Previous to this, the group had already started to publish 34, a magazine on contemporary culture for an advanced readership, which focused on reporting the most recent issues concerning art, media, urban life and subcultures.

The association is also a founding member of A4 (Zero space), an independent cultural center/ space that plays a major role in the campaign for transparent cultural politics in Slovakia.

They succeed in inspiring our small cultural scene by bringing in the best examples of experimental music (the NEXT festival), by developing innovative forms of projects and by raising consciousness of the hottest/coolest topics.

Why is the work of Atrakt Art members so important for Slovak culture?

– because of 34 – because of NEXT – because of A4 – because of their talent, creativity and inspiration – because of their involvement in social and politics issues – because of their love for the unseen, the un-experienced and the unexpected www.atrakt-art.sk www.34.sk

* František Kowolowski Artist, curator, The Brno House of Art, Brno / Czech Republic Recently, some new initiatives, independent of the official stagnated art scene presented by “state institutions”, have been appearing here in the Czech Republic. I would like to mention the Billboard Gallery Europe, the activities of the Group RAFANI concerning public lectures and presentations of contemporary visual art. At the same time they are opening up a new space for the understanding of contemporary art. Likewise, the Jindřich Chalupecký Award (prominent award for Czech artists up to 35 years of age) with its new international jury and its effort to define the more progressive ideas in the contemporary art scene, has been coming closer to common European standards.

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* Radek Váňa < waanja >, artistic director of De Veemvloer, Amsterdam / Netherlands The opening line might have referred to the early 1990s; it will, however, highlight the importance of the period around the turn of the millennium. This is because it was exactly at this point that several things became obvious. As usual, there was good and bad news.

Prior to this came a realization that the Western art world, after showing some curious interest in Czech contemporary art, did not want to adopt it and to become its ambassador abroad.

Hopes for the emergence of a local art market also gave way to disillusion. Although now, five years later, the situation on this battlefield seems to have improved slightly, one could say that the art market for contemporary Czech art still barely exists.

A parallel development has witnessed a gradual retreat from conquered positions: the theoretical art paper Detail; a gallery for up-and-coming artists, Starter&Sorter; the public exhibition spaces of Nová Síň and the Václav Špála Gallery (not to mention the scandalous case of a potential center of art life, the Mánes exhibition hall); and private galleries MXM and Béhémot, both pioneers from the early 1990s: all of these, one after the other, have ceased to exist or are in hibernation.

The appointment of Milan Knížák as director of the National Gallery was the proverbial last straw that divided (and continues to divide) a small art community in which broader collaboration, outside one’s own group of friends and interests, still does not come naturally.

Last but not least the leading role of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art, beside the Ministry of Culture the only provider of art grants, has to a great extent abandoned this crucial function.

This was also the period when the first batch of artists graduated from the reformed art schools. This fact, combined with the decreasing number of art spaces, caused a strong feeling of vacuum and it was only a question of time before incidental or short-lived activities would be replaced by something more substantial and structural. It was precisely at this time that the idea of Galerie Display evolved from the Internet art magazine Bazar.

There are several crucial points that immediately indicated a different position (which to date remains unchallenged) in the art world of Prague and probably the Czech Republic in general.

Display – started off with the intention of being permanent and having its own space; – is the initiative of two artists and two art historians (an unusual combination in the Czech Republic) – from the very start it made clear that it would only show international art and that local artists would be represented only exceptionally and incidentally; – started as a modest, street-style organization, ensuring – no matter how basic – solid foundations; nevertheless, from the very first exhibition (Josef Dabernig) it was clear that the boys were not thinking small!

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After three complete seasons, Display’s success is obvious. The continuous flow of exhibitions that are contemporary even within the international context is a result of building up a network of personal contacts with similar organisations abroad. The program, however, has had to become more nuanced: at least a small segment of the unchannelled production of the up-and-coming artists get an opportunity within ‘sub-label’, incidental events, brief exhibitions and projects in- and outside the gallery (including group presentations of contemporary Czech art abroad).

Lectures and publishing are also gaining more importance within the Display program.

Although it is now a time of re-evaluation and reconsideration of the starting points and achievements, although Display is now facing challenges arising from its success (confronted with the stark reality of the local broader cultural context), it is obvious that these four guys have brought back hope and faith in doing one’s own thing, in DIY, in building up regardless of the obstacles. Without them, those few newborn spaces focusing on local young artists probably would not be possible.

* Jiří Surůvka Artist, Ostrava / Czech Republic An artist, a teacher (the head of the shadow Studio of New Media, a spin-off of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ostrava); he works in the field of performance, painting, video, digital photography, digital collages, as an occasional writer and co-author of a cabaret called the “Return of Masters of Entertainment”. He is also a curator of art exhibitions, for instance the IBCA NG Prague 2005.

Today I can already say that I belong to the generation (born 1961) secondarily affected by the abnormality of relations before and after 1989. It is a generation with no influence in today’s Czech Republic, and which has nobody’s respect, bar a few exceptions. And this generation is not a target group in the eyes of the growing consumerist system. After spending many years, and a great deal of energy, trying to influence these circumstances to a larger extent in my hometown, I am forced to admit that my efforts have been in vain. Development goes elsewhere, guided towards the bureaucratization of everything and a new global totalitarian society. God and terror can help you to achieve that – I am going to wash my hands of it. I plan to spend the autumn of my life in a small house on the river, going fishing. I am ready to withdraw my involvement. I will just, if God gives me enough time, save up enough money for the hut.

First, I should point out that my point of view is perhaps different from my regional city, different from Prague.

Initiative? It is only the personal initiative of each of us that makes up the whole of the world.

Institutions? There aren’t any now because the old foreign institutions like the Soros Foundation and PROHELVETIA have left the new EU countries, and the new EU state of the Czech Republic has not recognized that it now comes down to their funding only. In our third biggest city in the Czech Republic, there isn’t even a city gallery or an institution like a Kunsthalle now. There is only a Landesmuseum, which does nothing. And the individual? Ha,ha, it is Milan Knížák, the current director of the National Gallery, who is fucking all of the artists in this country.

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* Ján Mančuška Artist, Prague / Czech Republic The recent art scene in the Czech Republic can be summed up with the expression “the crisis of institutions”. The big state and city institutions remain distanced from real art practice; their activities and representatives fully reflect the political situation in the region.

These facts sound pessimistic. However, despite the visible lack of an art market (commercial / private galleries) in my country, there is something really healthy and positive going on as a result: all of the activities on the Czech art scene are based on the will of people personally engaged in art. The art market and art politics do not have an influence or motive in these activities.

In answer to your question, I feel obliged to mention no fewer than two institutions / initiatives: the gallery Display; and the tranzit initiative, both working in Prague.

The Display gallery has a small exhibition space and its main program focuses on art from Central Europe. Internally, Display represents the main meeting-point for the Prague art scene.

The tranzit initiative operates primarily thanks to a support from Austrian Erste Bank. It is an institution without a space. Its program is divided into several activities such as publishing books (chiefly art theory, the major part of which is still not translated into Czech), organizing lectures and supporting specific art projects.

The existence of both of these institutions gives a feeling of a special value to Prague, or even to the Czech Republic, alongside the other art scenes of Europe.

* Brigitte Franzen Curator, Sculpture Projects Muenster 07, Westphalian State Museum, Münster / Germany It is hard to name only one initiative, because there are so many. So let me bring to your attention at least two of them.

1. A bookshop and artist space which has been organized in Berlin since the mid-1990s. Its name is “pro quadratmeter”, its organizers: Jesko Fezer, Axel Wieder and Claudia Reinhard.

Their initiative – as architects, artists and art historians to establish a new kind of thematic bookshop concerned “only” with subjects and questions of urbanism, city and society – is unique and very special. From an insider’s tip at the beginning, the shop has in the meantime become fairly famous. It is far from being just about selling books; it’s about promoting, criticizing and discussing them in public. They provide accessibility to difficult ideas and have meanwhile gained a lot of inf luence on the “scene”. (see www.pro-qm.de) 2. The “Galerie für Landschaftskunst” (Gallery for Landscape Art) in Hamburg is an artist-run, self-organized art space focusing on art and its relation to landscape. The former founding group – Till Krause, Anna Gudjonsdottir and Florian Hüttner – has now been widened to include several protagonists who organize the various projects, exhibitions and publications hosted by “Galerie für Landschaftskunst”. The gallery is not a label or a corporate identity, but rather a voluntary 94

association of people with connected ideas and interests. Its work is not associated in any way with green thinking in general; instead it is trying to establish a forum for the free flow of ideas concerning the relationship of art and landscape in a very contemporary way. (see www.gflk.de)

* Andrea Knobloch Artist, Düsseldorf / Germany I would like to highlight two projects here – first and foremost because they are about thinking models that project a hoped-for future development back into the present. The first model permanently anticipates per definitionem a state of not-yet, and the second one is already based today on a future that won’t happen at all unless great efforts to change the status quo are taken. Both projects negate fixed locations and avoid the management of factual constraints, which is associated with them, in favor of opening up options for thinking and action into fictional spaces without rejecting a shared social reality. Both draw upon cooperating interests that want to accelerate a forward-looking discussion about art and culture within the frame of the self-imposed format. So far, at least, both have managed without the ballast of a built representational surface.

The “Museum für werdende Kunst” [Museum for Evolving Art] is dedicated to the preservation of the not yet existing, an art that is still in the process of evolving but that is already expected; an art that – drawing on its experience of present circumstances – develops both itself and the circumstances of its future existence without being subjected to the often humiliating procedure of being compared to reality. What is created is an institution that can act beyond the objective borderlines of ownership in the real world, and that reinvents itself from day to day in the process of reflecting on what both art and an art museum could mean to a society. (http://www. dasmwk.net/www/mwk.htm) In the pilot project of a “European Kunsthalle Koeln” the creation of visionary realities is fuelled by the accidents of the politics of reality. The project was initiated by the Cologne association “das loch e.v.”, which criticizes the demolition of the Josef-Haubrich-Forum in Cologne. As a reaction to the lack of cultural-political vision on the part of the communal politics responsible for this, the practice of the administration of scarcity prevalent in communal politics is confronted with the development of a model of a “Kunsthalle” within a European network “[ …] that opens up perspectives for an urban society that go beyond the core area of art”, as Nicolaus Schafhausen, its recently appointed founding director, suggests. (http://www.das-loch.net)

* Angela Dorrer Artist, co-founder of program angels/lothringer13, Munich / Germany The Salon of Annette Schemmel Between February 2003 and February 2004, the salon of Annette Schemmel, who was studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich at the time, took place at regular intervals. Annette 95

Schemmel says about herself that she cultivates “a fairly vague yet all the more romantic idea” of the historic salon. Every three weeks people gathered in the salonière’s private apartment. In order to have an audience as diverse as possible, it was never disclosed beforehand who was going to talk on each of these occasions. The issue at hand in each of these salons was a preferably sound presentation of the hitherto unpublished state of research in various fields of cultural production.

The highlights included the debut performance of the electronic radio play remix Titus by Volker Rommel (Munich); a politically polarizing soirée about Zionism by Philippe Witzmann, a student of political science from Berlin, featuring a flaneur-performance by Katharina Rettelbach, an art student from Vienna; Wolfgang Ullrich’s talk dealing with Heidegger’s ways of staging himself; and Alexis Dworsky’s and Anne Hacket’s (both from Munich) talks about conspiracy theories.

Beside the talks there were also spontaneous performances. Before each presentation the salon space was specially refashioned, and, for a voluntary donation, you could help yourself at a mini buffet that harmonized with the general subject matter of the evening.

I agree in principle with opening space for discussions and experiments in the noninstitutionalized sector in order to link the art scene with people from other disciplines in a rather private environment. Of course, to find the right mix of topics and presentation vs. interaction, or openness vs. structure is always a tightrope walk, but thanks to Annette’s connective and lively personality it worked in a natural and organic way. Word got around in the Munich art scene and people came to get to know something new. After the events more than a few new friendships and collaborations developed as the visitors talked and partied in a relaxed atmosphere. At the moment Madame Schemmel is thinking about a remake of the salon in a different environment.

* Judith Siegmund Artist, Berlin / Germany Is it possible that an institution which is twenty-five years old has only recently influenced the art scene? Yes, it is: To this day, the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (New Society for Visual Art), founded in Berlin in 1969 – due to the ambiguity of its name – has referred to both a “new society” artists have been interested in up to the present day and, at the same time, to new forms of artistic organization and practice. The profile of the Berlin-based art association NGBK is characterized by the NGBK’s effort to promote two things: firstly, a self-responsible art practice beyond the art market, and, secondly, the creation of an adequate public for projects and exhibitions showing up-to-date subjects mediated via new forms of presentation.

Anyone can become a member. The members of the association develop ideas for projects in work groups and then present them to the other members. Finally, all members decide by vote which art projects will be realized. So both parts of the issue apply to the NGBK: in the first place, the exhibitions of the NGBK form time and again modes of perception and discourses about both art and its options and ways of intervention into society – as has been done recently.

So a history of art is written that time and again questions itself critically. Secondly, the NGBK, 96

as the only democratically organized art association in Germany, follows a very particular, or even a peculiar track because it conveys the idea that art can be understood as communication – on the one hand between the artists and the theorists in the work groups, and on the other, between themselves and the many visitors of the exhibitions. Since the exhibition practice of the NGBK is not governed by one person or group, visitors are enabled as members in work groups to intervene directly in the process of art production and presentation. In light of the many important and interesting exhibitions in recent years, I would rather not mention individual titles but refer to www.ngbk.de.

The answers on this survey have been arrived between summer 2005 and summer 2006.

October 2006

Notes: 1 In the wake of the steel crisis, since the 1970s the city of Linz has undergone a transformation from the city of steel to the city of culture. This transformation, developed on a broad basis, was most recently cast in 1999 in a Cultural Development Plan, in which the European Capital of Culture, along with the focal points open spaces, media and the independent art scene, was a declared goal. (http://www.linz.at/kultur/kep/E-start.htm) This is a fascinating cultural environment that has been marked, not least of all, by a cooperative partnership (also influenced by party politics) between the city government and the provincial government, and which has accordingly resulted in a diverse cultural and institutional constellation with the Bruckner Festival and Cloud of Sound, the O.K Center for Contemporary Art, the Ars Electronica Festival and Museum, and most recently the Lentos Art Museum.

2 Barnabás Bencsik, freelance curator; Júlia Fabényi, director of Műcsarnok Budapest; Zsolt Petrányi, director of the ICA Dunaújváros.

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The Frame, the Void, the Power Darko Šimičić The political, social, and cultural changes happening in the territory of Central and Eastern Europe have thoroughly shaken the earlier image of this part of the world. The view from the West had always been focused on the problems disturbing the glossed over image of the socialist world. When communism disappeared from the political scene and the introduction of a capitalist economic system began, it looked as if the never-ending dreams of a better world had begun to come true.

However, the processes of transition were painful and brought about great social harm. Croatia, one of the states that emerged from the brutal disintegration of Tito’s Yugoslavia, experienced drastic social changes. The war, a totalitarian regime, and the criminal process of privatisation of public property marked the reality in Croatia of the 1990s. The consequences of that situation were also evident at the international level, in the isolation of the country and the delay in the process of European integration. Although the negative consequences of the wild transition can be felt even today, fortunately democratic processes have overcome the totalitarian darkness.

These few general observations can serve as the introduction to the framework of the Croatian cultural scene. It should be pointed out that we are going to deal here with its very narrow segment, that of the contemporary visual art scene. I shall speak here of the excesses rather than offer a wide analysis of the earlier situation and the recent past. There are several reasons for that, the main reason lying in the notable agility and heterogenousness of some of the segments of the contemporary visual art scene in Croatia. The great individual success of several Croatian artists in the European and global art scene, unfortunately, hasn’t been followed by an institutional framework at the national level. Therefore, my examination moves between local and global strategies with frequent paradoxical turns.

The positioning of national culture has been one of the essential elements of the art system in Croatia. Open to definition as it is, unquestionably the idea of “national culture” and thus “national art” has always been discussed within the restrictive framework of a narrow national, or even worse, nationalistic ideology. The call for leaning on tradition and excluding “all that is foreign to our national spirit” still remains very loud. The defense of national interests in culture brings about dangerous parochialism, endless tallying, and unclear propositions. In such closed frameworks value systems become extremely disputable and stretch exclusively within the local framework. Criteria thus established still find strong support in the centers of administrative power.

Underdevelopment of some important elements in the cultural scene, such as the system of private galleries or insufficient support to flexible and innovative art institutions, still causes long-lasting negative consequences. This considerably slows down the evolution of the process of establishing more flexible organisational models and value criteria on the contemporary local scene. These 99

few sentences summarize a whole chain of problems discussed from here to eternity and back in Croatian art circles. Although such debates may have a banal ring to them as a mere repetition of well known facts, they reflect, in many ways, the situation in the contemporary art scene of Croatia. Let us examine the example of an exhibition recently shown in Zagreb. The description of that exhibition offers the opportunity of setting forth a whole series of layers which are contained within it that reflect the situation in the visual art scene. I am going to mention some events from the recent and more remote past, but it is not my intention to write a history of art or to review the exhibition. Rather, I am going to relate a number of seemingly contradictory facts, paradoxical situations, radical turns, and voids. I am going to speak about flaws, desires, concealment, and manipulation. The framework I wish to outline is going to be weak, fragile, unstable, and open.

In December 2005, the exhibition entitled “Power of Emptiness” showed the work of two artists in Zagreb.1 The exhibition presented works of art by Julije Knifer and Tomo Savić-Gecan. The curators of the exhibition were Jaša Denegri and Miško Šuvaković, both highly regarded critics from Belgrade.

The exhibition was accompanied by a customary small catalogue of texts written by the curators.

The exhibition was shown at the PM Gallery within the Croatian Visual Artists Society (HDLU) in a building constructed at the end of the 1930s as a representative gallery. The exhibition presented one painting by Julije Knifer from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. At first glance, the work of Tomo Savić-Gecan seemed to be invisible, but it was in character with his entire opus. There was a customary cocktail party at the opening. The visitors were offered glasses of wine and juice. It was precisely those glasses which were created by Tomo Savić-Gecan. The artist noted his part in the exhibition in the catalogue: “The glazed areas that made it impossible for visitors to circulate freely in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb during the exhibition ‘Here Tomorrow’ in 2002 have been transformed into wineglasses, PM Gallery, 2005”. The opening of the exhibition was attended by a few dozen of visitors, the usual number for the Gallery and the artists. The report of the exhibition, written in a telegraphic manner, speaks about one more exhibition not likely to attract special attention in the local community. It was apparently one more of the usual presentations of contemporary art for a small public. But let us examine in more detail some of its segments. Who were the artists and who were the curators? Where was the exhibition shown? How does it relate to some of the other institutions…?

The artists presented in the exhibition belong to different generations. Julije Knifer was born in 1924 2 and died in December 2004. The exhibition was conceived five years ago and should have presented Knifer’s new body of work, created for that very occasion. However, due to a chain of circumstances, in which the main role was played by the lack of funds, there were a number of delays, so that in the end the exhibition became a memorial exhibition and opened on the occasion of the anniversary of the artist’s death. Knifer belonged to the generation of artists who strongly articulated the Croatian visual art scene in the second half of the 20th century. After the Second World War, Yugoslavia was able to win a relatively independent political and economic status by skillful balancing between East and West in the rivalries of the Cold War. Its political and cultural 100

opening to Western countries started at the beginning of the 1950s. At the time, artists were among the first professionals to be allowed to travel on business to Western countries. The key event in the visual art scene at the time was the appearance of a group of visual artists from Zagreb called Exat 51. The group was established in 1951 and its program leaned on the abstract tradition of the Russian Avant-garde and the artistic methods proclaimed by Bauhaus. Perhaps the most obvious signs of the open and radical cultural policy of Yugoslavia were in evidence at the beginning of the 1960s. It was the time when the Nobel Prize for Literature and Oscar for animated films were won

by Yugoslavians. The international Biennial of Music was established in Zagreb in 1961, and the same year the Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art) opened the first of a series of exhibitions of international art. Within this period, at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, Knifer reduced the motifs and colors of his paintings. He chose the strongly minimalistic and monotonous motif of meander. His painting was reduced to the endless repetition of vertical and horizontal lines, and his color, with very rare exceptions, came down to black and white. Although the minimalism alone was an impressive artistic method, Knifer challenged the painting and painting itself, and reduced them to the “zero point”. To quote the artist: “I tried to create a form of anti-painting using minimal vehicles with extreme contrasts which had to create a monotonous rhythm. My aim was to create a form of anti-painting by minimal means, with extreme contrasts, in order to achieve a monotonous rhythm, because I think that monotony is the simplest and most expressive rhythm”.3 Let me say something else about Knifer. All younger generations of artists remember him as an exceptionally careful observer and collocutor who did not miss exhibitions of younger artists.

Beyond question, a great number of artists looked up to him as a model. Although he enjoyed a very high reputation, his paintings had a very limited market in Croatia. They were mostly bought by one institution only, today’s Museum of Contemporary Art, in Zagreb. Only a few of his paintings were bought by other public or private collections. Knifer did not enjoy the many benefits artists usually enjoyed in socialist countries. He was never given a city studio in Zagreb. So he used to spend most of his time in Germany, starting in the mid-1980s, because his gallerist provided a studio for him.

The beginning of the war in Croatia found him in France. Finally he settled down in Paris where he was provided with a city studio where he painted and drew every day. He once told me about twenty years ago: “When I started to paint meander, everybody was telling me it was ingenious and that I had to continue painting. I told them, you know, sometimes I go hungry. Never mind, they told me, just you paint!”.

Another artist in the exhibition, Tomo Savić-Gecan, belongs to a much younger generation. He was born in 1967 and has had solo exhibitions of his work since 1994. After completing his studies at the art academies in Venice and Milan he returned to Zagreb, where he spent several years, but soon moved to Amsterdam where he now resides and works. This generation of younger artists, among whom Savić-Gecan is a prominent figure, had to start their careers under exceptionally difficult circumstances. They had to make their start in a state which had just won its independence, in the traumatic aftermath of war, under a totalitarian regime, and in the midst of nationalistic euphoria.

The system of culture was thoroughly impoverished and ideologically turned to retrograde models and false values. The scene was crowded by strutting, self-proclaimed artists, producers of kitsch, 101

and people generally fishing in troubled waters. It was a time of very restricted opportunities.

Some galleries closed down, some abandoned their former relevant exhibiting policy, new galleries did not open. The younger generation of artists, therefore, often had to go to study and look for opportunities for work abroad.

This internationalization enabled the artists to evaluate their work against a different system of art. The process of art exchange was, fortunately, established in both directions. The number of visitors interested in the more or less unknown Eastern European and Balkan territories started to grow. These territories became new, exotic, and interesting destinations for artists, curators, and critics. A great deal of cultural communication went through the network of Soros Centers for Contemporary Art (SCCA), which had been established at the beginning of the 1990s in all countries of the region. Having personally worked at such center in Zagreb (now the Institute for Contemporary Art), I am able to say that this unexpected interest in the contemporary Croatian art scene was an exceptionally exciting experience. In discussions with foreign visitors the emphasis was on the long-lasting and relatively free communication with the West during the time of socialism and the recent problems in the newly established state. In the local cultural scene SCCA played a very important role in providing support and funding and in the establishment of a more efficient system of cultural exchange. Almost all the artists who were interested in foreign visitors were of a younger generation and were able to accept international art standards with ease. Soon there were invitations to artists to exhibit their work at international exhibitions and to participate in other forms of cultural cooperation. The artists saw a good opportunity to acquire new professional experience and they readily took it. We are able to claim with pleasure that several artists from Croatia, deservedly, now enjoy international reputations. Certainly, the important moments in the recent past have been the participation of Slaven Tolj in “Documenta X”, and the participation of the three artists belonging to different generations (Ivan Kožarić, Sanja Iveković, and Andreja Kulunčić) in “Documenta XI”. Tomo Savić-Gecan has achieved a relevant international career. He has shown his work in Riga, New York, Berlin, Gent, Amsterdam, Washington, Warsaw, Tirane, Kassel, Prague, and recently at the Biennial in Venice. One of the features of Gecan’s art is the real, or mental, connecting of very different segments within the art system. In his work he would connect visitors of the gallery in Amsterdam and the temperature of water in a swimming pool in Riga. On another occasion, he would install a partitioning wall of a gallery in Zagreb in a distant city park, kilometers away. In the case of his recent exhibition, he had made the glasses which were used by the visitors from the glass he had contributed to another exhibition several years ago. Then the artist installed two glass plates at the entrance and at the exit of one of the galleries in the Museum of Contemporary Art and thus disrupted the usual circulation of visitors. The exhibition where that work was executed merits a more detailed description. It was the exhibition “Here Tomorrow” shown in the autumn of 2002 in a chain of galleries and public places in Zagreb.4 It was organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the visiting curator of the exhibition was Roxana Marcoci, curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That exhibition still remains a precedent: it was funded by joint funds contributed by the Ministry of Culture and a private 102

foundation, Face Croatia, still the only private foundation that provides funding for cultural projects. The decision to entrust the exhibition to a specialist from an eminent foreign institution still remains an excess, something that has never happened before or after the event. Clearly, the experiment was a resounding success abroad, and probably helped to internationalize the local art scene. As for the Museum of Contemporary Art, this has been one of their most ambitious recent exhibitions. It should be noted that the Museum, since its foundation in 1954, has continued a very intriguing tradition of presenting innovative art practices, from New Tendencies in the 1960s, through Conceptual art in the 1970s, to the later post-modern art strategies. The special value of this tradition lies in the continuity of the Museum’s practice of international exhibitions. The Museum has a very rich collection of twentieth-century art, the most complete collection of national art, and a very valuable international collection. Since its founding, the Museum has been working in very small premises. Therefore, the construction of a new building for the Museum, which started several years ago, remains one of the most important decisions of our national cultural policy. The new building is expected to open at the end of 2007.5 Then the public will be able to see, at last, the permanent collections of the Museum, and there will be plenty of space available for special exhibitions and other activities. Although the history of contemporary art in Croatia remains closely connected with the Museum of Contemporary Art, due attention has to be paid to the 25 years of activities by the PM Gallery.6 This Gallery presents a precedent on the Croatian cultural scene because it was the only gallery to promptly present the most radical art strategies in the 1980s. The Gallery was founded as a gallery within the Section of Extended Media in the Croatian Society of Visual Artists, a professional association of painters, sculptors, and graphic artists, a typical socialist professional association. The Section of Extended Media offered an institutional framework undreamed of before to the artists who did not have formal training in the profession, and thus provided them with an opportunity of showing their work to many radical artists. In the 1980s, the Gallery was run by the artists. Exhibitions followed each other in a fast rhythm and offered an opportunity for prompt presentation beyond the restrictive bureaucratic rules of other galleries.

This flexible organizational model and the tendency towards radical artistic experimentation was later taken over by Art Workshop Lazareti in Dubrovnik, headed by Slaven Tolj. Tolj is an artist with an international reputation and, thanks to his organizational work in the promotion of an independent cultural policy, he was chosen as the commissioner of the Croatian Pavilion at the Biennial in Venice in 2005.7 In his very personal selection of six Croatian artists (Goran Trbuljak, Tomo Savić-Gecan, Pasko Burđelez, Alen Floričić, Zlatan Dumanić and Boris Šincek), Tolj stated in the introduction to the catalogue: “One of the old works of Goran Trbuljak is entitled ‘I don’t want to show anything new or original’, and the concept of this presentation also offers nothing of that kind. The defensiveness that is characteristic of these six artists is one of the key points of recognition, and in this context it translates into strategy. These artists offer no solutions. They are not the conscience of the world. They take no pains to be right.

They are linked by a contradiction – although passive, motionless, absent, enclosed, distanced, and self-referential, they deal directly with relations and the rationalization of power; with their own positions as artists, creative figures, and persons in the context of art and society. Their speech is immediate and without redundancy, which tends to be read off as insufficiency and uncommunicativeness. In a time dominated by form, they remain 103

loyal to substance. Everything at this exhibition has either already happened or is happening somewhere else”.

Instead of representative glamour, Tolj offered a reductive principle radically opposite to the usual perception of the national exhibition policy.

I have mentioned here just a few artists, curators, and institutions. They are far from being the only ones who merit speaking or writing about. I have emphasized their individual successes within what may be called the contemporary Croatian visual art scene on purpose. These individuals are also very much present on the international art scene. In the international context, alongside the artist’s name, the name of the country the artist comes from is always quoted. The question is, how much the local art community and its cultural structure contribute to individual success. This question leads us to a series of local paradoxes which are difficult to explain. Generally speaking, the overall attitude of society towards culture has been distinctly traditional and firmly based in the romantic ideas of past centuries. The question “Is it art at all” still pops out in front of a non-figural painting created in the middle of the 20th century, and we should not wonder about the almost scornful attitude towards all contemporary art forms. The reason for such a situation can be primarily detected in the flaws present at all levels of the educational system. As a rule, contemporary art gets excluded from the educational process, and there are no signs of significant change in the foreseeable future. A great hindrance to the directing of culture towards contemporary art is surely the lack of serious reading in the national history of art. A great deal of the history of art in the 20th century still remains to be written, well-known bodies of work revaluated, and quite a lot of research to be done. It seems paradoxical, but it is largely true: recent art history or recent contemporary art cannot be seen anywhere in Croatia, cannot be learned about or read about. The institutional framework in Croatia still remains entirely under the direct control of the state and, therefore, incompatible with the open and flexible Western system. The power has been concentrated in one place and, so far, there are no signs of change. However, there is no place for pessimism, and thus individual achievements have created the art scene and have kept it alive.

February 2006

Notes: 1 Knifer, Julije; Savić-Gecan, Tomo: Moć praznine / Power of Emptyness. catalogue of the exhibition, PM Gallery, Zagreb, 2005 2 For more information about Knifer see Maković, Zvonko: Julije Knifer. Meandar / Studio Rašić, Zagreb, 2001 3 Knifer, Julije: Zapisi. In: Koščević, Želimir: Julije Knifer – Meandar iz Tübingena 1973–1988. Galerije grada Zagreba, Zagreb, 1989, p.33 4 Marcoci, Roxana: Here Tomorrow. catalogue of the exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2002 5 It seems that the Museum of Contemporary Art will be finally open in September 2009.

6 For the history of gallery see Tudor, Nevena; Janković, Iva R.; Maračić, Antun (eds.): PM – dvadeset godina, 1981–2001. HDLU, Zagreb / Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik, 2005 7 La Biennale di Venezia / 51. Esposizione internazionale d’arte / Croatian Pavilion, Museo Fortuny, Venezia.

Commissioner Slaven Tolj. The catalogue was published by the Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik, 2005

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The Hidden Heritage Barbara Steiner In 1998, after nearly ten years of preparation, the Museum of Contemporary Art opened in Leipzig. Even before Reunification the art historian Klaus Werner, who was born and grew up in East Germany, had cherished the dream of a “Donors’ Museum” 1. The idea was that the donations of reputed artists and collectors would make it possible for a museum of international present-day art to be established in East Germany. Reunification finally led to this aspiration’s becoming a reality: as early as 1990, the Director of the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Christoph Brockhaus, launched an appeal throughout Germany for the donation of works of art, and in Cologne an initiative was set up under the title “Galerie für Gegenwartskunst Leipzig” (Leipzig Gallery of Present Day Art). In 1990, under the chairmanship of Arend Oetker, Friends of the Leipzig Art Gallery was established. The initiative of this group was responsible for the first artistic projects carried out in the city. A.R. Penck’s graphics folder “USA II”, his last graphic work before he was compelled to leave the GDR in 1980, was donated by the collector Jürgen Weichhardt, and a long-term loan, consisting for the most part of works of German informal painting, was made to the gallery by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI (Cultural Group of German Industry in the Federal Association of German Industry).

These formed the basis for the subsequent collection. Later additions included outstanding works which had not been favored with official recognition in former East Germany, such as Harald Metzkes’ “Tischgesellschaft” (given by Renate and Peter Küchler, members of the Friends of the Gallery from Munich) and graphic designs by Carlfriedrich Claus (partly purchased by Arend Oetker and partly donated by Hans Grüss). As early as during these foundation years the clear aspiration made itself felt for the rehabilitation of forgotten or suppressed artistic positions, together with the dream of building a bridge between the East and the West. The primary significance of bridge-building in these early years, though, was that of fetching the West to the East. The East needed above all to catch up – to make contact with free cultural and artistic developments from which it had been cut off for years. It also meant the opportunity of seeing works of art that had previously been known only from reproductions, and bringing artists to the East who had not been permitted to exhibit there in the past.

The ideas of catching up and opening up to the West also found definitive expression in the villa that houses the gallery, which was remodelled by the architect Peter Kulka. Dating from the Gründerzeit, 2 the building was renovated and remodelled between 1996 and 1998; the official opening ceremony took place in May 1998. 3 Substantial help was given to the gallery for the reconstruction of the building through the sale of long-term loans from the Cultural Group to the benefit of the Friends of the Gallery. This supplied 4 million Deutschmarks of the total financing of 11.5 million Deutschmarks that the Gallery required. 4 The interior of the building 105

Harald Metzkes Tischgesellschaft, 1957 Oil on canvas, 90×122 cm From the collection of GfZK

is in keeping with Western standards: the consistent design of floors and ceilings, white walls and clearly accentuated spatial alignments and axes of vision lend support to the representative character of the building, conferring dignity and elegance. Nonetheless, right from the start there was a major difference from the Western tradition of white exhibition space. There was no kind of attempt to affirm neutrality here – quite on the contrary, the character of the rooms was deliberately designed to signal allegiance to the Western cultural background. The conscious intention was to recreate the link with the tradition of civic commitment which had come to an abrupt end under Nazism, and which the foundation of the German Democratic Republic had made impossible to resume. Art and artists were to recover their freedom and no longer be treated as political tools. 5 As an outward sign of this, they were allotted rooms designed to encourage an encounter with those forms of art which for years had been inaccessible. The legal sponsorship and financing of the Gallery likewise followed Western and American patterns. 6 From the start, the “private-public partnership” was the model envisaged. The first legal status of the Gallery was that of a limited company; later, in 2003, it became a foundation. The idea was that private individuals should be equally involved, along with sponsorship from the public money. But apart from the exceptional commitment of the co-founder and co-initiator Arend Oetker, it must be said that the idea of private support functioned only in a restricted manner. Up to the present day, the private commitment to culture – and to contemporary art in particular – has had difficulty in obtaining a foothold in the new Federal States in the same way as it has in Hamburg or in North Rhine/Westphalia. This may be attributed partly to the interruption of a living tradition of private sponsorship, and partly to the unfavorable economic climate. This means that the Gallery is compelled to act on the basis of a sponsorship model that in the East German context is functional in principle but only in a rudimentary way. 7 Without the support 106

GfZK-1 Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig

of the public money (and here the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Federal State of Saxony deserve special mention), critically reflective and socially oriented contemporary art would disappear from public view in the new Federal States altogether. 8 The foundation and genesis of the Museum of Contemporary Art represents an exceptional case. 9 The Gallery was founded at an ideal moment in time in political and economic terms: the interests of all parties involved cohered. Or, in other words, the Gallery was the fortunate expression of a “double phantasm”. 10 And in fact two points of view here formed a happy conjunction, both of them in the last resort having come about in the time of the Cold War. From the Eastern point of view, the West “embodied a fantasy of absolute freedom and unlimited possibility”, while in the Western imagination the East stood for “the passionate aspiration to freedom and personal expression, above all as a result of its tradition of political resistance and activism for personal liberty and civic rights” (Rogoff, Kulturelle Territorien [Cultural Territories], p. 81). Irit Rogoff continues: “Cultural and intellectual identification with dissidence and political protest in Central and Eastern Europe gave us a kind of authentic feeling of ourselves – of our better selves, as it were: if we were forced to live under these circumstances and under such pressures, we would be this kind of person – but as we have not had to do so, we find an image of our better selves out there, in the East” (Rogoff, Kulturelle Territorien, p. 81). The ideal conception of civil society, involving private commitment for the benefit of the community, practically coincided with the ideal of a committed struggle for freedom of movement, freedom of thought and action, even if the actual motivation, in one case or the other, may have been a good deal more pragmatic than this suggests. In an alternative formulation, we might say that there was perhaps a critical moment when the utopian spark of a better society briefly came into view on both sides of the divide. This was a source of tremendous inspiration, but proved untranslatable into 107

GfZK-1, Lab I, 1998 View of the installation

concrete social terms. Today, 15 years later, we are faced with a different situation. The fantasy of unlimited possibility in the West is now extinct – direct experience of the capitalist economy has been too demoralising; nor has it been possible, from the Western angle, to hold onto the fantasy of a “better self” in the East. 11 From the start there has been an imbalance in East-West relations.

The West wanted ideally to see its better self on the other, dissident side of the divide, but in real terms it exported Western systems of politics, economics and culture to the East, to facilitate the latter’s assimilation. This development took place in Germany with particular rapidity, as a result of the generous flow of economic resources. But the consequence was that from the very beginning the remodelling of political, economic and social structures established hierarchies, which in their turn – even if in many cases rather later on – heralded the search for a different identity (that is to say, an East German identity), and so presented, and continue to present an obstacle to the coming together of the two Germanies. 12 Moreover, it is only today – at a distance of 15 years – that various categories of selection and of the post-Reunification order, driven as it has been by political and economic interests, have become plainly visible and so been subjected to public debate. In the Museum of Contemporary Art, too, the choice of program was not a matter for discussion: 13 just with the aim in view of catching up on developments in the West, in the aspiration to become a free and open institution dedicated to a cultural exchange with others, a predominant orientation to the West seemed logically consistent, and indeed looked like the most “natural” course. Art from the former Eastern Bloc, on the other hand, carried a burden of ideology and was only welcome when it had already been accepted by Western art institutions, or if it was characterised by direct or indirect criticism of the socialist system, as in the case of Ilya Kabakov for instance. Even at the start of 2003 the enhanced representation of artists from postsocialist countries on the Gallery’s program was made a public issue, giving rise to fears that an institution that by now enjoys an international standing might come to be marginalised.

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Neo Rauch Hirte, 2000 View of the exhibition “Neo Rauch. Randgebiet”, 10.12.00–25.02.01, GfZK, Lab I

Neo Rauch Gegenlicht, 2000 View of the exhibition “Neo Rauch. Randgebiet”, 10.12.00–25.02.01, GfZK, Lab II

After the fall of Communism identities that had been formed over decades, political systems of order and orientation together with their opposing positions, concepts of the state and also concepts of collective resistance – all these were edged out in a short space of time. The way in which art was understood likewise changed radically, in keeping with these social upheavals. If in the former GDR the concept of art as a function of the state was predominant, carrying with it to some extent a social interest in art that was dictated from above, 14 after Reunification this was changed completely. The politically repressive system disappeared, art – and so also interest in art – came to be to some extent “privatised”, and the links between art and social structures were fundamentally terminated. But as a result, art also lost its status as a “counterposition” – a form of expression that takes a stand against the system. 15 Contemporary and socially critical art, in particular, seemed suddenly to have become superfluous, to be “no longer needed”, in the words of the composer Mia Ciobanu, who writes: “It is wonderful to be able to say whatever you want to, but it is terrible to realise that you no longer know what you want to say or what 109

Wolfgang Mattheuer Hinter den sieben Bergen, 1973 Oil on hardboard, 170×130 cm

Tadej Pogacar Pure Beauty, 2000 Installation From the exhibition: The Future is not what it used to be, 28. 11. 04–30. 01. 05 110

Werner Tübke Lebenserinnerungen des Dr. jur. Schulze VII, 1966/67 Mixed media on canvas on wood, 122×183 cm

you should say – to see that contemporary art is no longer needed in our new society” (Ciobanu, in Niedermayr, S. and Scheib, Ch., Europäische Meridiane [European Meridians], 2003, p. 52). 16 These rapid changes affected not only the way in which art was understood, and so the status of art in society, but also the entire system of artistic production, contacts, and the position of the artists themselves. Art production in East Germany had been organised at a national level, from the associations of artists to the nationalized trade in works of art. In a few years all of this was done away with, and artists were laid off by the state, to try their fortunes in the competitive capitalist world and with private art dealers.

Let us take a moment to look back: in 1975 works of the East German painter Willi Sitte were exhibited in the West. This was the first time that art from the GDR had been registered and discussed by the general public in the Federal Republic of Germany to any significant extent. 17 After an abortive attempt to show art from the GDR at “documenta 5”, it finally proved possible to exhibit works by Bernhard Heisig, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Werner Tübke and Willi Sitte in 1977, at “documenta 6” in Kassel. 18 All the same, certain artists who had emigrated to the West, where they had enjoyed considerable success – like Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz – withdrew their works from the exhibition as a gesture of protest. Leaflets were also handed out in the rooms where these official East German painters were exhibited, highlighting the fate of “insubordinate painters” in the East. 19 The choice of artists that the “documenta” team arrived at – Bernhard Heisig, Wolfgang Mattheuer, Werner Tübke and Willi Sitte – was not a coincidence. In connection with the burgeoning debate on realism, it was thought that significant impulses could be derived from the art of the GDR. So we read in the “documenta 6” catalogue that “the fundamental reason for the new quality of GDR-painting is the uninterruptedly committed relationship of the 111

artist to social reality. The creative achievement of cultural politics in the German Democratic Republic has undoubtedly consisted in the way that artists, sometimes in spite of their own resistance to the idea, have been made to realize that they are themselves responsible for the state of the society in which they live. This consciousness of shared responsibility has given rise to a productive and exciting relationship between art and society, which is reflected outwardly in numerous lectures and discussions and in the phenomenal numbers that visit museums and exhibitions. In the last resort, however, it has resulted in higher expectations on both sides: artists expect more of society, and society expects more of its artists” (Lang, 1977, p. 47) 20. This view to a great extent accounts for Uwe M. Schneede’s motivation in wanting to put Sitte’s works on view in 1975. He too expected that the exhibition would “encourage people to take thought about the function of art in the society where it was created, and so also in our society” (Schneede, Willi Sitte, 1975, p. 6). This debate on realism however left out of account the fusion of artistic positions with a totalitarian state, as well as questions relating to artists’ proceeds and even the possibility that the artist might be corruptible. Neither the Hamburg catalogue nor the “documenta 6” catalogue voices any criticism of the GDR regime or mentions its rejection of alternative, opposed artistic positions. Nor did even the emergence of realistic tendencies in the 1970s (like “Capitalist Realism” in Düsseldorf or “Critical Realism” in Berlin) give rise to a more differentiated view of Socialist Realism, let alone result in a more informed demarcation of the different conceptions of realism current. Either scepticism and rejection of East German art stands out, or else we find a romantically tinted picture of the social relevance and functionality of art, its closeness to the public and masterly control of formal media. 21 Apart from the presence of GDR-artists at “documenta 6”, official cultural relations (and thus also the potential for cultural exchange between East and West Germany) developed at a rather slow pace. As late as 1986, a joint cultural agreement was signed with the aim of “progress towards benefiting the population on the basis of a two-way relationship”, 22 and an exhibition was put on in Berlin and Dresden under the title “11 Positionen. Malerei aus der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” [“11 Artistic Positions – Painting from the Federal Republic of Germany”], including works by Horst Antes, Willi Baumeister, Raimund Girke, Gotthard Graubner, Anselm Kiefer, Konrad Klaphek, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Emil Schuhmacher and Günther Ücker. The declared aim of this exhibition was “to deepen the mutual awareness of cultural and social life” (Otto Bräutigam, Head of the Federal Republic of Germany’s Permanent Mission) and “to contribute by means of culture to a climate of mutual trust and understanding, and so to the normalization of relations” (Kurt Nier, deputising for the East German Foreign Minister – both quoted in 11 Positionen, Grussworte [11 Artistic Positions, Welcoming Speeches], pp. 8 and 9). Apart from these official contacts, a series of important artistic contacts between East and West took place in the 1980s on a semi-official or unofficial level, as at the Galerie Arcade, under the management of Klaus Werner, or the Raum rot-grün [Red-green Room] in Sredzkistrasse 64, base of a community of artists grouped around Erhard Monden, both in Berlin. 23 In the West, meanwhile, the Hanover gallery owner Dieter Brusberg in 1982 organized 112

a traveling exhibition of paintings and graphics from East Germany, which visited seven cities in the Federal Republic of Germany, without consulting the SED’s cultural representatives. 24 A feature of the East-West relationship that merits special attention is the fact that in the 1980s it was West German industrialists above all who devoted their energies to the collection and exhibition of art from the East – a chapter of history that continues to be a subject of much controversy, and where there has been too little detailed research. 25 It is still a controversial issue as to what extent these collectors reinforced the official canon, or whether they supported alternative and dissident artistic modes of expression or increased their isolation. So on the one hand we find the following in a biography of Peter Ludwig by Herbert Bude: “This trace of East German artists [the reference here is to artists associated with Strawalde, like Peter Hermann, Peter Makolies and Peter Graf] who were not exactly artists of the GDR was something that Peter Ludwig, in his Eastern investigations, at all events, did not pursue” (Bude, 1993, p. 226). On the other hand, Eduard Beaucamp emphasises Ludwig’s contributions to the “normalization” of inter-German endeavours, and points to the fact that works by Gerhard Altenbourg and Penck formed part of his collection. As to the motivation of these entrepreneurs in areas other than that of art, we are free to speculate. If we just take the chocolate manufacturer Peter Ludwig of Aachen, it is well known that he used his commitment to the East in every way as a means of furthering his private policy of industrial colonization. BASF, Hoechst, Salamander and Metallgesellschaft AG in Frankfurt am Main may well have tried to link cultural and economic interests in a like manner. 26 The interest was of course thoroughly mutual. The GDR needed the help of capitalist companies to increase its own production and productivity, while highly desirable new markets were opened up for exploitation by West German firms.

In spite of isolated West German efforts, the stereotyped image of art in the GDR (whether positive or negative) that had become widely established in the society of the Federal Republic of Germany did not essentially change. Altenbourg was not necessarily accepted in the West as a GDR artist, as were figures like Sitte, Tübke and Mattheuer, but was rather seen as an “exceptional case”. On the Western side, there was no serious attempt in the first instance to make a lasting adjustment of the balance in the way East German art was regarded. On the one hand the Federal Republic of Germany continued to be dominated by the idea of an ideological divide between the free West and abstract art, and the repressive East and realistic art; on the other hand, a kind of glorification of realistic and socially focused art came into being, in the art world above all, and in the 1970s in particular, while the totalitarian regime was left out of consideration, as is clearly shown when we look at “documenta 6”. A third, and by no means unimportant reason, is undoubtedly to be seen in the solid economic interests of West German entrepreneurs who were all too willing in their turn to adhere to the official canon.

At the beginning of the 1990s, then, the dissident practices of opposition artists were due for examination; but seen from the Western point of view they gave the impression of a “hidden 113

Michael Morgner Requiem, 1986/89 Mixed media on canvas on wood, 90×122 cm From the collection of GfZK

landscape”. As Eckhart Gillen put it in 1990, “Sheltered from the hectic pace and craving for innovation of the Western art market, in the GDR a protected zone has been maintained for unspectacular forms of art that hold fast to their traditions” (Gillen, 1990, p. 29). 27 Again we find a romantic view of the art of the GDR being taken, though here in a different key. And indeed the painting of Strawalde and the pictures of Michael Morgner can be read as a late form of abstract expressionism, just as the emergence of the autoperforation artists in the late 1980s can be seen as a late form of action art – as when Else Gabriel for instance, in “Alias, auch… genannt” [“Alias, also… known as”], plunges her head into a bucket of cow’s blood and blowflies settle on it, or when Micha Brendel, in “Der Mutterseelenalleingang” [“Oh So Alone”], rubs a piece of brain into the wall of the gallery with a mason’s trowel. Questions about criteria and standards of evaluation immediately suggest themselves. From the Western point of view it may have looked “biotopic” and “authentic”, but in the “other Germany” it stands for criticism and resistance – not just of dominant artistic practices, but also of a social system where such subjective statements and gestures of rejection were disallowed. It was not as if the officially accepted or tolerated line was homogeneous, nor was it clearly and exclusively dedicated to giving practical expression to the dogmas of the state. Nor, on the other hand, did the opposition camp necessarily stand for “formalistic work”, withdrawal into the inner world, a state of constant inward resistance. And not every kind of art that took an active interest in society was for that reason “unartistic” or just a manipulated tool in the hands 114

Cornelia Schleime Bis auf weitere gute Zusammenarbeit, 1993 Seriography, 100×70 cm From the exhibition: Publicly Private, 7. 9. 03–9. 11. 03

of the state. After the fall of Communism, however, it was clearly hard for either side to make the necessary distinctions. This was demonstrated in the bitterly contested struggle to re-evaluate East German artistic trends, as at the National Gallery in Berlin, where the dialogue between the East and West started by Dieter Honisch in 1990 soon came under fire. Honisch was criticised – from the East German side above all – for offering a forum to the former official artists of the GDR, with the result that their work was depoliticized and taken out of its context. 28 And it is certainly not easy to get away from this impression.

Let us return now to the present, where the case on these problems appears to have been closed for many. Exhibitions like “Klopfzeichen” [“Rappings on the Wall”] aim to present Eastern and Western trends in German art in illuminating contrast, 29 in this case as illustrated in the art of the 1980s, while the exhibition “Kunst in der DDR” [“Art in the GDR”] at the Berlin National Gallery allots as much space to dissident as to official trends. 30 Interest in East German art is greater than at any time in the past. A younger generation of Leipzig painters (known as the “New Leipzig School” in imitation of the “Old Leipzig School”) is attracting international attention, and painting from Dresden stands high on the market. So we read in a report in the New York Times that “Charles Saatchi is refrigerating his sliced animals to make room for Teutonic talent. Dealers like Jay Jopling and David Zwirner are scouting the former GDR… In fact, YGA’s – young German artists – have replaced YBA’s – their British predecessors – as the art stars of the decade. But rather than shock audiences, or run up bar tabs at the Groucho Club, these guys just want to paint.” (New York Times, Sept, 19, 2004). The statement that they “just want to paint” indicates that these artists focus solely and exclusively on aesthetic issues. And so when one of the main figures in question, Matthias Weischer, 115

says in the New York Times, “Some people want me to show that it is more than painting,” and the owner of the gallery where he exhibits, Zach Feuer, remarks that “In Germany, it is OK to make a traditional painting,” they are distancing themselves from any kind of social formulation of the medium and manner of expression, and staking a claim to an independent artistic position. We are repeatedly referred back to “painting as painting”. In the pictures themselves this is expressed through a particular accentuation of painterly effects, such as the melting and running of colors in a way that may be described as picturesque. Of course, no one can accuse Neo Rauch and the younger Matthias Weischer, Tilo Baumgärtel or Matthias Ruckhäberle – to mention just a few names – of sharing the political convictions or attitudes of their predecessors, even if the motifs and craftsman’s workshop style of painting favored by some of them patently appeal by suggesting an Eastern affiliation, and for that reason enjoy considerable economic success. And yet even they – as it were in passing – exonerate their predecessors: even the work of the latter should now be acknowledged as painting and nothing but painting, independently of its political context. Paradoxically, it appears that with the hype attached to the “New Painting” East Germany has finally been brought to the West. Achieving perfect entry to a market system that functions on capitalist lines, and wholly uncritical of this, “Art from the East” has been reduced to a tradition and a craft, and presents itself as the ideal marketable brand. This encourages people to continue in their schematized view of art – a view that in principle has been theirs all along, and which they have never been required to correct. It is a conspicuous fact that in the contemporary debate about old art and new art in East Germany there is a complete absence of those artistic positions that take an active interest in society, or aspire to act on society in such a way as to make a difference. 31 I began with the Leipzig Museum of Contemporary Art, and with the Gallery I will end.

The Gallery holds some 8 to 10 temporary exhibitions in the course of a year, awards three scholarships annually to younger artists and is responsible for the administration of a privately donated art prize, the “Zukunft Osteuropas” [“Future of Eastern Europe”]. The orientation of the collection, the library and the museum’s educational endeavours is expressed in the program planning of the institution, which is concerned with the social function of art and aesthetics. Let me just mention briefly three examples of this. Extending over two years, the “Kulturelle Territorien” [“Cultural Territories”] 32 project engaged in an intensive investigation of the role of culture and art in processes of radical social change. Structured in terms of various globally significant aspects (the economy, migration, racism, language, the mass media and so on), the exhibitions and symposia of this project made it possible to experience the changes in Northeastern, Southeastern and Eastern Europe through the medium of art. The decision to devote a project to this complex of topics was of course closely connected with the geographical situation of the Gallery and its political past. Another theme emphasised has to do with contemporary attitudes to the heritage of the German Democratic Republic. This primarily involves a critical examination of the mental conceptions and images in the media that are being produced today – as if in retrospect – and their significance for the present. In this connection the Gallery has hosted three exhibitions (“East”, “öffentlich-Privat” [“public-private”] and “Die 116

Olaf Nicolai Pfauenaugen, 2004 Mural From the exhibition: The Future is not what it used to be, 28. 11. 04–30. 01. 05

fotografierte Stadt” [“The City Photographed”]) devoted to the power of the photographic image both before and since the fall of Communism. Yet another major focus of the Gallery’s program is on the situation of East German cities and their inhabitants. In collaboration with the Dessau Bauhaus, the architectural journal arch + and the Philipp Oswalt office (both the latter two of Berlin), the “Schrumpfende Städte” [“Shrinking Cities”] project aims to extend the debate on town planning currently being conducted in Germany, with a view to supplying fresh impulses for dealing with shrinking cities going beyond demolition. This involves on the one hand putting developments in Eastern Germany in an international perspective, and on the other drawing on various artistic and scientific disciplines to assist the search for effective strategies. Urban geographers, cultural theorists, architects, journalists and artists are all taking part in the work.

The first part of the project, dedicated to the analysis and description of the phenomenon in an international comparative context, was presented in the form of an exhibition at Kunst-Werke, Berlin, in 2004. Suggested strategies for dealing constructively with urban contraction will be the subject of an exhibition to be put on in April 2005 at the Leipzig Museum of Contemporary Art. All these projects and exhibitions aim to adapt international discussions and positions for local application, and to read and interpret global developments in the light of the locally given parameters. But even if the Gallery evinces a great interest in the effects of the past on the present, it makes no claim to present a “correct” image of East Germany or a “rectified assessment” of art in the GDR. This would indeed be presumptuous. On the other hand, the Gallery does call for a critically reflective view of the past – of this past of ours – and hopes to contribute to a picture of this that neglects none of the subtle nuances, going beyond issues of current market compatibility.

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This text was written in 2004 before the GfZK-2 building by as-if berlinwien was completed and before the Museum of Contemporary Art started the “Revised Collection”, a project which aims to promote a discussion of various conceptions of artistic quality, as well as systems of value, cultural consensus or dissent, against the background of current related debates both in a local setting and in the international arena.

Notes: 1 For comprehensive information on the history of the founding of the Gallery, see Förderkreishefte 1 and 2, 2002 and 2003, and Just Be!, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig 1999.

2 A period of rapid expansion in Germany, roughly covering the last three decades of the 19th century.

3 In addition to this, the “Coachman’s House” was converted into a caretaker’s residence and a double studio built for use by artists.

4 The remaining 7.5 million Deutschmarks were contributed by the Free State of Saxony, the City of Leipzig and the Federal Government of Germany.

5 Admittedly there was no reflection in these years on the political and economic instrumentalization of Western art – a topic that has been treated by a number of critically engaged artists since the 1960s and 1970s, among them Hans Haacke and Michael Asher.

6 An important part was played by Konrad Weis, former Chairman of Bayer Amerika, and also a member of the Friends of the Museum of Contemporary Art. According to Arend Oetker, Weis contributed “a great many ideas” to the foundation of the Gallery (Oetker, Förderkreisbroschüre, 2002, no page reference). The program of exhibitions from 1998 to 2001 also showed a clear emphasis on Western and American trends. As a parallel endeavour, artists from Eastern Germany who had not received any official recognition or support in the past were to be rehabilitated, and due homage paid to their works (see exhibitions of the works of Horst Bartnig, Michael Morgner and others).

7 Apart from the generous flow of funds from Arend Oetker, there has been no private support worth mentioning. The membership level of the Friends of the Gallery is likewise stagnant. The program is essentially financed by sponsorship from the Federal Government of Germany and the Federal State of Saxony and cultural funds from the EU. Companies contribute around 5% to the annual budget for exhibitions.

8 When companies in Saxony provide sponsorship for art, they tend – as is the case too in other parts of the world – to favor established artistic styles and exhibitions that will attract large numbers of people. This certainly makes it possible for them to achieve a higher profile, and so more comprehensive coverage in the media. In the Leipzig area there are hardly any companies like the Sachsen LB [Federal State Bank of Saxony] which deliberately aim to open up virgin territory through their cultural sponsoring, and make this part of their public image.

9 As a result of the specific political situation in Germany, the initial excitement of Reunification made it possible for the Gallery to be opened. In other post-Communist countries the starting situation has been much less favorable to art, in both financial and political terms.

10 The British cultural historian Irit Rogoff spoke of a “double phantasm” in an interview with Katalin Timar, to describe relations between East and West (Irit Rogoff interviewed by Katalin Timar, in Kulturelle Territorien, Zur Macht kultureller Territorien [On the Power of Cultural Territories], pp. 75–88, Cologne, 2005, p. 81). Even if this term was not coined with reference to the Gallery, it still seems appropriate as an analytical comment on the situation in the founding phase.

11 Here I disagree with Rogoff, who supposes that in the East people are still attached to the fantasy of unlimited possibility in the West, while the West can no longer find its “better self” reflected in the East. Rogoff concludes that we are operating “on a dissimilar basis – both in terms of our conceptions, and economically, in respect of industrialization and all possible assets and resources” (Rogoff, Kulturelle Territorien, p. 81). De facto, it appears that in most formerly socialist countries as well, disillusionment with the possibilities offered by the West has become increasingly prevalent.

12 In spite of the dissimilar starting positions in reunified Germany, there necessarily remains a feeling of ambivalence – seeing that without help from the West it would not be possible for an institution like the 118

Museum of Contemporary Art to exist at all – an institution, that is to say, that can take issue with social questions and concerns independent from any kind of political pressure or influence. There is no intention here of rehabilitating the GDR or painting a roseate and idyllic picture of life in former East Germany.

Nonetheless, the end of East Germany seems to have brought in its train the end of many factors of the culture of everyday that contributed to a sense of identity, and it has not been possible to replace these with new values since.

13 Exclusive or shared exhibitions of the works of East German artists (a limited number of them) were put on as a way of “redressing the balance” – for instance, there have been exhibitions dedicated to Horst Bartnig and Carlfriedrich Claus, Carsten and Olaf Nicolai. None of them played a large role in the established art of the GDR. 14 Art was a means of state propaganda, but it also offered a screen on which images of resistance could be displayed – by way of “taking an opposing stance”. The level of interest in art was consequently extremely high overall – both in establishment and opposition circles.

15 Not only was interest in art privatised – social protest also came to be individualized.

16 Ciobanu, in Niedermayr, S. and Scheib, Ch., Europäische Meridiane. Neue Musik Territorien in Europa [European Meridians. New Music Territories in Europe], 2003.

17 See Willi Sitte, Gemälde und Zeichnungen 1950–1974 [Paintings and Drawings 1950–1974], Kunstverein in Hamburg 1975.

18 Just five years earlier Manfred Schneckenburger’s precursor, Harald Szeemann, had attempted to exhibit artists from the GDR in the context of his realism project, but had been defeated by political circumstances.

19 Cf. Lindner, B., Mauerspringer–Mauersprenger. Die Künstler und die deutsch-deutschen Kulturbeziehungen in den 80er Jahren [Wall-leapers and Wall-blasters. Artists and Cultural Relations between the Two Germanies in the 1980s], in Klopfzeichen, Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre in Deutschland [Rappings on the Wall, Art and Culture of the 1980s in Germany], exhibition catalogue, Museum der Bildenden Künste / Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig, Ruhrland Museum, Essen, 2002/2003, pp. 25 ff.

20 The GDR-author, Lothar Lang, traces an “alternative” line of development in art history, one that he contrasts with developments in the West. This line begins with Dix, Grosz, Guttuso, Deineka, Faworski, and continues with Rivera and Siqueiros right through into East German painting. The fact that the East was also aware of those painters who achieved general acceptance in the West and were looked up to as models (like Picasso, Klee etc.) is however something he does not mention. Lang, Lothar, Zur DDR-Malerei der siebziger Jahre [On East German Painting of the 1970s], in “documenta 6”, Malerei, Plastik, Performance [Painting, Sculpture, Performance], Kassel, 1977.

21 For example, the editors of the book “Kunst in der DDR” [“Art in the GDR”] surmise that the indifference of the West to artists like Hermann Glöckner, Herbert Behrens-Hangeler, Willy Wolff, Carlfriedrich Claus, Robert Rehfeldt, Jürgen Böttcher-Strawalde and Max Uhlig, “even in the context of ‘documenta’, … (prolonged) their isolation in their own country and … without intending to do so, (confirmed) the verdict of the state’s art censors” (Gillen, Eckhart and Haarmann, Rainer, Foreword, in Kunst in der DDR [Art in the GDR], Berlin, Bonn, 1990, p.15). This must be put into perspective to a certain extent, seeing that Dieter Brusberg, the owner of a West German gallery, promoted the cause of unofficial East German painters as well, as far back as in the 1960s. Wilfried Rugo too, the representative in the East of a Saarbrücken steel company, collected Altenbourg’s works from an early stage. See Lindner, Bernd, Mauerspringer-Mauersprenger. Die Künstler und die deutsch-deutschen Kulturbeziehungen in den 80er Jahren [Wall-leapers and Wall-blasters.

Artists and Cultural Relations between the Two Germanies in the 1980s], in Klopfzeichen, Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre in Deutschland [Rappings on the Wall, Art and Culture of the 1980s in Germany], exhibition catalogue, Museum der Bildenden Künste / Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig, Ruhrland Museum, Essen, 2002/2003, p. 21.

22 Das Kulturabkommen, Abkommen zwischen der Regierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Regierung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik über kulturelle Zusammenarbeit [The Cultural Agreement – Agreement between the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Government of the German Democratic Republic on Cultural Cooperation], Bonn 1986, p.12. But even before this, exhibitions at the Permanent Mission in Hannoversche Strasse, like that of the works of Joseph Beuys in 1981, had made a significant impact on artists working in the East.

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See Banz, Claudia, Baustelle der Identitäten [Building Identities], Klopfzeichen, Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre in Deutschland [Rappings on the Wall, Art and Culture of the 1980s in Germany], exhibition catalogue, Museum der Bildenden Künste [Museum of the Fine Arts] / Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig, Ruhrland Museum, Essen, 2002/2003, pp. 45–46.

24 Lindner, Bernd, Mauerspringer-Mauersprenger [Wall-leapers and Wall-blasters], in Kunst in der DDR. Eine Retrospektive der Nationalgalerie [Art in the GDR. A National Gallery Retrospective]. Exhibition catalogue, Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2003, p. 21.

25 Eduard Beaucamp took issue, doubtless on good grounds, with the conspiracy theory that saw an unholy alliance between West German entrepreneurs and the SED leadership. Ludwig’s entrepreneurial interests in the GDR, on the other hand, and the role of culture in opening doors, are not mentioned in his text either. Beaucamp, E., Der Bilderstreit [The Battle of the Pictures], in Kunst in der DDR. Eine Retrospektive der Nationalgalerie [Art in the GDR. A National Gallery Retrospective]. Exhibition catalogue, Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2003, pp. 110 and112.

26 See Bude, H.: Peter Ludwig. Im Glanz der Bilder [In the Radiance of Pictures], Bergisch Gladbach, 1993.

For instance, we find in the first section of the chapter “Der Weg nach Osten” [“The Road to the East”] the following significant sentence: “Here the frontier had become more penetrable, and it could be foreseen that behind the Iron Curtain an enormous market could be opened up, for the confectionery trade in particular” (Bude, 1993, p. 205). What is more, there were cooperative arrangements between Leonard Monheim AG and the confectionery industry of the German Democratic Republic as early as the 1970s (ibid., p. 206). Generally speaking, much research still remains to be done on the art collecting activities of West German entrepreneurs in East Germany.

27 Gillen, E: “Seen from the point of view of the West, art in the GDR seems – to borrow the title of a poem by Heinz Czechowski – like a ‘hidden landscape’, to be compared with the biotope at the Potsdam freight railway station in Berlin. The station has been shut down now for 40 years, but apparently more than 300 species of plants that have long since died out in the rest of Europe have survived there. Sheltered from the hectic pace and craving for innovation of the Western art market, in the GDR a protected zone has been maintained for unspectacular forms of art that hold fast to their traditions” (Gillen, Eckhart, Abgeschlossene Landschaft.

Diether Schmidt im Gespräch mit Eckhart Gillen [Hidden Landscape: Diether Schmidt in an Interview with Eckhart Gillen], in Kunst in der DDR [Art in the GDR], ed. Gillen, Eckhart and Haarmann, Rainer, Berlin, Bonn, 1990, p. 29).

28 See Peter-Klaus Schuster, in Kunst in der DDR. Eine Retrospektive der Nationalgalerie [Art in the GDR. A National Gallery Retrospective]. Exhibition catalogue, Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2003, p. 9 ff. The attempt to supply a context was then carried further by the Deutsches Historisches Museum at the Zeughaus, with exhibitions like “Auftrag: Kunst 1949–1990” [“Commission: Art 1949–1990”], 1995, and “Boheme und Diktatur in der DDR” [“Bohemia and Dictatorship in the GDR”], 1997.

29 At the exhibition in the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig, artistic trends of the 1980s from both West and East were juxtaposed. Without any indication being given of the sociopolitical context in each case, a supposed “proof” was offered that on both sides of the Iron Curtain artistic work of equal value was being conducted. The Zeitgeschichtliches Forum, just across the road, then provided a kind of contextualisation. See Klopfzeichen. Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre in Deutschland [Rappings on the Wall, Art and Culture of the 1980s in Germany], exhibition catalogue, Museum der Bildenden Künste / Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig, Ruhrland Museum, Essen, 2002/2003.

30 At the exhibition in the National Gallery in Berlin dissident and official pieces were shown next to each other.

It suggested an equality of aesthetic expression but the various social implications of formal expression were not taken into consideration.

See Kunst in der DDR. Eine Retrospektive der Nationalgalerie [Art in the GDR. A National Gallery Retrospective]. Exhibition catalogue, Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2003.

31 Discrimination against artists also seems set to continue. Artists played as little part in the official art of the GDR as they do in the art of the present day.

32 “Kulturelle Territorien” [“Cultural Territories”] was conducted with the cooperative support of the German Federal Cultural Federation, as also was the project “Schrumpfende Städte” [“Shrinking Cities”].

23

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Biography

Barnabás Bencsik Born 1964; curator, lives and works in Budapest. He earned his degree in literature and history, later in history of art from the ELTE University Budapest. Soon after he became involved in the changing period of the Hungarian post-communist art scene, from 1990 to 1999 he run the Studio Gallery Budapest, the exhibition venue of the Studio of Young Artists Association. Simultaneously between 1993 and 1995, when the Central-East European network of offices was established, he was visual arts program coordinator at the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Budapest. He worked as a curator in the Trafó Gallery at the Trafó House of Contemporary Art in Budapest (1999–2001) and as a chief curator in the Műcsarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest, where he contributed to the realization of the show at the Hungarian Pavilion of the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2001 as the artistic director of MEO Contemporary Art Collection in Budapest he conceived and developed the exhibition policy and the collection’s profile of this private institution. Since 2002 he has been a free-lance independent curator involved in various visual art projects and exhibitions such as “Little Warsaw” at the Hungarian Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale, where he acted as a project manager (2003) and curated shows such as “September Horse”, Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, “Hungary Unplugged”, Cotthem Gallery in Brussels, “Street Art”, Millenaris in Budapest (2005). In 2004 he was appointed a curator of the “Hongarije aan Zee” (Hungarian Cultural Season) in the Netherlands, where he conceived the program for visual arts. He has been the initiator and since 2006 the director of the ACAX Agency (acax.hu), an office for support and development of various types of collaboration between participants in the international art scene. Since 2008 he works as the director of Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest. He is an author of several publications on contemporary art and art criticism in Hungarian and international magazines as well as exhibition catalogues.

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Vladimír Beskid Born 1962; art historian, curator and critic of contemporary art, lives and works in Trnava and Bratislava. He graduated from the University of J. A. Comenius in Bratislava (History and Theory of Art, 1985). He worked as curator in several cultural institutions (Tatra Gallery Poprad, Museum of Vojtech Löffler Košice) and was a teacher at several art institutions of higher learning (Department of Visual Art and Intermedia, Technical University Košice, 1998–2002; Research Institute of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Bratislava, 2003–2005; Department of Art Education, University of Trnava, 2003–2008). He was a project leader of a grant from the Swiss Foundation Kulturstiftung Pro Helvetia (1996– 1998) and a member of the Board of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Bratislava (1998–2002). Since 1999 he has been a member of AICA and since 2006 the director of Jan Koniarek Gallery in Trnava. He has focused on political and social context of modern and contemporary art in Central European region and published numerous articles and critical reviews in Slovak and international media. He participated in the following publications: Rusinová, Zora. (edit.): 20th Century (in Slovak Art), Slovak National Gallery Bratislava, 2000; IRWIN (edit.): East Art Map (Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe), Afterall Book University of Arts London / The MIT Press Cambridge, 2006. He initiated and realized as a (co-)curator various international art projects and exhibitions in Berlin, Munich, New York, Prague, Brno, Budapest, Miskolc, Bratislava, Košice, Trnava, etc. Selected exhibitions: “Laboratory I–V”, international art symposium, 1992–2000; “Public District”, Central European project, Ústí nad Labem, 1999; “Distant Similarities (Something Better Than Cosmetics)”, National Gallery in Prague, 1999; “Public Subject”, international public art project, Bratislava, 2000; “Fremdkoerper / Alien Body”, Jan Koniarek Gallery in Trnava; Kunstraum Bethanien Berlin, 2005/6; “PitoreSKa”, Wannieck Gallery Brno, 2007.

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Michal Koleček Born 1966; curator, art historian, lives and works in Ústí nad Labem. He graduated from the Department of History and Czech Literature at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem (1986–1992, Master’s degree) and the Department of Theory of Art Socialization at Masaryk University in Brno (1995–2002, Ph.D. degree). Since 1993 he has been teaching as a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. From 1994 to 2007 he worked as a head of the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. Since 2003 he has been the director of the Center for Contemporary Central European Art of the Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. Since 2007 he has been the Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. Between 1994 and 2001 he worked in the position of a chief curator of the Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem. During the years 2002–2003 he worked as a curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery in Prague. In 2003 he curated the SUPERSTART project of the Czech-Slovak Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennial. As a free-lance curator he has collaborated with the following institutions: Art Workshop Lazareti, Dubrovnik, Croatia; Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaujvaros, Hungary; City Gallery Prague, Czech Republic; <rotor> association for contemporary art, Graz, Austria; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany; Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israel; Exit Gallery Peje, Kosovo; House of Art, Brno, Czech Republic; Kunst im Öffentlichen Raum, Wien, Austria; Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria; Mücsarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest, Hungary, Wyspa Progres Foundation, Gdansk, Poland; Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland; Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku, Finland; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland.

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Margarethe Makovec & Anton Lederer Margarethe Makovec was born in 1971 and Anton Lederer was born in 1970; curators of contemporary art, they live and work in Graz. In 1994 they started to present art to the public at their own home. Five years later they founded < rotor > association for contemporary art (www.rotor.mur.at) in Graz. Their program concentrates on socially and politically relevant art production and they have focused on cooperation with art scenes of Central and South Eastern Europe. In 1998 they carried out their first major project in the public space “Public Appearances”, when they rented 10 empty shops in the neighborhood of one street and gave it to 10 international artists. In 2001 they organized a three-day performance event in the streets and squares of the inner city of Graz “Never Stop the Action”. Then, in 2003, when Graz was the Cultural Capital of Europe, the curators developed a large-scale project in the 5th district of the city under the title “real*utopia – art in the Graz district Gries” (www.realutopia.at). At the same time they organized the project “Balkan Konsulat” together with the Sarajevo-based curator Lejla Hodzic and gave their gallery space to 6 curators from Belgrade, St. Petersburg, Prague, Istanbul, Budapest and Sarajevo. In 2004 they were invited by a Roma festival which took place in Graz to curate an exhibition “We Are What We Are – Apsects of the Roma Life in Contemporary Art” that later travelled to Ljubljana, Trnava, Ústí nad Labem, Bucharest and Budapest. Since 2002 they have been involved in the organization of the biennial “MSE-Meetings” (Middle-South-East); the 2006 meeting took place in Prishtina in collaboration with Erzen Shkolloli and the 2008 meeting in Ústí nad Labem in collaboration with Michal Koleček. Since 2007 they have been involved in the long-term project “Land of Human Rights – Artistic Analyses and Visions of the Human Rights Situation in Europe” (www.landofhumanright.eu). This project was established on the EU level in collaboration with partner organizations in Ústí nad Labem, Dresden, Budapest, Ljubljana and Zagreb. They have been involved in diverse teaching programs, lectured all over Europe and published a number of books related to the activities of < rotor >.

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Darko Šimičić Born 1957; art critic, lives and works in Zagreb. Between 1979 and 1982 he was active as an artist with several solo and group exhibitions and was a member of the editorial board of the alternative magazine May 75, published in Zagreb from 1978 to 1984. Until 1991 he was part of an informal group of artists associated with alternative exhibition spaces Podrum and the Gallery of Expanded Media (PM Gallery). The same group was also active in organizing artistic manifestations in public spaces in Zagreb and other cities. Since the end of the 1970s he has been collecting artworks and documentation about contemporary Croatian art. He worked in the Soros Center for Contemporary Art (later the Institute for Contemporary Art) in Zagreb, 1994–2006. He organized or curated several exhibitions such as “Checkpoint”, Zagreb, 1995; “Who by Fire # 1”, Dunaujvaros 1997; “Black & Blue”, Ústí nad Labem and Dubrovnik, 1998; “Group of Six Artists – Retrospective Exhibition” (Zagreb, Split, Rijeka, Ljubljana 1998–2001); “Bound(less) Borders” (Belgrade, Cetinje, Skopje, Thessaloniki, Sarajevo, Bucharest, Sofia, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Kassel 2002–2003); “Re: Action”, Prague, 2003; “Gemine Muse” (Lyon, Geneva, Split 2004; Biella, Helsinki, Split, 2005); “Young Artist Visual Art Award”, Prague 2005. From 2006 to 2008 he worked in the archive of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. He was an exhibition assistant and contributor to the catalogue “Flashes of the Avant-garde in Croatian Art of the First Half of the 20th Century”, Zagreb, 2007. He is an author of several texts on contemporary art and the historical avant-gardes of the 1920s and 1930s published in books, magazines and catalogues in Croatia and abroad. Since 2003 he has been a member of AICA. Separately, he carried out research projects about avant-garde movements and artists in Croatia in the 1920s and 1930s (on topics such as Dada, Zenithism, avant-garde magazines and books, photomontages, stage design, etc.).

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Barbara Steiner Born 1964; lives and works in Leipzig and Vienna. She works as a curator and author focusing on politics of representation (institutional critique/criticality, architecture and display) and economical issues in the field of exhibitions and museums. Barbara Steiner studied art history at the University of Vienna. She wrote her doctor thesis on the ideology of the White Cube. Since 2001 Barbara Steiner has been the director and a curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig (GfZK). Since 2007 she has lectured at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Before that she lectured at the University in Linz and at the Art Academies in Braunschweig and Copenhagen. She ran art associations in Ludwigsburg and Wolfsburg, where she curated solo exhibitions by, inter alia, Angela Bulloch, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno, Olafur Eliasson, Karen Kilimnik and Superflex.

In Leipzig she initiated research projects such as “Cultural Territories, On the Role of Art and Culture in Post-Communist Societies”, (2003–2005); “Heimat Moderne, On the Heritage of Modernism” (2005); “againstwithin, On the Role of Artistic Critique/Criticality in Capitalist and Socialist Societies” (2006) and “Carte Blanche, Private Commitment in Art” (2008–2009). In this connection a series of exhibitions and books evolved, such as “The Future is not what it used to be” (with Igor Zabel) or “Archit-Action” (with Oana Tanase).

Since 2003 the following building projects have been realized in close collaboration with architects and artists: “GfZK-2, as-if berlinvienna”, 2002–2004; “Neubau/Weezie”, Café and Bar, Anita Leisz, 2004–2007; “Hotel Everland”, Lang & Baumann, 2006–2007; “Paris Syndrome”, Café and Bar and gfzk garten, both Jun Yang, 2006–2007.

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Content

Framing of Art – Editorial / Michal Koleček In the Trap of Frozen Structures / Barnabás Bencsik Zwiechen(t)raum – Changes and Challenges in the Slovak Version / Vladimír Beskid Art In Motion – The Czech Path of Cultural Transformation / Michal Koleček Framing of Art – The Social and Institutional Context of Contemporary Visual Art in Central Europe / Margarethe Makovec & Anton Lederer The Frame, the Void, the Power / Darko Šimičić The Hidden Heritage / Barbara Steiner Biography

5 7 27 51 79 99 105 121

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Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem

FRAMING OF ART Edition: Projects Editor: Michal Koleček Texts by: Barnabás Bencsik, Vladimír Beskid, Michal Koleček, Margarethe Makovec & Anton Lederer, Darko Šimičić, Barbara Steiner Editor in Charge: Jaroslav Polanecký Translation: Aileen Derieg, Kate Howlett Jones, Otmar Lichtenwörther, Árpád Mihály, Jana Pluliková, Josef Procházka, Vladimíra Šefranka, Zdenka Ungar Copy Editor: Vladimíra Šefranka Graphic Design: Tomáš Trnobranský First edition Number of pages: 128 Number of copies: 420 Published by: Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem and authors, © 2007 ISBN 80-7044-0730-3 Faculty of Art and Design of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem Velká Hradební 13, 400 01 Ústí nad Labem Tel.: + 420 475 285 121 e-mail: miroslav.matousek@ujep.cz www.fud.ujep.cz Framing of Art publication is supported by Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem, Velká Hradební 19, 400 01 Ústí nad Labem, www.gef.cz