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Monsters in the RudolfinumExhibition of Socialist Realist works is no joke.
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Czechoslovak Socialist Realism 1948-1958 At the Rudolfinum through February 9th The exhibition Czechoslovak Socialist Realism 1948-1958, which opened at the Rudolfinum on November 7, is at once boring and exhausting. While it is interesting after so many years to see such a concentration of Gottwalds, dams, militiamen and workers, by the second or third hall of the gallery, the visitor is overwhelmed by the same feeling he had on an obligatory school trip to a museum of the workers’ movement in 1986. You wish it would end. For the most part, the canvases and sculptures on display have no charm, not even the appeal of being embarrassing, disgusting or unintentionally ridiculous. They are repulsive, sloppy pieces of work by totally untalented people and interchangeable “vulgar craftsmen,” as Chalupeck´´ once described the heavily represented Jan Čumpelík. Going to the gallery is a little like watching a TV series made in the era of Normalization. The first episodes seem astonishing and bring back memories, but after a while, one can’t stand to look at them anymore. There are exceptions. The “post-Christian” painting Resurrection, for example, with the central motif of God-Gottwald (signed “Koltay”), is so crazy that one can’t help feeling it was a carefully constructed parody. The children from a day-care center in another canvas have such depressing expressions on their faces that one suspects the painter wanted to depict not “beauty” but rather the sheer horror of the Red-organized world, and by chance she actually managed to pull it off. The presence of works by Emil Filla strikes one as sad and rather inappropriate, and his painting depicting prisoners liberated from a concentration camp is bizarre and unusually cynical. The horrors they lived through leave no trace on these cheerful guys, who hold a merry meeting with a guitar and typewriter in the woods under Czechoslovak and Soviet flags. The bloody commemoration of the “righteously murdering” peasantry likewise fills one with disgust. But these are only curious details that confirm the overall wretchedness that oozes from the dozens of paintings and sculptures. One of the most intolerable phenomena of standardized life in a totalitarian society was the constant, repeated, deadening rhythm from which the worker was not supposed to diverge. The exhibition at the Rudolfinum distinctly captures this atmosphere of the times: Klement, landscape, dam, Sta-lin, Klement, landscape, dam, Stalin. Did people honestly believe in these paintings? How can one today justify the support that intellectuals and artists once showed for the Communist Party, considering that the clear signs of hell were manifest in every sphere of life, from painting and literature to the social sciences? The absolute majority of Socialist Realist works were not the result of fanaticism or ideological blindness, but the fulfillment of demands made by the authorities. Painters like Jan Čumpelík and Vojtěch Tittelbach were simply able to adapt in time. They knew what would bring them money and influence. They understood that many artists would not dare to take a stand against Socialist Realism and that a number of theoreticians would defend it. Hence Vincenc Kramář’s 1952 declaration: “Since the old Christian era, no art has been so governed and guided by high moral ideals as the Czech Socialist Realism that is now developing.” The ranks of the pragmatic, amoral bunglers were joined by those who adopted the mandatory style out of fear and took refuge in harmless landscapes. The exhibition says nothing about the fact that dozens of ruined lives and careers are hidden behind Czecho-slovak Socialist Realism. Certainly, this will be a subject of discussion in the series of accompanying events. The theoretical point of view of the Communists – according to which, ‘Teige, Translation by Kathleen Hayes |
Article added on Tue 19th Nov, 2002 [last updated Thu 6th Oct, 2005]Share this page 
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