Contenu du sommaire

Procházka's Bawdy House and Hlavácek's Soul In the 1890s, in the Czech countries, the writers and artists involved with the monthly art magazine “Modern Review” (Moderní revue), founded by Arnošt Procházka and the poet Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, played a key role in the birth and development of modem typography and illustration. In 1894 (or 1895) the collection of poems “Brothel of the Soul” (Prostibolo duše) was written by A. Procházka in the style of Baudelaire and Maeterlinck. It was illustrated by neo-romantic and fantasy prints by the young Karel Hlaváček who claimed to have drawn his inspiration from Rops, Sattler, Redon or Beardsley, and also Ensor. This publication is a milestone in Czech Symbolism because of the decadent sensitivity of its texts and the graphic conception of the book, which earned it the admiration of Stanisław Przybyszewski. An analysis of the pages of this collection, which was influenced both by German poet Max Dauthendey's theory of colours, and also by Hlaváček's own psychological progress (torn as he was between the purity he longed for and a sexuality associated with evil, violence and death), brings to light a great affinity with the art of Munch. The analysis also brings out the work's prophetic value in that it shows how Symbolism would develop, choosing the path of formal abstraction over the realistic form.

The Picture Within the Narrative : Painting as a Motif in Fin de Siècle Czech Literature Paintings play a major part as motifs in novels, and this study focuses on their place in the works of two Czech writers, Julius Zeyer Dobrodružství Madrány [The Adventures of Modrána], Z papíru na kornouty [Of the Paper of which we Made Cones], Dům u tonoucí hvězdy [The House of the Sinking Star], Teréza Manfredi, Legenda o jarním dešti [Legend of a Spring Rain], Blaho v zahradě kvetoucích broskví [Bliss in the Garden of Flowering Peach-Trees]) and Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic (Scarabeus, Ganymedes, Román Manfred Macmillena [The Novel of Manfred Macmillen], Zlověstná madona [The Evil Madonna], Františkánská legenda [A Franciscan Legend], Zastřený obraz [The Veiled Painting]). Both writers show in their texts, using various and sometimes divergent forms, an interest in real or partly imaginary portraits, and also in landscapes, the motif of the painting being sometimes combined with that of the spectator observing it. This creates, among other metamorphoses, the identification of the literary character (and, in Zeyer's case above all, his psychological disarray) with the pictorial portrait. Above all else, it is the traditional motif of the magical power of the portrait which prevails, shifting from an 'external' fantasy form to a psychological examination of mankind. The latter is sometimes conveyed through the artist's meditations on his model, or through the intangible, mysterious, or even occult dimension of the work of art itself: in Karásek's works, in particular, the artist's hand itself seems to be dominated by an external force — the devil's hand or the force of the artist's own sin.

“The Fusion of the Arts” and the “Search for Modernity” : the introduction in Bohemia of a chapter of French art criticism : Camille Mauclair and His Relationship with F. X. Šalda and William Ritter The names of two French-speaking art critics appear on the artistic scene of the Czech countries at the turn of the century: the first is William Ritter (1867-1955), the Swiss critic who commented on Czech art in French periodicals, and the second one is the Frenchman Camille Mauclair (1872-1945), who wrote articles on French art for two Czech periodicals, and in particular for “Volné směry”, the mouthpiece of the artistic society Mánes. The critic F. X. Šalda seems to deserve the credit for introducing of the works of Mauclair in Prague, in particular his plan for a unified aesthetics and art criticism suggested in his collection of articles “Les Idées vivantes” [Living Ideas], and notably in the last chapter "L'identité et la fusion des arts" ["The Identity and fusion of the Arts"], and in his novel “La Ville lumière” [The City of Light] (both published in 1904). However, William Ritter was certainly the one who unwittingly acted as a go-between between Volné směry and Mauclair, strengthening the relationship that already existed between Rodin and Élémir Bourges. A study of this relationship shows how the complicity existing between the two critics gave way to a certain competitiveness. At the same time they shared a loathing for the form of modern art starting to be influential in Prague, as expressed by Ritter in 1906 in “Études d'art étranger” [Studies in Foreign Art] (1906) and by Mauclair in “Les Trois crises de l'art actuel” [The Three Crises in Contemporary Art].

The Work of Felix Jenewein by Jakub Deml : A Poetic Interpretation In the 1890s, the painter Felix Jenewein attracted the admiration of the young intellectuals who had founded the Modem Catholic Group (Katolická moderna) and the review New Life [Nový život] (to which the young priest and poet Jakub Deml contributed in the years 1903-1905). Written from 1927 to 1928, and published in 1929, The Work of Felix Jenewein by Deml features among the most important literary exegeses on art works ever written in Bohemia. In order to understand why, it is necessary to go back to the origins of the work and to analyze the thematic and stylistic relationships woven between Jenewein's pictorial art and Demi's writing, in particular around the motif of the danse macabre. This publication illustrates the connection between Christian pictorial and literary works and the existential feeling of the modem era.

Jaroslav Hašek, Josef Lada and Švejk It is interesting to go back to the origins of the picture Josef Lada created of the Good Soldier Švejk, the hero of Jaroslav Hašek — a picture which has become one of the most popular emblems of twentieth century Czech culture. Indeed, between 1921, the year of the first illustrations, and 1924-25, when this long novel was published in a serialized form (after the death of the novelist), the physiognomy of that 'feeble-mindeď soldier totally changed under the pen of the illustrator, and this metamorphosis would be confirmed with Lada's completion of the cycle in the 1950s. This study analyzes the formal characteristics of these drawings, the features which link them with the historical culture of the time and which have made them difficult for the modern-day reader to understand. It also examines the differences between the novelist's and the illustrator's conception of the character.

The Yellow Spectrum by František Kupka The Yellow Spectrum (1907, National Museum of Modem Art, Pompidou Centre, Paris) by F. Kupka, the key work of his figurative period, is a typical example of an approach based on synesthesia. As its highly descriptive title indicates, Kupka hère launches himself deeper into a study of colour, applying the whole yellow-orange spectrum present in the theory of colors. Nevertheless he attaches to these colors a symbolic and 'narrative' meaning in which he follows the logic of the psychological and physiological effects of color. Moreover, many preliminary sketches, as well as the second version of this painting (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) are fraught with literary connotations. It is very likely that this work is an imaginary and highly symbolic portrait of Charles Baudelaire as a poet able to evoke and 'visualize' through his work (in particular in Les Paradis artificiels [Artificial Paradises] and in his French translations of Edgar Allan Poe) a whole spectrum of internal visions.

Kupka and the relationship between Pictorial Creation and the Music Model The aesthetic reflections of Kupka, that great Czech painter and pioneer of non- figurative art, lead us to study the relationship he created between music and pictorial creation. Pitting the arts unfolding in time against painting, of which one declared objective is the “graphic freezing of moving forms', Kupka distrusted any analogy between two essentially different arts. Nevertheless, as he was interested in synesthesias, he carefully examined the complexities of acoustic and visual impressions. In this demanding, and essentially metaphoric reflection, music eventually serves as an artistic model, in as much as it has the qualities of abstract construction of Bach' s Fugue, the ideal abstract form for Kupka.

Vision of Animals in The Snake on the Snow [Had na Sněhu] by Bohuslav Reynek Both a poet and an engraver, Bohuslav Reynek (1892-1971) was one the of Czech creators who moved from a pictorial medium to poetry. His first period is characterized by a vitality which is close to Expressionism, and is associated with the short history of the 'Czech Expressionist book'. The similarities between literature and visual arts are indeed obvious in the series of the Sešity poesie [Books of Poetry], illustrated with linocuts — in particular those by Josef Čapek — and edited by Reynek in the early twenties. An analysis of one of his collections of poems, Had na sněhu [The Snake on the Snow], makes it possible to discern thematic convergences and stylistic connections between visual and literary expressions, based on a certain difficulty in identifying the pictures, which are quite abstract in style. Reynek' s interest in animals — which represent both pure contingency and pure transcendence — , an interest he shared with many representatives of the expressionist movement, can probably be explained by the particular place animals hold in this ambiguous status of representation. It is emblematic of what one of the texts from Had na sněhu calls 'the existence hidden in the folds and gathers of a secret being'.

The Refuge of Poetry : Zdenek Rykr's illustrations of Milada Soucková's Collections of Poems In 1930 the painter Zdeněk Rykr, a special case in the Czech avant-garde movement of the interwar years, married Milada Součková, a poet, prose writer and literary historian. Rykr became the illustrator of two of her collections of poems Kaladý (1938) and Mluvící pásmo [Talking Zone] (1939). The former, a moving prose poem and a meditation upon the defense of a language when it is under threat, was accompanied by black and white drawings interspersed with pseudo-baroque quotations, in the style of kal (refuse, mud, filth) acknowledged in the title, and which can also be found in the compositions of the time on rural motifs. In contrast, the conception of his next collection of poems is dominated by cosmic purity and clarity, which are developed from abstract forms.

Lautréamont in the Eyes of Jindřich Štýrský The painter Jindřich Štýrský, both a lover and connoisseur of literature, began the arduous task of illustrating Lautréamont in the late twenties, when he created 'illustrations' for the first Czech edition of extracts from Les Chants de Maldoror [The Songs of Maldoror]. His illustrations thus came well before the well-known era of the Surrealists' illustrations of Lautréamont' s work and he continued to illustrate Lautréamont up until his very last painting. His first illustrations are characterized by an artificial style: they are partly abstract compositions, and their relationship with the text is not concrete but based on thematic analogies, whose treatment was inspired by microphotographs or drawings from scientific publications of the time. In his later works, he drew his inspiration from actual impulses found in Maldoror but also in his own subconscious, as his dream transcriptions show: in his collage The Dream, he even refers programmatically to Lautréamont, quoting the famous metaphor in the sixth canto: 'Beautiful like... the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.' His last unfinished painting, an addition to his imaginary portrait of Lautréamont, was entitled Maldoror (1941).