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In cooperation with the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, WAGNER:WERK Museum Postsparkasse presents the exhibition “cubiCZm! Prague’s Deconstruction of Modernism” as its contribution to the cross-border cultural projects realized by the Czech Republic and Austria in 2009. Confronting Wagner’s Modernism and the Czech Cubism responding to it, the presentation visualizes a thesis and an antithesis of early twentieth century architecture.
Otto Wagner’s Modernist Architecture vs. the Architecture of Czech Cubism
Twentieth century early Modernism with its many considerations regarding an architecture committed to function has found its completion in Otto Wagner’s Postal Savings Bank building (1904–1912). In this keywork, Wagner succeeded in translating all his theories into built architecture and designed interior.
In the Czech lands, Wagner’s architectural concept was synonymous with Modernism’s endeavors in the field, particularly since his student Jan Kotĕra, as professor at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts and founder of its architecture class, exercised a decisive influence on the following generation of architects. In 1908/09, Josef Gočár as well as the founder of Czech Cubism, Pavel Janák, worked in Kotĕra’s office.
Janák called for a new sculptural design, which, according to his opinion, was not to be found in modern buildings erected in Otto Wagner’s vein, and strove to clear the path for an absolute – ideal and exclusively valid – architecture by overcoming the ascetic and moralizing attitude of Modernism Construction and material were of only secondary impoimportance.
These endeavors resulted in a dramatically expressive architecture abounding in corners and edges and boasting deformed, fragmented and reassembled facades. Instead of two-dimensional surfaces, we come upon angular reliefs with continuously projecting and set back colliding sloping elements, which provide dramatic light and shadow effects.
Cubist landmark buildings include Josef Gočár’s “House of the Black Madonna” on Prague’s Celetná Street, which accommodates the Kubista Museum today, Josef Chochol’s Kovařovic villa on Vyšehrad and apartment house on Neklanová Street as well as Pavel Janák’s Jakubec single-family residence in Jičín and renovated Baroque house in Pelhřimov.
Pavel Janák, the founder of Czech Cubism
After graduating from the Prague Polytechnic, where he had enrolled in 1899 to study with Professor Josef Schulz, Pavel Janák went to Vienna to study under Otto Wagner at the Academy of Fine Arts. Having returned to Prague in 1908, he began to work in Jan Kotěra’s architectural office and joined the “Mánes” Association of Artists. He was also involved in the foundation of the “Artĕl” cooperative in the same year. It was the Wiener Werkstätte, whose works Janák had become familiar with during his stay in Vienna, which provided a model for the initiators of the “Artĕl.” Stylistically, however, the group aimed at overcoming the influence of Vienna and already tried to pursue a pronouncedly Czech path of their own very early on.
French Cubism offered a wide range of new possibilities here: in their pictures, painters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque reduced objects to crystalline three-dimensional forms, fragmenting them in a way that just permitted to maintain their concreteness. The reliefs translated into paintings on two-dimensional supports reveal a vast number of pointed, angular and, above all, broken-up detail forms.
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Together with the architects Josef Gočár, Vlastislav Hofman, and Josef Chochol and various artist-craftsmen, Pavel Janák developed a Cubist canon of forms for arts and crafts as well as for architecture. Besides Paris, Prague became the second most important center of the Cubist style in Europe.
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Czech Cubism in the applied arts
Striving for a gesamtkunstwerk encompassing architecture as well as interior and furniture design, Cubist architects rejected the priority of functionality: “We are not interested in producing functional things, our inventions are art ... we leave the production of functional things to the epigones.” They disassembled pieces of furniture into their constructive elements, dissected surfaces into right angles, and developed forms contradicting all static and functional requirements. Traditional carpenter techniques did not suffice for their complicated designs, and it was necessary to fix slant or beveled parts with various reinforcements, which increased the weight of the already voluminous pieces.
With their designs for ceramic, glass and metal objects of use, the artists proved the validity and feasibility of Cubist theory regarding the dynamization of forms and penetration of geometric bodies. Decorated with black lines emphasizing the edges of the polyhedra with their triangular faces, Pavel Janák’s prismatic box of whitish stoneware resembles an origami work. Like Cubist furniture, the objects draw on traditional solutions, but strip them of their décor and reduce them to their form.
Czech Cubism anticipated a number of later movements and strengthened the cultural identity of a State in upheaval. The persuasiveness of this national patriotic experiment ensured that Czech Cubism turned out to be much more than an episode in European cultural history or a return to the country’s own traditions.
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cubiCZmus! Die Dekonstruktion der Moderne in Prag
30. Juni bis 29. August 2009, Mo – Fr 9 bis 17 Uhr, Sa 10 – 17 Uhr
WAGNER:WERK Museum Postsparkasse/ Grosser Kassensaal
BAWAG P.S.K., Georg Coch-Platz 2, 1018 Wien
T: ++43/1-53453-33088
F: ++43/1-53453-33087
M: museum@ottowagner.com
www.ottowagner.com
Die Ausstellung entstand in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Prag.
Katalog ”cubiCZmus! Die Dekonstruktion der Moderne in Prag“
120 Seiten, ca. 70 Farb- und 40 SW-Abb.
ISBN 978-320001564-7, Preis € 25
Erhältlich im Museumsshop WAGNER:WERK Museum Postsparkasse
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| WAGNER:WERK - MUSEUM POSTSPARKASSE - Georg Coch-Platz 2, 1018 Vienna |
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