Czech Photographic Avant-Garde: 1918-1948

by Vladimír Birgus.
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002
311 pp., illus.
ISBN: 0-262-02516-7

Reviewed by Claire Barliant
c/o the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504

cbarliant@yahoo.com

Despite the insistence of many that art and politics remain separate, there are several moments throughout history where they are fiercely intertwined, and the relationship between dictatorial regimes and avant-garde movements in early 20^th century Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe are certainly exemplary of an instance in which politics and art wrap around each other like Laocoön wrestling his snake. In a book titled Czech Photographic Avant-Garde: 1918-1948, one would hope for some perspective on the relations between aesthetics and politics. Instead, Czech Photographic Avant-Garde focuses on the art. The book is organized by formal concerns, neatly (and perhaps wisely) sidestepping the historical morass of the Soviet invasion. Yet the threat of cultural extinction does surface in uneasy bursts throughout the book, albeit in images, not words.

Originally published in German and Czech to accompany the exhibition Modern Beauty: Czech Photographic Avant-Garde 1914-48, this beautiful book traces the evolution of Czech photography from its jubilantly experimental beginnings to its premature end at the hands of the emerging Communist regime. This period of art-making produced a great deal of incredibly rich and innovative work, and this elegantly compiled history offers a large selection of photographs from which to draw a sense of the creative activity of this time.

A series of essays, including several by historian Vladimír Birgus who conceived of the idea for the book and selected the photographs within, chronicles the influences on Czech photographers and the various trends within the Avant-Garde movement, such as Poetism and New Objectivity. There are texts on socio-critical photography, the influence of advertising, and the design of book covers. Included in the back matter are two chronologies, one on Czech art and one on Czech photography, both by Birgus, that mark important events such as the pivotal Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929, the largest international photography show at the time, and one that finally gave photography its due as an artistic medium in its own right.

Though the essays are dry, heavy with historical data and light on analysis, the book is saved from stuffiness by the many fantastic pictures inside. Photographs by established masters such as Josef Sudek, John Heartfield (who emigrated to Prague in 1933 and whose brilliantly damning photo-montages of Hitler influenced Czech avant-garde art), and Jaromir Funke share space with artists who have apparently been obscured by time, and whose work obviously deserves the attention it receives here.

There are so many compelling photographs in this book that it is difficult to select any for special notice, but during one perusal of its contents, I was particularly captivated by two images by Eugen Wiskovsky. From the biographies of the artists which appear in the back of the book, I was stunned to learn that not only was Wiskovsky a superb photographer, he was also a brilliant polymath who compiled a German-Czech dictionary, translated some of Freud’s writings into Czech, and published theoretical articles on photographic composition. It is one of the successes of the book that his work has been rescued within these pages. The two photographs published here twist the natural landscape into uncanny resemblances of wild seas and man-made objects. Disaster (1939) depicts a field of grass that is so whipped by the wind that it looks like a raging sea; on the horizon, near the top of the frame, the outline of a structure that resembles a battleship rises from the tumultuous depths. Flag (1944) shows a recently harvested field rippled by the hilly terrain and seemingly waving like a flag on a pole, the "pole" being the crisp white path that neatly borders the area.

Of the many essays, one of the most compelling is Antonin Dufek’s "Abstract and Nonfigurative Tendencies," which explores Surrealism’s counterpart: works that do not demonstrate an attachment to the object. Dufek explains how these images render solid objects intangible, dropping the barrier between human and nonhuman reality. "In the world of this unconditionally determined ‘freedom,’" Dufek writes, "anything can happen; the world therefore becomes a mystery, usually a sinister one." It is a rare moment of reflection on the political situation and its relation to the creative energy surging in Prague at that time. Overall, the book would have benefited from more writing like this, well-crafted and packed with observation and insight.