Bazar moderního umění | Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820

Commentary

Devětsil, the most important Czech avant-garde group of the 1920s, first exhibited its artworks at the spring exhibition in Prague's Rudolfinum in 1922 [Honzík 1963, p. 17; Šmejkal 1962]. Paintings and drawings by Devětsil members took magic realism and imbued it with – as Josef Čapek put it – “social compassion content.” As such, these works reflected the proletarian poetry of Jiří Wolker and Jaroslav Seifert. However, the second half of 1922 marked a break in Devětsil's artistic program. The group's membership base changed and only a few original members remained – Karel Teige, Jaroslav Seifert and Artuš Černík among them. This was in large part a result of Teige's summer trip to Paris [Švácha 1993] and the activities of the architect Jaromír Krejcar, the group's newest member, who, at the end of 1922, edited Devětsil's revue Život II (Life II). The changes were so radical that when Devětsil organized its second exhibition – the Bazaar of Modern Art – in 1923, some journalists wrote about it as if it were Devětsil's first [anonymous author 1923, p. 3]. The Bazaar of Modern Art celebrated the engineering civilization and the modern metropolis with magic realism giving way to Cubism, Purism and Constructivism. Next to traditional artworks, spectators were confronted with Duchamp-like ready-mades.

Karel Teige outlined the show's conception in his article Painting and Poetry in the first volume of the revue Disk, published shortly before the exhibition's opening. Here, Teige expresses the typically avant-garde aversion to museum and gallery institutions. “The old exhibition type is almost extinct, it resembles too much the gallery mausoleum,” writes Teige, “the modern exhibition must be a bazaar (fair, world exhibition) of modern production, a manifestation of the electrical, machinic century.” [1923]. The 1923 Devětsil show thus became an entertaining combination of traditional art forms – paintings, drawings, stage designs, architectural projects – and objects without any artistic status, which was a reflection of the curators' intention, most likely Teige himself. Right behind the entrance to the exhibition halls, visitors were welcomed by a mirror with the inscription “Your portrait, spectators!”, a safety belt from a steamboat and several advertising posters along with a wax hairdressing figurine and two large ball bearings as examples of modern sculpture. The printed catalogue, thanks to which we can to a degree imagine what the exhibition looked like, was concluded by a special section named Street Theatre and the Biomechanics of Sport, likely an indication on the part of Teige and Devětsil that life in the modern metropolis outside the exhibition hall was an inseparable part of the Bazaar.

The daily Rudé právo, which shared Devětsil's radical leftist orientation, published no special review of the Bazaar of Modern Art but it did refer to it in several other texts and also gave a notice of the exhibition's approaching end. “Comrades, come and see the works of young artist comrades in Devětsil,” wrote Rudé právo on the show's last day, December 2, 1923 [Anonymous author 1923, p. 3].

The dailies Tribuna and Lidové noviny published reviews by Václav Nebeský and Josef Čapek. Because both had clashed with Devětsil in the past, their opinion of the Bazaar of Modern Art was not entirely favourable. The word “bazaar” itself irritated Nebeský because, according to him, it “directly demands that you do not contemplate too much what strikes your eye.” Such a diverse and entertaining bazaar, says Nebeský, is ideal for a child enraptured by a white-bearded Santa or a villager who has come to the city for the first time. A true connoisseur of bazaar goods, however, must be interested in their quality [V. N. 1923, p. 2]. Both Nebeský and Čapek were surprised by Devětsil's turn away from proletarian art toward the latest -isms, which, in Čapek's view, was not properly explained [-jč- 1923, p. 7]. Yet, both these critics were open to seeing the exhibition's positive sides. Both agreed that Josef Šíma's works held powerful promise for the future, and Nebeský also endorsed Jindřich Štyrský. In contrast, both denounced paintings and drawings by Otakar Mrkvička [V. N. 1923, p. 2; -jč- 1923, p. 7]. The synthesis of Cubism and Purism, represented at the Bazaar by Štyrský, Toyen and Remo, otherwise gave Nebeský an “impression of quite innocent and harmless decorative arrangements” [V. N. 1923, p. 2].

In the article Painting and Poetry in Disk, Karel Teige announced the birth of a new art form, the pictorial poem, and at least one such poem appeared in the catalogue as a part of Teige's own set at the exhibition [Srp 1999]. However, neither Nebeský nor Čapek mentioned pictorial poems and Čapek even omitted them in the passage where he writes about “the many suggestive inscriptions” and “glued pieces” on the exhibited paintings and points out the influence of “Apollinaire's lyrical ideograms” [-jč- 1923, p. 7]. Both critics completely overlooked the rayograms by Man Ray, a Parisian photographer and the Bazaar's only international artist.

In contrast, both Nebeský and Čapek highly appreciated the show's architectural section featuring designs by Chochol, Feuerstein, Krejcar, Fragner, Linhart, Honzík and Obrtel [V. N. 1923, p. 2; -jč- 1923, p. 7]. Even J. R. Marek, a conservative reviewer for the daily Venkov (Country) praised their serious approach although he otherwise believed that the whole Bazaar was really meant to make fun of the visitors [Marek 1923, pp. 3–4]. Almost none of the reviewers noticed that the Devětsil architects did not merely follow the“austere technical form” of Josef Chochol's projects – as Josef Čapek put it – but that some of them strove to enrich their designs with a barely perceptible poetical charge, best observable in the works of Evžen Linhart. In his report for the journal Stavitel (Builder), the architect Adolf Benš was able to sense this intention. To Benš, the constructive form of the designs on display often appeared “so lyrical that one would be reminded of Giotto.”

Rostislav Švácha

Works cited

ab 1924: ab [Adolf Benš], Bazar Umění v domě umělců, Stavitel V, 1924, p. 17

Anonymous author 1923: Rudé právo IV, 1923, no. 265, 11. 11., Dělnická besídka, p. 3

-jč- 1923: -jč- [Josef Čapek], Pražské výstavy, Lidové noviny XXXI, 1923, no. 588, 23. 11., p. 7

Jíra 1923–1924: [Jaroslav] Jíra, Bazar moderního umění (II. výstava Devětsilu, Dům umělců), Stavba II, 1923–1924, pp. 161–162

Honzík 1963: Karel Honzík, Ze života avantgardy, Praha 1963

Marek 1923: J[osef]. R[ichard]. Marek, Veselá mysl – půl zdraví, Venkov XVIII, 1923 no. 276, 25. 11., pp. 3–4

Srp 1999: Karel Srp, Optická slova – obrazové básně a poetismus 1922–1926, Ateliér XII, 1999, no. 5, p. 9

Šmejkal 1962: František Šmejkal, Jarní výstava 1922, Výtvarná práce X, 1962, no. 25–26

Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

1923
Bazaar of Modern Art

Works cited

Further reading

Databáze uměleckých výstav v českých zemích 1820 – 1950

1923 Bazaar of Modern Art

Works cited

Further reading

1923
Bazaar of Modern Art