DOI Artikel:
Milena Bartlová: Cultivating its Own Roots: Czech Art History in the 1980s in Search of its Own Beginnings
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73804#0094
93
dealt with in the Chapters." The three reviews prove that
nationalism was already at the time of publication the
most delicate topic.
PREDECESSORS AND FOUNDERS
Somewhat unexpectedly, Koran began his interpretation
with a discussion of Hussite iconoclasm at the turn of the
15th c. and continued with a treatment of Humanist texts.
Most of the first chapter is, however, taken up with Baro-
que Catholic historiographers of the 17th and 18th centu-
ries, who are presented as the primary source of Czech art
history. For Koran, such an emotional nationalist appro-
ach is part of the above pronounced patriotism, and the
criterion of Czechness is neither ethnicity nor language,
but 'love of the nation conceived as a component of Ro-
man Catholic religious faith. The revival of the idea of Au-
strian provincial patriotism was effectively promoted in
the 1980s in the historical fields of Czech humanities as
one of the efforts to find a substitute for historical mate-
rialism. Koran himself, however, made no attempt to dif-
ferentiate his emotional concept from the ethnic and lin-
guistic nationalism that prevailed in the Czech lands for
most of the 20th c.
What is much more surprising on a contemporary
reading is that the opening chapter of this self-identifying
work of Czech art history rejects both the rationality of
scientific methodology and the demand for internation-
al relevance in art historical scholarship. The questions of
national identity, international relevance, and explicitly
also that of the place of scientific rationality in art his-
tory research are likewise addressed in the second chapter
of the first volume, with different results. Its author, the
medievalist Vlasta Dvofakova, was among the scholars
who were aware of Western Marxism and semiotics in the
1970s and 1980s and she sought to integrate some of these
approaches into the domestic art historical context. The
tenor of her account of the Enlightenment and Romanti-
cism is a recognition of the opposition between the jour-
nalistic and scholarly modes of writing about art. She first
asks how texts devoted to art monuments operated in the
process of the transition to modern scientific rationality,
and then critically explores the question of the national,
Slavic specificity of artistic expression, or esthetics.12
PROBLEMS WITH PROFESSORS
The biographical chapter on Miroslav Tyrs, the first pro-
fessor of art history at the Czech-speaking Charles Uni-
versity, was written by the main editor Chadraba and
11 J. Kroupa, 'Kapitoly z ceskeho dejepisu umeni [rewiev]', Studia
minora facultatis philosophicae Universitatis Brunensis (SPFFBU),
32-33, 1988-1989, pp. 109-112.
12 V. Dvorakova, 'Osvicenci a romantikove, in Kapitoly z ceskeho
dejepisu I., pp. 35-74 (as in note 1).
thus formed a sort of counterbalance to his chapter on
Dvorak.13 However, Tyrs could not be given an impor-
tant place in the beginnings of Czech art history because,
contrary to the developmental norm, he held a normative
idea of the absolute value of the arts of antiquity. In the
1870s, he consistently emphasized the Neo-Renaissance
over Romanticism and Realism, and he also promoted
idealized Classical values as a co-founder of Sokol, the na-
tional gymnastic and quasi-military popular movement.
Tyrs died only one year into his professorship in 1884 du-
ring a mountaineering expedition in the Alps.
Karel Chytil, who in 1911 resumed work at the chair
of art history at Charles University, could not stand as
a founding figure, either. Since the 1920s he had been
personally attacked and his work disparaged because of
a personal animosity that was mainly motivated by his
anti-Viennese political stance after the founding of the
Czechoslovak Republic, and the younger graduates of the
Vienna School who formed the Prague art historical es-
tablishment of the newly created state.14 Although he was
roughly a contemporary of Dvorak, Chytil is included in
the first volume of Chapters, giving the impression that
he belongs to the distant past. Rostislav Svacha wrote an
important essay on so-called cultural history as one of the
possibilities of art historical thinking, with the intention
of rehabilitating both this research direction and Chyt-
il personally. Unfortunately, however, the chapter made
the whole situation rather unclear when Svacha, anoth-
er from the four co-editors, followed rather too literally
E. H. Gombrich in his identification ofthe cultural-histor-
ical direction with the Hegelian model of development.15
Svacha shied away from calling it more accurately posi-
tivism, whose aim was to overcome the one-sidedness of
formalism. Chapters includes Chytil's biography by Krasa,
in which he described the best of Chytil's texts as high-
quality domestic precursors of iconology and discussed at
least briefly the role of positivism.16
POSTMODERN PLURALITY?
Let us now summarize the results of current reading of
the first volume of Chapters. The main characteristic of
the construction of the roots presented here is its postmo-
dern plurality - not surprising from the point of view of
its publication date, although perhaps unexpected in re-
trospect. Coherently with the period ideological situation,
though, the plurality lacks openness. Some of the texts
contain authoritatively formulated statements that con-
tradict other parts ofthe book. It is thus a hybrid plurality.
13 R. Chadraba, 'Miroslav Tyrs (as in note 7).
14 K. Chytil, 'O pfiśtich ukolech dejin a historiku urneni ve state
ceskoslovenskem', Naśe doba 26, 1918, pp. 753-756.
15 R. Svacha, 'Historikove kultury', in Kapitoly z ceskeho dejepisu I.,
pp. 141-159 (as in note 1).
16 J. Krasa, 'Karel Chytil', in Kapitoly z ceskeho dejepisu I., pp. 172-
178 (as in note 1).
dealt with in the Chapters." The three reviews prove that
nationalism was already at the time of publication the
most delicate topic.
PREDECESSORS AND FOUNDERS
Somewhat unexpectedly, Koran began his interpretation
with a discussion of Hussite iconoclasm at the turn of the
15th c. and continued with a treatment of Humanist texts.
Most of the first chapter is, however, taken up with Baro-
que Catholic historiographers of the 17th and 18th centu-
ries, who are presented as the primary source of Czech art
history. For Koran, such an emotional nationalist appro-
ach is part of the above pronounced patriotism, and the
criterion of Czechness is neither ethnicity nor language,
but 'love of the nation conceived as a component of Ro-
man Catholic religious faith. The revival of the idea of Au-
strian provincial patriotism was effectively promoted in
the 1980s in the historical fields of Czech humanities as
one of the efforts to find a substitute for historical mate-
rialism. Koran himself, however, made no attempt to dif-
ferentiate his emotional concept from the ethnic and lin-
guistic nationalism that prevailed in the Czech lands for
most of the 20th c.
What is much more surprising on a contemporary
reading is that the opening chapter of this self-identifying
work of Czech art history rejects both the rationality of
scientific methodology and the demand for internation-
al relevance in art historical scholarship. The questions of
national identity, international relevance, and explicitly
also that of the place of scientific rationality in art his-
tory research are likewise addressed in the second chapter
of the first volume, with different results. Its author, the
medievalist Vlasta Dvofakova, was among the scholars
who were aware of Western Marxism and semiotics in the
1970s and 1980s and she sought to integrate some of these
approaches into the domestic art historical context. The
tenor of her account of the Enlightenment and Romanti-
cism is a recognition of the opposition between the jour-
nalistic and scholarly modes of writing about art. She first
asks how texts devoted to art monuments operated in the
process of the transition to modern scientific rationality,
and then critically explores the question of the national,
Slavic specificity of artistic expression, or esthetics.12
PROBLEMS WITH PROFESSORS
The biographical chapter on Miroslav Tyrs, the first pro-
fessor of art history at the Czech-speaking Charles Uni-
versity, was written by the main editor Chadraba and
11 J. Kroupa, 'Kapitoly z ceskeho dejepisu umeni [rewiev]', Studia
minora facultatis philosophicae Universitatis Brunensis (SPFFBU),
32-33, 1988-1989, pp. 109-112.
12 V. Dvorakova, 'Osvicenci a romantikove, in Kapitoly z ceskeho
dejepisu I., pp. 35-74 (as in note 1).
thus formed a sort of counterbalance to his chapter on
Dvorak.13 However, Tyrs could not be given an impor-
tant place in the beginnings of Czech art history because,
contrary to the developmental norm, he held a normative
idea of the absolute value of the arts of antiquity. In the
1870s, he consistently emphasized the Neo-Renaissance
over Romanticism and Realism, and he also promoted
idealized Classical values as a co-founder of Sokol, the na-
tional gymnastic and quasi-military popular movement.
Tyrs died only one year into his professorship in 1884 du-
ring a mountaineering expedition in the Alps.
Karel Chytil, who in 1911 resumed work at the chair
of art history at Charles University, could not stand as
a founding figure, either. Since the 1920s he had been
personally attacked and his work disparaged because of
a personal animosity that was mainly motivated by his
anti-Viennese political stance after the founding of the
Czechoslovak Republic, and the younger graduates of the
Vienna School who formed the Prague art historical es-
tablishment of the newly created state.14 Although he was
roughly a contemporary of Dvorak, Chytil is included in
the first volume of Chapters, giving the impression that
he belongs to the distant past. Rostislav Svacha wrote an
important essay on so-called cultural history as one of the
possibilities of art historical thinking, with the intention
of rehabilitating both this research direction and Chyt-
il personally. Unfortunately, however, the chapter made
the whole situation rather unclear when Svacha, anoth-
er from the four co-editors, followed rather too literally
E. H. Gombrich in his identification ofthe cultural-histor-
ical direction with the Hegelian model of development.15
Svacha shied away from calling it more accurately posi-
tivism, whose aim was to overcome the one-sidedness of
formalism. Chapters includes Chytil's biography by Krasa,
in which he described the best of Chytil's texts as high-
quality domestic precursors of iconology and discussed at
least briefly the role of positivism.16
POSTMODERN PLURALITY?
Let us now summarize the results of current reading of
the first volume of Chapters. The main characteristic of
the construction of the roots presented here is its postmo-
dern plurality - not surprising from the point of view of
its publication date, although perhaps unexpected in re-
trospect. Coherently with the period ideological situation,
though, the plurality lacks openness. Some of the texts
contain authoritatively formulated statements that con-
tradict other parts ofthe book. It is thus a hybrid plurality.
13 R. Chadraba, 'Miroslav Tyrs (as in note 7).
14 K. Chytil, 'O pfiśtich ukolech dejin a historiku urneni ve state
ceskoslovenskem', Naśe doba 26, 1918, pp. 753-756.
15 R. Svacha, 'Historikove kultury', in Kapitoly z ceskeho dejepisu I.,
pp. 141-159 (as in note 1).
16 J. Krasa, 'Karel Chytil', in Kapitoly z ceskeho dejepisu I., pp. 172-
178 (as in note 1).