Jirí Kolár

Hello everyone!

As we got to know a grasp of interesting ideas about creativity, let's have a look at a man whose creative powers has been praised for last fifty years. 

Jirí Kolár obviously didn't need any creative learning. In fact, he didn't even go to Art School. Born in Protivín (Czechoslovakia)in 1914, he worked as a carpenter in his small town till the day he went to Prague to watch surrealistic collages at the Mozarteum. It was a breakthrough! Twenty-years old, he eventually decided to become an artist.  

"Like most great artists of the past century, Kolář was both an anarchist and a reactionary." said Travis Jeppesen, an American novelist, poet, and art critic. Indeed, Kolár experimented with text and image in a way that was unknown in the art history. He combined them in a way that surprised the Czechs and quickly gained a fame as a shocking visual poet, leading such art circles as "Gruppe 42" and "Kreuzung".

Soon he got into trouble. His anarchistic work was too subversive for the time of Stalinism. In 1953 Jirí Kolár spent months under arrest. When released, he got a publication ban that didn't stop him from working on his poems, dramas and ballets. However, the reflections of the gloomy time may be seen in his prose. He writes in "Ocity svedek" (Eye-witness), a verse and prose diary from 1949 : "Through the breaking of a cultural tradition ... culture itself is sinking into unimaginable backwardness". It comes as no surprise that the voice of an artist and an intellectual, who regarded Stalinism as a "barbarism", was silented by the dictatorship; the book was first published in Munich in 1983. His finest collection of poems, "Prometheova jatra" (Prometheus' Liver), written in 1950, was first published in Toronto in 1985. Despite the fact most of his work wasn't published till 1980s, he was considered one of the most important writers of the time.

His poetic work avoid conventional metaphors and sophisticated language. He would rather use vulgar excerpts from everyday talk and implot politicians speeches that were a part of the Stalinism language. Typically he wrote monologues spoken by unhappy women and their disintegrated souls, thus focusing on the internal experience rather than external world. His verse may surprise with the evocations of beauty and strong liturgical elements.

Around 1959 Kolár abandonned his poetic work and focused on visual arts. He included materials from everyday-life like hairs, razor blades, and zippers. He produced miniature-objects and collages. "In order to “make it new,” - said Travis Jeppesen - the artist must systematically reject every aesthetic tendency that’s come before." One look at some of his art collages would serve as a thousand words. (http://butdoesitfloat.com/I-m-chasing-after-an-image-nothing-more)

He was amongst those who would never compromise to the Communist power. Along with Vaclav Havel, a playwright and later Czech president, he signed Charter 77 (the declaration calling on the Communist authorities to respect international human-rights agreements). Then he was forced to emigrate to France in 1980. At the time his work was exhibited in such world-known galleries as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1981) and participated in the Biennale in Venice (1990).

As a leading figure in Czech artistic and anarchistic history, Jirí Kolár died in Prague in 2002.

QUESTIONS:
1) What is the impact of the dictatorship on the art work?

2) Recently media are struck to hear that a Czech tattooed drama professor runs in the presidential election (see:http://www.sundaytimes.lk/130113/sunday-times-2/tattooed-professor-in-race-to-be-czech-president-28436.html ). Do you think that an artist and an intellectual may become a successful politician?

sources:

http://www.jiri-kolar.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/arts/jiri-kolar-88-czech-collage-artist-and-poet.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Kol%C3%A1%C5%99
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Jeppesen