After 1953 Kolář migrated away from writing and began to focus on the visual arts: ‘poetry of silence.’ This divergence marked a period of a more necessarily insidious defiance of rigorous Communist control over art and literature. The artist’s adoption of less figurative art forms outlined a canny strategizing, such as in his Lady with an Ermine (1966) and Breakfast in a Cow (1967), which whimsically re-worked Da Vinci’s painting of the same name (1489), and Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe (Breakfast on the Grass, 1862).
These works showcase his predisposition for visual jokes and his kaleidoscopic handle of visual motif and repetition. The artist describes his attempt to provoke a heightened sense of perception and consciousness from the viewer through layering, pleating, crumpling and cutaways to toy with depth and dimension. Kolář – whose works sit in conversation with his Cubism-inspired Dadaist predecessors Raoul Hausmann, Man Ray, Hannah Höch, Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst – similarly eschewed conventional aesthetic values. He created collages underscored with abstraction and narrative nonsensicality in defiance of a society enrobed in dangerous dominant discourses, which had engendered the travesties of World War I. Kolář’s collages riled against Socialist Realism, whose doctrines condemned non-representative forms of art. Later known as the Zhdanov Doctrine, this vehicle of censorship imposed by Soviet authorities was a tense web of prohibitions that strove to sculpt Czechoslovakian art and literature into shining billboards of Communist ideology.
In Kolář’s work, methods of distortion and distress effect a disruption of the plane. In Venuše (1968), the artist adopts precise regularity to slice and replicate Boticelli’s Venus, appropriating his favoured motif of the Renaissance female nude (he returns to this again in his re-figuring of Gabrielle d’Estrées et une de ses Sœurs, 1594). Similarly, in Oro Olimpico (Olympic Gold, 1972), Kolář splices one of Italian Romanticist Francesco Hayez’s sensual nudes, Ruth (1835), with a photograph of an Olympic high jumper.
Whilst Kolář’s Dadaist influences might posit a resistance to interpretation, the artist’s selection of images is far from arbitrary. In Oro Olimpico, the ‘gold’ medal being won in the black and white photo becomes thematically linked to the warm amber tones of Hayez’s wheat field. These collaged works additionally belie a sinister sense of metamorphosis: an unnerving changing and assimilating of perception without us realising. Equally, these respective images of iconic sporting prowess, religion, innocence and beguiling beauty are mashed together in a symphony of human achievement and experience. In all of his works, we get the sense that Kolář is both revering the human condition, but through scrap-book joviality, is also reminding us not to take ourselves too seriously.
In the 1960s, when Czechoslovakia belatedly entered a period of de-Stalinization behind the rest of the CEEC, Kolář enjoyed limited freedom to explore experimental art forms. However, the failure of the Prague Spring in 1968 – the quashing of First Secretary Alexander Dubček’s attempted political liberalization by Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact members – shunted his work again into the prohibited realms of “anti-Soviet” art. In 1977, Kolář signed Charter 77 – a declaration demanding the acknowledgement of international human rights agreements by Communist authorities and which collected over 800 signatures – and immigrated to Berlin. Kolář later resided in Paris and exhibited globally; these filigree scraps of torn magazine acting as tokens of resistance against the grand narrative of creative oppression in 20th Century Czechoslovakia.
Become a Culture Tripper!
Sign up to our newsletter to
save up to $1,656 on our unique trips.
Our immersive trips, led by Local Insiders, are once-in-a-lifetime experiences and an invitation to travel the world with like-minded explorers. Our Travel Experts are on hand to help you make perfect memories. All our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together.
All our travel guides are curated by the Culture Trip team working in tandem with local experts. From unique experiences to essential tips on how to make the most of your future travels, we’ve got you covered.
Source link : https://theculturetrip.com/europe/czech-republic/articles/ji-kol-his-life-work-and-cultural-significance-to-the-czech-republic
Author :
Publish date : 2021-08-13 07:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.