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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2013
Among those who interest themselves in modernism in the context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prague is sometimes referred to as the “second city of cubism.” In 1911, at a time when the style was still largely unknown in Europe, an artists’ group devoted to the defense and promotion of the new art was founded in Prague. The members of the Skupina výtvarných umělců, or Visual Artists Group, wrote extensively about cubism in their journal Umělecký mesičník [Art Monthly] as well as in other publications. They sponsored numerous exhibits of the art at home and participated in shows of Czech cubist art abroad. In February 1914, Prague was the site of the largest show of cubist art anywhere in the world up to that time.
1 See Švácha, Rostislav, ed., Kubistická Praha/Cubist Prague, 1909–1925 (Prague, 2004)Google Scholar; and Starcky, Emmanuel and Anděl, Jaroslav, eds., Prague 1900–1938: Capitale secrète des avant-gardes (Dijon, 1997)Google Scholar. On the place of Czech cubism in the Habsburg cultural sphere, see Garver, Bruce, “Czech Cubism and Fin-de-Siècle Prague,” Austrian History Yearbook, 19/20 (1983/84): 91–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Czigány, Magda, “Imitation or Inspiration: The Reception of Cubism in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1910–15,” in Decadence and Innovation: Austro-Hungarian Life and Art at the Turn of the Century, ed. Pynsent, Robert, 74–81 (London, 1989)Google Scholar.
2 Unlike the other exhibits of cubist art in Prague, this one was not organized by the Skupina but by the French critic Alexandre Mercereau at the instigation of breakaway members of the group. Reflecting Mercereau's affiliation with what were known as the Puteaux cubists (i.e., not Picasso and Braque), it featured the work of Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brancusi, Robert Delaunay, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Raoul Dufy, Roger de la Fresnaye, Emil-Othon Friesz, Albert Gleizes, Jean Marchand, Louis Marcoussis, Jean Metzinger, Piet Mondrian, Diego Rivera, and Jacques Villon. Czech artists were represented by the painters Josef Čapek, Otakar Kubín (Othon Coubine), Bohumil Kubišta, Ladislav Šíma, and Václav Špála and by the architects Josef Chochol and Vlastislav Hofman. See Lahoda, Vojtěch, “Malířství v Čechách 1907–1917/Osma, Skupina výtvarných umělců a jejich generační druhové [Painting in the Bohemian Lands 1907–1917/The Eight, the Visual Artists Group and Their Generational Peers],” in Dějiny českého výtvarného umění (IV/1), 1890–1938 [A History of the Czech Fine Arts (IV/1), 1890–1938], ed. Lahoda, Vojtěch, Nešlehová, Mahulena, Platovská, Marie, Švácha, Rostislav, and Bydžovská, Lenka, 233–93 (Prague, 1998)Google Scholar, 259.
3 The full passage reads: “Cet art [modern art/cubism] est très en honneur aujourd'hui en Bohême et les Tchèques ont pris la tête de Mouvement Moderne.” Guillaume Apollinaire, Paris Journal, 6 March 1914. Cited in Josef Čapek, Slavík, Jaroslav and Opelík, Jiří, eds., (Prague, 1996)Google Scholar, 83. All translations by the author unless otherwise noted.
4 Josef Kodíček, “O jedné generaci [A Certain Generation],” Přítomnost [The Present], 20 March 1924, 153.
5 Kodíček, 151. The “real men” to whom Kodíček specifically referred were the writer Ervín Taussig and the painter Bohumil Kubišta, both of whom died as a result of World War I. But the sentiment was clearly meant to apply to the prewar modernist generation as a whole. In addition to Taussig and Kubišta, Kodíček mentions by name the Čapek brothers (Josef and Karel), Emil Filla, Stanislav K. Neumann, Václav Špála, and Otakar Theer. While this list is by no means a comprehensive accounting of this generation, one of the significant things about it is that it includes figures from all the major factions of the Czech prewar modernist movement. For Kodíček, masculinity was a characteristic shared across the movement, rather than an exclusive feature of any one of its subgroupings.
6 Felski, Rita, The Gender of Modernity (Cambridge, MA, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Felski, “Masking Masculinity: The Feminization of Writing,” 91–114. See also Le Rider, Jacques, Modernity and Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, trans. Morris, Rosemary (New York, 1993)Google Scholar, esp. Part II, “Crises of Masculine Identity,” 77–161.
8 See Strohsová, Eva, Zrození moderny [The Birth of the Modern] (Prague, 1963)Google Scholar, 37.
9 Marinetti, F. T., “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” trans. Flint, R.W., in Futurist Manifestos, ed. Apollonio, Umbro, 19–24 (Boston, 2001)Google Scholar, at 22.
10 Adamson, Walter, “Futurism, Mass Culture, and Women: The Reshaping of the Artistic Vocation, 1909–1920,” Modernism/Modernity 4, no. 1 (1997): 89–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 103.
11 Adamson, 102. It is worth noting, however, that other scholars question the sincerity of Marinetti's commitment to women's rights. See Spackman, Barbara, Fascist Virilities: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Social Fantasy in Italy (Minneapolis, 1996)Google Scholar, 12, for a more skeptical view.
12 de Saint-Point, Valentine, “Manifesto of the Futurist Woman,” in Futurism and Futurisms, ed. Hulten, Pontus, 602–603 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar, at 603. Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Futurism and Futurisms” shown at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice. Emphasis in original.
13 Schorske, Carl, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981)Google Scholar.
14 Schorske, 263–73. See also Luft, David, Eros and Inwardness in Vienna (Chicago, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 See Mosse, George, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York, 1996), 155–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blum, Cinzia Sartini, The Other Modernism: F.T. Marinetti's Futurist Fiction of Power (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996), 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Spackman, Fascist Virilities, xiii.
16 An excellent example of this approach is Duncan, Carol, “Virility and Domination in Early Twentieth-Century Vanguard Painting,” in Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany, ed. Broude, Norma and Garrard, Mary D., 293–313 (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.
17 See Tickner, Lisa, “Men's Work? Masculinity and Modernism,” Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations, ed. Bryson, Norman, Holly, Michael Ann, and Moxey, Keith, 42–82 (Hanover, NH/London, 1994)Google Scholar.
18 The outstanding example of this approach is Izenberg, Gerald, Modernism and Masculinity: Mann, Wedekind, and Kandinsky through World War I (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar.
19 See, for example, Thomas, Alfred, The Bohemian Body: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Czech Culture (Madison, WI, 2007)Google Scholar. Thomas's book is one of very few sources that directly explores issues of gender and sexuality in the Czech cultural context in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it touches only in passing on the prewar modernist movement. It does, however, include a chapter on Karel Čapek's plays of the 1920s and 1930s. Like Thomas, Izenberg, Mosse, Le Rider, and Felski all argue for a “crisis of masculinity” in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Europe. But Izenberg also criticizes the way this framework is usually employed on the grounds that the reasoning behind it is circular: Evidence for the crisis is drawn overwhelmingly from modernist texts, but characteristic features of the same texts are said to be the products of the crisis. He maintains that the case for a “crisis of masculinity” can only be made by examining the individual psychodynamics of exemplary modernists, which is precisely his approach. (See Izenberg, 15–16.) Since my approach is not psychobiographical, I hesitate to use this framework despite its explanatory potential. The Czech modernists who are the subjects of my study may very well have had ambivalent feelings about their own masculinity, but the sources I have drawn on for this paper do not alone provide sufficient insight into this question.
20 Čapek, Karel, “O čapkovské generaci [The Čapek Generation],” in O umění a kultuře III [Art and Culture III], ed. Macek, Emanuel and Pohorský, Miloš, 309–15 (Prague, 1986)Google Scholar, 314 (hereafter OUKIII). Originally published in Přítomnost, 9 March 1932.
21 Karel Čapek, “O dvou publikacích [Two Publications],” OUKIII, 638. Originally published in Lidové noviny [The People's Paper], 4 March 1935.
22 František Götz, “Tak zvaná generace čapkovská [The So-Called Čapek Generation],” Přítomnost, 18 November 1931, 700.
23 Ibid., 726.
24 Matejka, Ladislav, ed., Czech Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology, vol.1 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1973)Google Scholar, 347. See also Novák, Arne, Dějiny českého písemnictví [A History of Czech Literature] (Prague, 1994)Google Scholar, 243.
25 See Josef Kodíček, “Z nové poesie III [New Poetry III],” Lumír (1913); and Strohsová, Zrození Moderny, 14.
26 Čapek, Josef, “J. Karásek ze Lvovic Posvátné ohně [J. Karásek ze Lvovic Sacred Fires],” Umělecký měsíčník [Art Monthly] 1 (1911–12)Google Scholar, 144.
27 Ibid., 143.
28 Although Neumann identified wholeheartedly with the aspirations of the prewar modernist generation and became one of its most important spokesmen, he was in fact closer in age to an earlier generation of writers, the so-called generation of the 1890s.
29 Neumann, Stanislav K., “Ať Žije Život [Long Live Life],” in Osma a Skupina výtvarných umělců, 1907–1917: Teorie, Kritika, Polemika [The Eight and the Visual Artists Group: Theory, Criticism, Polemics, 1907–1917], ed. Padrta, Jiří, 140–42 (Prague, 1992)Google Scholar (hereafter OaS). Originally published in Lidové noviny, 2 August 1913.
30 Neumann, Stanislav K., “K nové poesii sociální [The New Social Poetry],” in Ať Žije Život! Nové úvahy o novém umění [Long Live Life! New Reflections on Modern Art], ed. Neumann, Stanislav K., 136–52 (Prague, 1920)Google Scholar, 139 (hereafter AŽŽ). Originally published in Lidové noviny, 14 November 1913. Emphasis in original.
31 Neumann, “Různé odpovědi [A Range of Responses],” AŽŽ, 82–83. Originally published in Lidové noviny, 12 September 1913.
32 Neumann, “K nové poesii sociální,” AŽŽ, 141.
33 Neumann, “Otevřená okna [Open Windows],” OaS, 140. Originally published in Lidové noviny, 9 August 1913. The entire “Long Live” section reads as follows:
Long live:
the liberated word, the new word, fauvism, expressionism, cubism, pathetism, dramatism, orphism, paroxysm, dynamism, plastic art, onomatopoeism, the poetry of noise, the civilization of inventions, and journeys of discovery!
Long live:
machinism, sports fields, Frištenský, the Českomoravská Machine-Tool Works, the Central Slaughterhouse, Laurin and Klement, the crematorium, the cinema of the future, the Circus Henry, the military concert on Střelecký Island and in Stromovka Park, the World's Fair, railroad stations, artistic advertising, steel, and concrete!
Long live:
modernism, life in its fluidity, and the art of civilization.
Long live:
Vincenc Beneš, V.H. Brunner, Josef Čapek, Karel Čapek, Otakar Fischer, Otto Gutfreund, Jóža Gočár, Stanislav Hanuš, Vlastislav Hofman, Josef Chochol, Pavel Janák, Josef Kodíček, Zdeněk Kratochvíl, Bohumil Kubišta, František Kysela, František Langer, Stanislav K. Neumann, Otakar Theer, Václav Špála, Wojkowicz, etc!
Portions of the translation above are taken from Sayer, Derek, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton, NJ, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 158.
34 Strohsová, Zrození moderny, 37.
35 Josef Čapek in a letter to S.K. Neumann, September 1913, in Jarošová, Stanislava, Blahynka, Milan, and Všetička, František, eds., Viktor Dyk, St.K. Neumann, Bratři Čapkové: Korespondence z let 1905–1918 [Viktor Dyk, St.K.Neumann, the Čapek Brothers: Correspondence from the Years 1905–1918] (Prague, 1962)Google Scholar, 56. The Almanach na rok 1914 [Almanac for the Year 1914] was one of the most famous collections of prewar Czech literary modernism. It also included cubist etchings by the painter Václav Špála and theoretical articles on modernist painting and music. In this letter, Josef Čapek contrasted “masculine” art not to “feminine” art, as was almost always done, but to “sexless” (bezpohlavní) art. This is undoubtedly an interesting and suggestive variation on the rule, but I have found no other instances of such usage.
36 Neumann, “Cirkus [Circus],” Almanach na rok 1914 (1913), 64. “Miluji jeho plakáty, / že vybuchují jako granáty.”
37 Čapek, Karel, “Několik poznámek k moderní literature [A Few Remarks on Modern Literature],” in O umění a kultuře I [Art and Culture I], ed. Macek, Emanuel and Pohorský, Miloš, 332–36 (Prague, 1984)Google Scholar, at 336 (hereafter OUKI). Originally published in Přehled [Digest], 10 October 1913.
38 Karel Čapek, “K nejmladší německé poezii [The Newest German Poetry],” OUKI, 338.
39 See, for example, Pavel Janák, “Proti náladě v architektuře [Against Mood in Architecture],” OaS, 185–87. Original published in Umělecký měsíčník 1 (1911–12). See also Hofman, Vlastislav, “O secessi [The Secession],” Styl [Style] 5 (1913): 118–19Google Scholar.
40 Janák, “Proti náladě v architecture,” 185–87.
41 Of the four principal architects who pioneered the cubist style in the Bohemian Lands, two—Josef Chochol and Pavel Janák—studied directly with Wagner in Vienna. The others—Josef Gočár and Vlastislav Hofman—were trained in Prague by teachers strongly influenced by Wagner.
42 Janák, Pavel, “Otto Wagner,” Styl 1 (1908–09): 48Google Scholar.
43 Chochol, Josef, “K funkci architektonického článku [The Function of the Architectural Element],” Styl 5 (1913): 93–94Google Scholar.
44 Schorske, 263–73.
45 Because the Schorske thesis has been so influential, the literature that seeks to revise or modify it is also vast. But for a collection of some key critiques, see Austrian History Yearbook 28 (1997)Google Scholar; and Beller, Steven, ed., Rethinking Vienna 1900 (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.
46 See, for example, Hanák, Péter, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton, NJ, 1998)Google Scholar; and Spector, Scott, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka's Fin de Siècle (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Spector rejects Schorske's strict opposition of politics and aestheticist culture, but his book affirms the idea of an aestheticist turn among Prague German-Jewish writers in response to their estrangement from their milieu.
47 For a more extended discussion of the applicability (or inapplicability) of Schorske's thesis to the Czech-identified artists of Prague, see Ort, Thomas, Art and Life in Modernist Prague: Karel Čapek and His Generation, 1911–1938 (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 This includes members of the Czech prewar modernist generation who were Jews. Kodíček is one example.
49 See Rider, Jacques Le, Modernity and Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, trans. Morris, Rosemary (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.
50 See Harrison, Thomas, 1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The book opens with a description of a rash of suicides among young Austrian artists and intellectuals in the year 1910.
51 Kann, Robert A., A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526–1918 (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1974), 464CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Cohen, Gary, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1914 (Princeton, NJ, 1981), 132–34Google Scholar.
53 See, among others, Karel Čapek, “Otázka národního umění [The Question of National Art]” and “Tradice a vývoj [Tradition and Development],” OUKI, 272–76 and 342–46. Originally published in Volné směry [Open Paths] 17 (1912–13) and Volné směry 18 (1913–15). Volné směry is often translated into English as “Free Directions,” but I think a superior if slightly looser rendering is “Open Paths.”
54 Neumann, “Otevřená okna,” 66. Emphasis in the original.
55 See Weiss, Jeffrey, The Popular Culture of Modern Art: Picasso, Duchamp, and Avant-Gardism (New Haven, CT/London, 1994), esp. 49–105Google Scholar. See also Green, Christopher, Cubism and Its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916–1928 (New Haven, CT/London, 1987)Google Scholar; and Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1914 (Cambridge, MA, 2000), 181–210Google Scholar. None of these sources promotes this view of cubism. Rather, they describe a broad range of responses to the style, including many popular and critical misconceptions.
56 Bohumil Kubišta, “O duchové podstatě moderní doby [The Spiritual Foundation of the Modern Age],” OaS, 90. Originally published in Česká kultura [Czech Culture] 2 (1913–14).
57 This is Schorske's argument about expressionism in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. See “Explosion in the Garden: Kokoschka and Schoenberg,” 343–66.
58 Čapek, Josef, “Kandinsky: Über das Geistige in der Kunst,” Umělecký měsíčník 1 (1911–12): 270Google Scholar.
59 Josef Čapek, “Krása moderní výtvarné formy [The Beauty of Modern Artistic Forms],” OaS, 136. Emphasis in original.
60 Čapek, Josef, “První Berlínský podzimní salon [The First Fall Salon in Berlin],” Lumír 42 (1914): 94Google Scholar.
61 Karel Čapek, “K nejmladší německé poesii,” OUKI, 338–42. Originally published in Přehled, 31 March and 7 November 1913, 104–05, 127.
62 Karel Čapek, “K nejmladší německé poesii,” OUKI, 339–40.
63 Ibid., 340.
64 Ibid., 340–41.
65 Josef Čapek, “Tvořivá povaha moderní doby [The Creative Character of the Modern Age],” OaS, 133. Originally published in Volné směry 17 (1912–1913).
66 Karel Čapek, “Moderní lyrika francouzká [Modern French Lyric Poetry],” OUKI, 305.
67 Vlastislav Hofman, “Duch přeměny v umění výtvarném [The Spirit of Change in the Fine Arts],” OaS, 211. Originally published in Almanach na rok 1914 (1913).
68 Kubišta, “O duchové podstatě moderní doby,” OaS, 91–92. Emphasis in original.
69 Karel Čapek, “Moderní umění [Modern Art],” OUKI, 372–73. Originally published in Přehled, 13 and 20 March 1914.
70 Hofman, “Duch přeměny v umění výtvarném,” OaS, 212. Emphasis in original.
71 Josef Čapek, “Krása moderní výtvarné formy,” OaS, 136. Emphasis in original.
72 Karel Čapek, “Několik poznámek k moderní literatuře,” OUKI, 333–36.
73 Hofman, “Duch přeměny v umění výtvarném,” OaS, 212.
74 Karel Čapek, “Několik poznámek k moderní literatuře,” OUKI, 336.
75 Čapek, Josef, “Výstava futuristů [A Futurist Exhibition],” Lumír 42 (1914): 140–42Google Scholar.
76 Karel Čapek, “Výstava maleb italských futuristů [An Exhibition of Italian Futurist Painting],” OUKI, 349. Originally published in Česká revue (1913).
77 Emil Filla, “Z berlínských výstav [Exhibitions in Berlin],” OaS, 166–67. Originally published in Umělecký měsíčník 1 (1911–12).
78 See Vincenc Beneš, “Nové umění [Modern Art]” and “Kubistická výstava v Mánesu [The Cubist Exhibition at Mánes],” OaS, 106 and 169–72. Both originally published in Umělecký měsíčník 2 (1912–1914)Google Scholar.
79 Filla, “Z berlínských výstav,” OaS, 167.
80 Karel Čapek, “Výstava maleb italských futuristů,” OUKI, 349.
81 Ibid.
82 Mosse, 156.