Journal of Art Historiography Number 7 December 2012
Czech art history and Marxism
Milena Bartlová
Czech art history after the Second World War was pursued in a state dominated by
Soviet power and as such it presents a prominent example of the coexisting synergy
and conflict between the Vienna School and Marxism. Research into this
relationship may provide valuable insight into the character of Czech art historical
tradition. I will attempt to show the role played by Marxist, Marxist-Leninist and
Stalinist thinking in Czech art history against the background legacy of the Vienna
School of art history.1 The introduction of Marxism into Czech art history has to
come to terms with this legacy, as before the Second World War the Czech art
historical milieu was a self-proclaimed devoted and faithful follower of the Vienna
School. The shape of Czech Marxism in art history, however, differs quite
significantly from that which one might expect from the vantage point of the
Western world. Frederick Antal, who personifies the contact between the two
approaches, was unambiguously rejected, and authors such as Meyer Schapiro and
T. J. Clark remained virtually unknown. Czech Marxist art history displayed
pronounced disinterest in the social history of art and instead, solely concentrated
on the problem of realism. The most interesting period was the 1960s, when the
Viennese tradition was re-evaluated during the search for ‘humanist Marxism’, or
Revisionism. Reframed, it was fundamentally strengthened as a methodology and
considered the only truly scientific one. The only scholarly analysis devoted to
Czech Marxist art history and published before the end of the 1980s was by
Rostislav Švácha.2 It is based on good quality research but is written from a position
inside Marxism and not surprisingly, Šváchaʼs study thus lacks a critical distance
from its topic.3
1 I have traced the character of the transition from Austro-Hungarian to Czechoslovak art history in my
contribution to the colloquy organized by Matthew Rampley at The Royal Academy in London in 2009.
The text will appear in a special issue of JAH edited by him. Other texts illuminating the position of
Czech art history in the context of the Vienna School include Hugo Rokyta, ʽMax Dvořák und seine
Schule in den Böhmischen Ländernʼ.Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst und Denkmalpflege, 28, 1974, 81-
89; Ján Bakoš, ‘Viedenská škola a český a slovenský dejepis umenia’ in: Ján Bakoš, Štyri trasy
metodológie dejín umenia. Bratislava 2000, 41-66; Otto M. Urban, ʽThe beginnings of modern art history
and art criticism in the Czech landsʼ, Centropa, 5, 2005, 40-48; Matthew Rampley, ʽHistory and the
politics of empire: rethinking the Vienna Schoolʼ, Art Bulletin ,91, 2009, 446-462.
2 Rostislav Švácha, ‘Dějepis umění v současnosti’ in: Rudolf Chadraba et al. eds, Kapitoly z českého
dějepisu umění, vol. 2, Praha 1987, 349-370. Cf. also Nicholas Sawicky, ‘Modernist paradigms after the
war: the case of Max Dvořák’, in: Vojtěch Lahoda ed., Local strategies, international ambitions. Modern art
in central Europe 1918-1968, Praha 2006, 47-52, who is the only one to briefly relate the Czech reception
of Dvořák to Marxism.
3 This is true even more concerning the two period overviews by Luděk Novák, ʽVýtvarná teorie
v letech 1953-1960ʼ, Umění, 9, 1962, 160-176 (dealing more with the theory of artistic practice than with
art history proper) and František Matouš, ‘Teorie a dějiny umění 1945-1965’, Umění, 11, 1965, 217-232.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
2
Two methodological restrictions deserve a preliminary mention. Firstly, I
will proceed within the framework of the history of discourse, while devoting only
marginal attention to the history of institutions, art historical topics and
biographical research. This restriction is dictated by the fact that general inquiry into
the historiography of four decades of Czech history under the rule of the
Communist Party (1948-1989) has only gained momentum in the past few years.
Until now, there existed just a few historical studies explaining the processes of
continuity and discontinuity between the strong left-wing cultural and political
Czech tradition of the inter-war period, post-war years and the period of Socialism
(after 1960), and Marxist Revisionism of the 1960s.4 Twenty years of disinterest can
be easily recognized as an act of negative memory, of forgetting; the type identified
as ‘monological forgetting’ by Aleida Assman. More than twenty years after the
political revolution of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, the predominance of moral
judgement has receded only slowly in Czech society and this has affected both
membership of the Communist Party (the legal order contains a law from 1991
which declared the CP a ‘criminal and despicable organization’), and also the
reception and application of Marxism in scholarly research. As a result important
creative personalities of the second half of the 20th century ─ in our case art
historians ─ may have, at times, been members of the ruling Communist Party and
information about them would have to be mined from personal archive files. Their
membership may have had a decisive impact on their public activities and on the
challenges they had to face in their careers. Besides, one definition of Marxism
considers it to be a theoretical component of Communist activism and in fact its
employment was deemed self evident for any CP member. As a result, it is often
hard to decide whether published texts merely represent outer signs of loyalty to
the political regime, ‘just a camouflage’ (as they are often summarily designated in
retrospect), or whether they are the result of serious thinking and intellectual work.
The question of honesty in Communist engagement, or rather its lack, is primarily
considered in actual Czech discourse ─ paired with retrospective moral judgment. I
will leave it to one side, however, and will also only refer to the institutional level
marginally. Still, I am convinced that it remains feasible and legitimate to follow the
relationship between Czech art historical Marxism and the legacy of the Vienna
School of art history predominantly within the framework of published texts. My
second restriction concerns the fact that the state of informative sources does not
allow me to pursue the topic of both Czech and Slovak art historiographies in
parallel with each other, in spite of the fact that the developments took place in the
common state of Czechoslovakia (1918-1939, 1945-1992) and there existed a web of
mutual contacts.5
The Czech intellectual milieu during the inter-war decades was
characterized by a marked prominence of a Leftist orientation. The Czechoslovakian
Communist Party was one of the strongest communist parties in Europe. In 1946 it
4 Jiří Knapík, Únor a kultura: sovětizace české kultury 1948-1950, Praha 2004; Jiří Knapík, V zajetí moci:
kulturní politika, její system a aktéři 1948-1956, Praha 2006 ; Michal Kopeček, Hledání ztraceného smyslu
revoluce. Zrod a počátky marxistického revizionismu ve střední Evropě 1953-1960, Praha 2009.
5 Both national art historiographies together are sketched with further references in Milena Bartlová,
‘Art History in the Czech and Slovak Republics: Institutional frameworks, topics and loyalties’, in:
Matthew Rampley et al. eds., Art History and Visual Studies in Europe, Leiden 2012, 305-314.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
3
became the only one to win a parliament majority in free elections and many artists
were already members before the war. Among visual, literary and theatrical artists
there was a strong Soviet-oriented vanguard movement including the prominent
theoretician Karel Teige (1900-1951), who attempted to conciliate surrealism with
Communism during the 1930s and 40s.6 The reason why art history did not join this
prevailing trend is not immediately clear. It may have had something to do with the
generally rather conservative taste of the central figures of the Czech art historical
establishment. The director of the state art collections Vincenc Kramář (1877-1960),
who already appreciated Cubism before the First World War, stood apart from his
peers in this respect. He disregarded the otherwise strong insistence on the necessity
of a ‘time gap’ which only enables art historical engagement with new art after
thirty or fifty years have elapsed. The class affiliation of mainstream Czech art
history was unambiguously bourgeois.7
The Czech art historical establishment rarely paid attention to the activities
of the Prague Circle and to Jan Mukařovskýʼs formation of structuralist aesthetics
and theory in the 1930s.8 The Czech art historians felt satisfied and safe with the
legacy of the Vienna school as represented by Vojtěch Birnbaum (1877-1934) at the
Prague University. His student and successor to his chair Antonín Matějček (1889-
1950) was himself a late student of Max Dvořák. The status of this latter method was
confirmed by defending it against the indigenous tradition represented by Karel
Chytil (1857-1934).9 The art historical methodology developed by Birnbaum, which
has remained dominant until today, consists of two aspects which are loosely
connected. One is a rigorously formal analytic approach coupled with positivist
historicism as a double tool for art historical research concentrated on individual
artworks. The main art historical target is, however, a narrative of linear artistic
developments construed according to laws which, once discovered, are considered
objective and true, not to be questioned but only applied. The whole methodological
structure is generally indebted to Franz Wickhoff more than to Alois Riegl. This
resulted in a sceptical distance from art historical theory (including Riegl), from
methodological self-analysis as well as from new methodological inspiration.
Another result was a rather strict concentration on local artworks that could be
researched in the desired depth and detail and which conformed to the task of any
research in humanities which was seen to confirm Czech national identity. Ideas of
Dvořákʼs later years, which turned the history of art into a ‘spiritual history’
6 Karel Srp ed., Karel Teige 1900-1951. Kat. výst. Galerie hl.m. Prahy 1994; Tomáš Hříbek, ‘Karel Teige
and the “wissenschaftliche Weltauffasung”ʼ, Umění 53, 2005, 366-384; Matthew S. Wittkovsky, ‘Karel
Teige,’ in: Matthew S. Wittkovsky ed., Avant-Garde art in everyday life. Exh. Cat. Art Institute of Chicago
2011, 99-116; Karel Teige, Modern Architecture in Czechoslovakia and Other Writings, Los Angeles 2000.
7 Brief portraits of the prominent Czech art historians between the wars are included in my paper ‘The
Czech Legacy of the Vienna School of Art History’ (forthcoming). Their upbringing and family
background seems to have been most often the Czech ‘Bildungsbürgertum’. Unfortunately, Czech
biographical research generally overlooks the matter of class (I am indebted to Marta Filipová for
bringing this question to my attention).
8 Ján Bakoš, ‘Der tschecho-slowakischer Strukturalismus und Kunstgeschichtschreibung’, Zeitschrift für
Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 36, 1991, 63-66; Ján Bakoš, ‘Česko-slovenský štrukturalizmus a
dejepis umenia. Pražský lingivstický krúžok a dejiny umenia’ in: Bakoš 2000, 161-220.
9 For more about the character of this antagonism cf. my paper ‘The Czech Legacy of the Vienna School
of Art History’ (forthcoming).
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
4
remained present outside the academic establishment, with teachers at artistic
academies.10 Against this background we will assess the two original art historical
thinkers from two generations of Antonín Matějčekʼs students at the Prague
University: Pavel Kropáček in the 1940s and Jaromír Neumann a decade later.
Pavel Kropáček (1915-1943) started his career early, received his PhD aged
twenty-four and his medievalist achievements were highly praised by his teacher. In
the late 1930s he engaged with the fine art scene and became a theoretician of
Skupina 42 (Group 42). He died in Auschwitz, aged only 28, as a consequence of his
participation in the underground Communist resistance movement during the
war.11 His dissertation on panel painting from the Hussite period ─ the indigenous
Reformation movement in the first half of the 15th century ─ was published
posthumously. Kropáček successfully combined the standard rigorous formal study
of individual artworks with their inclusion in a different framework from the
equally standard ‘history of ideas’ of Dvořákʼs followers. Uniquely influenced by
Mukařovský, he adopted a broader structuralist approach that would need to be
elaborated more deeply in order to bring more effective results. It was clearly
Kropáčekʼs individual fate that inhibited a further development of structuralism in
Czech art history and thus a later parallel to Hans Sedlmayrʼs generation in Vienna.
Because the Czech history of older - especially medieval - art was so strongly
informed by the need to promote national qualities of artistic production, we would
expect to find some fiery opposition to the German nationalism of the Viennese
structuralists and consequently some kind of emancipation of the Czech art history
from Vienna. Unfortunately, such a discussion was prevented from taking place by
the historical situation ─ first during the war when Czech intellectual life was
suppressed and then after the war because of the Communist takeover of power and
ensuing severance of international connections with countries outside of the Soviet
Bloc.
Jaromír Neumann (1924-2001) belonged to the generation of young Czechs
who flocked to universities after the end of the war,12 most of whom joined the
Communist Party at the same time. Their belief in the moral superiority of the
Soviet state, ideology, science and culture in the post-war period was genuine.
Neumann belonged to the young people who formed self appointed ‘revolutionary
committees’ in 1949-1950 under the auspices of the CP, which expelled professors
and students from the universities who were not judged ideologically acceptable.
Among the older generation of Czech art historians, Vincenc Kramář was the only
one to enrol in the CP by 1945, aged sixty-eight, once again going against the
mainstream of his peers. He declined the offer of becoming the director of the new
National Gallery taking excuse in his failing health but he remained committed to
10 Václav V. Štech and Jaromír Pečírka, cf. the latter´s afterword to the collection of translated essays by
Max Dvořák, Umění jako projev ducha, Praha 1936. Translation of Geistesgeschichte as ‘history of ideas’
shifts the semantic focus away from Dvořákʼs ‘spirit’ which includes an important spiritual dimension.
11 Eva Petrová, ‘Pavel Kropáček’, in: Anděla Horová ed., Nová encyklopedie českého výtvarného umění.
Praha 1995, 409-10; Karel Stejskal, ‘Pavel Kropáček’ in: Chadraba 1987, 342-347 (Stejskal here refers to
Kropáček as Marxist, a mistake I repeated in my paper ‘Vývoj českého malířství krásného slohu v
pojetí Pavla Kropáčka’, Ars 1996, 156-159; Hana Rousová, ‘Živý pes Pavel Kropáček’, in: Jiří Ševčík et
al.eds., Alén Diviš: paralelní historie, Praha 2006, 28-37.
12 Czech universities were forcedly closed during the Nazi occupation between 1939 and 1945.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
5
the new regime. The leading figures of a younger generation, Antonín Matějček and
Jan Mukařovský only joined the party, as many others did, when it became a
totalitarian ruling force after the successful Communist power takeover in February
1948. This was clearly in order to support their academic careers. From 1948
onwards, Marxism-Leninism became the sole approved and officially acceptable
methodological approach to anything, including art historical research.
A brief clarification of terminology may be helpful at this stage. The object of
our inquiry is the position and role of Marxism in Czech art history. Between the
1950s and 1980s however, the official ideology, whose primacy was embodied
directly in the Czechoslovak Constitution, was Marxism-Leninism. Considered by
its opponents as a major deviation or even treason against the legacy of Marx and
Engels, the ideology was developed in the Soviet Union between the wars. The
Leninist part consisted of an adaptation of Marxist philosophy to the social reality of
underdeveloped Eastern European countries where industrialization was lacking
and the proletariat formed a tiny minority of the population.13 One noticeable
feature was the resignation of internationalism. In retrospect, the formative role of
Russian Orthodox traditions, imperial politics and the political culture of Byzantine
or Persian origin are evident. Marxist rhetoric remained obligatory but the decisive
role was attributed to the collective wisdom of the Communist Parties – under the
direction of the Soviet CP − as the sole source of legitimacy. This held true even
more for Stalinism with its personality cult, which was a totalitarian regime whose
practices were related to German Nazism. In Czechoslovakia the period of Stalinism
in the 1950s, under strong and direct Soviet surveillance, should be distinguished
from the 1960s when the search for pristine and ‘humanist Marxist’ philosophy rose
and consequently the reading of original Marxist texts returned. This period
witnessed an increased dialogue with the West that included Marxists outside the
Soviet Bloc countries but not those intellectual developments which had elaborated
on classic Marxism, like the Frankfurt School or the Althusserian circle. The 1970s
and 1980s were affected by the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 and the
ensuing establishment of a neo-Stalinist regime, weaker in political practice but
authoritarian in ideology and rhetoric. Due to the self-proclamation of much of the
period’s writing as ‘Marxist’ a precise differentiation may often be difficult.
However the whole situation cannot be properly understood without discriminating
between Marxism, Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism.
After the introduction of Marxism-Leninism as the only acceptable
ideological and philosophical framework in 1949, Czech art history found itself in a
peculiar position. Czech art history was not forced to denounce its own tradition
from the first half of the 20th century, as was the case of the other humanities that
had been influenced by semiotics and structuralism. It was also able to continue its
own long-standing and highly formative discourse on the tense confrontation
between Czech and German speaking cultures.14 The dispute fitted perfectly into the
new political situation that followed the expulsion of the three-million German
minority from the country in the aftermath of the Second World War, between 1945
13 Cf. Archie Brown, The rise and fall of Communism, London 2009; Eric Hobsbawm, How to change the
world. Tales of Marx and Marxism, London 2011.
14 I have analyzed this background in my book Naše, národní umění. Studie z dějin dějepisu umění, Brno
2009. It is in the process of being published in German translation.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
6
and 1946. In spite of its residual internationalist rhetoric, Marxism-Leninism
allowed space to sustain the self-confirmation of national collectivism without
having to renounce it in favour of class collectivism. Unlike historiography,
however, Czech art history had no Marxist experience of its own. The theoretical
writing of Karel Teige was not considered part of art history but as an aesthetic and
critical stance concerning actual artistic practices. Moreover Teigeʼs texts, written
prior to his suicide in 1951, remained unpublished until 1966.15 The rapid settlement
of this debt can be recognized around the year 1950 in the texts of prominent art
historians. In the middle of the 1950s marked contributions began to appear by
Marxist-Leninist oriented art historians of the younger generation. After the deaths
of Stalin and his devoted Czech ally Klement Gottwald in 1953-5416 and the 20th
Congress of the Soviet CP, the second half of the decade introduced what is
probably the most interesting chapter of Czech Marxist art history, relying on Max
Dvořák for a new synthesis of a Viennese legacy with Marxism, which was
promulgated around 1960. At its core was a unique appropriation of iconology and
participation in a wider stream of Revisionism in the Central European Soviet Bloc
countries in their search for a ‘humanist Marxism’.
The most interesting aspect of this development may be the fact that Czech
art historyʼs reorientation towards Marxism did not take place within the
framework of social art history which was, on the contrary, sharply denounced as
‘vulgar sociologism’ ─ a code-word used to label an adherence to original Marxism
that disregarded the Leninist contribution.17 This caused a real split between Czech
Marxist art history and its counterparts in the West. The overview of Marxist art
history published by Andrew Hemingway does not pay any attention to art
historical developments in the Soviet Bloc countries, including Czechoslovakia, and
this is typical of such an overview.18 Seen from the other side it is symptomatic that
Meyer Schapiro remained virtually unknown in Czech art history, even though he
had close personal experience with pre-war Vienna.19 A plan to publish a selection
of Meyer Schapiroʼs essays in the middle of the 1980s was undoubtedly supported
by the Marxist affiliation of the author. It was protracted beyond the fall of the
Communist regime and when the book finally appeared in 2006 almost all mention
of Schapiroʼs Marxism had been omitted.20 The Czech translation of Arnold
Hauserʼs Philosophy of Art History was arranged in the 1970s by aestheticians and
elicited no response among art historians.21 The synthesis of Nicos Hadjinicolau has
15 Karel Teige, Vývojové proměny v umění, Praha 1966.
16 A joint obituary for both state and party leaders written by Jaromír Neumann introduced the first
issue of the new central art historical journal Umění in 1954.
17 Rudolf Chadraba, ‘Sociologie umění’ in: Sáva Šabouk ed., Encyklopedie českého výtvarného umění,
Praha 1975, p. 474-476.
18 Andrew Hemingway ed., Marxism and the history of art: from William Morris to the New Left, London,
2006.
19 Evonne Levy, ʽSeldmayr and Schapiro correspondʼ, Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 59, 2010, 235-
264.
20 The afterword by the volumeʼs editor Karel Srp was also published separately as ʽDějiny umění
podle Meyera Schapiraʼ, Umění, 48, 2000, 22-40.
21 Arnold Hauser, Filosofie dějin umění, Praha 1975. In the standard Czech textbook of art historical
methodology, Hauser is briefly mentioned together with Elias and Bourdieu in a short chapter entitled
‘Sociology of Art History’. Marxist art history does not qualify as a research category at all, similarly
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
7
remained completely unknown until today and Horst Bredekampʼs dissertation of
1975 has only been on record because its third part is devoted to that iconic topic of
Czech history, Hussitism.22
In contrast, Frederick Antalʼs Florentine Painting and it Social Background, a
book of crucial importance for Marxist art history that grew from the orbit of the
Vienna School, was translated almost immediately and appeared in summer of
1954.23 The impulse behind the publication was undoubtedly the Viennese affiliation
of Antal who had been Dvořákʼs student and thus the book was clearly expected to
provide the desirable foundation for a Czech Marxist art historical methodology. In
the afterword, Jaromír Neumann (aged twenty-eight at the time) harshly
reproached Antal and argued that the book cannot be termed Marxist at all.
Neumann found Antalʼs mistakes in his overly direct transition from a class analysis
to a stylistic one and in his consideration of art as a mechanical product of social
classes, or strata, to which the donors belong. In Neumannʼs opinion, Antal starts
from a false concept of development and does not take into account the ideas of
Engels and Lenin concerning historical development. As a result, Antal was made
accessible to Czech readers but at the same time rebuked from a Stalinist vantage
point. This criticism was prolonged into the second half of the 1950s and onwards,
when ‘sociologism’ was deplored as unacceptable. Social art history in the Czech
context was at least partially vindicated in the 1970s but until very recently any
approach that would account for the decisive roles of recipients of artworks and
investors in them has been habitually denounced as unacceptably prioritizing the
social environment over the artwork itself.
Instead of developing social art history, the art historians and critics who
declared themselves Marxists or Marxist-Leninists concentrated on the debate over
Realism. The discussion absorbed the energy of prominent art historians from three
generations and revolved around Leninʼs theory of reflection, which claimed to
explain the epistemic role of visual arts. A highly interesting contribution to the
debate was made by Vincenc Kramář who managed to sidestep Stalinist
terminology. Kramář developed genuine Marxist principles in order to prove that
Realism does not mean the simple replication of visible facts but their creative
reformulation, and that Cubism was a successful example of realist art.24 On the
basis of private correspondence with Kramář, Karel Teige expressed the same idea
more sharply and openly in a text written between 1949 and 1950 and not intended
for imminent publication.25 Teige, however, opposed Kramářʼs conclusion that
Cubism specifically should be included in Realist art, but he stressed that the
opposite derogatory label of ‘Formalism’ should apply neither to Cubism, nor to
Abstract art. Both scholars clearly stated that the style propagated as ‘Socialist
Realism’ reproduces petty bourgeois values and is supported by true reactionaries.26
with books by Donald Preziosi or Eric Fernie. Jiří Kroupa, Metody dějin umění I-II, Brno 2009-2010, 279-
283.
22 Horst Bredekamp, Kunst als Medium Sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt a.M. 1975.
23 Frederick Antal, Florentské malířství a jeho sociální pozadí, Praha 1954.
24 Vincenc Kramář, ʽO realismu a formalismuʼ, Výtvarné umění, 4, 1954, 45-48.
25 Karel Teige, ‘Pokus o názvoslovnou a pojmoslovnou revisi’, in: Teige 1966, 9-139.
26 Vincenc Kramář, Kulturně-politický program KSČ a výtvarné umění, Praha 1946, 7. While the CP
proposed its political program of 1946 in order to cover up its true Stalinist aims before the takeover of
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
8
Jaromír Neumannʼs contributions around 1950, on the other hand, faithfully
conformed to the official Stalinist terminology and practice. In his doctoral thesis,
defended in 1950 and devoted to Realism in Bohemian seventeenth-century
painting, Neumann explained Baroque art as a combative ideological product of late
feudalism directed against the progressive because ─ early bourgeois in character ─
Renaissance and Reformation cultures. 27 The book was clearly written under the
influence of Antalʼs concept of Marxism as social art history. In 1951, the year of its
publication, Neumann performed a ‘public self-criticism’ ritual and confessed that it
was only the teaching of Stalin and the CP that had helped him to turn away from
the malignant influences of structuralism, as represented by Mukařovský, Kropáček
and the Slovak structuralists.28 Were it not for Neumannʼs shift in position, as
clearly expressed in the afterword to Florentine Painting mentioned above, his
dissertation could have formed a strong foundation for Czech Marxist art history. It
would be methodologically incorrect to disregard the period rhetoric but it is still
quite clear in retrospect that Neumannʼs criticism of Antal was far from implausible.
Some recent criticism of Antal, Hauser and Max Raphael arrives at similar
conclusions, while adding that such a ‘rudimentary form of Marxist art history’
could have only been brought to completion later by the followers of the Frankfurt
School, with the help of Walter Benjaminʼs writings and after the rediscovery of Aby
Warbug in the 1990s.29
The widely held conviction that conformism to official Marxist-Leninist
ideology only affected research in modern art whilst early art remained untainted,
cannot be sustained. It was clearly present in the 1950s work of Jaroslav Pešina
(1912-1992), the son-in-law of Antonín Matějček from whom he inherited the highly
prestigious scholarly focus on medieval painting together with a respected position
in the Czech art-historical establishment. His specialty in Late Gothic painting led
Pešina to the topic of Hussitism which the Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia
construed as its crucial legitimating historical epoch. Pešina relied on the studies of
the young Communist historiographers to show that, as an analogy to the
privileged epistemic historical position of the proletariat, the Hussite revolution also
had a fundamental meaning in history. From this it followed that artistic production
related to the Hussites is not marginal and unimportant ─ as evaluated by standard
art history ─ but on the contrary, it has a world-wide importance.30 According to
Pešina it is only logical, for example, that the use of Nuremberg originals as
power in 1948, Kramář shared the idealism of other leftist intellectuals in this remarkable booklet and
defended the Communists’ cultural politics. For context, see Knapík 2004.
27 Jaromír Neumann, Malířství XVII. století v Čechách, Praha 1951.
28 Jaromír Neumann, ‘Boj o socialistický realismus a úkoly naší výtvarné kritiky a historie umění’, in:
Za vědecké dějiny umění a novou kritiku, Praha 1951, 19-79, esp. 51. On Slovak structuralism cf. Ján Bakoš,
‘Česko-slovenský štrukturalizmus a dejepis umenia. Pražský lingivstický krúžok a dejiny umenia’ in:
Bakoš 2000, 161-220.
29 Otto Karl Werckmeister, ‘The Turn from Marx to Warburg in West German Art History 1968-90’ in:
Hemingway 2006, 213-220, esp. 214. While an anthology of Benjaminʼs texts was published in Czech
translation already in 1979, both the Frankfurt School and Warburg remained largely unknown among
Czech art historians until the 1990s. Cf. also Berthold Hinz, ‘Kunst und Geschichte nach dem
Mauerfall: Marx – zu Hegel – auf den Kopf stellen!’ in: Andreas Berndt et al. eds., Frankfurter Schule
und Kunstgeschichte, Berlin 1992, 183-190.
30 Jaroslav Pešina – Mojmír Hamsík, ʽTriptych monogramisty I.V.M. Příspěvek ke studiu problematiky
českého malířství 15. stoletíʼ, Umění, 2, 1954, 21-40.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
9
inspiration for art in Bohemia was delayed for more than three decades, as the
difference conformed to the differences in the development of social productive
forces between the two countries. Unlike Kramář or Neumann, Pešina used Leninist
and Stalinist axioms of simplified textbook Marxism to construe his argument. It
seems that in the beginning of the 1950s he has succumbed to the most seductive
fallacy of Marxism, namely its capacity to provide easily understandable
explanations and directions.31 Although Pešina abandoned this position after 1956,
he relied on the results he achieved in this way in his further research. In 1959 he
developed an argument concerning the popular character of artistic production in
the Hussite period, and in 1964 he construed his explanation of the art of the
Beautiful Style as being ethnically Czech and socially plebeian on the same basis.32
The work of a pupil may best exemplify the teacher’s ideas. This is certainly the case
with Karel Stejskal’s (b. 1931) study on the Realist character of the style of the socalled
Rajhrad Altarpiece (second quarter of the fifteenth century). He defended it
against an allegation of Naturalism and characterized the measure of progressive
Realism in the pictures by assessing ‘the measure of closeness of the artist’s
approach to reality and his creative grasp of it’.33 What may strike a reader today as
an example of a narrow-minded ideological approach, was in its time a
proclamation of a moderate opposition to the official propaganda, revealed in the
subtleties of selected terminology and logic of argument which measured the
progressive quality of creativity and did not judge it on the basis of class alone.34
Ten years later, Karel Stejskal was among the protagonists of what I would
call the ‘iconological turn’. This was elaborated by Jaromír Neumann in his studies
which were already published before 1960.35 Neumann suggested that instead of a
one-sided concern for a social dimension of art, art historians should devote their
attention to the creative dimension, and to its source which is to be found in the
artist’s imagination. In contrast to his earlier criticism of Dvořák as a bourgeois
thinker, Neumann now considers Dvořákʼs methodology as a valuable inspiration
that may be of help in the search for an assessment of art as a creative ─ and not
31 Tony Judt, Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century, London 2008, 135 (citing Leszek
Kolakowski).
32 Jaroslav Pešina, ʽStudie k malířství poděbradské dobyʼ, Umění, 7, 1959, 196-227; Jaroslav Pešina,
ʽK otázce retrospektivních tendencí v českém malířství krásného slohuʼ, Umění 12, 1964, 29-34.
33 Karel Stejskal, ʽPodoba císaře Zikmunda – prostředkem boje husitského umění proti feudální reakciʼ,
Acta universitatis Carolinae 7 – Philosophica et historica, Praha 1954, 67-75; Karel Stejskal, Archa rajhradská
a její místo ve vývoji českého umění první poloviny 15. století, Universitas Carolina - Philosophica 1, Nr 1.
Praha 1955, 61-94, esp. 64.
34 Robert Suckale explained in similar way the qualitative difference between the texts of Wilhelm
Pinder and the official Nazi propaganda in the early 1940s, cf. Robert Suckale, ʽWilhlem Pinder und die
deutsche Kunstgeschichte nach 1945ʼ, kritische berichte, 14, 1986, Nr. 4, 5-17.
35 Jaromír Neumann, ʽK dnešním metodickým otázkám dějepisu umění: poznámky o výtvarné
představivostiʼ. Umění 6, 1956, 178-188; Jaromír Neumann, Umění a skutečnost: úvahy o realismu
v uměleckém vývoji, Praha 1963. The most important deficiency of the text by R. Švácha 1987 (as Note 1)
is a complete omission of this initiative and creative role of J. Neumann in the methodological shift
around 1960. Neumann is credited only with ‘vulgar Marxism’ around 1950 while the position of an
authoritative protagonist of Czech iconology is attributed to Rudolf Chadraba. The reader should bear
in mind that when the volume was being written in the middle of the 1980s, Neumann was expelled
from the CP and was tolerated only on the margins of the field, while Chadraba was the main editor of
the book and a vice-director of the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
10
mechanical ─ reflection of historical consciousness.36 While in 1956 Neumann still
noted that Dvořák remained an insurmountable idealist, four years later he
considered Dvořákʼs work as a possible foundation for Marxist art history thanks to
his employment of dialectical method, his lack of materialism notwithstanding.37
Iconology, retrieved by Neumann from Panofskyʼs recent books, offered a
possibility to synthesize the Viennese ─ and specifically Dvořákʼs ─ tradition of
‘spiritual scholarship’ with the Marxist demand that historiography should provide
knowledge of the ideological dimension of history. The ‘idealistic’ component of
Dvořákʼs art historical method could be safely set aside while the main benefit
resided in his dialectic; it was a dialectic which marked the decisive break from the
‘dogmatic’ ideology of Stalinist years. Iconology began to be understood as a
method that enabled researchers to expose the thinking and ideology of times past
through a direct analysis of an image, without recourse to social and historical
circumstances, which were considered external and contingent. Instead of ‘intrinsic’
or cultural meaning of artworks, the entity thus revealed would be the ideological
superstructure of an historical epoch, which did not need to be derived from its
material, economical basis. Seen from a certain distance it seems clear that this
methodological convergence was made possible by the intellectual habit of
Hegelianism ─ shared by both the Viennese tradition and Marxism.38 It was
precisely this habit that was ─ together with the conviction about the direct
epistemological role of a visual image ─ refused by thinkers who had turned
towards inspiration in structuralism and semiotics.
The most interesting feature of the synthesis may be that although it
considered itself Marxist, it completely disregarded class analysis of specific
artworks, their production and consumption. The only exception seems to be
Neumannʼs thesis on Baroque realism, discussed briefly above. The background
from which the new interpretation of iconology, and of Dvořákʼs history of ideas,
was developed was the one-sided interest in realism. The decisive character of art
and style was seen in their direct epistemic role, regardless of social situation, which
for Czech art history unambiguously remained an external factor. The Marxist twist
of iconology continued to be attractive to Czech art historians for forty years. In the
1960s, iconology seemed to be an exceptionally sophisticated tool for exploiting the
epistemic potential of artistic heritage. Its character was strongly indebted to
Dvořák, as art historians did not consider it necessary to search for relevant period
texts that would be used for the interpretation of artworks and none of Panofskyʼs
original Neo-Kantian basis remained in place. The method was stripped of its strict
consistency and reframed as a direct interpretation of the ‘physiognomy of forms’
(indebted to the Gestalt tradition). Motifs in images were interpreted as bearers of
‘hidden symbolic utterance’ without taking any recourse to semiotics. This hidden
information could be interpreted as secular or as political, in both cases, as opposed
to spiritual or church messages, which were labelled as merely covering up, with
36 Sawicky 2006.
37 Jaromír Neumann, ʽDílo Maxe Dvořáka a dnešekʼ, Umění, 9, 1961, 525-575. The whole issue of the
journal was devoted to reassessment of Max Dvořák.
38 Cf. Ján Bakoš, ‘The Vienna Schoolʼs hundred and sixty-eighth graduate: the Vienna Schoolʼs ideas
revised by E. H. Gombrich’ in: Richard Woodfield ed., Gombrich on art and psychology, Manchester 1996,
234-361.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
11
the help of period ideology, what was really at stake.39 After all, the method of
‘reading between the lines’, or the belief that the true meaning of public utterance
can be encoded for reasons of safety and must therefore be deciphered as it could
prove to be in opposition with the first superficial reading, was a common semantic
practice for the inhabitants of Soviet Bloc countries in the 1960s, 70s and 80s: this
was the proper way to read daily newspapers.
Similarly, the insistence on autonomous artistic development, as opposed to
the idea of art as participating actively in the life of a society, conformed to the need
to maintain creative artistic freedom in face of manipulations of artistic production
on part of the authoritarian regime ruled by the Communist Party. The basic
compliance between the Dvořák-type iconology and the tradition of the Czech
branch of the Vienna School can be seen also in the fact that this platform could
provide a common ground for art historians who set out from Marxism – as did
Neumann and Stejskal − and for those who started from an ideologically opposite
position, namely from Catholic spiritualism. It seems clearer now why Max Dvořák
gained an almost sacred character in Czech art history. He was the great and worldrespected
Czech speaking member of the Vienna School of art history. But
additionally, it was through his legitimization that Czech art history was, as early as
the beginning of the 1960s, able to find a solution to the task of establishing a
methodology that would be acceptable to the official ruling ideology. As a result of
its ‘iconological turn’ the Czech art historical establishment could call itself Marxist
and at the same time was able to retain a position of elitist ‘bourgeois humanism’.40
Suppressed and out of the focus of theory, bourgeois class consciousness was
allowed to flourish in Czech art historical academic and museum establishments,
perhaps aided by another officially repressed area of art historical competence,
namely private collecting. In the 1950s as well as 1970s, art history departments
were inhabited by finely dressed and elegant men with polished manners, both
members of the Communist Party and its outsiders. The discipline was pursued as
an elitist sanctuary of humanistic values, safely shielded by its scientific
methodology from the excessive demands of the ruling ideology.
In the 1970s, iconology also became a starting point for researchers in
modern art like František Šmejkal and Petr Wittlich, although they moved gradually
closer towards psychoanalysis and semiotics. The sum of these approaches was
called Marxist art history up until the end of the 1980s and managed to retain its
strong bond with the Viennese tradition of fundamentally historical explanations of
artworks.41 Was this Marxism, or was it not? As far as it considered itself to be so,
39 The most ambitious books are Rudolf Chadraba, Dürers Apokalypse – eine ikonologische Deutung, Praha
1964 and Josef Krása, Die Händschriften König Wenzeles IV, Praha 1971. They both gained international
relevance because they were published in German and English. The topics of both Krása and Chadraba
developed impulses of the leading Vienna School scholars, Julius Schlosser and Max Dvořák
respectively.
40 The situation seems to have been closely parallel in Poland with the prominent personality of Jan
Białostocki. The fate, methodologies and politics of art history in the individual countries of the Soviet
Bloc were, however, rather specific and the lack of relevant research forbids me to pursue a more
detailed account of the topic here. For a recent survey see Ján Bakoš, ‘Paths and Strategies in the
Historiography of Art in Central Europe’, Ars, 43, 2010, 85-118 and relevant chapters in Rampley et al.
2012.
41 Švácha 1987.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
12
we may have to classify it as a specific branch of Marxist methodology. On the other
hand it may be difficult to find a place inside any relevant definition of Marxism for
an approach that explicitly disregards the social framework of art production and
consumption, and does not attribute class analysis a central place.
Attempts at different methodological starting points remained isolated and
had no followers: this holds, for example, for the semiotics of art proposed by the
theorist Josef Zvěřina.44 The intensity of the methodological tradition of the Vienna
School can be discerned also in the fact that until today there has not been a great
deal of understanding in Czech art history for those approaches that would
disregard the history of forms as a basic framework of interpretation. This concerns
first of all the Heideggerian phenomenology that became ─ thanks to efforts of
philosopher Karel Kosík ─ the source of inspiration for ‘humanist Marxism’ or
Revisionism in the 1960s.45 We could say that the Dvořák-style iconology fulfilled a
similar role to phenomenology within the Czech intellectual environment, but their
mutual contact was not considered necessary. There was, however, one important
exception, Václav Richter (1900-1970) from Brno University, who created a specific
methodology by synthesizing phenomenological inspiration with the tradition of
the Vienna School in spite of his sparse, or perhaps non-existent, contact with the
contemporaneous texts of Kurt Badt or Lorenz Dittmann. Richter read Hans G.
Gadamer (although he never cited him) and he reframed the Viennese
epistemological basis using the concept of ‘mental model’. Following Heidegger
himself, Richter attempted to interpret Baroque architecture as a bearer of meanings
that could be recognized through sensually concrete bodily experience, and not with
the help of information gained from research into historical ideas and ideologies.
The letters exchanged between Richter and his close personal friend Jan Patočka leading
phenomenologist of European stature but banned from the philosophical
establishment and institutions - reveal that Richterʼs efforts were considered rather
naïve by the professional philosopher.46 Václav Richter had a creative follower in the
1970s, Ján Bakoš, who was a Slovak art historian, while Patočkaʼs teaching in the
late 1960s influenced a small group of art history students in Prague.47 Taken as a
whole however, phenomenology never gained the influence in art history that could
match its dominance in Czech philosophy, and there seem to have been no attempts
at synthesizing it with Marxism.
The case of the second Brno professor in the art history department,
medievalist Albert Kutal (1904-1976), confirms the original role of the marginal but
44 Josef Zvěřina, Umělecké dílo jako znak, Praha 1970. Zvěřina was a Roman Catholic priest and
theologian, persecuted by the Communist regime, and he did not participate in the art historical scene
beside this delayed publication of his dissertation. Attempts at an officially acceptable convergence of
semiotics and Marxism in theories of visual art were pursued, on a mediocre level and without much
success, by Sáva Šabouk, ʽTeorie umění a umělecká kritikaʼ, Estetika, 21, 1984, 19-29.
45 Tomáš Hříbek, ‘Proti metodě: Karel Kosík o architektuře a urbanismu’, in: Marek Hrubec et al.,
Myslitel Karel Kosík. Praha 2011, 225-250; Kopeček 2009, esp. 263-270.
46 Václav Richter, Umění a svět. Studie z teorie a dějin umění, Praha 2001; Ivan Chvatík – Jiří Michálek
eds., Jan Patočka, Dopisy Václavu Richterovi, Praha 2001; Rostislav Švácha, ‘K “odstupu” a “parciálnosti”
v soudobém dějepisu uměníʼ,Umění, 29, 1981, 473-485; Rostislav Švácha, ‘Václav Richter’ in: Chadraba
1987, 284-294; Ján Bakoš, ‘Epistemologický obrat na ceste historika umenia’ in: Bakoš 2000, 109-123.
47 Only Dalibor Veselý is known internationally from this group, all others published only in Czech.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
13
intellectually potent Brno school of art history.48 Kutal benefited from contact with
an important historian of the younger generation at Brno University, Josef Válka,
who mediated the knowledge of post-war French historiography. This enabled
Kutal to elaborate on his interest in the social history of the Annales School
tradition.49 Although the relationship between Annales School and Marxism has not
been unambiguous, it proved possible to employ this inspiration in Czech
historiography without provoking official discontent. For Kutal, the French
inspiration served to complement his methods, which remained within the
framework of Czech methodological tradition combined with moderate iconological
attempts, and a decent but never complete absence note of Czech national
identification of form and contents of medieval artworks.
The concept of ‘Marxism without classes’ in Czech art history proved
valuable once again after the demise of the Communist regime. Apart from several
politically compromised individuals who had to leave the scene, Czech art history
found itself in a comfortable situation after the turn of 1989. It has continuously
upheld the position of an elitist humanistic discipline, which was only briefly
engaged in Stalinist ideology and practice in the early 1950s but moved beyond
them long ago, harmonizing with the appeal of the predominant neo-conservative
atmosphere of the new capitalism in the 1990s. If more radically historically oriented
approaches to old art have found their way into Czech art history in recent decades,
inspired, for example, by Robert Suckale or Svetlana Alpers, the stress on the
elements of volition on the part of donors and the public of artistic production is
adversely confronted by the deeply rooted belief in the idea of autonomous artistic
development. Its primarily formal character is still paired with the concept of an art
history ruled by the laws of development, a field of research which can directly
access and reveal ideas ─ even the Spirit ─ of history. From this vantage point it can
be concluded that Czech art history is a faithful and devoted part of the legacy of
the Vienna School of art history. Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism, opposed the local
branch of Viennese tradition only briefly and essentially did not weaken but rather
strengthen this deep seated continuity. At the same time, however, the distrust in
art historical theory became stronger than before, as the Marxist-Leninist episode
serves as an exemplary menace. As a result, Czech art history largely remains
deeply suspicious of any fresh inspirations. 50
Milena Bartlová teaches at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague
after thirteen years at the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno.
Professor since 2005, she is up till now the sole female art history professor in her
country. She writes about medieval art history in Central Europe, about art theory
and she is one of the very few Czech art historians to also do research in art
48 Ján Bakoš, ‘Umeleckohistorické stanovisko Alberta Kutala’, in: Bakoš 2000, 69-108; Milena Bartlová,
ʽAlbert Kutal zum 100. Geburtstagʼ, Kunstchronik, 57, 2004, 448-449.
49 Martin Nodl, ‘Otázky recepce francouzské historiografie v českém prostředí: totální dějiny, dlouhé
trvání a mentality’ in: Dějepisectví mezi vedou a politikou. Brno 2007, 139-171; personal communication of
Válkaʼs student Jiří Kroupa.
50 I am indebted to Marta Filipová (Birmingham) for her informed corrections and insightful
suggestions which helped me greatly in the final revision of the text.
Milena Bartlová Czech art history and Marxism
14
history´s history. Her book Our own, national art (Naše, národní umění, Brno 2009)
analyzed the construction of national identity through medieval art history and the
history of German-Czech relationship in the field. This year she published a book on
performative theory of medieval image Real presence: medieval image between icon and
virtual reality (Skutečná přítomnost: středověký obraz mezi ikonou a virtuální realitou)
which she started to write as a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin
(2008).
Bartlova.M@seznam.cz