Preliminary Notes on Cubist Architecture in Prague
[The following is the text of a lecture prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University) for a Liberal Studies Abroad Program (Prague 2004). The text is in the public domain and may be used, in whole or in part, without permission and without charge, provided the source is acknowledged. Released April 2004]. For comments and questions please contact Ian Johnston.
Preface
The following cursory observations arise out of my attempts to learn something about the architecture of Prague in preparation for a visit to the Czech Republic. Such a project leads one quickly enough to claims in any guide to the city that cubist architecture is an important part of the urban landscape, that, in fact, Prague offers a uniquely rich collection of buildings in that style. However, my wish to examine such claims in more detail by exploring just what the label Cubist Architecture means as an analytical term defining some specific characteristics of architectural form (like, for example, the terms Gothic or Baroque) quickly confronted me with what looked like something of a puzzle. The major histories of architecture I consulted made no mention of that style, and some knowledgeable people I asked, historians of art and teachers of architecture, generally found my question very odd. So what I had assumed would be an issue I could deal with quite quickly turned into a somewhat more challenging assignment. The paragraphs below are the result of my pursuing the issue somewhat further than I had originally intended.
Introduction
From an art historical perspective . . . any analysis of the relationship between architecture and cubism ultimately depends upon the contested definition of cubism itself. Quite apart from the question of whether there was such a thing as cubist architecture, today there is no consensus about the very meaning of cubism, as a style or as a historical phenomenon. Indeed, historians of cubism do not necessarily agree on who exactly was a cubist painter, or to whose work the written statements of the period apply. (Blau and Troy 4)
What exactly is Cubist Architecture? As the above quotation indicates, this question does not admit of a answer until one clarifies what one means by the term "Cubist" or "Cubism." Normally, of course, these terms refer most immediately to the modernist school of painting created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in Paris in the years immediately before World War I, a style marked by a rejection of realistic detail and an emphasis on fragmented abstract two-dimensional form, often picturing several aspects of an object simultaneously (for some examples please see Cubism). This sense of the term apparently has little obvious connection with architecture:
I see nothing cubist for example, but nothing at all, in the Duchamp-Villon's celebrated Maison Cubiste. . . . And though I have only a very limited knowledge of it, I'd say the same of the so-called "cubist" architecture of Prague. . . . My definition of cubism is resolutely narrow: it has little to do with the geometrising style that sent ripples through the entire Western world of art during the teens and developed into art deco a decade later; rather, it is exclusively concerned with the analysis of the conditions of pictorial representation, and their deliberate subversion, carried out by Picasso and Braque. (Bois 187)
Such a claim would seem fairly common among scholarly historians of architecture, who habitually refer to an alleged line between cubist painting and architecture only to erase it (see Colomina 141 ff) or omit any detailed discussion of Cubist Architecture in their surveys of modern styles.
Given this apparent consensus, an understanding of cubist architecture in Prague would seem to require a more empirical approach. Rather than looking for any clear formal connections between the revolution in painting and developments in Czech architecture or seeking some preliminary precision about just what that term cubist refers to and then looking for that in particular examples, we should perhaps derive our sense of what cubist architecture means from what those people who used the term intended by it their theoretical writings, their designs, and their finished buildings. The meaning of the term cubist architecture will then serve as a descriptive label for their efforts (cubist designs are designs people called cubist). And in following this line of enquiry, we should probably confine ourselves to the place where the major chapter of this phase of European modernism was being written, that is, to Prague itself, so that our concern is not really Cubist Architecture as a permanent and meaningful conceptual category but rather Czech cubist architecture as a historical phenomenon, an artistic response to a particular set of circumstances in a particular culture.
Modernism in Bohemia
The development of modernistic styles in art and architecture in Prague was inextricably bound up with the major political issues of the time, particularly with the continuing success of the National Revival, the sustained attempt to rescue Czech language and culture from extinction at the end of the eighteenth century in the face of official policies from Hapsburg Vienna designed to transform Bohemia into a faithful Catholic German-speaking part of the Austrian Empire (after 1867 the Austro-Hungarian Empire). By the end of the nineteenth century, the National Revival had had considerable success in re-creating a Czech culture, building a number of Czech institutions, and fostering a revival of spoken Czech, particularly by emphasizing traditional Czech customs, work habits, artistic styles, folk music, and story telling. Perhaps the most obvious symbol of this success was the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition in 1895 in Prague, a celebration of traditional rural Czech life (see Sayer 124 ff).
This thrust of the National Revival made a certain view of Czech history an essential aspect of the national identity (certainly in contrast to the Germanic culture of Vienna) and insisted that the true role for the Czech artist was to use his talents in the service of an urgent national need. Such a view inevitably bred a certain narrow parochialism:
This was the great paradox of Czech nationalism. In its blindness and thinly-veiled chauvinism it branded every demonstration of personality as non-Czech, since from the frog’s-eye view of its own puddle such manifestations had certainly very little to do with Czech reality. (Mucha 198)
A countervailing pressure among young artists at the end of the century was a turning away from the issue of national identity towards a more cosmopolitan internationalism, with an emphasis on various other priorities: individualism, equality, workers' rights, and ideals of socialist justice. The opening salvo from this camp came in 1895, the same year as the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition, when a group of young Czech artists published a Manifesto of Czech Modernism, a document rejecting an art based on outmoded traditions, "imitation national songs, versified folkloristic baubles," and an exclusive emphasis on national identity (quoted in Sayer 154). From that point on, the story of Czech modernism becomes the struggle between the continuing search for a national style, a Czech identity expressed in and developed by art and architecture, and the influential ideas and inspirations acquired from the vital and changing international artistic scene. In the development of this national identity, how was one to sort out the conflicting demands of the specifically Czech tradition established by the National Revival and the growing demand for other priorities not anchored in that tradition? What room was there for an art which focused exclusively on the individual at the expense of national issues? Should art concern itself with universal social principles rather than a Czech agenda? And so on.
[By a nice irony, as Sayer reminds us, the year 1895 also marked the sudden emergence of Alfons Mucha as an internationally famous artist and the leading figure in Art Nouveau in Paris. According to his own frequently repeated assertions, he derived his inspiration from traditional Czech and Moravian folk designs and was deeply committed to Slav nationalism. But his style was not recognized as particularly Czech (his own national origins were so obscured that many people thought he was French and spelled his name Alphonse), and the Czech nationalists did not see in his work a sufficiently explicit tribute to the National Revival. Besides, he was living in Paris and thus was for some people a "sell out," who had abandoned his native land. For more detail about Mucha's career, please click on the following link: Mucha]
What's particularly interesting in many of the debates about art and architecture throughout the modernist period in Bohemia (and elsewhere) is the idealistic and spiritual tenor of the arguments. To an extent that is perhaps difficult for us to recognize in these much more disillusioned and cynical times artists and architects saw their work as charged with high moral purpose, ranging from a commitment to the political ideals of pan-Slavism to the dreams of a distinct Czech identity or the loftiest utopian goals of international socialism. Hence, shifts in style or criticisms of existing styles, along with the acceptance or rejection of particular artistic projects, were an integral part of a wide and passionate debate about the most important political priorities of freedom and justice in a newly emerging Czech nation. In retrospect, given how the brutal ironies of later Nazi and Communist rule brought a swift end to this discourse, these modernist hopes may seem extraordinarily naive to us, but that should not obscure just how vitally important these elements were for the development of modernism in Prague.
In 1887 a group of artists formed the Mánes Union (named after the nineteenth century Josef Mánes) to promote internationalist styles in art, especially among young artists and to assist exhibitions of modern art. The first specifically modernist group in Prague (called Osma, meaning eight), inspired in part by the Edvard Munch exhibition in that city in 1905, was formed in 1907 by a group of Czech and ethnic German artists, who turned away from the prevailing styles to develop an aesthetic derived from expressionism and primitivism and who used their art to produce distinctively modernist works exploring their own alienation, moral suffering, and psychic pain (see Mansbach 16 ff). A few years later, in 1910, a number of Bohemian artists first experienced the work of Picasso and Braque in Paris. Under that influence, some former members of Osma and young artists influenced by cubism and expressionism founded the movement Skupina in 1911 "on the platform of cubism—initially called 'New Primitivism' or simply 'New Art'" (Švácha, Architecture . . . 101). The members of this group (which included some architects) developed an eclectic, powerful, and highly individualistic style.
The Czech artists born in the 1880s were a passionate group. Their establishment of Osma and Skupina can best be understood as a tempestuous bid to break through prevailing local conditions and psychological limitations and to deal with universal issues of cosmic importance. Hence, themes of extraordinary (and often disconcerting) expressive power—religious, anthroposophic, or excessively individual—were depicted in a vocabulary drawn from progressive international styles: German expressionism, French fauvism, analytic cubism. . . . The result of such a melding of styles and themes was a highly charged art that conformed to the disquieting conditions of the Habsburg Kingdom of Bohemia in a state of spiritual crisis and impending political collapse. ( Mansbach 54)
[Parenthetically, it's interesting to observe how close in spirit many of the these works are to the stories of Franz Kafka. For obvious reasons, interpreters of Kafka tend to locate the source of his imaginative vision in his personal life, particularly in his family relationships or his Jewish heritage. However, the fact that a number of other artists, ethnic Germans and Czechs, expressed similar anxieties suggests that there may be much more informing Kafka's disturbing visions than his unique personal background.]
