The Bohemian Art
By Vojta Beneš
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ODERN Bohemian Art is rather young. It came into being with the Bohemian Revival at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. And just as this revival in its other phases, political, commercial and industrial, and at last cultural in the full sense of the word, were weak and groping at first, so also our art grew from insignificant beginnings; and as all the activities of the regenerated nation clung to foreign influences at first, e. g. to the French Revolution, and the humanitarian philosophy of Herder, even so the beginnings of our art grew out of the cosmopolitan, characterless art, which came into Bohemia in its colorless international form from abroad.
And yet there lay in the soul of the Bohemian people immense treasures of the national artistic spirit—treasures of folk art. When in the era of religious expansion of Bohemian Brethren, these modest but rare creators of better Christian life were preserving for the future days their songs and hymnals, they decorated them with drawings, paintings, miniatures and illuminations so perfect in their delicacy, so thoroughly artistic, that to-day we turn back to them with great respect and admiration. This beautiful and in fact brilliant Bohemian Art succumbed to counter-reformation, as indeed did all the Bohemian Culture. Luckily, however, the counter-reformation could not completely destroy the character of the national spirit. In the simple peasant folk there was kept alive the national song with which grew up the national art of the people.
While in the upper strata of the Germanized Society the sense for the old Bohemian Culture was being lost, the Bohemian and Slovak people lived in their reminiscences, dressed in characteristic national dress, decorated their homes with exquisite embroidery, surrounded themselves with furniture of the original, national style, painted Easter Eggs, made original toys for their children, doves, dolls and roosters, steeped their whole lives in poesy, which had its source in their pure souls.
