Central European Neo-Avant-Garde Art and Ecology Under Socialism
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Central European Neo‐avant‐garde Art and Ecology under Socialism Maja Fowkes UCL PhD in Art History DECLARATION I, Maja Fowkes confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 ABSTRACT This thesis addresses the question of how the natural environment figured in the neo‐avant‐garde practices of the generation of artists who around 1970 started to engage with the subject across the socialist states of Central Europe, where various degrees of communist control over society influenced not only artistic production, but also limited access to information about the state of the environment and ecological discourse. The study examines a historical period influenced by the aftermath of the social and political upheavals of 1968, one where art entered the natural environment and engaged with environmental problems, which corresponded to the moment when ecological crisis was first registered on a planetary scale. Individual chapters devote attention to detailed examination of the practices of the Pécs Workshop from Hungary, the OHO group from Slovenia, TOK from Croatia, Rudolf Sikora from Slovakia and Czech artist Petr Štembera, each of whom developed distinctive approaches to the environment through the investigation of process‐based works, land art, public art, conceptual practices or performances, motivated by the neo‐avant‐garde tendency to dematerialise the art object. By focusing on their diverse approaches to the environment, which included engaging with the problems of ecological crisis, raising environmental awareness among socialist citizens, and exploring non‐ anthropocentric positions and cosmic perspectives, this comparative study analyses their practices in light of specific socio‐political and environmental circumstances, and reveals the complexity of art history as a discipline under socialism. Working from specific positions and with different artistic affinities, the artists considered here articulated a cosmopolitan voice which commented on the nationalist trespassing of nature, and the communist denial of the environmental crisis, and spoke about a burgeoning ecological imperative that spanned the globe and could not be confined within any imposed borders. 3 CONTENTS 1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5 2 Abstract Elements in Industrial Environments: The Land Art of the Hungarian Group Pécs Workshop……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………25 3 The Cosmic Environment of the Slovenian Group OHO…………………………………………………………….58 4 Ecology of the Socialist City: Public Art of the Croatian Group TOK…………………………………………..92 5 Correlations of Geography, Ecology and Cosmology in the Conceptual Practice of Slovak Artist Rudolf Sikora……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..125 6 Embodied Environmental Awareness in the Performative Practice of Czech Artist Petr Štembera…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..159 7 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………195 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………213 List of Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..237 4 Introduction The beginnings of modern environmental awareness crystallised around the middle of the nineteenth century, when the effects of the alteration of the natural environment caused by the rapid pace of industrialisation and the modernising force of the capitalist economy became increasingly visible. ‘Man is everywhere a disturbing agent,’ wrote George Perkins Marsh in one of the earliest comprehensive studies of environmental history entitled Man and Nature from 1864, in which he determined that wherever man ‘plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discord.’1 When French landscape painter Théodore Rousseau strolled around the woods, marshes and meadows in the vicinity of the village of Barbizon, he also observed the inextricable links between the conditions of the trees and the manmade changes to Fontainebleau forest. At that time, Fontainebleau was indeed not only a favourite subject for landscape painters, but had become an ideal leisure destination for escape from the strains of modern city life of nearby Paris, while its timber was extensively used as an economic resource.2 In 1852 Rousseau wrote a petition to Napoleon III in which he declared that ‘the artists especially decried the systematic felling, clear‐cuts, and unintelligent [pine] plantations that were made at Fontainebleau’ and appealed for ‘the places that are the subject of study for artists, recognised models for compositions and paintings, [to] be placed beyond the reach of the forest administration that runs them poorly.’3 As a result an official report into the administration of the forest was prepared the following year, which among other managerial measures, also recommended the protection of certain areas that were particularly specified in the artists’ petition, which should be ‘left unmanaged’. The artist’s plea and the response he received had as a consequence ‘the birth of modern conservation’ which, as art historian Greg Thomas stated, ‘unfolded from a painter’s determination to save his sacred studio.’4 The significance of this artist’s act did not go unnoticed when in 1971 a major Croatian art magazine Život umjetnosti 1 George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, ed. David Lowenthal (Seattle: Washington University Press, 2003), 36. 2 See: Steven Adams, The Barbizon School and the Origins of Impressionism (London: Phaidon, 1994), 157. 3 Petition to Napoleon III as reprinted in: Greg M. Thomas, Art and Ecology in Nineteenth Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 214‐217. 4 Ibid., 172. It was only in 1972 a text entitled ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’ was published, which is now considered seminal in discussion of the ‘legal rights of natural things’. See: Christopher D. Stone (1972), ‘Should Trees have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects,’ as reprinted in Thinking Through the Environment, ed. Mark J. Smith (London: Routledge, 1999), 211‐223. 5 devoted a special issue to the trendy theme of ‘Humans and their environment’, reporting that ‘the first, although partial, measure of protection of nature in modern sense could be considered the protection of woods of the Fontainebleau initiated by a group of painters’.5 Since Rousseau’s appeal, artistic involvement with ecology has corresponded to the intensity of the perceived immanence of ecological crisis and changing assessments of how acute the human impact on the environment really is, oscillating sharply as occasional eruptions of such awareness are promptly surpassed by the seemingly unchallengeable priority of social, political or economic imperatives. At present, although one can still feel the reverberations from the fervent artistic activities that preceded and accompanied the Copenhagen UN Summit on Climate Change in 2009, the sense of urgency around the environmental agenda has weakened again due to the failure of the summit to reach a binding agreement on cuts of CO₂ emissions and especially under the pressure of the global financial crisis.6 ‘The earth is undergoing a period of intense techno‐scientific transformations’ wrote Felix Guattari in 1989 and warned that if ‘no remedy is found, the ecological disequilibrium this has generated will ultimately threaten the continuation of life on the planet’s surface.’7 This was also the period when ‘popular dissatisfaction with polluted and unsafe environments’ in Eastern Europe became one of the main factors in triggering the ‘political unrest that brought down communist regimes,’8 in one of the rare instances when ecological and political agendas have coincided. The changes brought by 1989 entailed the restructuring of world divides no longer on the Cold War axis of East and West but rather along the fault lines between an economically differentiated North and South, while ‘sustainable development’ was introduced as a novel credo soon only to serve as a strategy for assimilation of ecology within neo‐liberal capitalism.9 5 Dragutin Alfier, ‘Proces internacionalizacije problematike i politike zaštite prirode,’ [Process of internalisation of problematic and politics of protection of nature] Život umjetnosti (Zagreb) 15‐16 (1971): 34. [My translation] 6 See for example catalogues of exhibitions: Anne Sophie Witzke and Sune Hede, eds., Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change (Arhus: Alexandra Institute, 2009); Franceso Manacorda and Ariella Yedgar, eds., Radical Nature – Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969‐2009 (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 2009). 7 Felix Guattari, The Three Ecologies (London: Continuum, 2000), 27. The publication first appeared in French in 1989. 8 Petr Pavlínek and John Pickles, Environmental Transitions: Transformation and Ecological Defence in Central and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2000), 6. 9 For some notable artistic projects realised for the 1992 UN Summit on sustainable development held in Rio see: Jeffery Kastner and Brian Wallis, eds., Land and Environmental Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1998). On 6 Another period of intensive interaction between art and ecology culminated around 1968, coinciding with the formation of contemporary environmentalism and the emergence of neo‐ avant‐garde art practice, before ecological concern became secondary to ‘the worries about an energy crisis’ that loomed shortly after the first UN summit on Human Environment