Albín Polášek: Boundaries of Continents and Ages
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FILOSOFICKÁ FAKULTA MASARYKOVY UNIVERZITY Dějiny umění Seminář dějin umění Bachelor thesis ALBÍN POLÁŠEK: BOUNDARIES OF CONTINENTS AND AGES Author: Mgr. Anna Jaegerová Thesis advisor: doc. Mgr. Pavel Suchánek, Ph.D. Brno 2017 1 I hereby declare that I have authored this thesis independently and that I have not used other than the cited sources and literature. Mgr. Anna Jaegerová 2 Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my thesis advisor, doc. Mgr. Pavel Suchánek, Ph.D., for the continuous support, guidance and great patience. The door to doc. Suchánek’s office was always open whenever I ran into trouble or had a question about my research or writing. He allowed the thesis to be my own work, but steered me in the right direction whenever he thought I needed it. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my work. Enormous thanks goes also to my father, Steven Jaeger, who has helped me with researching sources in the United States and with making my understanding clearer by leading long discussions about sculpture with me. He has dedicated a tremendous amount of time in the past few months to support me in any way he could to make my thesis the best it could be, for which I am very thankful. I would like to thank Dominik Matus, DiS., who helped me with archival research in the Czech Republic and who took valuable photographs for my study and for the appendix of images. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my family and my fellow schoolmates for their feedback, support and of course their friendship. They motivated me to work harder and deliver a better performance by expecting nothing less than a great result from me. 3 Table Of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 5 2 LITERARY RESEARCH .............................................................................................................. 7 3 BIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 11 3.1. EUROPEAN BEGINNINGS ............................................................................................................................. 11 3.2. EMBRACING THE NEW WORLD .................................................................................................................... 12 3.3. PRIX DE ROME .......................................................................................................................................... 15 3.4. NEW YORK STUDIO.................................................................................................................................... 17 3.5. CHICAGO CAREER ...................................................................................................................................... 18 3.6. CREATING FOR HIS HOMELAND .................................................................................................................... 21 3.7. DEPRESSION AND WAR .............................................................................................................................. 22 3.8. FINAL YEARS............................................................................................................................................. 23 4 CONTEXT AND TRENDS IN AMERICAN SCULPTURE ................................................................ 26 4.1. AMERICAN CLASSICISM AND MORAL EARNESTNESS.......................................................................................... 26 4.2. CHARLES GRAFLY ...................................................................................................................................... 28 4.3. MODERN CHALLENGES TO RODIN ................................................................................................................. 29 4.4. ARCHAISM AND THE ROME ACADEMY FELLOWS .............................................................................................. 30 4.5. EXPRESSIONS OF PATRIOTISM AND RELIGION .................................................................................................. 33 5 ANALYSIS OF THE THEODORE THOMAS MEMORIAL .............................................................. 35 5.1. MODELS OF THE ‘SPIRIT’ ............................................................................................................................. 35 5.2. THE FINAL FIGURE ..................................................................................................................................... 37 5.3. ICONOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................................................... 39 5.4. THE ENSEMBLE WITH THE GRANITE WALL ...................................................................................................... 43 5.5. BEAUTIFYING THE CITY ............................................................................................................................... 44 5.6. CONNECTION TO ARCHAISM ........................................................................................................................ 47 5.7. FOUNDATIONS OF POLÁŠEK’S WORK: MAIDEN OF THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA .......................................................... 48 5.8. LATER WORK: A NOTE ON RADEGAST ............................................................................................................ 52 6 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 59 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY: ................................................................................................................... 62 8 APPENDIX OF IMAGES .......................................................................................................... 66 4 1 Introduction While the pages of exhibition catalogs, textbooks, and popular literature are filled with the names of history’s most famous and talented artists, the works of countless, less recognized individuals sit beside the iconic pieces of art history in the galleries and, especially in the case of sculpture, also in our public spaces with a story of their own. Every artist responds to their environment with their own set of skills, influences and visions as they create works of art for themselves and for their patrons. One such artist, a twenty-two year old immigrant to America at the turn of the twentieth century, found his calling as a sculptor and built himself a career around his vision of the world. Albín Polášek, like millions of his fellow immigrants, came to the United States looking for a chance to better his lot in life and developed his talents into a respectable, if not spectacular, career. By examining the life and character of the man and analyzing representative sculptures from his oeuvre - especially one of his most important public commissions in Chicago, the Theodore Thomas Memorial - while at the same time setting them in the context of his American contemporaries, I hope to shed light on the choices that shape the form of his art and begin to identify its meaning. Polášek has passed through time unheralded despite leaving behind a lifetime of work, much of which still stands in public places both in the United States and in the Czech Republic. According to the Albin Polasek Foundation, he created over 400 works, which display a great variety of subject matter, style, material and scale.1 In his time, he was sought-after for his portraiture, producing distinguished busts, but also portrait reliefs and commemorative statuary. Although his output in America included allegorical figures, mythological garden statues and funerary memorials, today he is primarily recognized for his public monuments – several of which are generally recognized among Czech people despite their knowing little or nothing of the man who created them. Most notable in the latter category is the monument of the pagan god Radegast situated on Mount Radhošť near Polášek’s birthplace in Moravia, which is not only a popular tourist site, but also a well-known image, for it has been used commercially as the logo of a local brand of beer. Similarly, statues of Saints Cyril and Methodius – also situated on Mount Radhošť – and the Woodrow Wilson Monument in Prague, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941 and re-erected in 2011, may be familiar on this side of the Atlantic. Polášek’s work deserves a fair hearing of its place in the history of art, for the enduring nature of sculpture, and often its public display, maintains its presence in the physical environment. Alice Levi Duncan, director of the Gerald Peters Gallery and author on American sculpture, suggests that the 1 Debbie Komanski – Karen Louden – Cynthia Sucher, The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens, Winter Park 2008, p. 4. 5 diminished interest in Polášek’s work may be due to his reliance on academic traditions, his focus on technical skill and the overall air of severity in his work, which doesn’t correspond to the current vision of modern art.2 Despite his faded repute, I will attempt to revisit Polášek’s work in the context of place and time in order to reveal aspects of his life that shaped his vision of what sculpture should be. As an immigrant to the United States in 1901, Polášek lived most of his life in his New World home while not losing sight of his Bohemian origins and Moravian identity. I can personally relate to Polášek in this respect, for I also