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ALCHEMIST AND MAGICIAN. JOSEF SUDEK AND EMIL FILLA

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Lahoda V.

Umění (Art)

2004

vol. 52

issue 6

518-536

The article treats the development and impact of the dialogue between the photographer Josef Sudek and the painter Emil Filla. Sudek was referred to by some of his friends as an 'alchemist'. In a review in 1947, Frantisek Kovárna described Emil Filla as a 'magician'. Filla became acquainted with Josef Sudek sometime in the 1920s, probably through his editorial work for the journal 'Volné smery' (Free Directions). Filla built up an extensive archive of Sudek's reproductions of his own paintings. 'Chaos' was one of the favourite concepts that Sudek employed in analysing his photography. It was connected with the 'principle of uncertainty' that Anna Fárová has studied as the common denominator in all of Sudek's works. The concept of 'chaos' was most in evidence in Sudek's 'Labyrinth' cycles, strange and mysterious still lifes. Chaos was another expression of the confusion that fascinated Sudek as early as the photographs of St Vitus (1924-1928). Metamorphosis, inner transformation, uncertainty - these were also characteristic of Filla's cubist paintings. Filla had a tendency to describe artwork in terms of 'nternal expansiveness', 'dramatic explosiveness', and 'charged energy'. Elsewhere in Filla's texts, the concept of chaos is suggested by the term 'cacophony'. Filla considered it to be an essential part of language, including the language of art. In 1933, an exhibition of Filla's drawings was held in the 'Krásná jizba' (Beautiful Room) in Prague. Josef Sudek, who had had his first exhibition there in 1932, probably helped Filla get a show in the DP sales room. One of the collections that Sudek showed in his first exhibition in 'Krásná jizba' was the set of photographs taken of the completion of St Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Sudek interpreted the interiors of the church as still lifes, with a sort of surrealist disorder. Some of Sudek's photographs have a quality that one might call a cubist representation of space. This principle was the foundation of what Sudek called 'imaginary space'. The unified, perspectival space as seen through a peep-hole was disturbed by one, or sometimes a series of interspaces that had a separate meaning and impact. Even back then, Sudek was undoubtedly familiar with Filla's still lifes, which were examples of the construction of a magical space. Introducing 'chaos' into a photograph did not mean just creating a bizarre arrangement of things and objects, Sudek's characteristic 'mess', but also destabilising the point of view of the section photographed. The interpretation of the 'cubist' principle is even more obvious in Sudek's unique series 'Glass Labyrinths' (1963-1972). There he used glass plates or mirrors to create a multitude of spaces with the help of reflections and views of things. In the 1930s, but especially after his return from Buchenwald and after the renewed contact at the end of the 1940s, Filla initiated Sudek into the mysteries of cubist and Dutch still lifes, into questions of the origin of still lifes and the role of Caravaggio, about whom he published a theoretical study (The Mission of Caravaggio, 1925). Hence Sudek's photograph 'Still Life after Caravaggio' (1956). In 1948, Sudek visited Filla at the Peruc Chateau in the 'Ceské stredohori' (Bohemian Upland), which was loaned to Filla as a residence by the Czechoslovak state after his return from the Buchenwald concentration camp. At the beginning of the 1950s, Sudek inspired Filla to work on horizontal, elongated landscape drawings of the 'Ceské stredohori', which Sudek photographed using a panoramic camera. Sudek's cycle 'Memories' was also started at Peruc. Like Sudek in 'Memories', Filla in his paintings, perhaps under the impression of the poetic souvenirs of the photographer, also dwelt on beauty, the past and, above all, Holland, where he had lived in 1914-1920. What connected Sudek and Filla was a common sense of the intuitiveness of the creative process.

'WE ARE SEARCHING IN HISTORY FOR OUR OWN LOVES'. STILL-LIFES, CARAVAGGIO AND CUBISM: A CZECH READING

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Lahoda V.

Umění (Art)

2007

vol. 55

issue 3

196-206

This study deals with Caravaggio's role in Czech thought on Cubism. It begins with a discussion between Vincenc Kramar and Karel Teige which took place in 1949. Perhaps surprisingly, Teige refers to Caravaggio in his concept of Cubist 'tectonic painting': Caravaggio's painting aims at pure plasticity and less so at subject matter, which is reason for the avant-garde theoretician to put him in the same category as the architecture plate et coloree of Juan Gris or Picasso's 'tectonic paintings' in which the pure plasticity or sculpturality of matter dominates. In presenting Caravaggio as a precursor of the modernist sculptural conception of painting, Teige was preceded by the Czech Cubist painter Emil Filla (1882-1953), who acquainted himself well with the works of the old Dutch masters during his exile in Holland in 1914-1920 and dealt with the idea of 'objectivity' in their work. In the introduction to 'Dutch Still Life' (1916), an article published in the magazine 'Volne smery' (Free Directions) (XXII, 1924-1925), he mentions the name of Caravaggio, whom he takes to be the founder of a peculiar genre of still lifes which hearkened back to the Dutch masters of the 17th century. Filla emphasises the idea of objectivity which is neither a scientific documentary quality nor a pure objectivism, but the result of an action on the part of a subject - the creative act of a painter. For Filla, objectivity means a conciliation between objective and subjective factors in a painted object. In 1925, Filla published, also in 'Volne smery', a study on Caravaggio's vocation. Once again, Filla holds Carvaggio's sculptural conception of the surface of painting in high regard. Filla's work is followed up by his friend and collector, the patron of Cubism and art historian Vincenc Kramar in his essay 'The Inception and Character of the Modern Still Life: Caravaggio's Creative Act' (Volne smery XXIII, 1924-1925, pp. 129-160, 177-179). When Filla was writing his reflections on Jan van Goyen and on Caravaggio in the early 1950s at Peruc Castle, he was visited by the photographer Josef Sudek. He listened attentively to the well-versed painter's thoughts on Cubism, 17th-century Dutch art and Caravaggio. Sudek's photographically arranged still lifes in honour of Caravaggio of 1956 which he did not create until after Filla's death (1953) may be understood as a reminiscence of Peruc and his friend Filla as well as of the role of Caravaggio in Filla's theory.

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ALCHEMIST AND MAGICIAN. JOSEF SUDEK AND EMIL FILLA

'WE ARE SEARCHING IN HISTORY FOR OUR OWN LOVES'. STILL-LIFES, CARAVAGGIO AND CUBISM: A CZECH READING