Category: ARTMargins Online: Articles

When Hitler took power in 1933, many artists and intellectuals left Germany and continued their work after emigration. One of the countries that provided a new “home” to a number of those exiled was Czechoslovakia.

By January 1934, a group of German artists had already published in Prague the first issue of a satiric weekly magazine called Simplicus. Although the Czech version of this periodical was terminated early on, the German version, initiated by Hans Nathan and Heinz Pol, continued to be published under the title Der Simpl through 1939.

Bringing together Czech and German artists and writers, including … Read more

Sebestyén Kodolányi and Csaba Uglár: Abuse. Project Room, Museum of Contemporary Art/Ludwig Museum Budapest, November 3-25, 2002 

Sebestyén Kodolányi’s and Csaba Uglár’s project abuses the toposes of confraternity and the noble-spirited sentiments of men’s brotherhood. The “documentary film,” an experiment, documents a fraud. The “spiritual community” is dwelling on some scholarly topic first in a room of utterly mysterious atmosphere, then sets out and marches along against a backdrop of the streets, the blocks, and the inhabitants of the city.

The group of men, in garments that imitate sacred habits, visualise both the brotherhood of men in the gospels … Read more

The act of male artists inviting young girls into their studios with the intent of doing “studies” of their nude bodies is far from a shocking idea in contemporary Western society. However, in the past, renowned artists such as Edgar Degas and Egon Schiele among others suffered the consequences of gossip and rumors that can accompany a man’s intimate association with girls.

Pavel Opocensky, a locally renowned sculptor and jewelry designer within the Czech Republic, has also undergone public and state persecution, but previously for the inadvertent killing of a young skinhead in defense of an elderly man under attack.… Read more

See also Marina Grzinic’s original 2002 article: “Does Contemporary Art Need Museums Anymore” 

1. The original impetus for this reflection came from a series of visits and encounters with new and old museums in Wien. One could find at the more discrete institutions insightful and scrupulously presented work, and at the grandiose sites, exhibitions that were infuriating in their clumsy submission to the needs of financial survival.

This is not meant as a blanket characterization, but describes a trend that Bettina Funcke states is “part of a current emphasis on the spectacularization of the museum in general: Start with a … Read more

Artists in Novosibirsk, as those throughout the world, are separated into various groups and factions. Even during the period of Soviet totalitarianism, when the ideals of equality were strictly enforced, artists were separated into two groups: members of the Union of Artists of the USSR (now the Russian Federation) and non-members, more commonly referred to as “amateur artists.”

In today’s society, artists of Novosibirsk are more frequently separated into groups through individual characteristics such as talent, productive nature, style, and business principles.

Most artists of Novosibirsk work within traditional fields of art that are relevant to Russian culture, such … Read more

The following essay is part of a series devoted to contemporary art and architecture East-Central Europe. It was first delivered as a paper at a conference held at MIT in October, 2001. 

When speaking about European unification, or the incorporation of Central Europe into the EU structures after 1989, we should focus on Central European exhibitions held in the West after the Fall of Nation in 1989. The answer to the question “what was the core of the (Western) interest in newly discovered lands in the East” is very simple: there were political reasons so obvious that they are not … Read more

Mlady Maso at the Golden Ring House in the Ungelt, Prague 3.7 – 22.9. 2002

Over the last decade Czech art institutions seem to have developed a pre-occupation with discovering emerging Czech artists’ work. In an attempt to both escape the past and catch up with the rest of the Western art world, curators desperately seek out the latest of what the very youngest generation has to offer.

This consistent curatorial tactic apparently tries to convey that these mobile phone wielding, new-world-order, frustrated youths are somehow miraculously untouched by the former political system, and are in fact representatives of what … Read more

Festival Helden der Arbeit, September 7 – October 7, 2002. Berlin (various locations)

This voyage to Berlin was part of an ongoing investigation based around a certain recycling of space and how deserted spaces or sites in the urban landscape can be appropriated and reused. In this case, through artistic and cultural intervention.

Oberschoneweide in south east Berlin presented such processes in September/October 2002 through the art festival “Helden der Arbeit” as it opened up various factory buildings within its declining industrial district to visiting artists and, in turn, the show’s visitors.

Oberschoneweide is way off of Berlin’s beaten tourist … Read more

LONDON- FRANKFURT- BUCHAREST On this long haul over the land coach voyage where miles are devoured in darkness and discomfort, time has no relevance now measured in neon petrol station stops, highway tollgates, and border crossings. Changing coaches in Frankfurt brings a change of pace-now slow and erratic with contrasting intensified excitement.

Final destination: Romania and a meeting with Nona Ciobanu—Theatre director and director of TOACA cultural foundation in Bucharest.

Now accompanied by a new congregation of Romanians returning to the homeland, the bus promptly breaks down. There is a general acceptance of this fact; an acceptance to be the … Read more

The following essay is part of a series devoted to contemporary art and architecture East-Central Europe. It was first delivered as a paper at a conference held at MIT in October, 2001.

Originally, I developed my reading of Czech Cubist architecture within the framework of a more extensive project dealing with the phenomenon of the “border” in art. The ambivalent nature of the “border”, in addition to its obvious function of separation, inherently implies its own transgression, a certain amount of permeability, the existence of a boundary, and an “in-between” zone. Czech Cubism, a rather bizarre episode in the history … Read more