When I was asked to review this book, I accepted the invitation with some nervousness. What would qualify me, I wondered, as a relatively recent arrival to the Czech Republic, to comment on a publication such as this, which often draws on direct personal experience, a deep immersion in the subject, as well as conversations with many of the individuals involved? On reflection, I nevertheless agreed, because I was mindful of what the German sociologist Georg Simmel said about "strangers": they often notice aspects of a culture that remain invisible to insiders. (2)
Like the previous volume by Bartlová on art history in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1969, this book combines analysis of the institutional framing of art history with discussion of the key thematic and methodological debates. Thus, it considers how art history was practiced in universities, the academy of sciences, museums and galleries, the schools of art and design, and the role of the union of artists. It discusses, too, the key individuals who drove the discipline – for good and for bad. The book also examines the infrastructure of dissemination: books, academic journals, conferences, and the different kinds of audiences for art historical research, from the small circles of marginalized readers consuming samizdat writings to wider publics. The sub-title (the same as the title of the final chapter) indicates that this is a self-consciously partial account, for it would be impossible to write a totalizing history of all Czech art history. The author relates this idea to postmodern debates over epistemology, but this framing seemed both unnecessary and unconvincing; the book is a systematic and comprehensive analysis (more than 500 pages in length) that seems at odds with that very idea.
It is a major scholarly achievement. One has to admire the depth of the archival research, which underpins a compelling account of the social and political context of the time. This accompanies what is an unmatched grasp of the art historical world. There are continuities, too, with her previous volume in that while infrastructures and institutions are central to the analysis, it also pays considerable attention to individuals as agents. A chapter on "People" turns to themes that were first addressed in the previous book: "big men," the role of women, social class and different generational attitudes and experiences. These also provide a means of drawing out shifts and differences between the periods in question. In the period between 1945 and 1969, Bartlová notes, one of the major challenges for art historians was adapting to the new ideological environment of the socialist state and also the infrastructural changes that it brought about. By the 1970s, however, these had become accepted as "normal" by the generation of art historians whose careers were starting in the later 1960s and 1970s. Where many art historians had, in the early period, been representatives of a bourgeois culture under siege, by the 1970s, the profession of art historian had been redefined as a member of the labouring intelligentsia.
A central part of the narrative of the book is exploration of how individuals responded to the repressive environment of post-1968 normalization. In such circumstances, how does one even write about the activities of art historians, when they occupied such a precarious position, conscious of the limits on what could and could not be said, and when many had been relieved of their positions or, at the very least, restricted in what they were permitted to do? In such a regime, so many publications consisted of performative gestures or, even worse, exercises in bad faith, that special care has to be taken when approaching them.
The book also undertakes a reckoning with the behaviour of art historians in this situation, but this task faces particular challenges. The first volume dealt with a period that ended nearly 60 years ago. Most of the protagonists had passed away, but the second volume covers scholars, some of whom are still alive. Indeed, the sensitivities of the subject mean that, as Bartlová explains in the Introduction, some relevant individuals actively refused to co-operate with her project.
Many scholars examined in the book were, from the perspective of the present, personally and politically compromised through their willingness to comply with demands of normalization or, worse, to inform on their colleagues to the secret police and assist the state in its surveillance of them. Yet, Bartlová stresses, it is important not to rush to premature moral judgement about individuals for whom state socialism was assumed to be governing the rest of their lives. Social memory after 1989 may rest on a heroization of dissidents and an admiring cult of the signatories of Charter 77, but most art historians functioned in what Bartlová calls the ambiguous "third" zone between compliance and dissidence. This also meant that some found themselves designated as enemies of the state, not because they were actively resisting it or trying to undermine its ideological doctrines, but simply because their professional activities attracted its suspicion. Ladislav Kesner Sr. and Gabriela Kesnerová, for example, were deemed problematic because their work for the National Gallery involved contact with foreign diplomats; the medievalist Marie Kotrbová, came under suspicion for passing secret documents to the archbishop of Prague, which turned out to be translations of 13th century letters.
Despite its concern not to make judgements, the book singles out some individuals for their willingness to support and advance the interests of the state. Certain names recur as willing helpers of normalization, including Sáva Šabouk, director of the Institute of Art Theory and History throughout the 1970s, Dušan Konečný, Dušan Šindelář, editor of Výtvarné umění and Estetika, and the literary critic Zdeněk Mathauser. Others, such as Miroslav Lamač and Alexaj Kusák, fell in and out of favour with the authorities, being subjects of interest for the secret police, but then agreeing to collaborate with them, even when they had moved abroad, as in the case of Kusák.
The popular image of Normalization is of an era of dreary oppression, in which "real socialism" imposed a bland conformity on society and culture. There are plenty of examples that would bear out this view, but Bartlová suggests that the state of constant of surveillance, which, she notes, some have compared to Foucault's model of modern governance, was not as totalizing as this parallel would indicate. Not only was censorship a dispersed, informal, practice based on second-guessing what was permissible. There were also numerous inconsistencies; the art historian Václav Wagner had been imprisoned in the 1950s, but it was still possible to cite his work. Albert Kutal was banned from publishing, yet other authors were still permitted to refer to his publications. Jaromír Neumann, expelled from the party as a Stalinist-turned-reformer, was banned from publishing in the art journal Umění, but he was still able to publish books with the presses Odeon and Artia. At some points, too, Bartlová suggests, the censor gave up trying to monitor academic publications due to an inability to understand them.
It was the inconsistencies and cracks in the system that made it possible for something approximating "normal" art history to take place. Not all scholarship published in the 1970s and 1980s consisted of empty, performative, rhetoric, and in the final chapter, the book explores those authors, publications and ideas that merit scrutiny as serious attempts to expand and develop the discipline. It is not necessary to list them all, but certain writers are the objects of special attention. It is a testament to the generosity of spirit of her book that Bartlová recognizes the intellectual significance of Šindelář and Šabouk, even though they were, from the standpoint of the present day, politically compromised.
What image of art history in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s does the book provide? The final chapter leaves the reader with the impression of an engaged discipline, in which scholars from a range of positions attempted, within difficult intellectual constraints, to formulate innovative answers to basic questions of the discipline, such as: how to determine artistic value, how to describe art as a social practice, the mechanisms of artistic meaning, the experience of art (both as maker and as spectator). This reviewer found the final chapter the most intellectually rewarding part of the book. Its outline of the ideas and lines of thinking current at the time highlighted why, despite the destructive impact of normalization, Czech art history of the 1970s and 1980s still merits our attention. This was also, though, the most frustrating part of the study, for it would have benefitted from a much more focused and deeper analysis, with close reading of the texts in order to bring out more clearly their productive insights and suggestions. Instead, the reader was often presented with a blizzard of names of authors, their work often presented in a cursory way. The exception to this pattern was the discussion of Kapitoly z českého dějepisu umění edited by Rudolf Chadraba, which, conversely, might have benefitted from a more succinct analysis with less extrinsic anecdotal information. (3)
This reveals, perhaps, an apparent assumption of the author, namely, that the reader will be already familiar with the individuals and their works. However, not only will many contemporary readers have only a sketchy knowledge of many of the works mentioned, from Petr Rezek's Tělo, věc a skutečnost (1981) to Josef Kroutvor's Hlava Medusy (1988) and Potíže s dějinami (1990); in many cases, they may only have a very limited sense of who the authors even were or are. (4) As a result, I was left wondering who the book was written for. In this respect, the author's proximity to many of the events and dramatis personae at times undermined its ability to communicate with readers who lacked this same intimate familiarity with the subject.
The relatively cursory treatment of authors and their writings stands in contrast to the lengthy and detailed discussion (some 370 pages) of the institutional and social context they had to work in. An important and systematic account, it would nevertheless have benefitted from some editorial revision in order to sharpen the argument and focus. This is particularly the case given that much of the material presented was anecdotal, or comprised background information, but was not always well integrated into the analysis of individual texts and ideas. We learn, for example, that some individuals, such as Jiří Kotalík or Šabouk, were domineering, imperious, figures, who, seen from the vantage point of the present, abused their institutional authority. They instantiate the model of the "big man" that comprises a central thread through the book, but it is not clear what structural role this observation plays in the argument of the book as a whole. They represent a type that is limited neither in time nor place to the Czechoslovakia of the 1970s and 1980s, and can be found in art history everywhere. The same could be said of the detailed account of the scandal of Jaromír Neumann, prosecuted for involvement in the illegal trade in antiquities. Many art historians have taken advantage of their position for personal enrichment (Bernard Berenson, for example, or John Pope-Hennessy), and while the circumstances may have been quite distinct in the case of Neumann, the pertinence of his case for the broader analysis of Czech art history is not immediately apparent.
The conclusion offers important reflections on the significance of the 1970s and 1980s for the state of art history today. Of these, perhaps the most striking is its commentary on the resistance to theory. It cites Ladislav Kesner Jr.'s observation that Czech art history has never been very theoretically driven, yet it is difficult to reconcile this with the evidence of earlier chapters. Not all projects of theoretical inquiry were equally sophisticated or successful. Nevertheless, numerous authors saw the exploration and development of new models of theoretical inquiry as an integral part of art historical research.
Where Kesner is correct, though, is in the fact that in the present, theoretical reflection often still meets indifference of even resistance. This was all too apparent at the 2024 conference of the Czech Association of Art Historians; when one senior professor prefaced their presentation by declaring that they would not be dealing with theory, they were met with a round of applause. Bartlová concurs with the idea that Czech art history is in a postmodern, post-theoretical phase, but this does little to explain the specifics of the situation, especially as the idea of "post-theory," when it first emerged in film studies in the 1990s, was more about embracing theoretical pluralism than about simply discarding theory per se. (5)
Art history long had a reputation for being resistant to theory, and not just in the Czech context. In the anglophone sphere, in the 1970s, as the reception of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jaques Lacan was revolutionizing literary study, it was criticized for its refusal to engage with these new impulses. There are numerous explanations for this; one is that the focus on physical artefacts encourages an empiricism for which the abstractions of theoretical reflection seem to miss something vital about the work of art. In the context of Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, as in the other socialist states, this was compounded by the fact that "theory" usually meant the officially sanctioned Marxist Leninism of "socialist realism." It is no surprise that so many greeted "theory" with scepticism. Yet the discarding of "theory" has not benefitted Czech art history, and a rich vein of methodological reflection from the recent past has consequently disappeared from the collective memory. Indeed, when younger scholars seek new conceptual approaches, they are more likely to reach for models abroad than to look closer to home.
The experience of state socialism produced a number of counter-reactions that have persisted and become embedded in the culture of the discipline, even 35 years after the Velvet Revolution. Alongside the hostility to radical politics, Bartlová mentions a number of other features of the intellectual landscape of socialist Czechoslovakia that might explain the culture of Czech art history. Perhaps the most prominent is the dominance of methodological nationalism. Because of the ideological task that "normalizing" figures such as Šabouk and Konečny tried to impose on the discipline, it was conceived as an integral part of the larger national project. In fact, many art historians wrote about European art (although few showed interest in art outside of Europe and North America, which mostly remained the preserve of museum curators). However, the methodological nationalism promoted by ideologues under normalization became, in some sense, normative for the subsequent development of art history. Material conditions under state socialism, which made travel abroad near impossible for many, turned this into a pragmatic response, too. What is striking for this reviewer is the extent to which this imprinted itself on art historical practice up to the present. Even though access to research funding now means that international travel is a practical possibility, there is still what an outside observer might regard as a puzzling lack of engagement with topics and debates relating to art outside of the Czech Republic.
Whether this is the legacy of Normalization-era practices is an open question. Bartlová's book implies that it probably is. On the other hand, what does seem to be clear is that many scholars of that time seem to have been more at ease combining research on Czech art with a wider interest in European art than their counterparts in the present.
Bartlová lets slip one or two value judgements that reveal the ongoing legacy of Normalization-era practices for contemporary Czech art history. One concerns bureaucracy. Her book contains a compelling critique of the deleterious effects of centralized planning and management, in which pointless and unachievable targets would be set, as well as centralized control, which only intensified in the 1970s. The impractical and meaningless nature of so many plans meant that one paid only lip service to them, for they were just one more reminder of the empty rhetoric of the state. This cast a long shadow, and explains why, even now, art historians (and academics more generally) have an allergic reaction to mention of strategy and planning. Ironically, too, centralized control has persisted. Despite the repeated invocation of academic freedom as a key academic value, universities have a marked lack of autonomy over their internal affairs. They are not free to appoint professors, and even the procedure for the award of habilitation is laid down by the Higher Education Act law, as are the recognised fields of study. This is a level of micromanagement is unknown in many other countries, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in certain respects, at least, the 1970s are still with us.
Dějiny dějin uměni II is an important work, for it is the first systematic survey of the period. It takes seriously the task of laying out the conditions under which scholars worked and, as such, helps us better evaluate their work and identifying what still merits more detailed scrutiny. Although some criticisms can be made of its approach and organization, this should not detract from the fact that all art historians working in the Czech Republic and Slovakia should read it in order to understand the development of their discipline as well as its present-day condition.
