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“What Shall We Do With It?” Finding A Place for Alfons Mucha and His Slav Epic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2015
Extract
Not very often does a work of art, which provoked very mixed reactions at the time of its completion, continue to stir the political and cultural waters nearly one hundred years later. The Slav Epic, a series of twenty large canvases created by Alfons Mucha (1860–1939) between 1909 and 1926 on the topic of Slavic history and myth, is such a work, and it has provoked critical comments from Czech art historians, politicians, and journalists. The most recent disputes, which have arisen in the last couple of years, concern the city council of Prague, which has expressed a wish to house the work somewhere in Prague in fulfillment of the artist's wishes, and the town of Moravský Krumlov in Mucha's home region, where the Epic was exhibited for forty years and lays claims to it as well. The debate about its physical location has also been joined by a number of public figures, including Mucha's grandson and the secretary to the then Czech president Václav Klaus, who called the Epic “the kitsch of the millennium” and “sheer Pan-Slavic propaganda.” Such negative comments only highlight the fact that the Slav Epic continues to generate controversy and has not yet found its place in the Czech, let alone European, context.
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References
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102 Mucha's membership in the Freemasons is often seen as the main reason for his arrest and interrogations by the Gestapo in 1939, which are also related to his subsequent death.
103 Jana Šetřilová, “Alfons Mucha—Freiemauer,” in Das Slawische Epos [The Slav Epic], 156–57.
104 Mucha, Alfons, Poselství, které přinesl dne 18.června 1932 nejj., svrch. kom. Bratr Alfons Mucha ř. a d. Josef Dobrovský v or. Plzeň v den desátého výročí jeho založení [The Message Delivered on 18 June 1932 by Brother Alfons Mucha of the Josef Dobrovský Lodge at the Occasion of Its 10th Anniversary] (Plzeň, 1932)Google Scholar, unpag.
105 Šetřilová, “Svobodný zednář Alfons Mucha [Alfons Mucha, a Freemason],” Historický obzor [Historic Horizon] VII–VIII (1996): 178–82Google Scholar, at 178.
106 Chytil, Muchova Slovanská epopeje, 9.
107 Ibid., 10.
108 “Překlad darovací smlouvy mezi A. Muchou a Prahou [Translation of the Donation Agreement between A. Mucha and Prague]”; ihned.cz, http://zpravy.ihned.cz/c1-45265390-preklad-darovaci-smlouvy-mezi-a-muchou-a-prahou. Agreement: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34893407/Původni-dohoda-mezi-Muchou-a-Prahou.
109 “Muchova Slovanská epopej umístěna ve veletržním paláci [Mucha's Slav Epic Placed in the Trade Fair Palace],” Národní listy, 23 Aug. 1928, 3.
110 “Muchova ‘Slovanská epopej’ byla včera odevzdána veřejnosti [Mucha's ‘Slav Epic’ Was Handed over to the Public Yesterday],” Národní listy 68, no. 263, 22 Sept. 1928, 3.
111 Mucha, Alfons, Slovanská epopeje. Epopée slave. The Slavonic Epopee. Die Epopöe der slaven (Prague, 1928), 5–7 Google Scholar.
112 Milan Hodža quoted in “Slavnostní zahájení výstavy životního díla Alfonse Muchy Slovanská Epopej ve velké dvoraně Veletržního paláce v Praze [The Official Opening of the Exhibition of the Life Work of Alfons Mucha, the Slav Epic, in the Atrium of the Trade Fair Palace in Prague],” Pestrý týden, 29 Sept. 1928, 5.
113 “Muchova ‘Slovanská epopej,’” 3.
114 “Mistr Alfons Mucha [Master Alfons Mucha],” Národní listy (26 June 1926): 3.
115 “O tvůrci Slovanské epopeje,” [About the Author of the Slav Epic] Národní listy, 22 July 1940, 1.
116 Šetřilová, “Svobodný zednář,” 170.
117 “Art: Slav Epic,” Time, 26 Nov. 1928.
118 Ibid.
119 Žákavec, “Slovanský program,” 59.
120 Ibid., 65.
121 Laclotte, Alfons Mucha, 21.
122 Similarly, a girl in the bottom left corner of the Oath of the Omladina painting was adopted for the poster advertising the exhibition of the Slav Epic in Brno in 1930.
123 Josef Čapek, “Kam s ní? [What Shall We Do with It?]” Lidové noviny, 15 Nov. 1928, 2. The title of this article is a pun on a famous feuilleton of the same name (“Kam s ním?”) by the Czech journalist and essayist Jan Neruda (1834–1891), in which he described his misfortunes of trying to dispose of an old, unwanted mattress.
124 Čapek, “Kam s ní?” 2.
125 Viktor Nikodém, Národní osvobození, 21 Oct. 1928, reprinted in Volné směry XXVII (1929–1930): 37–38 Google Scholar.
126 Kropáček, Pavel, “Alfons Mucha,” Volné směry XXXV (1938–1940): 161 Google Scholar.
127 Ibid., 161.
128 Teige, “Nové umění a lidová tvorba [New Art and the Art of the People],” Červen IV (1921): 175 Google Scholar. Reprinted in Avantgarda známá i neznámá I. Proletářská poezie a poetismus [The Familiar and Unfamiliar Avant-garde I. The Poetry and Poetism of the Proletariat], ed. Vlašín, Štěpán (Prague, 1971), 150 Google Scholar; Teige, Jarmark umění, 45.
129 Teige, Jarmark umění, 48–49.
130 Hlaváček, Karel, “Alfons Mucha (souborná výstava jeho prací),” [Alfons Mucha (A Retrospective of Work)] Moderní revue pro literaturu, umění a život 4–5 (1897–99): 114–16Google Scholar.
131 Ibid., 115–16.
132 Ibid., 116.
133 S. K. Neumann, “Otevřená okna [Open Windows],” reprinted in Padrta, Jiří, ed., Osma a Skupina výtvarných umělců 1907–1917 [The Eight and the Group of Visual Artists 1907–1917] (Prague, 1992), 139Google Scholar.
134 Rudé právo [The Red Right], 27 July 1935, quoted in Mucha, Alfons Mucha, 423.
135 Alfons Mucha, Slovanská epopej, 3–4.
136 Ibid., 7.
137 “Slovanská epopej nezmizí. Výstava byla prodloužena na 2 roky [The Slav Epic Will Not Go Away. The Exhibition Extended for Another 2 Years],” Česká televize, 12 Dec. 2013; http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ct24/kultura/254467-slovanska-epopej-nezmizi-vystava-byla-prodlouzena-na-2-roky.
138 “Alfons Mucha: The Czech Master of the Belle Époque” took place in Budapest between 21 Mar. and 7 June 2009 under the main title “In Praise of Women,” which was later dropped in Brno, 16 Oct. 2009–24 Jan. 2010. “Alfons Mucha, Master of Art Nouveau: A Retrospective,” in Die Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung Munich, took place between 9 Oct. 2009 and 24 Jan. 2010, and in Musée Fabre Montpellier between 20 June 2009 and 20 Sept. 2009, and in Belvedere, Vienna from 12 Feb.–1 June 2009. An exhibition “Das Slawische Epos” shown in the Kunsthalle, Krems in 1994 and its catalogue contain an extensive examination of the Epic and Mucha's background. See the catalogue: Srp, Karel, ed., Alfons Mucha: Das Slawische Epos (Krems, 1994)Google Scholar.
139 Bydžovská and Srp, eds., Alfons Mucha.
140 Kropáček, “Alfons Mucha,” 161.