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Backward and forward

Trashing consumerism during communism's last gasp
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
October 24th, 2007 issue

 

COURTESY PHOTO
Oddballs, from left, Hugo Demartini, Pavel Nešhela, Zdeněk Beran and Bedřich Dlouhý.
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The Backward Ones Forever

at Prague City Gallery–Municipal Library Ends Nov. 25. Mariánské nám. 1, Prague 1–Old Town. Open Tues.–Sun. 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

The art group “Zaostalí Forever,” rendered in English as “The Backward Ones Forever,” was formed in 1987, just on the cusp of the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia. Connected to the end of that era, their works seem to be both an odd culmination of and final affront to the four decades of artistic repression in the country.
In the mid-1980s, the local alternative cultural scene was busy with numerous unofficial art activities and exhibitions by artists representing all generations, opinions and styles. This was only possible because political repression was in decline. So it’s hard to imagine that in 1987 the Union of Czechoslovak Artists still needed to issue an appeal to the government to allow the formation of small artistic groups.
Nonetheless, approval was granted, opening the door for a number of groups through which artists were able to present themselves in their own country and elsewhere in Europe.
 “The Backward Ones Forever” was formed during this time by painters Bedřich Dlouhý (born in 1932), Zdeněk Beran (1937), Pavel Nešleha (1937) and sculptor Hugo Demartini (1931). These middle-aged artists were good friends who were reared in the avant-garde, nonconformist art of the 1960s, but shared an appreciation of traditional European arts. They also shared a disdain for consumer culture and its spiritual shallowness (like their East and West German counterparts of the same generation).
“Zaostalí” translates as the “odd” or “backward” ones, a name that was supposed to have a Dadaistic irony in response to the rush of groups formed in 1987. Twenty years later, however, this group (and its name) also reflects the state of the art scene here at the end of the 1980s: handicapped by a 40-year suppression of art trends and ideas and, perhaps most importantly, long restricted from regular activity in the international art market.
At their first exhibit for Forum 88, which included both Czech and Slovak artists, the group was assisted by the architect Karel Kouba (born in 1929), who joined “Zaostalí Forever” in 1988. The composer Jan Klusák (1935) also joined around this time.
At the end of 1990, members of the group managed to get the alternative space Nová síň for their own exhibitions, but only a fraction of their works were presented there. They displayed larger works at a parallel exhibition, “Prague–Paris, Dialogue 90,” at Mánes. Two years later they exhibited a joint installation, again at Mánes, for a show organized in Prague on the occasion of the Congress of International Art Critics in Vienna.
This installation in 1992, titled Pile, best defined the group’s approach toward the art market and aesthetics to this day. It was a chaotic pile of the works that they had made around the end of the communist era, mostly destroyed and left on the ground in a corner of the gallery. Documentation of Pile (a video showing the artists installing it and a full-scale photo of the final installation) is a centerpiece of the current exhibition at the City Library.
At the beginning of this show, Beran’s 15 suitcases, destroyed and mutilated, appropriately set the stage. The rest of the rooms are devoted to individual artists in the group, combining both older and more recent works.
Hugo Demartini’s room is the perfect scene for a sci-fi performance or film — full of white plaster sculptures that are partially smashed and half-built structures or boxes. It could be a futuristic waste zone.
Pavel Nešleha has a monumental, though bulky, painting titled Neither on Earth nor in Heaven (1989), which extends to the floor and resembles alien soil, with shards of painted boards jutting up from the canvas on the floor.
His drawings of nature reveal a more sublime technique, as in Oedipus II (1992), a high cliff isolated on canvas, and High and Low of Apocalyptic Horses (1994), which are seven drawings framed like photos on a roll, beginning with a skeleton of a horse that seemingly rises from the dead and runs off in a blaze of blind fury.
In a few smaller side rooms, Karel Kouba applies geography to art by drawing over topographical maps. However, it is Bedřich Dlouhý and Zdeněk Beran who dominate the show with their massive works, installed in multiple rooms, that combine painting, sculpture and installation, done almost with a vengeance.
In his room of recent paintings that equally reference Rembrandt and Surrealism, Dlouhý’s centerpiece, Prague Tonemixer, is a futuristic painting machine for spraying walls or canvas, held together by a conglomeration of animal parts, tubes, a partly crushed human skull and other materials.
Beran, not surprisingly, has a huge pile on the floor titled Scrummage of Pictures, Assemblages, Objects and Structures. It is an absolute mess of torn and burnt canvases, spiced with fiberglass, horsehair, assorted stretchers and other debris. This alone confirms that “Zaostalí Forever” should not be forgotten, as the group best represents the mindset of Czech artists at the last gasp of communism.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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