In the shadow of the avant-garde

Don't be fooled by the intimidating title of the exhibition, "Beings from Nowhere: Metamorphoses of Academic Principles in Painting in the First Half of the 20th Century." It is simply longhand for, above all, a bevy of beauties - female nudes and male nudes alike - presented in a thoroughly researched, provocative and cleverly designed show.

The classicist style that was favored in the famed Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in other European fine-arts academies in this period has been greatly overshadowed by the innovations of the avant-garde, therefore academic painting from the first half of the 20th century has been largely relegated to the margins of art history.

It was the French critic Camille Mauclair (1872-1945) who described the nudes favored by the official Salon exhibitions staged by the Paris academy as "beings from nowhere" - superficially attractive, sentimentalized and idealized.

The first room of the show recreates the traditional format of Salon exhibitions, hanging paintings closely together from floor to ceiling. This room contains 45 paintings and drawings on one wall, mostly luscious nudes. There is also an old photograph, projected onto the wall, of artists in a studio painting a nude model to illustrate the long-established academic approach to figure painting.

Apart from some often-displayed national treasures, such as Václav Brožík's Hussite Woman (Episode From the Hussite Wars of Bohemia, 1419) (1877) and his Cleopatra (1877), or Václav Sochor's In the Bath (1883), representing the Czech academic style in its late-19th-century heyday, there are lesser-known 20th-century works such as Max Švabinský's Birds of Paradise (1904), which is a mysterious image of two little blue birds flying above the head of a nude woman seated in a plush chair with her back turned and her head covered by a veil.

There is also Young Female Nude in an Armchair (1918) by Vlaho Bukovac, a Croatian artist who worked in Prague, featuring a nude woman unabashedly showing her reddish armpit hair. This one may have been an affront to traditional tastes of the time, and a pleasure to progressive ones.

In the next small rooms, the works represent the theme "The Threat of Lasciviousness," which show a shift in the depiction of nudes. Artists began using a rougher and fuller palette in reaction to the rise of film and photography, which began to surpass academic painting a popular medium for depicting nude and seminude women.

Here, Josef Loukota's Seated Female Nude (late 1920s) is as delicate as the white porcelain figures beside her. In contrast, František Jacub's Abduction (1930) shows a hazily painted nude woman helpless in the hands of ruthless white-slave traders. Overall, this section is awash in depictions of utterly appealing or seductive women, with Loukota and Jakub Obrovský emerging as kings of the genre.

In this section, paintings by Tavík František Šimon have a darker touch that seems to pull the viewer into a mysterious wonderland of promise and peril. Kamil Stuchlík's Standing Female Nude in the Mirror (1933) is the darkest canvas of all, depicting a nude woman looking into a mirror, although her reflection is too dark to see.

The next section, "The Oriental and the Exotic," includes a revolutionary work titled Reconciliation of Races (1910) by Antonín Hudeček. This painting is at least half a century ahead of its time in its depiction of a nude white woman and an African man in bed together.

The following section, "Allegory, Mythology, Plein Air Nude," has some breathtaking works inspired by Luminism and Naturalism, including the "Seasons" series made in the first third of the 20th century by Josef Duba, which is a stunning vision of nature as enjoyed by young girls as ethereal as ghosts. Tavík František Šimon's Girl and Harp is a divine evergreen landscape with the green-shadowed body of a girl contrasted with a faintly gold harp.

The last room of the first half of the show represents "Allegory of Joy or Death," with nude women in open-air settings. These paintings include many children, sometimes with angels or Roma included in the scene. Obrovský's Landscape with Gypsies (1909) depicts what almost looks like an orgy, while other nudes by Obrovský are placed in contrast with toiling workers, anticipating a perverted Socialist Realism.

After all the luminous nude models, the second part of the show picks up with "Stereotypes of Sentiment," mainly portraits in more proper settings with an emphasis on mothers and children (clothed). Alfons Mucha and Švabinský have several noteworthy works here, and also worth mention is Stuchlík's Portrait of a Noblewoman (1935), whose film noir atmosphere seems a reflection of the times.

Toward the end of the show there are further rooms with portraits, mainly of prominent men - bankers and industrialists - along with their chastely portrayed wives and their children.

In the last room, which the curators have titled "The Perilous Safety of Kitsch," there is Švabinský's Jupiter and Leto, in which the god ravishes the young Leto with kisses in a garden of tree-sized sunflowers.

These figures in the final rooms, including the members of the bourgeoisie, may be the real "beings from nowhere" in this show - not the nude or partially nude muses that Mauclair dismissed so long ago.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com