Blast from the past to the future

Did the future look different yesterday?

"The Planet Eden: Tomorrow's World in Socialist Czechoslovakia 1948-1978," an ongoing exhibition at DOX, presents the unfulfilled visions of the future from communist-era artists, filmmakers, architects, illustrators and designers in an eclectic show of futuristic renderings that range from the absurdly optimistic to the depressingly dark.

Curator Ivan Adamovič told The Prague Post that the concept behind the exhibition is complex and thematic.

"Our goal was to disclose, or remind the public how people earlier thought about the future, which dreams they shared - the real ones as well as those pushed through the media by the [Communist Party.] It is very likely the first attempt of its kind, and therefore it is impossible to talk about coherence," he said.

The first of the exhibition's six sections consists of several films projected in large scale onto the gallery walls, giving them a powerful presence. Each of the films envisions the future in a unique way.

Icarus XB1, directed by Jindřich Polák in 1963, was probably the most ambitious movie project supported by the totalitarian Czechoslovak government. Viewing the film's vision of a communist, utopian post-capitalist world, it is not difficult to see why the regime would have supported Polák.

"Tomorrow's World," the second section of the exhibition, depicts predictions of technological optimism and social engineering. Many intellectuals and artists between the two world wars believed in a communist future, and it shows in their designs. One model of a collectivist house by architect Karel Honzík still looks very up-to-date or even futuristic, although it comes from 1965.

Toy producers, too, did not allow themselves to be left behind in the 1960s space-age craze, introducing dozens of rockets and lunar mobiles as well as illustrated children's books that embraced an ideological, futuristic approach. Their efforts are evident in the "Sun City" portion of the exhibition.

The fourth section, "Victorious Technology," presents illustrations of sci-fi literature for adult readers. Famous artists such as Zdeněk Burian and Teodor Rotrekl, as well as virtually unknown illustrators like František Škoda, can be seen here. Contemporary sci-fi author Ondřej Neff told The Prague Post that seeing this art was a welcome blast from the past.

"Seeing Zdeněk Burian's illustrations for Vladimír Babula's trilogy was a big experience for me. I used to follow them in the magazine Pionýr, but it was never published as a book. After many years, I tried to find out why. The explanation is simple: It was clearly aggressive propaganda, and therefore it was too much even for the 1960s," he said.

Not all the visions of the future presented in the exhibition are so optimistic, however. Avant-garde artists Pavel Brázda and Věra Nováková illustrated two sci-fi anthologies that certainly do not depict happy communist days to come. Nováková's painting After the End of World shows an empty apocalyptic landscape with two alien-like human beings.

"Sci-fi was always dark. Optimism was the official order, with the Gulag in the background," Neff said.

Works in the final section titled "Retrofuturism" prove the future remains an intriguing subject for contemporary artists. Jiří Černický, Veronika Bromová and others present the possible absurdities and unhappy outcomes of socially engineered optimism.

Mostly this exhibition will bring a smile. Optimism was officially ordered by the communist regime, but some artists used the open subject of the future to express their restricted creativity, according to Adamovič.

"These are beautiful works of art," he said. "Some are closer to just a craft, and others are closer to art. Even 'just craft' has its historical value. Choosing from later works was more difficult because one had to consider artistic qualities. Fortunately, we stopped in 1978."

Filip Šenk can be reached at
fsenk@praguepost.com