Journal ARS 36 (2003) 3

Mária ORIŠKOVÁ

K otázke politiky vystavovania: príklad Slovenskej národnej galérie
[Politics of Display: A Case Study of the Slovak National Gallery]

(Summary)

Museum studies or new museology today critically reads and theorizes museum as an institution. The subject of museum is part of the contemporary discourse on representation and modernist institutions. No doubt, museums are powerful modern institutions rooted in a modernist ideology of "adequate representation". Institutional factors and the social functioning of art, as well as power relations, are at the center of museum studies. This essay will focus on Slovak National Gallery as the most important and respected art institution in Slovakia. We will show how this institution through different exhibitions in different periods had represented the idea of nation, ideas of communist society as well as contemporary democratic society after the turn in 1989.

Let's return to the early days of the Slovak National Gallery - to the foundational big survey exhibitions. The first attempts at articulating Slovak art history in the Slovak National Gallery were the exhibitions entitled "Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries" (1955) and "Twelve Centuries of Visual Art in Slovakia" (1966). It is necessary to point out that the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava was founded in 1948 and the first director Karol Vaculík had an important role: to acquire works of art, to build up the collection of Slovak art and to establish national tradition. On one hand, he developed the idea of the non-existent national tradition of the Slovak minority within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and on the other hand there was the idea of class distinctions where the upper class was Hungarian. How he resolved this problem is documented in the catalogue of the exhibition of 19th and 20th Century Art in Slovakia. He claims that art history in Slovakia is a battlefield of two cultures and two classes - the exploiter and the exploited. Needless to say, the exhibition was organized in the 1950s at the time of the newly established doctrine of socialist realism. Not only the officially required realism but also the key subject of "the life of simple (exploited) people" created the base for displaying Slovak art history for the first time. Socialist realism expected justification and confirmation of its own historical legitimacy - its own historical roots - from art historiography of and museology (Ján Bakoš). And this exhibition was the perfect opportunity. Accurately, 19th century art - portraits of national revivalists, romantic landscapes, the folk genre focusing on the life of village people (which means Slovaks) and later, in the 1930s, the urban proletariat, was something which smoothly fit into the required "realistic form" and " national content" and established a base for future displays in the Slovak National Gallery.

While the exhibition of Slovak Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries focused only on the period of two centuries, in 1966 Vaculík grandiosely utters his concept of twelve centuries. The great synthesis, as he designated it, was understood as a representation of our past. He calls for the articulation of the historical development of Slovak art around the 7th Century, through Romanesque art, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, 19th Century and the first half of 20th century art, from Great Moravia to Modernism. The aim was a universal survey of all periods, ordered into the coherent linear chronological system. The idea of development and successive styles derived from the discipline of art history was the guarantee of scientific objectivity and the legitimacy of Slovak art as well as the Slovak nation among other European nations. The desire to tell the story of Slovak art was fulfilled through the traditional chronological arrangement of works in the collection by styles, national schools and artists. In order to create a unified narrative and continual development, Vaculík did not hesitate to use facsimiles and enlarged photographs of lost and sold works or works located in churches. Small objects - buttons, buckles, metal mountings from the Great Moravian era were put on display as large black-and-white photographs. The Romanesque sculpture of a lion or a capital of a column, as well as wooden sculptures from the largest Gothic altar in Levoča, were cast in plaster. In order to maintain consistency and persuasiveness, two types of displays were used: displays of works because of their aesthetic value (as in Musée du Louvre) and displays of objects because of their educational aspects (as in Musée des Monuments Francais). A combination of originals and copies was necessary because of the predetermined narrative.

It's important to mention here that Karol Vaculík studied at Vienna University in the 1940s and the spirit of the Vienna School of Art History undoubtedly influenced his art- history concepts and museum practice. Based on the scientific argumentation of the Vienna School (connecting, in its early beginnings, scienticism with historical linear evolutionism) he had to prove the continuity of art development in Slovakia despite its fragmented material base. In order to visualize the existence of Slovak national art, objects found within the territory of present day Slovakia were used and chronologically ordered. The artistic production of the geographical region was identified as Slovak and classified into "national schools". Moreover, particular works were attributed to Slovak sculptors and painters. The captions, as well as the list of works in the catalogue include such texts: the Romanesque Lion was created by a Slovak sculptor in the mid-13th Century, or the Madonna from Strážky was created by a Slovak artist in the mid-14th Century. It was here that the theory of "Slovak Masters" was born. At the same time (in the sixties), the title "National Artist", which was an honor for officially accepted artists, was transferred to the world of contemporary art (Ján Bakoš).

Of course, displaying copies next to originals and ascribing Romanesque or Gothic sculptures and paintings to Slovak artists could be considered as compensating for gaps which had to be filled in for the sake of coherent narrative. National history had been confirmed through the artifacts displayed in the gallery.

However, it could be said that in the "Twelve Centuries" exhibition a general model of art historical displaying in Slovakia was created and established. Here national and aesthetic values merged at the base of historical linear evolutionism. Just as the authority of the museum legitimized art, so too art legitimized the authority of the museum. This is important, because in the future, every work that will be displayed here will have a guarantee - it will be considered art. And not only this: arising from accepted methodological practices of displaying, the authority of the museum will be abused. This relates to the next period after the occupation of Czechoslovakia 1968. While the 1960s were actually a very liberal period, in the 1970s, the dogma of socialist realism in contemporary art production was once again required. The Slovak National Gallery, as a state institution financed by the state, was never independent and now totally under the control of the Ministry of Culture and the Communist Party. Its absolute and main priority was to display contemporary art, which meant socialist realist art, with an emphasis on the work of national artists.

To add greater impact, the old late Baroque building of the National Gallery was enlarged by a new modern wing; in 1977 the new building and a new permanent collection was opened. The aspects of the state representation outside and inside the building and the emphasis of the present over the past were striking. The so called "developed socialist society" needed its confirmation through art. This was the role of the new permanent collection. Under the control of Ministry of Culture and the Central Committee of the Communist Party, curators of the National Gallery exhibited Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, 19th Century art and the art of the first half of the 20th Century to the same extent as the contemporary art of the "socialist epoch". The linear chronological concept of display was used again, but older periods were decreased on behalf of the contemporary "art of the socialist epoch". In fact, the historical part of the collection was only an introduction to the "grand epoch", a kind of culmination of the development over the centuries. So that the "historical introduction" of ancient art legitimized contemporary art. Validating mechanisms of the institution of the National Gallery represent the undoubted proof of the quality of art. Thus anything exhibited in the museum must be art. The authority of the museum and its mechanisms, like ordering objects into a readable historical development, presented with perfect naturalness the new ideological construction leaning on the previous national one. Once the "museological past" was created, (in the "Twelve Centuries" exhibition) it was possible to add new chapters. Everything appeared reasonable. The objectivity of the new "great synthesis" was constituted through genealogical filiations. Of course, within the "socialist epoch" and its socialist realism "style" there were particular requirements pertaining to content and form. Work featuring the Slovak National Uprising and the fight against fascism, the victory of the Soviet Army over German fascism in WWII and the building of a new socialist society designing a new world of workers and peasants were de rigueur. These themes had to correspond with the previous development of art in Slovakia. As a result, only work from the previous centuries and the first half of the 20th century which supported the ideas of heroic people and the building of a communist society were acceptable. However, in the 1970s there was a gap between social reality and the political desires of the ruling party. The disharmony and dissatisfaction caused by that gap resulted in the need to mask them. This led to a program of a harmonious superstructure and a doctrine of an obligatory norm supervised and controlled by the state. As a consequence, the principle role of art was to disguise the discrepancy between politics and social reality.

Art was not the only vehicle of political propaganda and instrument of ideological manipulation; art historians-curators of the National Gallery became instruments as well. Under the control of the authorities the representation of our past and present was composed. The new wing - a kind of white cube - enabled a "pure" modernist display as in the western modernist museum. In his book "Inside the White Cube" Brian O'Doherty describes "a simple, undecorated space with white walls and a polished wood floor or soft grey carpet. Paintings are hung wide apart in a single row, sometimes in only one large work on each wall. Sculptures are positioned in the centre of the gallery with ample space surrounding them. The works of art are evenly lit, usually by spotlights hanging from the ceiling or by ambient neon light. In this specialized viewing context, mundane objects may be mistaken - momentarily at least - for works of art: the firehose in a modern museum looks not like a fire hose but an esthetic conundrum".

The white cube model was applied here for the latest phase of socialist realism to underline the esthetic qualities of particular works of art. In this case it was a farce - paintings and sculptures were arranged on white walls and white pedestals according to color or formal similarities; some were put on a single panel and lit by a spotlight to create a contemplative atmosphere. The ideology of the white cube intertwined with prescribed communist ideology resulted in the curiously ambivalent existence of works of art. Of course, this kind of display - or better to say, rhetoric of display - should have achieved an eternal quality, a kind of sanctification of the work of art, but in the late 1970s and 1980s nobody believed it. Official art displayed in the state institution attracted no visitors or private collectors. Needless to say, scientific research in the SNG was limited and curatorial practice was formal due to the total control by the authorities.

In 2002 the exhibition "Slovak Visual Arts 1970 – 1985" in Slovak National Gallery was opened. The aim of the exhibition was to redefine the period after 1968 (we have interpreted above). Of course, it was the political turn of 1989 which enabled this but in the exhibition catalogue is claimed the necessity to display "what is considered art today". It is obvious that the political change claimed the adequate representation of the past. Instead of art of "the socialist epoch" we found unofficial alternative art at the center displayed in highly modernist manner. Not only paintings and sculptures but conceptual works, performance and different kinds of mixed media (found objects, junk art, environment, photographic documentation) were esthetically arranged on the white walls or white pedestals. Formal purity (pure style) and the modernist exhibitionary rhetorics enabled the "sanctification" of those works which were not considered art in previous regime. Two different narratives of the same period reveal not only analogies but demonstrate political usefulness of art institution to modern state.