Agulha Revista de Cultura: JAN DOČEKAL | Arnošt Budík

Words love each other.

ANDRÉ BRETON

It is possible to understand the current events more correctly when we simultaneously perceive the reflection of the past. Before the middle of the 1960s of the last centuries, the impression could have been created in Czechoslovakia that the stranglehold of communist ideology, especially in culture and art, which had lasted for a decade and a half, was perhaps more moderate.

The creation of the Lacoste group

Artists who did not merge with the ruling pro-Russian regime were intoxicated by illusion. They saw the outline of hope for freedom. From such a mood, when desire exceeds reality, a surrealist group was born in 1964, forty years after Breton’s surrealist manifesto, in the Moravian metropolis of Brno, 200 kilometres´ from the capital city of Prague. The founders, four students with surrealist ambitions, named it after the French chateau Lacoste. The oldest Arnošt Budík was twenty-eight years old (1936), Josef Kremláček a year younger (1937-2015), Václav Pajurek twenty years old (1944) and Jiří Havlíček eighteen (1946-2023). Four years later, Budík defended his thesis on Karel Teige and became an art historian. Pajurek received the same education, Kremláček studied fine arts with a specialization in cartoons, and Havlíček became a university teacher.

In 1965, Lacoste issued an inaugural statement. From its contents:

We stand helpless in an increasingly alienated world. We are looking for a way to detach ourselves from the conventional observation of life that glides over the surface of things... We independently put down the glasses of realism one by one. We got into a maze of isms and schools reeking of false reality... Our talent was only the ability to look and a subconscious desire for a real sense of freedom. Suddenly he appeared before us from the verses of Péret and Breton, from the poetry of Mordoror and from the sparkling canvases of Magritte, Toyen and de Chirico. And so, we began to discover what Breton wrote: Surrealism is contained in reality itself and is neither above nor outside of it.

The four in the Lacoste group subscribed to the theses of surrealism: Surrealism is a means to the complete liberation of the spirit and everything that resembles it (André Breton). Surrealism is a struggle for the free manifestation of the spirit and free expression in all forms (Karel Teige). Surrealism is a certain human attitude that includes the whole person (Guy Mangeot). This determination also includes the declaration of the Lacoste group: We want to open all doors even at the cost of not knowing where they will lead. We stand where the pre-war Dada stood, we verify the basic truths of life, the laws, we revise all values and dare to doubt them... We believe in the omnipotence of desire and in the possibility of finding a point where the real and the unreal, the past and the future, the communicable and the incommunicable, they merge.

Lacoste group’s European steps

Budík’s archive is a source of information about lived events of past decades. When I wrote about Lacoste some time ago, he sent me a summary message:

Already at the end of 1965, we had our first contact with the Parisian surrealist group. Of course, only by correspondence, traveling across the borders of Czechoslovakia was completely impossible. Then with the Italian group Surfanta and in France with the group Rupture in Marseille. We also got to know people from a distance around the Brumel Blondesü revue in the Netherlands and in Brussels around the very active Fantasmagie revue. This circle included A. Simon, M. Leconte, E.L.T. Messens and I. Colquhonn. Fantasmagie organized exhibitions all over Europe, some members of the Lacoste group also took part in them. Collaboration with Yugoslav poets inspired by surrealism culminated in an exhibition entitled Invisible Mirror held in Kruševac. Another exhibition, titled Logic of a Clear Night, was held in 1968 in West Berlin. And at that time, the last exhibition, entitled The Crisis of Presence, was in May 1969 in Mons, Belgium, and was repeated in the Brussels gallery La Grande jatte.

In Czechoslovakia at the time, shrouded in intellectual darkness, Lacoste necessarily moved on the thin ice of experimentation. Václav Pajurek wrote that a sign of the times was the chewing of the history of Czechoslovak surrealism from the time of Vítězslav Nezval, covered with a layer of dubious nostalgia. And over everything hung the foreshadowing of August 21, 1968, the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Soviet Union and the countries of the so-called Warsaw Pact. Development has stopped. All thrown back with the look of 1950s fear and misery. In 1969, Lacoste still publishes the seventh, last, number of the semi-legal magazine Styx (Budík later writes that in Czechoslovakia it was consistently thrown out of public libraries, while in France and Belgium it can still be found thirty years later). Lacoste has almost disappeared from the domestic scene. She held her last exhibition in Czechoslovakia in 1971, outside of closely guarded Prague, in the "unimportant" countryside, in Třebíč, where Lacoste member Josef Kremláček lived. The final presentation of the works of Lacoste members took place in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1972. In the background was Arnošt Budík, who had already been living in Brussels for three years at that time. No one from the group saw the next exhibition live, they preferred to keep quiet about it at home.

Arnošt Budík in Brussels

Cultural events in Czechoslovakia, but not only that, froze again after the Russian occupation in August 1968. However, Budík’s surrealist activity received a new breath and the strength of its outstretched wings in 1969, in the Belgian emigration. At the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, he defended his doctorate in art history (he spoke fluent French) and the following year he was already involved in the founding of Gradiva magazine. Czech and Slovak authors also appeared in it. For example, Karol Baron published the Manifesto of Panopticalism. Gradiva tried to build a bridge between the different currents of contemporary surrealism. In three issues there was a poll devoted to surrealism. Forty-two supporters of Surrealism and its critics expressed their answers to five questions concerning the relationship of Surrealism to art and philosophy. Among them were V Bounoure, E. Jaquer, the Japanese Takiguchi, A.P. Mandiargues. Important at the time was a leaflet published in April 1972 under the title How long will we wait with our heads in the sand? He protested Western concessions to Soviet imperialism. It was distributed throughout Western Europe by the Lacoste group.

Budík writes and publishes theoretical texts and essays, translates. His poetry collections and illustrated bibliophiles are published in Belgium and by the Czech publishing house Amaprint. Some also contain poems by Lubomír Kerndl. Brussels is a centre of creative freedom, a meeting place for surrealists from different corners of the world. The alarm clock establishes friendship and cooperation. Later, he uses everything in the Czech surrealist Gallery Čertův ocas (Devil’s Tail).

The Stir up group and the Čertův ocas gallery

In Czechoslovakia, in the region of northern Moravia, there was the Karl Teig Society. It ended in 1995. However, the path marked by surrealism continues. Some from North Moravia, members of the former group Lacoste and other surrealists founded a new surrealist group Stir up in a free climate. It is headed by Václav Pajurek, one of the founders of the former Lacoste group. So far, she has organized over a hundred collective exhibitions in various places in the Czech Republic, including reruns. It was also presented in Brussels, as a result of Budík’s organizational activity. From contacts with Miguel de Carvalho in Portugal and surrealists overseas, Stir up was represented in international surrealist exhibitions in the Portuguese centre of Coimbra (2008), in Chile (Santiago de Chile 2009, 2017, 2019) and in Costa Rica (2016, 2019). Arnošt Budík has always played an important role in participation. Relations with Latin American creators and knowledge of their work made Budík the best-known surrealist of Czech origin in the geographical and cultural space there.

Lubomír Kerndl, a painter, sculptor, printer and publishing entrepreneur, joined the Stir up group at the instigation of Josef Kremláček at the turn of the century. In the spring of 2006, he rented a former water mill on the Jihlava River near the town of Třebíč. The mill is located in a romantic valley thirty kilometres west of Budík’s native Brno. A surrealist gallery is being created in the mill with the name Čertův ocas (Devil’s Tail). Budík is the leading author of the concept of the premiere exhibition. The opening on May 1, 2006 is a great celebration of contemporary surrealism. It presents the works of a number of foreign guests. Due to its scope and the information provided, it was an event of considerable importance in its time. Including works by Stir up members and guests, it was almost 200 works. Let’s name some of the participating artists: Noël Arnaud, Miguel de Carvalho, Miguel Lohlé, Fernando Garcia Diaz, Eva Garcia, Amirah Gazel, Christine Helmstedt, Fredy Flores Knistoff, Rik Lina, Carlo Piazza. And in the following five years we saw surrealist works with familiar names: Jean-Martin Bontoux, Aurelien Dauguet, France Elysées, Henry Lejeune, Tomas Rayner, Tony Pusey, John W. Welson, Artur do Cruzeiro Seixas.

Star of three crystals

Arnošt Budík considers himself primarily a poet and essayist. The collage is a visual mirror of the poems it already contains. Budík’s most important text is the essay The Star of Three Crystals. Here is its full text:

If we approach today, three quarters of a century later (written before the end of the 20th century, author’s note), at least a cursory view of the adventure of the spirit that is Surrealism, and free ourselves from the accumulation of epithets to which its gravediggers and disloyal observers are subjected patina of time, we see a large three-pointed star. This star of surrealism not only did not darken, but still shines brightly above the current reality, which is not acceptable to everyone.

Contemporary society, at least as we know it in Europe, despite certain material advantages that it sometimes generously and sometimes very carefully redistributes to its citizens, often deadens the human psyche with its indifference, established rules, conventions and exhausting conformism. The three-pointed star that still shines and attracts those who have stopped trusting the postulates of self-saving philosophy, the infallible development of so-called modern art and progress, as the only source of human happiness, this star with the flavour of subversion and resistance, this star that tries to put reality before questions with their true meaning, represents the trinity that fulfils the essence of surrealism - poetry, love and freedom. These three aspects are indivisible, commensurable and interconnected.

The first crystal is POETRY. Long before Breton (Poetry must propose its own solution to the problems of life), Novalis argued that poetry is absolute experience. In Surrealism, poetry thus came to the centre of life by ceasing to be a mere art and becoming a method leading to the widest consciousness and at the same time an integral part of a person. Only with his help does the admirable crystallization of the real reach the miraculous, which often elevates even the banal components of the everyday to a miraculous spark. Surrealism was also the first to raise the problem of the relationship between poetry and revolution, following Rimbaud and Marx: Change life, change the world.

The second crystal is LOVE. For Breton, it means a fateful force such as a dream and poetic inspiration. For the Surrealists, love is associated with the highest realms of the spirit. Breton’s postulate remains valid: We reduce art to its simplest expression, which is love.

The third crystal is FREEDOM. For the Surrealists, it is a basic prerequisite for the development of the human spirit, a dimension of life that must be conquered in any case to make life truly worthwhile. In this area, Surrealism rejects all compromises. This desire for liberation is expressed in Surrealist work by eschewing traditional patterns, rules, and practices. That is why, for example, painting is never about the pursuit of aesthetic expression, but about the desire for new discoveries, for achieving what has not yet been achieved.

Every proper Surrealist work contains all three aspects that make up its system. Surrealist activity may have lost some of its original potency of surprise when its power found itself in museums and school textbooks years ago, but it still follows its long-standing evolution with a disturbing urgency. She did not stop at the achieved positions.

Tiny collages like poems – continuity of imagination

Arnošt Budík’s first collages (even then exclusively of small format) were on display at exhibitions of the Lacoste group. Already at the beginning of his artistic work, Budík put poetry in the foreground of his work. His most natural expression has always been a poem written by hand on the so-called quarter or even only eighth paper format. When the collage is of the same format, it means that there is no desire for a larger image area in the artist’s work, the collage is a poem. We only discover it constructed by another graphic means.

Surrealists surpassed other creators by developing the collage technique. In addition to subconscious commands, they made extensive use of imagination. Their basis was the theory of an unimaginably illogical meeting of various elements. And with each new exploration, the boundaries are pushed again in the continuum of imagination. Budík’s collages are not bound by any aesthetic and ethical rules. The basic criterion is independence, followed by a content interpretation ending with a surprising glowing metaphor.

Budík’s characteristic modesty, rejection of conflicts, perception of the freedom of all human actions, creative work in particular, as the highest gift that a person can receive, all formed his personality. Anyone who has become familiar with the results of Budík’s branched activity admires his firmness of opinion and respects him.

JAN DOČEKAL (República Checa, 1943). Artista Plástico, escritor, editor. Colabora regularmente con diferentes medios internacionales: Agulha Revista de Cultura (Brasil), Matérika (Costa Rica), Triplov (Portugal) etc. Participa con los surrealistas checos en las diversas manifestaciones del Movimiento Surrealista. En una encuesta realizada por Agulha Revista de Cultura, ha declarado: En mi opinión, el movimiento surrealista es todo lo que está por encima del realismo en nuestro mundo. Significa todo lo que crean, comparten y difunden los seguidores del surrealismo. El movimiento significa dirección. El surrealismo (que muchos teóricos del arte declararon como algo del pasado hace mucho tiempo, pero que aún vive en las ideas y actividades de muchos seguidores) es sólo uno de los movimientos actuales. Es un hecho muy bueno. La variedad de posibilidades es una plataforma para la unidad en la diversidad. Creo que la civilización surrealista es un hermoso concepto futurista, pero aún no se ha cumplido. Es una expresión de entusiasmo, revolución y deseo también. Hace unos cien años, según Kandinsky, la humanidad debía reconocer que la principal forma de arte es la abstracción. Pero no sucedió. Y nuestra civilización no se ha vuelto surrealista desde el nacimiento del surrealismo en la segunda mitad de los años veinte del siglo pasado. Si el surrealismo se convirtiera en el estilo universal de la existencia humana, habría perdido gran parte de su encanto oculto.

ANTONIA EIRIZ (Cuba, 1929-1995). Se graduó de la Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Alejandro en 1957. Participó en la II Bienal Interamericana de México en 1960 y en la VI Bienal de Sao Paulo en 1961, donde su obra recibió una mención honorífica. De 1962 a 1969 impartió clases en la Escuela de Instructores de Arte y en la Escuela Nacional de Arte, ambas en La Habana. En 1963 ganó el Primer Premio en la Exposición de La Habana, organizada por la Casa de las Américas. Al año siguiente, la Galería Habana presentó su importante exposición “Pintura/Ensamblajes”. En 1966 expuso su obra junto a Raúl Martínez en la Casa del Lago de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, y un año después en el 23 Salón de Mayo en París, Francia. Eiriz tenía una forma muy particular de captar su entorno, optando por retratar las situaciones más dramáticas y grotescas de la condición humana, lo que provocó que su obra fuera incomprendida por el gobierno revolucionario, lo que la llevó a jubilarse anticipadamente. A finales de los años sesenta abandonó la pintura y se dedicó a la promoción de formas de arte popular, transformando su casa en un taller donde enseñaba técnicas como el papel maché y los trabajos textiles a la comunidad local. En 1989 recibió la Orden Félix Varela del Consejo de Estado de Cuba, la más alta distinción del país en el ámbito cultural. En 1991 se realizó una exposición de su obra titulada “Reencuentro” en la Galería Galiano de La Habana y en 1994 recibió una beca de la Fundación John Simon Guggenheim. Después de su muerte en 1995, el Museo de Arte de Fort Lauderdale organizó una retrospectiva de su obra: “Antonia Eiriz: Tributo a una leyenda”. Ahora ella es nuestra artista invitada, en esta edición de Agulha Revista de Cultura.