"Album 76": An Alternative Art Platform of the 1970s

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60461446%3A_____%2F22%3AN0000022" target="_blank" >RIV/60461446:_____/22:N0000022 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://resonances.artpool.hu/conferences/1" target="_blank" >https://resonances.artpool.hu/conferences/1</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

—

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

"Album 76": An Alternative Art Platform of the 1970s

Original language description

During the 1970s—the period known as normalisation—culture in Czechoslovakia was heavily influenced by censorship and the lack of personal and creative freedom. Consequently, artists searched for alternative conditions in which to continue their work, for mutual generational and intergenerational confrontation, and for the presentation of contemporary art. No longer supported by the state, art was forced to move to a model of self-organisation. It created alternative channels of communication and established a range of exhibition venues outside of gallery institutions. All these unofficial activities arose thanks to the engagement of individuals, their fierce commitment, and their willingness to take risks under the common and challenging conditions of that time. The paper by Dagmar Svatošová at the conference Rezonances I - Non-conformist art under socialism in Central Eastern Europe and its transnational network: parallel structures, communicating channels and nodes. "Album 76", a collection of graphic prints and original drawings by nearly seventy Czech and Slovak artists, is a unique example of such an alternative form of presentation and confrontation of contemporary art. It served as a portable platform through which the communication of art, disrupted by circumstances at that time, could take place, and offered information about the ongoing work of an important part of the unofficial art scene that could not be seen elsewhere. The album instigated other artistic events and impacted both the development of mutual Czech-Slovak relations, as well as relations with Poland, Hungary and East Germany. This paper will analyse the circumstances and preconditions that led to the creation of "Album 76", its significance at the time, and the influence it would go on to exert. It will offer a brief comparison of formally related works from both sides of the Iron Curtain that worked with a similar exhibition strategy, albeit in different contexts and for different reasons. Although the portable exhibition format of the album was soon exhausted and the circle of "Albumists" moved onto other projects, it remains one of the specific forms of alternative institutionalisation that artists in the Eastern bloc discovered. It reveals the full range of the network extending across Czechoslovakia and into the wider region, and is testimony to the uninterrupted activity of local art scenes even during the normalisation period of the 1970s.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

60401 - Arts, Art history

Project

—

Continuities

V - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z jinych verejnych zdroju

Publication year

2022

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů