Arts news
In today's edition of the Arts, Dita Asiedu looks at some of the Czech cultural stories making the headlines this week, including the 120th anniversary of the birth of Franz Kafka, an exhibition of paintings documenting the Prague ghetto in the second half of the nineteenth century, a new Czech addition to the UNESCO list of world heritage sites, and of course the start of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival:
The romantic nooks and corners of Prague's Jewish ghetto that have long disappeared have come to live again as the Robert Guttmann Gallery in the Czech capital is currently housing an exhibition of works by the half forgotten Czech-Jewish painter Adolf Kohn who lived from 1868 to 1953. Kohn dedicated much of his life to painting the Jewish ghetto and a look at a collection of his work today refreshes memories of what streets and squares in Prague's Old Town and Josefov looked like in the second half of the nineteenth century and at the start of the twentieth century before the so-called "asanace" or clearance was launched. Arno Parik is the exhibition's curator:
"Towards the end of the nineteenth century in Prague, just like in many other cities in Europe, the Jewish quarter was torn down because of the bad state it was in. There was a labyrinth of some three hundred houses. The streets were narrow because houses kept on being rebuilt. Furthermore, there was a very complicated system of property ownership for several historical reasons. So, under these conditions the quarter was difficult to manage and people began to move to other parts of Prague, leaving only those behind who were willing to live in this way. The area, with its many transformations, soon came to be known as the Fifth Quarter instead of the Jewish Quarter. So this is also why the authorities decided to launch the Asanace - or Clearance. In 1893, a law was introduced, under which this part of the city was to be torn down, and reconstructed changing it completely within a short period of ten to thirteen years."
As a little-known artist of his time, Kohn's work mainly hung in local restaurants and shops, reminding customers what the Jewish quarter was like before the clearance project. His style is quite similar to that of Robert Guttmann - the Czech-Jewish artist after whom the gallery hosting Kohn's work today is named after. Both artists lived in Prague's Jewish ghetto and were inspired by their surroundings. Just like Czech-Jewish writer Franz Kafka, they did their work without any artistic education, choosing not to continue with their family's trade. With Kohn lacking the artistic education, his work is said to have a certain technical weakness, which observers have chosen to label as "naïve". The exhibition runs from June 26 to September 19 and is open every day from 9 am to 6 pm, with the exception of Saturdays and Jewish holidays, when it's closed.
It's been 120 years since the birth of one of the Czech Republic's most famous authors. On Thursday, the Czech Republic's cultural scene celebrated the anniversary of the birth of Franz Kafka, who was born in Prague on July 3 1883. Kafka studied law at Prague's German university Ferdinand-Karls. After his graduation in 1906 he worked in the field for a year before working for an insurance company. It was here that he came up with the topics for his literary work. It was not until 1912, at the age of forty that he began to write feverishly.
However, during his time, Kafka's work never enjoyed much popularity. None of Kafka's novels was printed during his lifetime, and it was only with reluctance that he published a fraction of his shorter fiction. His strained relationship with his father, shopkeeper and businessman Hermann Kafka, as is documented in one of his letters to his father that was never sent and later published, left a deep mark on Kafka, who is probably known as one of the most melancholic Czech-Jewish artists we know. But despite him having been more of an introvert, Kafka found the love of his life - although his relationship with Felice Bauer soon proved to be complicated. After their engagement in 1914, Kafka broke it off, then got engaged again but broke off the engagement for a second time after receiving the news that he had contracted tuberculosis. He died in a sanatorium near Vienna, on June 3 1924. He is buried at the Olsany Jewish cemetery in Prague.
"Franz Kafka was associated with the ill-fated year of 1968 when, I think the General Secretary of the Communist Party said it all began with the Kafka Conference in Liblice and ended with the contra-revolution in 1968. So that is how Kafka became an enemy of the state - a fact that our foreign friends will never understand. Of course, after 1989, the gates opened and Kafka became popular. However, he became an image that was marketed aggressively and unfortunately in the wrong way. The businessmen took over, using Kafka's image to sell all sorts of textiles, and other products."
Some of Kafka's most famous works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Castle, A Hunger Artist, and In the Penal Colony.
