Publication details
Collecting in Communist Czechoslovakia. The Art Collection As An Altruistic Space Of Freedom : How The Totalitarian Ideology Could Change The Aspects Of Collecting Behaviour
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Political developments in Czechoslovakia after WWII, especially after the crucial transformation of the ideological paradigm in February 1948, brought with them radical changes to ownership/property and societal structures as a consequence of the fight against the “defeated” social class. Private art collecting experienced a great deal of ideologically motivated oppression. The systemic, targeted measures enacted against members of the societal layer that up until then had served as the vehicle for the class-rooted phenomenon of art collecting anchored as a component in the lifestyle of the middle and upper classes, were taken. The paper concerns a significant crucial impact that these political and social conditions have had on the form of the basic functional aspects of private collecting behavior during 1970s and 1980s in Czechoslovakia. Also compares these collector‘s behavior patterns with those of 1990s and those of contemporary art market buyers. The social function of individual art collecting, associated with the aspect of self-presentation, ambition and social status building, was under totalitarian conditions considerably weakened or deformed. Unofficial contemporary art that was searched by young collector’s generation was not tradable in the legal market. Thanks to the malfunctioning mechanisms of the free art market traditional financial/economic function of collecting were also paralyzed. The aesthetic/decorative or also educative dimension of collecting behavior was in the official rhetoric of the regime the only uncontested one. As a resultant of such determinant conditions, individual collectors emphasized the spiritual-symbolic aspect of their behavior. In the background of many collectors' stories, we could observe the desire to escape into alternative, free space/reality, but also the desire to interact with contemporary art, the need to communicate with the works of authors who have passed the same generational experience. |