Publication details
Disregarded or Adored? Women Artists' Market In Communist Czechoslovakia. Case of Adriena Simotova and Her Career Path
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Just in the recent years, with the progressing research in the field of art and contemporary history of the totalitarian Czechoslovakia era, we have been posing question about changing the role, market and social position of the women artists. What are the data we can use for researching the galleries (private and state-owned), collectors and media response for individual artist career path for the last five or six decades? And how can we collect them? For describing this phenomenon and changing situation during this period, paper examines the case of one of the most influential Czech woman artist of the last century, Adriena Simotova (1926-2014), and her deeply changing position in the Czech and also (afterwards) international (esp. French) cultural space from late 1960s to 1990s (or even nowadays after her death). As any recent gender studies are showing that the current position of women under socialist condition/society was different from the western world, or maybe even more equal (!) on the general level, what were the real responses of buyers and critics? And what were their real positions as artists, as they usually lived in the marriage with their much more established and acclaimed men-artist partners (also e.g. Bela Kolarova or Vera Janouskova and others case in Czech cultural space)? We are going to examine Adriena Simotova and other significant Czech women artists market response development from late socialism period, when all these authors were officially supressed with no possibility of public presenting of their work (supressed as a post avant-garde conceptual artist in general and also supressed as a women-artist?), till the situation of contemporary free society and free market with their private buyers, representing certain generational taste and financial preferences. Discussing also the special period position of art-historians as buyers-collectors, buyers-state galleries employees, critics and exhibition-makers in one. Or the position of private collectors and unofficial exhibition makers in one. |