Erratum

Compensation Portrait: Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction
Original Author: Julian Stallabrass, 2006

Introduction

The Representing the Nation publication was prepared in relation to our participation in the International Triennial of Contemporary Art (ITCA) organized by Tomáš Vlček and Milan Knížák at the National Gallery (NG) in Prague in 2008. We were invited to create a new work.

We wanted to characterize the NG in Prague as an institution. In 2008 the NG was a member of the Association of Czech Galleries. We decided to visit all of its member institutions across the country during a six month period. This gave us an overview of topics, complications, facilities, and staff issues, including an understanding of the challenges the respective institutions face, in respect to the regional, economical, and historical collections of art for which they are responsible. How do they think about and reflect on their own practice? What kind of functions, positions, roles, or ambitions do they articulate?

Despite being dissatisfied with the research material, we made a decision to maintain the project’s original framework. We had anticipated more substantial visions or statements, so we applied an improvised strategy of so-called Compensation Portraits, inspired by a concept from the exhibition catalog First Papers of Surrealism held in New York in 1942. In this case, the surrealist painters were asked to bring photographs of people other than themselves to represent them in the publication. In this spirit, we selected theoretical texts on institutional critique from a range of international writers, translated these texts into Czech and presented them as texts from Czech institutions and their representatives.

The project as a whole was self-financed. The sponsors or partners whose logos are printed on page 59 at the end of the publication are all imaginary sponsors, themselves unaware of any seeming participation. Thus, the publication falsely takes on the form of a serious international cooperation between the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Practices (eipcp.net), the EU Education and Culture D6 Framework Program, the Association of Czech Galleries, the National Gallery Prague, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Prague, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and funded by the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank. This parody reflects the trend of corporate sponsorship supporting critical, progressive, intellectual, and autonomous initiatives within locations of their respective markets.

The Representing the Nation publication was immediately distributed to all of the represented institutions. The project was not appreciated by the organizers of the ITCA / NG, generally disappointed in not understanding the basic conceptual framework. They refused to cover production costs or to further communicate concerning the project. In addition, part of the publications went missing from the NG depository. Few institutions encouraged further dialogue, and there was limited interest by other representatives and researchers from various institutions in Prague.

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The Gallery of Modern Art in Roudnice nad Labem

Authority: The Ústí nad Labem Region
Director: PhDr. Miroslava Hlaváčková

History:
In 1910 August Švagrovský donated some 250 paintings from his collection to the town of Roudnice. These pictures formed the core of the Roudnice municipal picture gallery, which was opened in the auditorium of the local school in 1913. From 1930 to 1942 the premises of the picture gallery, including the exhibition rooms, were on the second floor of the local savings bank. The Gallery found its permanent home in the newly reconstructed Lobkowicz riding school (Baroque). From 1960 until 1965, when the gallery opened its doors to the public, the premises were substantially reconstructed.

Collection:
The gallery specializes in 20th-century Czech art. It owns a large collection of pictures from the Czech Impressionists. The Gallery also has works by members of the groups Sedm v říjnu (Seven in October), Skupina (Group) 42 and by representatives of Czech Surrealism and imaginative art. The 1960s are chiefly represented by artists belonging to Nová figurace (New figuration) and structuralism. The permanent collection represents modern Czech art from the late 19th century up until today.

Statement:

Recent state demands on art complement those of the corporations, for both have similar interests in fostering social calm, cohesion, and deference in the face of the gale of creative destruction that the economic system are committed to propagating continually gives rise. In Czech Republic the government sees art as a way to boost the economy, particularly in the so-called ‘creative industries’, as an aid to regional development, and as social balm to heal the divisive social rifts opened up by the long years of so-called totalitarian rule.

Art should be of quality without being elitist, and should draw in new, diverse audiences. There are similar moves in all of Europe and in the US, where National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) funding, long under attach from conservative politicians, is newly justified on the grounds that art has a role to play in social programmes, including crime reduction, housing, and schooling. The danger of such moves is that revealing the instrumentality of art, they also unmask with too much clarity the relationship between art and the state, which is supposed, after all, to be founded on idealism and eternal human values.

If states fund the arts to improve the souls of their citizens, the effect is ruined if those consumers of art wander about our galleries thinking about advertising strategies and regional development. Increasingly, those thoughts are unavoidable. Art can only meet the instrumental demands of business and state if its function is concealed by the ideal of freedom, and its qualitative separation from free trade is faithfully sustained. The state and business are happy to leave art beyond the reach of pure profit maximization. In many nations the state plays a large role in hoarding and displaying objects, influencing the determination of taste and the coarse of art writing.

If artworks were truly commodities like any other, states should be content to leave their purchase, conservation, and disposal to market forces. While commodities are thought to divide as well as define identity, appealing to competing impulses within the individual, there is a doubtful assumption that the art work within the museum forges social cohension even as it celebrates difference, and reinforces collective memory even as it recycles and recombines diverse and disparate references.