http://www.praguepost.com/night-and-day/galleries/3277-from-bohemia-to-bohemia.html
Life at a cultural outpost, as lived by three noteworthy artists
Posted: January 13, 2010
By Mimi Fronczak Rogers
Today, when counterculture almost instantaneously becomes mainstream
thanks to the Internet and the media, it's hard to remember there was
a time when small-B bohemians truly existed at the fringes. An
exhibition at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art looks at bohemia as
a concept, fast-forwarding past the Parisian bohemia of the 19th and
early 20th centuries all the way to postwar New York, focusing on a
period spanning the 1950s to '80s. A central question of this show is
whether the existence of a real bohemia has withered away, as
one-time refuges for unconventional and free lifestyles such as New
York's legendary Chelsea Hotel become gentrified.
The thought-provoking show "Chelsea Hotel: Ghosts of Bohemia" traces
the history and legacy of this particular place through the framework
of three important artists who lived and worked there, representing
three decades: Harry Smith (1923-1991), Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). By focusing on the Chelsea as a
microcosm, the exhibition's curator, DOX Artistic Director Jaroslav
And l, opens the door to bigger questions. The show doesn't offer
answers, but rather signposts encouraging viewers toward further consideration.
Warhol has already become a familiar presence in Prague. Local
audiences had the opportunity to see some of his most famous films
last year at Galerie Rudolfinum, including the rarely screened Eat,
Kiss, Blow Job and the five-and-a-half-hour Sleep. A 2002 show staged
by the National Gallery at Veletr ní palác showcased his visual art.
Warhol represents a transformational phase in the concept of bohemia.
While surrounding himself with characters living on the margins, he
was obsessed with, and ceaselessly courted, celebrity. His
self-proclaimed "deep superficiality" masked a complex figure who was
a harbinger of phenomena that would later appear full-force in the art world.
The main attraction in Warhol's section of this show is his film
Chelsea Girls, a three-and-a-half hour 1966 epic rarely shown outside
a museum or film club setting. Playing at DOX on a split screen
accompanied by a soundtrack for one side at a time, Chelsea Girls is
a rambling documentary shot partly in the Chelsea Hotel along with
other settings, including Warhol's Factory. It features a cast of
characters who inhabited the hotel in the mid-1960s playing
themselves, with the ambience of the place itself in a leading role.
Interestingly, this was Warhol's first commercially successful film,
with distribution to major cities beyond New York.
Mapplethorpe is a name widely known to local audiences, though mainly
through reproductions and reports about scandals involving
exhibitions of his photographs, since his work has seldom been
exhibited in this country. Mapplethorpe lived in the Chelsea at the
beginning of his career, and his partner at that time was Patti
Smith. Mapplethorpe later defined himself and defied the art
establishment with his homoerotic photographs. He represents the late
phase of New York bohemia in the 1980s, when the art world embraced
Warhol's directives toward fame and fortune and the margins moved
toward the center. Unfortunately, Mapplethorpe was also a casualty of
the AIDS crisis that hit the cultural community hard in that decade.
Smith will be an unfamiliar name for many viewers, though he is by
far the most fascinating personality in this show, and best embodies
the true "bohemian." Smith is represented mainly by his experimental
films and some paintings and drawings, only a couple facets of his
many pursuits.
Exposed by his family at a young age to the occult, Smith studied
anthropology and was traveling the academic track until a
mind-expanding encounter with marijuana on a weekend visit to San
Francisco led him down a different path. He continued pursuing
anthropology and ethnology - and smoking pot - notably compiling folk
songs from the 1920s and '30s in his 1957 Anthology of American Folk
Music, a key influence on Bob Dylan and many others. His interest in
preserving folklore and finding deeper correspondences also tied in
to many other activities. He was an avid collector, amassing things
tangible and transitory, from paper airplanes to string figures.
In addition to his complex, symbol-loaded visual art, much of which
was lost or destroyed, Smith is probably best-known for his abstract,
hand-painted animated films; Heaven and Earth Magic and Mahagonny are
two of the most memorable. His legacy, however, is far richer, and
this show can only begin to tell the full story. Hopefully, what's
here will intrigue viewers enough to further explore his life and work.
These three figures represent different manifestations of the
"bohemian" artist, though there are overlaps and a certain continuity
among them. Another thing they have in common is the impact they made
on the culture of their times, beyond their artworks.
While the Chelsea Hotel has been the subject of books, documentaries
and studies, as well as the source of many myths and legends, this
show is unique in using the setting to ponder the fate of bohemia in
this particular way. The exhibition succeeds in presenting a slice of
New York's bohemia in historical context, even creating a sense of
nostalgia for it.
Whatever form bohemia takes today, or will in the future, can only be
more fragmented than it was in the heyday of the Chelsea Hotel, and
is more likely to be found in Belgrade or Beijing than New York or
Paris. Forging a new conception of counterculture will be the job of
those who take the cosmic baton from Warhol, Mapplethorpe and Smith.
Especially Smith.
Julia Calfee's photographs recording the unique atmosphere of the
hotel are also on display until Feb. 15.
--
Chelsea Hotel: Ghosts of Bohemia
at DOX Center for Contemporary Art Ends March 29. Osadní 34, Prague
7-Holešovice. Open Mon. 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Wed.-Fri. 11 a.m.-7 p.m.,
Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
.
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