The Quoted Poseur

Anna Hulačová and Markéta Lisá

The exhibition was open from 23.10.2013 to 22.11.2013 in Studio Hrdinů foyer.

– is the third exhibition of Studio Hrdinů. It reacts to the production by Jan Horák and Michal Pěchouček about the life of Julius Fučík. The duo of the directors does not discuss the obvious political aspects of the myth of Julius Fučík, but they introduce him as a figure of specific social temperament and discuss the themes of heroism and martyrdom usually linked with his figure.

The main characters – Saint George and Jan Hus – of the multilayered composition by Anna Hulačová, can be perceived as a symbolic meeting of religious icons that were abused, reinterpreted and manipulated by ideology; the same is true about Julius Fučík. The stylized sculptural group depicting a fight of Saint George discusses conflict of Good and Evil in the context of the specifics of the Czech environment, which is somehow negative to the values of religion, heroism and sacrifice. Saint George is going to kill Jan Hus. Jan Hus, a reformer of the Church similar to Luther or Calvin, not a fighter against the Church and everything western and German, as he was interpreted by the communist regime. Saint George, whose statue dominates the second courtyard of the Prague Castle, is usually seen as a character from a fairy tale. Julius Fučík was not a passionate ideologist, but rather a child of his own period, who was motivated by his own temperament rather than logical arguments. The myth of the martyr in the statue refers to the prejudices connected to the ideologically damaged historical interpretation of the values.

The music motif The Tree by Markéta Lisá refers to the process of the creation of the myth in general, e.g. the romanticizing tendencies of Julius Fučík and his relationship to nature, based in the legacy of the Czech romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha and the aesthetics of the Czech National Revival.

Curator: Tereza Sochorová Horáková