A Beauty of Thought: Jiri Kolar’s Visual Poetry

Strangely enough, I had to move over the Atlantic Ocean to discover many Czech and Slovak artists of the 20^th century avant-garde. Jiri Kolar (1914 – 2002), a prolific Czech poet, visual artist and translator, created a vast body of work, collages, that prompted my recent explorations in printmaking and its application for relief and 3D work.

There is a good online article in English on Jiri Kolar by Leah Cowan Jiri Kolar: His Life, Work and Cultural Significance to the Czech Republic that can give you some basics about the extent of his work, so I’m not going to summarize his life and work here. But I would like to share my on-going fascination with his work and legacy, which triggered my new (or renewed) interest in this 20th century art form (used by prolific artists from Picasso to Schwitters and Motherwell). I’m fascinated by the range of collage methods that Jiri Kolar developed, labeled and systematically applied throughout his work. The best source to learn about these methods is Kolar’s Dictionary of Methods from 1960s (Slovnik metod in Czech), which  includes specific methods of cutting, replicating, layering or folding paper elements with such exotic names as chiasmage, crumblage (I love its Czech name ‘muchlaz’), froissage, confrontage, rollage or prollage.

example of Kolar’ collage – a combination of chiasmage and rollage

Kolar, isolated in the communist Czechoslovakia, didn’t have many resources, and often relied on friends of his friends outside Czechoslovakia, in Western Europe, to supply him with good color reproductions. Despite the impressive range and systematic approach to the development of his collage methods, it is the thought behind his genius that continues to impress us (me! It does impress me.).

Jiri Kolar’s  ‘Cow Having Eaten Up Canaletto’, 1968, prollage

“Kolář’s collages riled against Socialist Realism, whose doctrines condemned non-representative forms of art. Later known as the Zhdanov Doctrine, this vehicle of censorship imposed by Soviet authorities was a tense web of prohibitions that strove to sculpt Czechoslovakian art and literature into shining billboards of Communist ideology. “ — Leah Cowan

Kolar’s method of distortion and disruption destruct the original plane, creating a new way of looking at the old world, the system. His collages were intended to influence the viewer’s outlook on life; to raise the viewer’s level of consciousness. Whimsical, yet requesting attention of an intelligent observer, Jiri Kolar’s collages, these ‘non-verbal poems’, revere the human condition, but through scrap-book joviality, also remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.

Jiri Kolar’s ‘Mademoiselle Riviere’, 1982, crumblage (muchlaz)