Masters and Workers of National Culture. The Image of Artist in Czech Feature Films in the Years After February 1948
Abstract
The study focuses on the image of artist as construed in Czech feature films in the era of the cultural-political doctrine of socialist realism after the February of 1948. The first part focuses on the formulation of the doctrine in a wider contemporary discourse: the organizational, regulative and aesthetic-normative changes in culture lead to the re-evaluation of the status of artist in society.
Artists from intelligentsia had to adjust to requirements of the new establishment; their works were subjected to the commission and supervision from above. Artists from the working class and popular art were favoured.
The Soviet art and selected great cultural personalities of Czech history served as a model. These are the elementary ideas underlining the typology of artist figures and narrative schemes in the period cinema.
The main part of the study is dedicated to the implementation of these ideas in films. It focuses on the collection of feature films made from 1948 to 1956, with particular attention paid to the theme of art in the context of period dramaturgy and several basic schemes.
The progressive artist is realized primarily through the classic figures of national culture in biographical films. The negative type is represented, without exceptions, in small roles and their characters do not develop.
They are connected with bourgeoisie or typical Western culture (e.g. jazz musicians). The accommodation of a hesitating artist and his work to the needs of new society is represented in the films Písnička za groš and Nezlob, Kristino.
The idea of art made by a collective is represented in several films, particularly those addressing music. These schemes correspond to the general typology employed in Arts, journalism and public discourses in general.
Characters of artists that do not clearly conform to the categories mentioned above were present only in a small number of films (particularly due to the fact that their production started before February 1948).