Tomáš Pospiszyl

Tomáš Pospiszyl is a front Czech historian, theoretician and modern and contemporary art curator. He currently teaches at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Centre of Audio-Visual Studies) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (Department of Theory and Art History), and he is also engaged in art journalism. He studied Theory of Culture and Art History at the Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University in Prague.

Following his return from postgraduate studies at the Centre of Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York (1995-1997), he put together the anthology of American fine art theory and critique Před obrazem (Before a Painting)  (1998), which focuses on the work of Clement Greenberg and his followers and opponents (Michael Fried, Leo Steinberg, Douglas Crimp, Rosalind Krauss and others). In the year 2000 he was on a study internship in MoMA in New York. His subsequent anthology Primary Documents. A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s (2002, in cooperation with Laura Hoptman) contains texts of theoreticians and artists from the geopolitical region of Eastern Europe at the time of the Cold War and of the subsequent transformation in the English language. Czech authors are represented by Jindřich Chalupecký, Ivan Martin Jirous and Petr Rezek.

Greenberg and Chalupecký, generational companions from the opposite sides of the iron curtain, who have similar foundations of thought but their conclusions about the role and status of art in society fundamentally differ, are the subjects of the study Modernistická rozcestí (Modernistic Crossroads), which opens Pospiszyl’s collection of essays called Srovnávací studie (Comparative Studies) (2005). The book is founded on an art-historic comparative method and its core subject matter is the duality of East – West and relationships in general of the artistic centre and the periphery, as well as local/national and global/international art. Pospiszyl points out the interpretational pitfalls of formalism, which can elevate superficial similarities at the expense of local specifics of different cultural-political contexts in which the given works originated. He confronts images of Soviet socialistic realism anchored in an ideology with illustrations of American Norman Rockwell (Images of Reconciliation and Hatred) and he evaluates American sculpture minimalism with selected reductive expressions in Czech sculpture (Hugo Demartini, Stanislav Kolíbal, Eva Kmentová), where in spite of the minimalistic morphology the need for metamorphic expression remains (Východní a západní krychle) (Eastern and Western Cube).

In 2014 he followed up on his Comparative Studies with a similar book format and comparative method in Asociativní dějepis umění. Poválečné umění napříč generacemi a médii (koláž, intermediální a konceptuální umění, performance a film) (Associative Art History. Post-war Art Across Generations and Media (collage, intermediary and conceptual art, performance and film)). Pospiszyl rejects linear interpretation of art history and he chooses the method of collage, which is driven by associations, as the structural element of his art-historical essays. He no longer compares domestic art expressions with Western art, but in the selected essays he offers insight into situations in other Eastern European countries. His collection of texts shares a motif of intergeneration dialogue, which, on the interpretation level, is led by contemporary artists – whose conceptually and social-critically oriented work is influenced by the post-Internet phenomenon – with selected key personalities of the Czech and Slovak neo-avant-garde (Jiří Kolář, Milan Knížák, Stano Filko and Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda, Jan Mlčoch), whom the current generation feels influenced by and whose art techniques it is developing. For example, he presents Kateřina Šedá’s actions as a parallel to the flux activities of Milan Knížák, and he compares Kolář’s early collages with current methods of Vladimír Houdek, Dominik Lang and Eva Koťátková.

The chapter in his Asociativní dějepis (Associative History) devoted to Ján Mančuška and his work that ranges between fine art, film and literature illustratively documents Pospiszyl’s interest in art, which overlaps the borders of one media, as well as its ability to maintain an interdisciplinary approach. As an art historian working at the film school (CAS FAMU), he is engaged in the linkage between fine art and film, as well as the phenomenon of a moving image in general. In the curator selection for the Bienále mladého umění Zvon (Biennale of Young Art Zvon) (2010) he pointed out the diverse media base of contemporary art and its connection to other areas of culture. The media exhibited included comic strip, music video and film document.

His professional attention is devoted to traditional fine art disciplines as well as art with intermedia nature. He deals with painting (Alén Diviš, Vladislav Mirvald), photograph (Lukáš Jasanský – Martin Polák, Alena Kotzmannová), graphic design and its overlap to liberal art (exhibition Časový optimista (Time Optimist). Robert V. Novák) and more.

Also characteristic for him is his interest in visual culture expressions including its “lower” forms, which give a true picture of the time of their origin, the social situation at the time and the political ideology. The paradoxes of a polarized world are mirrored in Pospiszyl’s book Octobriana a ruský underground (Octobriana and Russian Underground) (2004), which depicts a distinctive story of a mysterious strategist Petr Sadecky and his legendary sham – the comic character Octobriana, whom he created based on a piratical art image and during his exile stay in the West he passed it off as a product of Soviet samizdat culture of the 1960s.

Victimized illustrators included Bohumil Konečný, about whom Pospiszyl later wrote a monograph (Zapomenutý malíř Bohumil Konečný (The Forgotten Painter Bohumil Konečný, 2007), and Zdeněk Burian, whose works were exhibited at the exhibition Planeta Eden. Svět zítřka v socialistickém Československu (Planet Eden. The World of Tomorrow in the Socialistic Czechoslovakia), which Pospiszyl put together with Ivan Adamovič for the Brno House of Art in 2010. This extensive project documented the strong position of the scientific-fantastic genre in socialistic pop culture on a wide range of visual materials (book, comic strip, film and fine art) from the period 1948 to 1978.

Tomáš Pospiszyl considers himself to be a part of the generation for which the relationship between East and West is a cardinal topic and his professional work is conducted with an effort to inscribe Eastern European art in the global art narrative. With his interest in hybrid art forms he contributes to the strengthening of such art-scientific approach during which the object of exploration is examined separately from other expressions of audio-visual culture. 

2016
Docent (habilitation at FAMU)

Since 2004
Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, FAMU, PhD studies

1995–1997
Bard College, New York, Center for Curatorial Studies

1989–1992
The Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, Art History

1986–1991
The Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, Theory of Culture

od 2016 
Head of  Department of the Theory and History of Visual Arts, AVU in Prague

od 2012 
Lecturer, AVU in Prague

od 2003 
Assistant professor, FAMU (CAS - Department of Audiovisual Studies)

od 2002 
member of tranzit.cz

1997–2002
Collection of Modern and Contemporary art in the National Gallery in Prague, curator

1992–1993
production manager of exhibition program at Prague Castle Administration

Dominik Lang: The Sleeping City, tranzit, Prague 2011

Alina Šapočniková in Prague. In: Alina Szapocznikow: Awkward Objects, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw 2011

Tomorrow’s Worlds. In. Star City, The Future Under Communism, Mammal Foundation and Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham 2011

A Glass Hill and Illuminated Crossroads. In: Fabricators of the World, Scenarios of Self-Will, Schloss Trautenfels, Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz 2010

Look Who is Watching: Photographic Documentation of Happenings and Performances in Czechoslovakia. In: 1968 – 1989, Political Upheaval and Artistic Change. Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw

Live Coverage of the Past, National and Personal History through New Media. In: Transitland, Videoart from Central and Eastern Europe 1989-2009, Ludwig Museum, Budapest 2009

Alena Kotzmannová. Fra, Praha 2006

Petr Kvíčala, červenec 1984 až 28. 2. 2006. Arbor vitae, Praha 2006

Alén Diviš (1900–1956). Nadace Karla Svolinského a Vlasty Kubátové, Praha 2005 (s Vandou Skálovou)

Srovnávací studie. Fra, Praha 2005

Octobriana a ruský underground. Labyrint, Praha 2004

Primary Documents, A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art Since the 1950s. The Museum of Modern Art a MIT Press, New York a Cambridge 2002 (s Laurou Hoptman)

Piet Mondrian, Lidem budoucnosti. Triáda, Praha 2002

Kim Adams. The Powerplant, Toronto 2001

David Černý: Promrdané roky, život a dílo umělce. Divus, Praha 2000

Jindřich Prucha, Lomy. Národní galerie v Praze 2000

Marketa Othova, in: Carnegie International 1999/2000, Pittsburgh, 2000

Před obrazem, antologie americké výtvarné teorie a kritiky. OSVU, Praha 1998