The Czech Visual Art Foundation Mánes

• The Mánes building, currently administered by the Czech Visual Art Foundation00:02:41.338
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• (previously the Visual Art Fund), has become a symbol of the negative consequences00:02:45.327
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• of culture privatisation in the past twenty years.00:02:50.463
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• In the nineties, the legal actions taken over its ownership00:02:55.194
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• resulted in victory for a purpose-built law interpretation over justice.00:02:59.057
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• Under the Foundation, the commercialisation of the gallery's operation00:03:04.804
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• lacked any artistic targets or concern for the quality of the exhibition programme and other activities.00:03:08.923
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• It proceeded as such, owing to the art community's total resignation00:03:16.377
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• to the presented ideals of union life.00:03:22.028
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• A relatively wide spectrum of the art community were unprecedentedly activated,00:03:27.768
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• and via a new initiative called 'Mánes for Artists', a strong appeal was launched.00:03:32.929
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• It required a redress of all the mistakes caused by the general lack of interest00:03:42.536
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• in potentially common, public issues; and for full responsibility to be taken for their state.00:03:47.784
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• In a very short space of time, the initiative's manifesto was signed and supported by 250 people.00:03:54.607
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• The situation with Mánes' unfunctional exhibition hall and Czech Visual Art Foundation00:04:05.601
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• stimulated an irritated demonstration regarding the state of society; institutions;00:04:12.203
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• the culture policy; and once public, denationalised property.00:04:18.622
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• I think artists' discontent with cultural institutions and the Ministry of culture00:04:23.618
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• has been present for a long time, and the urge00:04:30.929
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• to open the Mánes case again allowed us to also discuss union life and what we have lost.00:04:38.481
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• Mánes hasn't carried out any of its functions for a very long time.00:04:49.037
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• It doesn't create a platform or background for visual art presentation and the life it should meet.00:04:53.883
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• The foundation operates only as an estate agency, leasing the place.00:05:03.651
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• It sometimes appears as-though something is going on there, but it's someone else who is paying for it.00:05:08.805
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• The foundation administration is legal, but not legitimate. Its operation in the past 20 years has proven00:05:14.848
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• to be inappropriate property administration. We consider it non-legitimate.00:05:28.766
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• Of course, we understand that the law provides them with the right to administer their property in any way they prefer,00:05:36.724
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• but we want them to consider possessing and managing something legitimately,00:05:45.124
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• and with respect for public and art platforms; as well as just legally.00:05:53.166
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• The 'Mánes for Artists' initiative wasn't the only attempt00:06:18.161
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• in post-revolution history to point out the very problematic transformation,00:06:23.547
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• and subsequent administration, of the Czech Visual Art Foundation.00:06:29.834
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• To better understand the lengthy case that emerged after 1989,00:06:34.204
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• it's important to go back; not only to the pre-revolution operation of the Czech Visual Art Fund;00:06:39.082
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• but also to the situation created by the Mánes Union of Artists,00:06:47.110
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• from 1948 to its disputed abolition in the 1950s.00:06:52.851
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• It's very complicated and I'm not very knowledgeable about the 1950s,00:07:00.484
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• but as we've taken care of the case since its beginning after 1990;00:07:07.817
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• and as we used to have residence in Mánes next to the Mánes Union; we could look into it00:07:17.928
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• - but you'd better ask the Mánes Union because they went to court.00:07:25.167
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• Although they lost the case, it even made it to the Supreme Court based on the fact that all unions were abolished in 1956,00:07:31.053
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• and the abolishments should have been signed by the minister of culture of the time,00:07:46.819
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• but the Mánes Union was the only one that didn't have the paper signed by the minister.00:07:52.489
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• There wasn't a signature, so the Union protested vehemently. The former chairman of the Union, Jaroslav Fragner,00:07:58.694
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• protested to the minister about the property sequestration and Union liquidation.00:08:09.188
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• All the funds - literary, music, theatre, and art - were established in the 1950s.00:08:21.842
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• This may sound a bit heretical, but they were very well operated institutions,00:08:33.265
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• based on a good principle in favour of artists. I was employed there for many years00:08:47.278
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• before the revolution, so I could see into their activities from the inside.00:08:56.271
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• The initial Fund of Czech Visual Artists was a trade union in a way,00:09:02.450
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• and at the same time a business concern. The ideological part, that created the issues00:09:12.010
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• we all had reservations about, was held by the Association of Czechoslovakian Visual Artists00:09:20.874
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• and the Association of Czech Visual Artists. All the art funds were a certain state inside a state.00:09:31.543
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• All artists and theorists were deducted 3 percent from their charges by copyright protection,00:09:42.224
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• and the money went to the funds.00:09:55.452
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• When I worked there, the fund was directed by engineer, Stepanovský00:09:57.864
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• - who wasn't a member of the Communist Party - and the fund operated at several levels.00:10:03.690
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• Firstly, there were scholarships that would assure living art today:00:10:11.893
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• the scholarships were granted to artists after their graduation.00:10:26.453
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• There were also creative grants for several years. Artworks were bought from artists00:10:31.831
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• and as the fund became gradually rich, it purchased many properties,00:10:41.191
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• including a hotel in Karlovy Vary, two villas in Staré Splavy, a villa in Ceské Budejovice, a hunting lodge near Jihlava...00:10:53.618
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• The Fund also created so-called 'art commissions' that were on the one hand very bad,00:11:08.398
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• but important for those in the membership. Today it would be quite convenient00:11:19.530
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• because it secured professionalism and provided income for the artists.00:11:26.170
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• The Fund had a very positive role in the revolution00:11:38.923
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• as it provided a background for the entirety of the Mánes and art communities.00:11:44.575
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• Everything that was photocopied there, all the posters, all the phone calls...00:11:51.661
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• everything that took place in Mánes was arranged by the Fund.00:11:57.616
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• Shortly after the revolution, the Union of Artists claimed it,00:12:42.161
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• and twenty-two so-called members or refounders announced the continuation of its activity.00:12:48.150
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• Via its renewed activity, the Union started enforcing the right for restitution of the confiscated property.00:12:55.861
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• Its opacity, with reference to its termination in the 1950s, served as a surprisingly00:13:04.182
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• fundamental argument in the lawsuit between the Mánes Union and the Visual Art Fund:00:13:10.713
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• later the Czech Visual Art Foundation.00:13:17.384
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• The twenty-two members of the Union then nominated young artists and architects they were close to,00:13:22.504
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• and thus the twenty-two expanded to a hundred or a hundred and fifteen.00:13:34.781
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• So the Union was interesting because it was cross-generational.00:13:46.823
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• There were ninety-year-old respectable visual artists together with the thirty-year-old ones,00:13:55.200
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• so there were generational discussions and the Union was very active in the beginning.00:14:05.896
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• The meetings were well attended, as were the discussion nights that took place there...00:14:13.367
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• Since 1992 the Mánes Union exhibition was held there every year00:14:20.643
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• and the fund would lend the exhibition space to the Union for free, for one month...00:14:29.071
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• The Foundation, sorry the Fund, treated the Union relatively helpfully and said they would give back the building00:14:37.234
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• and that they were just looking for a way to do it. It wasn't the whole board of administration:00:14:50.813
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• many representatives of the board said that the Union had to get the building back itself.00:14:56.734
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• The problem was the social pressure when union life was revived.00:15:04.415
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• Colleagues from Mánes stood up for the Mánes tradition and longed to reclaim the building ownership.00:15:14.132
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• It didn't appear wrong to me, rather the contrary,00:15:23.676
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• but the problem was the legal aspect. The Foundation couldn't simply say they would give it to them00:15:28.232
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• because it would make the other five thousand registered artists feel they were being deprived of something...00:15:35.074
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• Nothing happened, and after four years of waiting the Union pressed charges to determine the owner,00:15:45.908
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• and the (at many instances unbearable) judicial cycle began. It went through everyone,00:15:57.018
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• then it all started again on three instances until they made their decision after ten years...00:16:03.098
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• It's interesting to follow the issue from the view of the Foundation,00:16:09.039
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• who applied three types of defence to their web. The first said that the Mánes Union consisted of people00:16:14.563
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• who were supporters of the previous regime: they weren't dissidents, on the contrary00:16:33.012
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• they cooperated with the regime. The question is to what extent the Union is responsible for their00:16:40.711
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• post-war members. As we all know, the Czech culture platform used to be mainly left-wing,00:16:47.349
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• so artists were no exception. Their participation after 1948 is disagreeable,00:16:53.956
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• but it wouldn't surprise me that much...00:17:04.390
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• This is written on the Foundation website, it's one of their recent attacks...00:17:07.298
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• It says that many members of the Mánes Union became active members of the Association: consequently the Fund...00:17:12.561
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• - but that was true of everyone in the country in the unbearable 1950s.00:17:20.776
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• Many artists, not only union members, worked actively in the Association. Many of them were soon found out00:17:29.421
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• and expelled, many of them never joined, and some of them were imprisoned.00:17:39.978
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• It was stratified in the whole society, so it applied to the Mánes Union as well.00:17:45.858
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• Another argument was that they didn't build it from their own money, which was generally known in fact...00:17:52.070
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• They mentioned that the price of it - the building cost - climbed00:17:59.787
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• from 7 to 10 million: which wasn't a small sum of money at that time.00:18:07.403
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• The state contributed a million, the president Masaryk 200 000 crowns, Rothschild helped too...00:18:15.669
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• - but there was also a debt that should have been paid off in 1956.00:18:24.062
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• This argument is interesting because the Mánes Union was ready to settle the debt,00:18:31.998
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• and that's why they decided to make part of the project a bit commercial...00:18:42.727
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• The third reason they used in defence, was of an administratively-legal base:00:18:49.736
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• they said the Mánes Un��fA��fA00:18:56.921

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