Kolektoři 8 – Karel Babíček

• Mr. Karel Babíček, you were born on July 19th 1956 in České Budějovice.00:00:26.370
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• You studied civil engineering at ČVUT which you graduated from in 1981.00:00:33.620
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• After a short experience as a miner in Karviná which you terminated due to health reasons00:00:39.630
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• you started working at state trading enterprise as a shipper focusing on the field of leather and shoes.00:00:44.820
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• You worked there until 1990 when you started your own business.00:00:53.460
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• In 1991 you founded a private gallery Behemot.00:01:01.270
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• From 1996 till 2000 you worked as main curator and manager at Nová Síň.00:01:06.030
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• In 2002 you terminated all activities of the Behemot gallery.00:01:14.580
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• We have already talked about your dad working in agriculture00:01:20.170
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• and not having any special interest in art.00:01:24.470
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• What was your path towards this interest, what or who inspired you?00:01:28.370
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• That is a question I, because of my age, pose to myself as well more and more often.00:01:35.680
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• And basically there are three moments that significantly influenced my relationship to art.00:01:42.860
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• First is that in the late thirties my mother was at some uncle in Moravia00:01:51.410
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• and got two paintings from him, one was by Joža Uprka, that was always hung at our home,00:02:04.580
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• and the other one stayed at my grandma, there was a windmill on it,00:02:11.857
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• and as a child I grew up with the painting by Uprka at home00:02:15.367
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• and it was probably the first thing that influenced me.00:02:20.147
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• The second thing that influenced me as an older child was that00:02:25.663
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• at the end of the sixties my dad was quite engaged in politics as a farmer00:02:32.780
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• and he was meeting with diplomats, the minister of culture and so on00:02:40.198
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• and during the visits that I accompanied him to I saw collections from the thirties00:02:45.506
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• and till this day I remember visiting one villa in Baba in Prague 600:02:52.246
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• where you would come to the hall of this beautiful functionalist villa00:02:58.272
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• and there was a two meter painting by Filla, Medek and others,00:03:03.197
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• so I fell in love with paintings that was somebody else’s,00:03:11.629
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• and I guess that is when I thought, one day I would also like to have my own painting.00:03:15.642
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• And the third moment that was the moment of physical realization00:03:21.218
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• was when I worked when I was eighteen to make some money to buy jeans,00:03:27.691
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• I went to Prague to buy jeans and I bought a painting instead,00:03:32.250
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• I bought a painting by Stanislav Judl called Spring on the roof,00:03:38.131
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• and that was the moment when I realized that my relationship to art00:03:43.308
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• was a bit different, a bit stronger,00:03:49.519
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• maybe I even saw some things differently than normal people,00:03:52.044
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• so as a farmer’s son I brought the painting instead of jeans.00:03:57.259
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• So those are the three episodes, then the episode of actually penetrating the scene00:04:02.036
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• was that during my studies I would go to exhibitions,00:04:08.802
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• I would work as a passive viewer when I would experience the things a lot,00:04:12.666
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• and the key breaking point when I became the insider came in 198400:04:21.778
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• when I was on holiday with Vladimír Skrepl, Martin John, Vladimír Merta,00:04:31.474
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• we were in Yugoslavia and they made sketches, painted00:04:39.936
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• and wanted to make money by making portraits00:04:45.583
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• and then in the evenings we would discuss art, culture, music,00:04:49.119
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• so thanks to one holiday in Yugoslavia I became an insider00:04:54.711
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• and started to meet up with these people from the underground00:05:00.116
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• at exhibitions and events characteristic for the culture of the eighties.00:05:07.810
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• Your gallery Behemot founded after the revolution as one of the first private galleries00:05:15.987
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• is in a way legendary today, it is quite hard to find00:05:22.976
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• any information about in on the internet and so on,00:05:29.385
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• so could you tell us how it was founded and how did you work as its director?00:05:32.188
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• The story of Behemot starts in 1984 on the bus to Yugoslavia,00:05:43.492
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• already back then I would say, when I'm old and rich I will start my own gallery,00:05:49.965
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• you know, while drinking the evening wine,00:05:57.751
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• and in 1990 when I started my own shipping business00:06:00.534
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• I felt, OK, I’m getting rich so in twenty years I will have the gallery.00:06:06.203
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• And then the group of painters, my friends,00:06:13.049
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• said I shouldn’t be stupid and wait, that then was the right time,00:06:18.754
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• and the years 1990, 1991, the spontaneous years, were full of enthusiasm,00:06:26.231
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• so I found a space in Prague 1, I got the space and Behemot was born.00:06:33.773
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• It formed as a gallery that wanted to apply the model of New York galleries,00:06:48.684
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• a gallery that is lively, has a clearly defined programme, doesn’t allow for polemics,00:06:59.695
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• and then I was optimistic that the market would work,00:07:08.138
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• so I thought it was not important to worry about profit in the first years,00:07:12.537
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• it was important to form the programme of the gallery, to be diligent,00:07:18.245
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• so the gallery didn't focus on one generation, on one topic,00:07:23.651
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• it focused on current affairs, communication between generations00:07:32.989
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• because in the nineties all generations were starting,00:07:42.234
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• whether it was the generation of classics such as Šimotová, Nepraš,00:07:46.556
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• or the generation of newcomers like Vincourová, Příhoda,00:07:51.841
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• so it was very important what was happening inside,00:07:58.407
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• the communication between generations and also communication towards viewers,00:08:03.653
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• that is how art becomes art.00:08:09.062
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• Of course as the nineties started the gallery shaped itself00:08:14.100
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• into the type of gallery we would today call a conceptual one,00:08:22.851
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• so even though it worked with traditional forms like paintings or objects,00:08:27.587
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• it always tended not to be just plain exhibiting but there was the reason why,00:08:33.827
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• the moment of concept, moment of commitment that could be both political and cultural.00:08:42.610
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