Kolektoři 8 – Karel Babíček
Podnikatel a sběratel umění Karel Babíček sice nevystudoval žádný obor přímo spojený s výtvarným uměním, do uměleckého provozu v Česku, ale výrazně zasáhl svou činností galeristy, a to zejména v 90. letech. Roku 1991 založil soukromou galerii Behémót pojmenovanou podle bájného zvířete objevujícího se v biblické knize Job. Mezi autory, které galerie prezentovala byli přední zástupci tehdejší mladé generace jako Margita Tittlová-Ylovsky, Václav Stratil, Vladimír Merta, Vladimír Kokolia, Martin Mainer či Petr Kvíčala. Babíček byl také jedním z prvních podporovatelů dnes mezinárodně etablovaných umělců jako Jiří Příhoda nebo Kryštof Kintera. Galerie Behémót byla na umělecké scéně vnímána jako dobový protějšek legendární galerie MXM. Galerie ukončila svou činnost v roce 2002. Mezi lety 1996 a 2000 byl Babíček také hlavním kurátorem v pražské nekomerční galerii Nová síň a po roce 2000 působil příležitostně také jako kurátor v Galerii kritiků v Praze i v dalších institucích. Umění podporuje Karel Babíček i v současnosti a to z pozice podnikatele-špeditéra.
- 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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- The fact that the gallery is hard to research nowadays is something I try to work on,00:08:49.759
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- I started intense work on mapping the functioning of the gallery00:08:56.442
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- and I made a commitment that in two years the golden fund of the gallery00:09:08.458
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- should be easy to find, transparent, seen...00:09:18.770
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- From the second half of the nineties you have worked in Nová Síň,00:09:25.544
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- did your activities in your own gallery collide with your activities as a main curator in Nová Síň?00:09:29.457
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- Behemot versus Nová Síň is a moment that was never a conflicting one.00:09:36.528
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- Basically, Behemot focused on the local scene, it had its limits,00:09:46.905
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- mainly space limits because it was just two small rooms00:09:54.101
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- and I was always drawn to big projects,00:09:59.209
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- and when the opportunity rose to have Nová Síň,00:10:04.897
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- which I consider the most beautiful exhibition space in Prague,00:10:09.176
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- Behemot basically started working on the basis of small projects00:10:13.594
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- and Nová Síň as a regular gallery with big projects00:10:21.492
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- and it mainly focused on projects bringing current world affairs to the Czech republic00:10:27.440
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- and vice versa, confronting current Czech art with world artists.00:10:37.967
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- So, on the contrary, I think those roles complimented each other,00:10:53.257
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- we could use the business term and say they were sister organizations,00:10:57.343
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- so even though Nová Síň was bigger, more important, with a more diligent programme,00:11:08.571
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- it was still a sister of Behemot,00:11:15.046
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- and the programme was very much connected because it was still me creating it,00:11:19.418
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- I couldn’t split myself in half to do two things that I believed in,00:11:29.604
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- I just believed in one thing, one type of art,00:11:36.051
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- that is why I think the galleries complimented each other and could work simultaneously.00:11:40.887
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- As a collector and a gallerist you focused on the generation of the late eighties and nineties,00:11:50.829
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- you were interested in various media, could you describe the core of your collection?00:12:00.108
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- I will come back to the beginning, to the way the collection was created,00:12:12.969
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- it originated on the basis of a surge of emotions and enthusiasm00:12:18.965
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- for a certain thing, a certain author,00:12:26.631
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- I am not a theorist and never succumbed into feeling lesser00:12:31.552
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- because of not having a theoretical education,00:12:41.473
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- so the collection grew, when people asked me, I would say I felt it in my guts,00:12:44.240
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- I would come to a painting and feel a pressure around the stomach00:12:51.334
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- and feel that’s it, that’s what I want to have.00:12:54.622
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- So the original collection that I called the Behemot collection,00:12:59.422
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- because the American model of a gallery said that a proper gallery has to have its own collection,00:13:03.431
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- it really started in 1978 with Standa Judl00:13:09.025
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- and then mainly in the eighties when I started to operate on the scene,00:13:15.078
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- lively art scene and started discovering my generation,00:13:25.829
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- so the basis was in the generation of artists born between 1954-1961,00:13:30.336
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- a very strong generation emerging in the late eighties,00:13:42.036
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- and before Behemot I was buying things by authors I really enjoyed,00:13:47.691
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- I feel like I was the first one to buy Kokolia,00:13:58.616
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- I would buy things by Tvrdohlaví who weren’t even Tvrdohlaví then,00:14:02.507
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- Žáček painted his first exhibition, The Gospel of St. Matthew,00:14:11.872
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- so the collection is very much emotion based.00:14:21.554
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- Then when Behemot started, during the era of the start of free living and culture,00:14:26.107
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- there were life episodes important as well,00:14:34.749
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- many of the key paintings are linked to a certain episode of mine or the author,00:14:40.725
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- I have a painting by Martin Mainer called Demonstrants, ministrants00:14:53.933
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- that he painted between the 17th and 30th November00:14:59.764
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- when he returned from the military service, the revolution stated,00:15:06.309
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- so he took down a bedsheets since he didn’t have money for a canvas,00:15:11.754
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- and instead of going on a strike he would paint ministrants, Demonstrants,00:15:14.925
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- and for me this is very much linked to November 1989 and Mainer,00:15:23.771
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- and there was a lot of stories like that, I would meet someone,00:15:30.276
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- fall in love with someone, it could be about women but also about authors, paintings…00:15:37.659
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- In the nineties, thanks to the Nová Síň there were projects added to the collection,00:15:47.244
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- while art in the eighties was made for one day or two days long actions00:15:57.568
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- or wasn't even exhibited at all,00:16:09.167
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- the nineties started an era of conceptual art and projects00:16:12.581
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- and the collection that in the eighties consisted mainly of classical forms, paintings, sculptures,00:16:22.614
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- started to grew bigger with less traditional works from the point of view of a collector,00:16:35.857
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- so there are many key works important for the nineties00:16:42.529
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- that are, for a normal collector or a household, impossible to exhibit,00:16:51.987
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- Krištof Kintera- Plumbař, Jiří Příhoda- Potopa,00:17:00.367
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- those are objects and installations00:17:07.013
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- and the collection started moving from what I had on the walls00:17:17.686
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- towards depositories and formal administration that these things are connected with.00:17:24.148
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- Documentations, videos, photographs slowly joined the collection.00:17:43.389
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- This collection Behemot is aimed at years 1984-199800:17:53.622
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- and then around 2010, because I was a manager of a shipping company,00:18:11.106
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- I started dealing with questions of generations X, Y, their motivations, social influences,00:18:24.785
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- I added a new collection I call @Y,00:18:38.051
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- and its aim was to systematically map the emerging generation between 2005 and 2015,00:18:49.858
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- it still combines emotions of course, but after those twenty years on the scene00:19:04.386
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- I started thinking about it in a way similar to the way art historians think,00:19:16.562
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- there are authors who are talented when leaving school and the talent stays,00:19:22.055
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- and then authors who make a genius diploma work and then disappear,00:19:30.818
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- so it is an effort to map this generation Y that didn’t grow up in totalitarian conditions00:19:39.581
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- but in different ones set by the possibility to communicate, travel,00:19:51.807
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- share information, work with new technologies and so on.00:20:02.137
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- Why did you leave your activities on the contemporary art scene after 2000?00:20:08.254
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- I don’t think I left my activities, in 2002 I left Nová Síň,00:20:15.272
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- after the ten years of operation Behemot had become a tired genius loci,00:20:26.007
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- it needed a change, a restart, and the experience from Nová Síň00:20:33.864
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- made me want to work on bigger galleries, exhibitions,00:20:45.447
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- so Behemot was suddenly not enough,00:20:51.412
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- because the episode of Nová Síň was the most beautiful in my curating career.00:20:57.338
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- There was also a moment when I needed to start a new shipping firm,00:21:07.738
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- so I said I needed a break for a year and basically left the scene for a year or two,00:21:18.662
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- but I started coming back in 2004, 2005 as a curator00:21:28.697
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- and started making big exhibitions from time to time,00:21:37.337
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- so those years are connected with a very close and successful collaboration00:21:43.589
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- with Vlasta Čiháková- Noshiro and Galerie kritiků00:21:51.500
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- where every year I would make two or three exhibitions of people I considered interesting,00:21:57.506
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- I made exhibitions for state run galleries in Jihlava, České Budějovice,00:22:06.413
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- and of course I started searching for a space that I would enjoy,00:22:19.373
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- I always say, give me a space of three hundred square meters and I will do Behemot 2,00:22:30.849
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- it almost happened several times, but the realization would have to be absolutely professional00:22:38.760
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- and then I would even think about leaving shipping to be the gallerist I promised myself to be in 1984,00:22:49.070
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- that I don’t want to die on a plane as a shipper00:22:58.644
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- but I would like to still be on the scene with young, contemporary artists.00:23:02.300
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- It is impossible to leave the scene because I am actually inside of it00:23:11.682
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- and during those two years of break I missed it very much,00:23:18.284
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- because for me shipping and art are very interconnected,00:23:23.673
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- and I use comparisons from art in economics and management and vice versa,00:23:32.012
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- and I use terms from shipping when I talk with artists00:23:38.565
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- think about what logistics or shipping would do in art,00:23:53.626
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- I remember a beautiful discussion with Kokolia when driving to Brno00:23:56.966
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- and I explained the terminology of 4PL to him, which means the fourth side in logistics,00:24:01.249
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- and he opposed me with the fourth dimension in art00:24:09.462
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- and we decided we would have to make a lecture about it one day00:24:13.813
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- because those are the things that meet in the higher sphere,00:24:18.237
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- because it is a question if there actually is a fourth side in logistic or fourth dimension in art,00:24:24.143
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- so basically I can’t leave it even if for these moments,00:24:32.173
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- of course another moment is the moment of collecting,00:24:37.791
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- the obsession with collecting art is something that is a part of me00:24:41.309
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- and the last moment is that the scene won’t let me go,00:24:54.863
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- many of the artists I started with in the nineties still keep in touch,00:24:58.473
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- invite me to their studio, and I want to go, I have to go.00:25:10.502
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- How do you choose works of artists today, has something significantly changed in your taste?00:25:16.276
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- What definitely changed, as I mentioned in previous questions,00:25:24.645
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- is that emotions are substituted by experience and reason,00:25:32.694
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- while collecting in the eighties was full of mistakes,00:25:39.062
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- so if I think about the success rate in guessing what would be good,00:25:49.340
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- I made a lot of errors, lots of misses, sometimes I was ripped of,00:25:59.625
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- I think that after 25 years of collecting you become a professional whether you want to or not,00:26:07.886
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- in a way you are always confronted with theory, so I became an amateur theorist,00:26:16.459
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- I was confronted with the fact that besides collecting I also worked as a curator,00:26:28.442
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- so I had to think about the works from the point of view of art history, current tendencies,00:26:37.098
- 00:26:37.098
- so the collection 2005-2015, @Y, is about an emerging generation00:26:51.342
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- that can be interesting, that will have strong individuals,00:27:06.354
- 00:27:06.354
- but at the same time it is a collection of paintings that is maybe about the end of post modernism,00:27:12.410
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- about the question if post modernism is replaced by another modernism and so on,00:27:19.404
- 00:27:19.404
- so compared to the eighties or nineties when I would come to a studio and say,00:27:25.207
- 00:27:25.207
- well that’s a beautiful painting, I want to have it,00:27:32.548
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- now apart from the moment of emotions, that I have to be enthused by it to buy it,00:27:36.075
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- now there is also the moment of why,00:27:43.793
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- and sometimes I choose the additions to the collection in the way that I think yes,00:27:46.443
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- it is an author I could maybe argue against, but consider him important as far as art history goes,00:27:54.236
- 00:27:54.236
- and it is important that he is a part of a collection that shows somethings, maps something.00:28:03.362
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- Maybe something about the taste,00:28:11.668
- 00:28:11.668
- I feel that at first glance what dominates here is figuration00:28:15.240
- 00:28:15.240
- and a slightly more expressive expression,00:28:25.979
- 00:28:25.979
- so what is your relationship to abstraction, you have a Štech here,00:28:31.938
- 00:28:31.938
- so would you consider buying a work by Vladimír Houdek,00:28:37.819
- 00:28:37.819
- so if you could relate to pure aesthetic preferences.00:28:41.612
- 00:28:41.612
- I have a Vladimír Houdek of course, I have four things by him…00:28:52.602
- 00:28:52.602
- But as for the formal preference, what we see here, because we are at my house,00:29:02.091
- 00:29:02.091
- you can see paintings that are connected to family episodes, family paintings that belong here00:29:10.938
- 00:29:10.938
- and when this house was being built I already knew I would have Mainer and his ships here and so on,00:29:22.550
- 00:29:22.550
- but at the same time it is also influenced by children, because they are strict censors,00:29:29.922
- 00:29:29.922
- I don't have any Róna here, because the children are scared of him,00:29:35.606
- 00:29:35.606
- so Róna is at the gentlemens' club,00:29:40.672
- 00:29:40.672
- and of course the moment of a collection you can see like this is influenced by current feeling,00:29:45.900
- 00:29:45.900
- so the moment of figuration, expressive figuration,00:30:01.540
- 00:30:01.540
- expression is a tendency that appears on the Czech scene in the last five years as very important.00:30:07.300
- 00:30:07.300
- I like abstraction just as much, in the Behemot collection00:30:16.426
- 00:30:16.426
- there’s Bačkovský, a complete abstractionist,00:30:25.489
- 00:30:25.489
- in the @Y collection there are works by the group OBR., previously mentioned Houdek,00:30:30.436
- 00:30:30.436
- so it’s not about a decision to collect expression, I collect what I enjoy00:30:44.392
- 00:30:44.392
- and I collect two generations, generation of the eighties and generation after 2000.00:30:52.428
- 00:30:52.428
- At your house you are surrounded by art works,00:31:02.871
- 00:31:02.871
- is it safe to say that art works for you are primarily collectibles00:31:06.089
- 00:31:06.089
- or do you also think about them as about a financial investment?00:31:11.774
- 00:31:11.774
- Again, there are two sides here,00:31:20.924
- 00:31:20.924
- the core Behemot collection is built on life episodes, stories, emotions,00:31:25.981
- 00:31:25.981
- and that is why it is not for sale, I never saw it as an investment,00:31:36.602
- 00:31:36.602
- another side is that I make a living in business,00:31:47.065
- 00:31:47.065
- so I think I am one of the few that can look at art from both points of view,00:31:51.501
- 00:31:51.501
- to see if it can be of historic value and also of financial value,00:32:04.042
- 00:32:04.042
- because that goes with it and a real gallerist should think both ways.00:32:16.117
- 00:32:16.117
- I never saw my collection as an investment, and many people say,00:32:23.902
- 00:32:23.902
- what a collection, you must have enough money in it for when you're older,00:32:30.637
- 00:32:30.637
- but it is not for sale, the collection is quite vast00:32:34.639
- 00:32:34.639
- and I create a golden fund that should not be sold, it should stay compact.00:32:43.887
- 00:32:43.887
- On the other hand sometimes as a gallerist I mediate sales00:32:56.173
- 00:32:56.173
- and help various collectors as a consultant and I always say,00:33:03.047
- 00:33:03.047
- first of all you have to like the work, for a starting collector,00:33:08.786
- 00:33:08.786
- I say, don’t worry about this or that, you just like the thing00:33:14.119
- 00:33:14.119
- and I can tell you what this work can do on the market in ten, twenty years, where it can go00:33:20.452
- 00:33:20.452
- sometimes I collaborate with collectors who say,00:33:31.300
- 00:33:31.300
- we don’t care at all, here are the money, buy something,00:33:37.325
- 00:33:37.325
- and in ten years you will explain if it was a good buy or not.00:33:42.934
- 00:33:42.934
- Of course sometimes I look at the collection and think,00:33:46.990
- 00:33:46.990
- yes, I bought this for 3000 and today it would cost many times more,00:33:52.928
- 00:33:52.928
- but it definitely isn't the primary reason, the primary reason is that I like the painting,00:34:00.554
- 00:34:00.554
- sculpture, installation, photograph, I have a personal relationship to them00:34:07.110
- 00:34:07.110
- and I try to raise my kids to also have a personal relationship to them, and it is quite cute.00:34:15.678
- 00:34:15.678
- Do you present the works anywhere, do you think about opening another gallery00:34:24.294
- 00:34:24.294
- or about one day willing the collection to some institution?00:34:30.023
- 00:34:30.023
- For a collection to work for public and for me as a collector,00:34:36.635
- 00:34:36.635
- it has to be cleared up from time to time, evaluated and the works have to appear in new contexts,00:34:48.167
- 00:34:48.167
- which means I am happy when somebody comes and says, we're making an exhibition called Islands of resistance,00:35:02.173
- 00:35:02.173
- and because it is an exhibition dealing with the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties00:35:10.055
- 00:35:10.055
- there were many pieces from my collection,00:35:17.357
- 00:35:17.357
- so I am happy to lend the collection to institutions, to authors if they make exhibitions00:35:20.530
- 00:35:20.530
- where they want to return to some historical works,00:35:30.760
- 00:35:30.760
- and there are moments in the collection I already mentioned,00:35:36.366
- 00:35:36.366
- installations from the nineties and I would like them to be exhibited, lent, even donated to institutions.00:35:42.329
- 00:35:42.329
- Two years ago I had a discussion about Krištof Kintera and his Plumbař,00:35:58.592
- 00:35:58.592
- I think that is a thing that should be permanently exhibited,00:36:06.320
- 00:36:06.320
- it is currently at DOX, but apart from exhibitions00:36:11.526
- 00:36:11.526
- it should appear at institutions as a long term loan, part of installations00:36:17.492
- 00:36:17.492
- that is the case of the whole generation emerging in the nineties,00:36:26.345
- 00:36:26.345
- Kintera, Příhoda, Vincourová, the essential works,00:36:36.074
- 00:36:36.074
- I try to care for them, conserve and preserve them00:36:41.865
- 00:36:41.865
- and I hope one day a time will come when institutions will want to take over these works and buy them.00:36:48.590
- 00:36:48.590
- As for the classic collection, i.e. paintings,00:36:57.390
- 00:36:57.390
- if there was a space where the collection could be presented and exhibited from time to time,00:37:03.054
- 00:37:03.054
- I would definitely not be against it.00:37:13.205
- 00:37:13.205
- As for willing it, that is very far ahead,00:37:16.537
- 00:37:16.537
- I still feel very young, and I don’t think about finishing, thinking about what will be next,00:37:20.444
- 00:37:20.444
- I haven’t thought about it yet, now I try to raise my kids so that they are not afraid of paintings,00:37:29.211
- 00:37:29.211
- so they see it with normal eyes and build some relationship to them00:37:37.176
- 00:37:37.176
- and are glad that they have paintings at home.00:37:51.242
- 00:37:51.242
- And as for willing, I think the nineties are quite well collected00:38:00.121
- 00:38:00.121
- and it should stay as a whole, I talked about the golden fund with 120 key works,00:38:12.203
- 00:38:12.203
- those should stay together, should not be divided, sold individually,00:38:22.599
- 00:38:22.599
- it should work as a documentation of the eighties and nineties.00:38:28.546
- 00:38:28.546
- I think if the after 2000 generation will also turn to be good,00:38:36.214
- 00:38:36.214
- the collection could also give testimony about talents, lost talents,00:38:41.961
- 00:38:41.961
- about the Czech art scene, the internationalization of it, its openness,00:38:51.166
- 00:38:51.166
- but on the other hand also about phobias on the Czech scene between 2005 and 2015.00:38:59.737