Modernism and Modernity in Brno, 1900–1938
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In 2018, the National Gallery of Art in Prague opened a new permanent exhibition, The First Republic, 1918–1938, which explored the modernist art world of interwar Czechoslovakia. It marked a departure from traditional narratives of Czechoslovak Modernism by drawing attention to the many centres of modern art in the Republic, such as Bratislava, Košice, Uzhhorod and Brno. A year later, the Moravian Gallery in Brno installed a new exhibition, Brno: A Suburb of Vienna (Brno, předměstí Vídně). It highlighted the many cultural and social links that existed between Brno and the Austrian capital in the decades before the First World War. Taken together, these two exhibitions began to dismantle established Prague- centric narratives of Czechoslovak art, pointing instead to the polycentric nature of the republic’s artistic and cultural landscape. This paper examines the complex cultural legacies of Brno as a useful case study for exploring this phenomenon. It suggests that in questioning the traditional centre–periphery relationship, we must not only to recognise that a city like Brno was an important cultural site in its own right (and not merely subordinate to Prague), but also that its history placed it in a cultural and artistic landscape that did not necessarily conform to the political boundaries of the state. |