Between painting and illusion: [Im]material imagery of Czech modernity

Abstract

This media-archaeological study examines the environment of Czech modernity, delineated by two crucial events organized at the turn of the nineteenth century in Prague – the first entirely Czech General Global Exhibition (1891) and the Exhibition of Architecture and Engineering (1898). Within the space of exhibitions, it is revealed how the interaction of individual innovations brought about by the end of the century influenced the definition of a medium. The study does not just offer just an argumentation for media heterogeneity at the end of the nineteenth century and period differentiation of media definitions; it focuses also on manifestations of such media variegation in very specific local conditions. In order for these exhibitions to be able to demonstrate the continually promoted idea of a well-developed nation and to stimulate the spirit of enterprise in Czech industrialists, the newest inventions of Czech industry, engineering, science and culture were exhibited. At the same time, however, the conception of the exhibitions was subjected to national needs, and this is the reason why also thematically and technologically much more traditional images were exhibited, constructing a seeming continuity of historical development of the Czech nation. Thus, end-of-the-century media in the Bohemian lands were affected by two perspectives: in concordance with radical changes of modernity, the exhibitions focused on future development, and at the same time, they looked back into history at adored Czech national symbols in an effort to bridge the long period of the Czech nation’s submission. These apparently contradictory features were connected in the layout of the exhibitions and their deployment of forms of media, together with the symbolic national beverage – beer – in order to refresh the spectator tired by everyday observations of the innovations provided by progress.