Review / BRATISLAVA MODERN FOUNTAINS
Martin Zaiček, Andrea Kalinová, Petra Hlaváčková (eds.): Bratislavské moderné fontány, Archimera, 2021
After the book Architektúra starostlivosti (Slovenské kúpele 2. polovice 20.storočia) by the author duo of architectural historian Martin Zaiček and photographer Andrea Kalinová, their next editorial venture appeared this year. This is a genre register in which they document Bratislava fountains realized between 1963 and 1989. To create the publication they invited graphic artist Katarína Knežíková, who complements it with illustrations, Ivor Švihran and Lucia Mlynčeková as authors of the accompanying texts. The graphic design of the publication was done by Magdaléna Scheryová.
The time interval on which the authors focused is already revealed by the title Bratislava’s modern fountains, they narrowed down modernity to the period 1963 – 1989, i.e. in terms of political history to the period of communist totalitarianism and unfreedom in the former Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Bratislava, as the second capital, experienced massive growth during this period, almost doubling its population between 1961 and 1991. Massively subsidised by the state apparatus and ideologically packaged by a propaganda layer of communication, the conjuncture needed to achieve the illusion of a seamless, classless society capable of housing, employing, clothing, educating, treating and culturally developing all of its inhabitants. In a system of building and five-year defined construction of mainly housing structures and amenities, the regime created a financial support mechanism called HLAVA V, which was part of the implementing decree of the Construction Law, specifying the compulsory investment in the arts within construction budgets. Thanks to this “hlava”, unprecedented numbers of works of art were created in this period in public space, but also in the interiors of public buildings. Fountains also had their share in this period.
The register of Bratislava’s fountains was last compiled in 1990 by Štefan Holčík and Bohuslava Bublincová in the book Bratislavské fontány, to which the current publication is loosely linked in the title. The authors also drew on the Inventory of Statues in Public Space, compiled by Sabína Jankovičová and Roman Popelár in 2013. Since 1990, fountains have been disappearing from Bratislava’s public space rather than increasing in number, and those from the period on which the book focuses are decaying and their current condition is often deplorable. This reality is recorded in the book’s pictorial section, which is based on a collection of civilian, non-embellishing photographs by Andrea Kalinová. The illustrator Katarína Knežíková takes the same authorial approach to them, taking the models (sculptures, objects) out of context and turning them into a kind of free artistic notebook, again with a melancholic undertone.
The author’s photographic and artistic part of the book is complemented by texts by the book’s editor Martin Zaiček, activist and local history guide Ivor Švihran and architect and graphic designer Lucia Mlynčeková. Zaiček wrote the introduction to the book, in which he focuses on the phenomenon of the fountain (spring) throughout history, continues through the modernist urban concept of the Athenian Charter and the construction of housing estates in the Czech Republic, and then notes the psychological aspect of the humanization of large housing estates on fountains. In doing so, he refers to studies by psychologists, architects, sociologists and doctors who, in the period from the 1970s to the 1980s, addressed the theme of ‘water as a tool for improving society and making living in monotonous structures more attractive’. He reflects on the current state of fountains in philosophical language: “The ruins of fountains reflect the dichotomy of the eternal and the temporal of our culture, the naturalness of nature and the artificiality of our interventions in it…..” and sometimes goes to poeticisms, looking at them as “… mythical micro-spaces detached from everyday reality”.
Ivor Švihran’s study is the study of a connoisseur who has a precise control over the stories of works in public space in individual city districts. He draws attention to many details, for example, a very interesting passage about the 1974 purge of Ružinov statues, when the National Committee Bratislava 2 removed 24 artworks by artists with anti-regime attitudes in the aftermath of the normalisation purges. “Works by P.Binder, J. Čihánková, T. Kavecký, T. Klimová, J. Kočiš, M. Laluha, M. Paštěk, A. Rudavský, R. Uher, J. Vachálka and others were taken to the Štokerská lime factory and there they were destroyed, among them was one fountain.” He also mentions the removal of the work Rodina by J. Jankovič from the fountain on Bachova Street and how a statue of Mary by Pavel Mikšík was added to the empty pool of the fountain.
Also interesting is the story of Havrillo’s well-known sculpture of the Zen Girl in Petržalka, which is only a part of the larger unfinished complex of the proposed Man and the Universe fountain. The sculpture of the girl was to be in a larger pool and in a smaller one, separated by a footbridge, was to be a 5 m high stainless steel cone terminating in a symbolic wreath. Havrilla’s “fountain” was realized in 1989 and after the coup it was never completed. In total, there are only three (!) fountains in Petržalka, probably because it was “completed” only in the 1980s, when artistic details did not play much of a role anymore.
Lucia Mlynčeková’s final study deals in detail with the phenomenon of “Hlava V” and its application. She highlights them as a tool of ideological control, but also points to the fact that, paradoxically, proposals from artists who were otherwise politically inappropriate often passed through the commissions. He also shows that similar models for funding large-scale artworks have survived in some countries to the present day.
In addition to the studies, the book includes oral history-style interviews. In them, the interviewees, sculptor Juraj Gavula and architect Martin Kusý, have left important testimonies on the social history of the production of official art in the period – who, with whom, why and how the mechanisms of operation worked. Again, an important theme is the application of “Hlava V” and also whether this model is transferable to the present. Martin Kusý cannot imagine it. Even in the past, he was bothered that it was mandatory. He argues that architecture has changed a lot since then. “If we were doing it today, I have an unimaginable fear of how our businessmen would take it up and what would be left of it. Or the political top brass. Maybe it would be worse than it was during the socialist era, because at least there were commissions that somehow guarded that quality.” Zaiček also addressed this question to the visual artist Matej Gavula (son of Juraj Gavula), who, on the other hand, thinks that resurrecting a similar principle would “cultivate the connection between art and architecture.”
From the focus of the texts in the book, it is clear that the story of “Hlava V”, rather than the fountains, their evaluation and classification in terms of art history, is the story of Title V. In the final analysis, then, Head V unmasks the urgent need to spark a public debate about how to help the creation of quality artworks in public space. Because we are falling behind and atrophying. Looking back over the last 30 years – how much and what kind of quality art in public space do we see?
Finally, a few words on the graphic design of the book. I don’t see the decision to dip it all in the pool, that is, in light blue, as a happy one. The problem arises with both the photographs and the illustrations, which should have been the main artistic motif of the publication and are not. The colour filter has changed them considerably. They may have wanted to reinforce a certain sense of, to quote again, ” the dichotomy of eternity and temporariness”, but taken plainly, they don’t look good. Moreover, the photographs are mostly double-paged and since the fountain is in the middle we don’t actually see it properly in the binding of the book. As a reader, I also get a bit lost in the register and location of the fountains. Too bad. Because otherwise it’s a nice book to hold, even for a walk.
P.S. I like the cover, which shows a symbolic erasure of the 1981 Mikšík’s fountain in the courtyard of the Istropolis.