Lot 180

Jiří Kolář (1914 - 2002) A PANCAKE PAN

Jiří Kolář bears witness to the 20th century, in which he was an integral part of the field of art, and in which quite extraordinary experiments took place. He joined Group 42 as a poet, and he also wrote poetry throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In his writings he is convinced of the permeability of the boundary between word and image. The work, in which the image of the famous Mona Lisa emerges in four parts, was written at a time when the belief in gradual liberalization was still prevalent. It was after the tragic events of 1968 that a profound crisis began to emerge in Kolář's works. There is a certain parallel with the work of ready-mades Marcel Duchamp. In this respect, the connection of an instrumental object (a pancake) covered with a chiasmage from the text with a photograph of da Vinci's Mona Lisa is interesting. An object called Valcha of the Religious Laundress from 1965 works on a similar play of combining everyday objects with text and works of the Old Masters.