The title of the exhibition, Dictionary of Methods, refers to the eponymous book by Jiří Kolář, which was first published in France thirty years ago, in 1991, by the Revue K publishing house specialising in publishing Czech authors in exile. In this book, the artist presents 110 different methods of creating collages in alphabetical order. Sometimes the key is the material used or the source texts and images, at other times it is the way the image surface is organized, or the techniques used to divide and distort it. Most entries, however, relate to the typology of subjects and themes that Kolář dealt with.

The displayed artefacts come from two important collections of Kolář’s works: Museum Kampa’s own collection, which was assembled in the 1970s and 1980s by Jan and Meda Mládek, and the corporate collection of the Prague Gas Company (Pražská plynárenská), which has been systematically collecting Czech collages since the 1990s. In fact, it was the Prague Gas Company that sponsored the Czech edition of the Dictionary of Methods in 1999. The basis of Museum Kampa’s collection is an extensive set of collages that Jiří Kolář exhibited in 1975 at his first major exhibition in the United States, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Jiří Kolář (1914–2002) was active as an artist from the 1940s only stopping a few years before his passing. The present exhibition is not based on a chronological structure; it tries to illustrate selected Kolář’s methods as described in his Dictionary. It is not meant to be a retrospective of the artist, but a presentation of two collections based on Kolář’s own categorization.

The Dictionary of Methods is a testament to Kolář’s systematic and analytical approach to his own work; at the same time, it is far from being a rigid system that imposes ways of how to read his collages ‘correctly’. Based on arbitrarily chosen criteria, individual works can be classified under two or three methods, and some collages are completely unclassifiable. The strong point of Kolář’s work lies precisely in this combination of a penetrating intellect and analytical approach on the one hand, with an openness to play, chance or the pursuit of maximum visual impact on the other.

Although Jiří Kolář has long been considered a classic of Czech post-war art, his works still manage to surprise with their vividness and juxtaposition. Despite their essentially analogue form, many of his collages are perhaps even more relevant today than at the time of their creation.

Visitors can discover these works on the two floors of the Moderna Gallery of the Museum Kampa from November 19th 2021 to February 27th, 2022.

Jan Skřivánek

© photo Oto Palán