Milan Knížák
Broken Music
Artist
Milan Knížák
(1940, Plzeň), Czech
Original Title
Broken Music
Date1965-1980
Mediumaltered vinyl record, adhesive tape
Dimensions⌀ 30 cm
Classificationsmixed media works
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionMilan Knížák is an internationally renowned Czech artist whose practice incorporates a wide range of mediums and whose influence transcends the art world. He was a member of the international Fluxus movement and in 1965 was named director of the movement’s Eastern European division. In the early 1960s, Knížák produced numerous ephemeral site-specific projects. His street performances, exhibitions, and happenings from his time in the art group Aktuální umění, founded in 1964 and later renamed to Aktual (1966-1973), significantly differed from the staged happenings of Western artists. Knížák’s happenings did not unfold according to a pre-prepared script. The human body played a vital role, representing the primary link to reality. To an extent, the happenings are based on engaging with a random, non-preselected audience and on a playful invigoration of mundane activities. Their purpose was to bridge the division between art and social life, and to intervene in the physical and spiritual environment of each individual. In this approach, art is not merely an artifact but a process with a playful and spiritually didactic function. During the 1970s, Knížák’s work underwent a significant dematerialization and conceptualization. By mailing manuals, instructions, and appeals, Knížák also aligned himself with the mail art wave of the 1970s, His broad interest in art also led him to explore fashion design. Clothing also played an important role in his happenings, during which he would burn it or paint it onto human bodies. Fashion, clothing collages, and fabric paintings also paved the way for his assemblage fabric canvases of the 1980s, Knížák’s later paintings and object are marked by postmodernist eclecticism, experimenting with kitsch aesthetics and quotations of other painters’ works, through which he conveyed his ironic commentaries on contemporary society.
Music has influenced Knížák’s art in various ways. Among the most important of such developments is the concept of so-called Destroyed Music played from vinyl records which Knížák altered. Between 1963 and 1964, he became one of the first artists to experiment with vinyl records—during live performances, he would speed up and slow down the playback speed, leading to changes in the quality of the sound. In 1965, he began damaging records, scratching, stabbing, breaking, and reassembling them; consequently, the process of playing these records was simultaneously damaging for the record player. Knížák would later adopt a similar approach to sheet music, erasing notes and entire bars, changing the notation denoting intensity and tempo, and changing the order in which parts were played. Later, in order to achieve a diversity of sound, he began seeking new ways to deface vinyl records—taping them up, painting over them, burning them with fire, cutting them up, and pasting together pieces of different records, thus creating new, aggressively sounding compositions with harsh changes and transitions. From 1970 onward, Knížák began using individual pieces of cut-up records and combining different records into new records, thus creating musical collages of sorts. In 1979, he also began creating unplayable variants known as Broken Music, in which he combined vinyl records with various small objects such as plastic miniatures of musical instruments, and in other instances created varied assemblages using records. Playable variants of destroyed music were further created in the 1980s, including the first series of so-called Double Compositions, dating from 1988.
Milan Knížák (* 1940, Pilsen) lives and works in Prague. In 1958, he was admitted to a foundation year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague but was expelled after one year. After completing his mandatory military service, Knížák worked as a cleaner. He later returned to study at the Academy of Fine Arts between 1963 and 1964, but never finished his studies. In the 1960s, he organized several notable performances in Prague’s public space, operating both alone (A Demonstration for All the Senses, 1964; A Demonstration for One, 1964) and with other members of the Aktual art group. In 1966, he organized the Fluxus Festival together with Ben Vautier and Jeff Berner; from the same year onward, he was identified by the Communist State Security as a hostile figure. From 1968 to 1970, he stayed in the USA having been invited by fellow Fluxus members. After returning to Czechoslovakia, he was tracked and prosecuted by the State Security. In 1974, he received the DAAD scholarship, but was only allowed to leave for Berlin five years later, from 1979 to 1980. From 1990 to 1997, Knížák was the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he also led the Studio of Intermedia Work from 1990 to 2016. He was also the director of the National Gallery Prague from 1999 to 2011. He has lectured at numerous domestic and international universities and has also published several books. Knížák’s art has been shown in a range of solo and group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. His work is included in the collections of many important institutions, both Czech and international, including the National Gallery Prague, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Tate Modern in London.
Music has influenced Knížák’s art in various ways. Among the most important of such developments is the concept of so-called Destroyed Music played from vinyl records which Knížák altered. Between 1963 and 1964, he became one of the first artists to experiment with vinyl records—during live performances, he would speed up and slow down the playback speed, leading to changes in the quality of the sound. In 1965, he began damaging records, scratching, stabbing, breaking, and reassembling them; consequently, the process of playing these records was simultaneously damaging for the record player. Knížák would later adopt a similar approach to sheet music, erasing notes and entire bars, changing the notation denoting intensity and tempo, and changing the order in which parts were played. Later, in order to achieve a diversity of sound, he began seeking new ways to deface vinyl records—taping them up, painting over them, burning them with fire, cutting them up, and pasting together pieces of different records, thus creating new, aggressively sounding compositions with harsh changes and transitions. From 1970 onward, Knížák began using individual pieces of cut-up records and combining different records into new records, thus creating musical collages of sorts. In 1979, he also began creating unplayable variants known as Broken Music, in which he combined vinyl records with various small objects such as plastic miniatures of musical instruments, and in other instances created varied assemblages using records. Playable variants of destroyed music were further created in the 1980s, including the first series of so-called Double Compositions, dating from 1988.
Milan Knížák (* 1940, Pilsen) lives and works in Prague. In 1958, he was admitted to a foundation year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague but was expelled after one year. After completing his mandatory military service, Knížák worked as a cleaner. He later returned to study at the Academy of Fine Arts between 1963 and 1964, but never finished his studies. In the 1960s, he organized several notable performances in Prague’s public space, operating both alone (A Demonstration for All the Senses, 1964; A Demonstration for One, 1964) and with other members of the Aktual art group. In 1966, he organized the Fluxus Festival together with Ben Vautier and Jeff Berner; from the same year onward, he was identified by the Communist State Security as a hostile figure. From 1968 to 1970, he stayed in the USA having been invited by fellow Fluxus members. After returning to Czechoslovakia, he was tracked and prosecuted by the State Security. In 1974, he received the DAAD scholarship, but was only allowed to leave for Berlin five years later, from 1979 to 1980. From 1990 to 1997, Knížák was the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he also led the Studio of Intermedia Work from 1990 to 2016. He was also the director of the National Gallery Prague from 1999 to 2011. He has lectured at numerous domestic and international universities and has also published several books. Knížák’s art has been shown in a range of solo and group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. His work is included in the collections of many important institutions, both Czech and international, including the National Gallery Prague, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Tate Modern in London.
