Milan Knížák
Book Document
Artist
Milan Knížák
(1940, Plzeň), Czech
Original Title
Book Document
Date2017
Mediumconcrete, metal, black and white photographs, drawings, collages, vinyl and paper
Dimensions67 × 31 × 31 cm
Classificationssculpture
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.
Book-Document (2017) is part of a larger series of Knížák’s artist’s book. In the mid-1960s, Knížák began creating a specific form of book-objects, in which he compiled documentation of his projects and concepts, as well as collages, texts, and documentary photographs of his iconic street actions. These books served a similar purpose as the documentary panels he was making in parallel—they represented a way of archiving artistic activities through a form that was itself an artistic object. Each book contains slightly different documentation—this one comprises documents dating from the 1950s to the present. Knížák transcribed most of the texts using a typewriter, meaning he would include in the books whatever writings he had available. A striking difference between these works and traditional books is their unique materiality, which transforms them into artistic objects. During the mid-1960s, Knížák also created special publications conceived in innovative forms, such as a shoebox full of paper planes covered in various slogans. Later, he began embedding documents into massive concrete slabs and iron plates, with the top cover usually having a particularly sculptural form, achieved through the addition of various found materials, such as metal wires, toys, textiles, rocks, and other found objects which shaped the books into unique artifacts. Knížák intentionally made his artist’s books massive and unwieldy, to protect them from disappearing in the depths of personal libraries: “Because I felt like libraries are where books die. I knew numerous people who bought themselves nice books, but their spines were just statically on display in their personal libraries. I made books that could not be shelved… either you lived with it, it was in your way, and you occasionally looked through it, or you dumped it into some big garbage bin.”
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.
Book-Document (2017) is part of a larger series of Knížák’s artist’s book. In the mid-1960s, Knížák began creating a specific form of book-objects, in which he compiled documentation of his projects and concepts, as well as collages, texts, and documentary photographs of his iconic street actions. These books served a similar purpose as the documentary panels he was making in parallel—they represented a way of archiving artistic activities through a form that was itself an artistic object. Each book contains slightly different documentation—this one comprises documents dating from the 1950s to the present. Knížák transcribed most of the texts using a typewriter, meaning he would include in the books whatever writings he had available. A striking difference between these works and traditional books is their unique materiality, which transforms them into artistic objects. During the mid-1960s, Knížák also created special publications conceived in innovative forms, such as a shoebox full of paper planes covered in various slogans. Later, he began embedding documents into massive concrete slabs and iron plates, with the top cover usually having a particularly sculptural form, achieved through the addition of various found materials, such as metal wires, toys, textiles, rocks, and other found objects which shaped the books into unique artifacts. Knížák intentionally made his artist’s books massive and unwieldy, to protect them from disappearing in the depths of personal libraries: “Because I felt like libraries are where books die. I knew numerous people who bought themselves nice books, but their spines were just statically on display in their personal libraries. I made books that could not be shelved… either you lived with it, it was in your way, and you occasionally looked through it, or you dumped it into some big garbage bin.”
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.
Milan Knížák
1977-1981
