Pavlína Morganová is an art historian and curator. She studied art history at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. She teaches at the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU), where she is also vice-rector for art, science and development. Since 2013 she has led the AVU Academy Research Institute.
She was the first to deal comprehensively with the phenomenon of Czech action art, which she examined in her diploma and dissertation work. She followed this up with the publication Akční umění (1999), which divides up the historical narrative of action art trends from the 1960s to the 80s into three chapters. The first part looks at happenings of the 1960s, i.e. collective activities in public space organised with the aim of dispersing art into everyday life (Průlom do každodennosti). This is followed by a summary of projects working with the natural elements, including interventions in the landscape (Návrat k přírodě). The core of the third chapter comprises body art performances of the 1970s and early 80s (Prožitek těla). The projects organised in the 1990s were examined in more detail in the second edition of the book (2009).
Morganová has looked at specific aspects of action art in many specialist articles. She cooperated on the Berlin exhibition Fluxus East. Fluxus-Netzwerke in Mittelosteuropa with the curator Petra Stegmann at Künstlerhaus Bethanien (2007), and contributed a study of the response to Fluxus in Czech periodicals at that time to the exhibition catalogue.
She prepared the exhibition 35 let 7000 kilometrů / Lumír Hladík a Jiří Kovanda (2011) for the Prague gallery SVIT, at which she introduced Lumír Hladík, a forgotten figure of Czech action art. In addition to Jiří Kovanda’s early work, she also exhibited hitherto unpublished period photographs and films that capture Hladík’s performances realised in the period before his departure for exile in Canada in the early 1980s. The two artists were friends, and, as several of the photographs showed, participated at each other’s events. Morganová dealt with the artist’s works from 1976 to 1981 in an accompanying essay (Lumír Hladík, 2011).
Her book Procházka akční Prahou. Akce, performance, happeningy 1949−1989 / A Walk Through Prague: Actions, Performances, Happenings 1949−1989 (2014) charts performances of unofficial art held in Prague during the communist era in the style of a guide. It identifies the specific locations of events (using GPS coordinates) and encourages the contemporary visitor to perceive public space in its urban and socio-political transformations by means of period photographic documentation.
The actions, performances and happenings that took place prior to 1989 were only sporadically immortalised on celluloid. Luckily, these unique recordings are available as a DVD compilation entitled České akční umění. Filmy a videa 1956−1989 (2015), which Morganová worked on with Terezie Nekvindová and Sláva Sobotovičová for the Vida series published by the AVU Research Institute.
Along with her interest in action art, as a curator Morganová is also interested in contemporary art. This is from the position of an art historian who draws attention to the recent past and pinpoints the starting points of current styles. These endeavours include her project Artscape.cz (2008), a visual map revealing the relationships and influences at work on the contemporary art scene.
The exhibition Insiders. Nenápadná generace druhé poloviny 90. Let / Insiders: The Unobtrusive Generation of the Late 1990s (Dům umění města Brna, 2004/2005) presented the early work of selected personalities of the second post-revolutionary wave of artists (Lenka Klodová, Ján Mančuška, Tomáš Vaněk, Zbyněk Baladrán, Jan Nálevka, Pavel Ryška, Kamera skura, Kristof Kintera, Pavel Kopřiva, Alena Kotzmannová). The title of the show emphasises the community character of the art scene, while the curator justified the use of the descriptor inconspicuous by comparing that generation with the previous one. While the latter became active at the time of post-revolutionary euphoria, quickly joined the international scene and often relied on large formats and effective visuals, the second half of the 1990s was characterised by a changing social climate brought on by disillusionment with the developments that took place following the Velvet Revolution. The interest of the West in artists from the Eastern bloc was declining and there was no functioning network of galleries for the next generation. Morganová focused on artists who anchored their post-conceptual objects and installations in local social contexts and of whom the term “noble DIY” was often used based on their utilisation of commonplace materials and their focus on the craftsmanship and the aesthetics of DIY.
The purpose of the exhibition Začátek století. České umění prvního desetiletí 21. Století / The Beginning of the Century: Czech Art of the First Decade of the 21st Century, which Morganová organised in 2012 for the West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen, was, despite the minimal time lag, to compile a representative picture of the art of the just concluded “noughties” with an emphasis on the youngest generation, which had entered the art scene during that period. Artists from the generation of the latter half of the 1990s were well represented and four personalities that the curator regarded as key influencers of young art were given space (Jiří Kovanda, Jiří Surůvka, Milena Dopitová and Markéta Othová). Morganová also edited the publication of the same name.
Her exhibition Někdy v sukni. Umění 90. let / In a Skirt – Sometimes: Art of the 1990s (Moravská galerie, Brno, 2014) featured the work of fourteen female artists, beginning with Milena Dopitová and ending with Kateřina Šedá, who entered the art scene during the 1990s and had an important influence of Czech art of this decade. “The 1990s was a period in which it would be possible for the first time to write a history of Czech art without male artists,” Morganová wrote in the catalogue on the character of the project, adding that “this is not the result of a feminist sense of injury, the feeling that women artists need highlighting and positive discrimination. On the contrary, it is based on the conviction that women on the Czech art scene of the 1990s played the most important role…” [1] Her curatorial strategy revealed a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, it was based on a gender construction in that it displayed only women artists. On the other, it defined itself as being in opposition to a gender-based, feminist reading.
This was not the first time that Morganová had concerned herself with gender. In 2003 she had organised the exhibition 5 žen a 5 otázek / 5 Women and 5 Questions (Galerie Jelení, Prague). The concept arose from doubts as to whether it was possible to organise a group exhibition of female artists without such an event being branded gender-based. For this reason she chose the format of exhibition-interview and encouraged men above all to speak of the situation women faced in art. Each of the participating artists, and the curator herself, chose a male respondent (an artist or theorist), and asked him questions regarding the position of women in contemporary art. The replies were made available in the form of audio recordings.
Morganová’s most recent exhibition, Independent Research of Subjectivity (2016), is something of a departure from her usual style. The exhibition took the form of a site-specific installation of current works by artists of different generations (with the exception of Karel Nepraš) in the dilapidated buildings of town halls opened to the public as part of the international festival 4+4 dny v pohybu (4+4 Days in Motion).
Finally, we should mention the collective projects realised by the AVU Academic Research institute. Morganová was part of the editorial team that oversaw the publication of the anthologies České umění 1938–1989. Programy, kritické texty, dokumenty (2001) and České umění 1980−2010. Texty a dokumenty (2011). At present the team under her leadership is completing research into the medium of the exhibition in Czech art from 1957 to 1997.
[1] Pavlína Morganová, Introduction. In a Skirt – Sometimes, in: Idem (ed.), Někdy v sukni. Umění 90. let, Moravská galerie and Prague City Gallery, Brno 2014. 5–6.
