The Work and Workshop of the Master of the Rajhrad Altarpiece

The main aim of this project was to verify the possibility raised in the publication of new archival data in 1980 that the group of panel paintings attributed to the Master of the Rajhrad Altarpiece and his workshop were not created before 1420, as earlier academic opinion held, but in fact only around 1450. It included a detailed analysis of the 21 panels forming the group, including infrared reflectography research. This helped identify the highly personal underdrawing style of the "Rajhrad Master" as common to all the panels in the group, proving that they really form a coherent whole. Questions of the painter's education and the nature of Bohemian society around 1450 were also considered, as. Bartlova felt these had been neglected in earlier studies. She concludes that the Master studied in Prague in the late 1430s and then continued studying in Vienna and Munich from 1440. The new dating of the group of panels connected with this anonymous master and his workshop throws new light on Bohemian artistic production during the late Hussite period (c.1430-c.1470). It was generally thought that artistic activity moved out of Prague after the outbreak of the Hussite wars in the 1420s, but this research revealed considerable activity there throughout the period. Numerous painters listed in the Book of the Prague Painters' Guild for this period can now be linked with extant panels, although most of these have survived outside Prague, principally in South Bohemia. These findings have broad implications for studies of Bohemian art in this period.

The Ideology, Politics and Autonomous Art of Richard Weiner: (An Event in Discourse)"

The first aim of the project was to compile documentation on the life and work of Richard Weiner, a Czech journalist, writer and poet who spent the best part of his life as Paris correspondent for Lidove noviny. Langerova looked at the contexts and the growing independence of certain parts of his work, the distribution of thematic compositional elements into different parts of discourse and their position in the autonomous space of a work of art. Looking at the features of minority literature and the contemporary contexts of Weiner's life and work Langerova focuses on the situation of the Jewish community (Wiener came from an assimilated Jewish family). For this minorities, the function of language as a medium of communication which is able to create an autonomous world became increasingly important. Literature, which is based on this function of language, is a political matter par excellence before it begins forming as an autonomous, independent and divergent place. This means that everything private and intimate is closely connected to political and social responsibility, while supposedly objective genres contain subjective features. Another important characteristic is "nomadism", which asks the question of "Where do I belong". This was very important in Czechoslovakia after World War I , as in the issue of Zionism. Although Weiner rejected Zionism, he asks this question in his writing and it is reflected at a symbolic level in his work, which shows a fundamental thematic and compositional plan of a journey, cross-roads and wandering. These theses were reflected in Weiner's life, which was a series of continuous transfers and unplanned moves, often when he thought he had found his place. As well as tracing the course of his life, and his relations with and views of other writers, Langerova looks at his writings in various areas. Her major focus is the divergence of trivial and great events into different types of discourse in Richard Weiner's work, their transfer (small into great, trivial into mythical) and their historical context.

The Institutional Framework around Successful Art Forms in Communist Czechoslovakia

Mr. Michl posed the question of how the institutional framework that the former communist regime set up around art production contributed to the success of Czech applied arts. In his theoretical review of the question he discussed the reasons for the lack of success of socialist industrial design as opposed to what he terms pre-industrial arts (such as art glass), and also for the current lack of interest into art institutions of the past regime. His findings in the second, historical section of his work were based largely on interviews with artists and other insiders, as an initial attempt to use questionnaires was unsuccessful. His original assumption that the institutional framework was imposed on artists against their will in fact proved mistaken, as it turned out to have been proposed by the artists themselves. The basic blueprint for communist art institutions was the Memorandum document published on behalf of Czechoslovak visual artists in March 1947, i.e. before the communist coup of February 1948. Thus, while the communist state provided a beneficial institutional framework for artists' work, it was the artists themselves who designed this framework. Mr. Michl concludes that the text of the memorandum appealed to the general left-wing and anti-market sentiments of the immediate post-war period and by this and by later working through the administrative channels of the new state, the artists succeeded in gaining all of their demands over the next 15 years. The one exception was artistic freedom, although this they came to enjoy, if only by default and for a short time, during the ideological thaw of the 1960s. Mr. Michl also examined the art-related legislative framework in detail and looked at the main features of key art institutions in the field, such as the Czech Fund for Visual Arts and the 1960s art export enterprise Art Centrum, which opened the doors into foreign markets for artists.

Effect of the Various Degrees of Stress on Childrens Art Expression Through Drawings

One of the aims of this project was to understand the way in which external environment or situation affects children's behaviour. Emotional experiences are developed and acquired under the influence of the environment, and a good family relationship is necessary for young people to grow, develop and socialise at all ages. Stress causes specific negative emotions, including concern, anxiety, sorrow and hostility. A pathologic environment in childhood forces the development of special abilities, both creative and destructive, It supports the development of an abnormal state of mind in which the usual relations between body and mind, reality and imagination, knowledge and memory are changed. Here the environment considered was that of the war and aggression in Bosnia & Herzegovina, where children, particularly those from Podrinje, witnessed arrests, killing, deforming and slaughtering of adults and children, in many cases members of their immediate families. Sehovic analysed the content of drawings by children exposed to various degrees of stress, to discover how these indicate various degrees of stress with the aim of using these as a projective technique in diagnostic work with children. The sample included around 600 children expelled from their homes, of both sexes aged between 6 and 12.

Problem of Tragedy and Tragic Consciousness in Russia at the turn of the 19th Century

This project intertwines philosophical and historico-literary themes, taking as its starting point the concept of tragic consciousness inherent in the epoch of classicism. The research work makes use of ontological categories in order to describe the underlying principles of the image of the world which was created in philosophical and scientific theories of the 17th century as well as in contemporary drama. Using these categories brought Mr. Vilk to the conclusion that the classical picture of the world implied a certain dualism; not the Manichaean division between light and darkness but the discrimination between nature and absolute being, i.e. God. Mr. Vilk begins with an examination of the philosophical essence of French classical theatre of the XVII and XVIII centuries. The history of French classical tragedy can be divided into three periods: from the mid 17th to early 19th centuries when it triumphed all over France and exerted a powerful influence over almost all European countries; followed by the period of its rejection by the Romantics, who declared classicism to be "artificial and rational"; and finally our own century which has taken a more moderate line. Nevertheless, French classical tragedy has never fully recovered its status. Instead, it is ancient tragedy and the works of Shakespeare that are regarded to be the most adequate embodiment of the tragic. Consequently they still provoke a great number of new interpretations ranging from specialised literary criticism to more philosophical rumination. An important feature of classical tragedy is a system of rules and unities which reveals a hidden ontological structure of the world. The ontological picture of the dramatic world can be described in categories worked out by medieval philosophy - being, essence and existence. The first category is to be understood as a tendency toward permanency and stability (within eternity) connected with this or that fragment of dramatic reality. The second implies a certain set of permanent elements that make up the reality. And the third - existence - should be understood as "an act of being", as a realisation of permanently renewed processes of life. All of these categories can be found in every artistic reality but the accents put on one or another and their interrelations create different ontological perspectives. Mr. Vilk plots the movement of thought, expressed in both philosophical and scientific discourses, away from Aristotle's essential forms, and towards a prioritising of existence, and shows how new forms of literature and drama structured the world according to these evolving requirements. At the same time the world created in classical tragedy fully preserves another ontological paradigm - being - as a fundamental permanence. As far as the tragic hero's motivations are concerned this paradigm is revealed in the dedication of his whole self to some cause, and his oath of fidelity, attitudes which shape his behaviour. It may be the idea of the State, or personal honour, or something borrowed from the emotional sphere, passionate love. Mr. Vilk views the conflicting ambivalence of existence and being, duty as responsibility and duty as fidelity, as underlying the main conflict of classical tragedy of the 17th century. Having plotted the movement of the being/existence duality through its manifestations in 17th century tragedy, Mr. Vilk moves to the 18th century, when tragedy took a philosophical turn. A dualistic view of the world became supplanted by the Enlightenment idea of a natural law, rooted in nature. The main point of tragedy now was to reveal that such conflicts as might take place had an anti-rational nature, that they arose as the result of a kind of superstition caused by social reasons. These themes Mr. Vilk now pursues through Russian dramatists of the 18th and early 19th centuries. He begins with Sumarakov, whose philosophical thought has a religious bias. According to Sumarakov, the dualism of the divineness and naturalness of man is on the one hand an eternal paradox, and on the other, a moral challenge for humans to try to unite the two opposites. His early tragedies are not concerned with social evils or the triumph of natural feelings and human reason, but rather the tragic disharmony in the nature of man and the world. Mr Vilk turns next to the work of Kniazhnin. He is particularly keen to rescue his reputation from the judgements of critics who accuse him of being imitative, and in order to do so, analyses in detail the tragedy "Dido", in which Kniazhnin makes an attempt to revive the image of great heroes and city-founders. Aeneas represents the idea of the "being" of Troy, his destiny is the re-establishment of the city (the future Rome). The moral aspect behind this idea is faithfulness, he devotes himself to Gods. Dido is also the creator of a city, endowed with "natural powers" and abilities, but her creation is lacking internal stability grounded in "being". The unity of the two motives is only achieved through Dido's sacrifice of herself and her city to Aeneus. Mr Vilk's next subject is Kheraskov, whose peculiarity lies in the influence of free-mason mysticism on his work. This section deals with one of the most important philosophical assumptions contained in contemporary free-mason literature of the time - the idea of the trinitarian hierarchy inherent in man and the world: body - soul - spirit, and nature - law - grace. Finally, Mr. Vilk assess the work of Ozerov, the last major Russian tragedian. The tragedies which earned him fame, "Oedipus in Athens", "Fingal" and "Dmitri Donskoi", present a compromise between the Enlightenment's emphasis on harmony and ontological tragic conflict. But it is in "Polixene" that a real meeting of the Russian tradition with the age-old history of the genre takes place. The male and female characters of "Polixene" distinctly express the elements of "being" and "existence". Each of the participants of the conflict possesses some dominant characteristic personifying a certain indispensable part of the moral world, a certain "virtue". But their independent efforts are unable to overcome the ontological gap separating them. The end of the tragedy - Polixene's sacrificial self-immolation - paradoxically combines the glorification of each party involved in the conflict, and their condemnation. The final part of Mr. Vilk's research deals with the influence of "Polixene" upon subsequent dramatic art. In this respect Katenin's "Andromacha", inspired by "Polixene", is important to mention. In "Andromacha" a decisive divergence from the principles of the philosophical tragedy of Russian classicism and the ontology of classicism occurs: a new character appears as an independent personality, directed by his private interest. It was Katenin who was to become the intermediary between Pushkin and classical tragedy.