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MIROSLAV HALAK
halak.miro@gmail.com
+43 660 59 69 130
+421 908 81 83 86
MIROSLAV
HALAK
Idealised notions of sublime nature and works of art depicting idyllic landscapes have largely shaped our understanding of 19th-century art. Yet these picturesque visions of dramatic coastlines, endless horizons, and richly coloured fields present a somewhat distorted picture, as they tend to romanticise the historical development of landscape painting without questioning it. The history of modern landscape painting is, in fact, far more complex, revealing a remarkable range of social factors that contributed to the emergence of new artistic styles and new ways of representing nature. While curating the exhibition Grow. The Tree in Art, for the Belvedere in Vienna in 2022, I was surprised to discover that the language editor found my reflections on the symbolic nature of the tree in art difficult to grasp. I therefore tried to explain the tree’s significance by referring to its role in the religious tradition.
Yet not only distant countries, foreign cultures, archaic traditions or marginal phenomena, or even very specific characteristics are associated with the attribute of the largely unknown. Paradoxically, it can even be a neighbouring region about which we know very little in detail.
The central theme of this truly exceptional publication is the tree and its forms and transformations in the history of art across the centuries. As one of the most common artistic and sacred motifs, the tree sparks our imagination while also serving as an irreplaceable source of sustenance and raw materials. The publication was released to coincide with the exhibition of the same name at the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery, which followed the successful GROW exhibition at the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna.
Through the Eyes of Franz Kafka: Between Image and Language traces the writer Franz Kafka’s interest in modern art and visual culture. Examining Kafka’s relationship to visuality, the book explores the diversity of images that surrounded Kafka in his home city of Prague—a heterogeneous and multilingual metropolis whose visual environment shaped his everyday experiences. It maps how Kafka engaged with local painting and sculpture, architecture, and monuments, and also with an array of popular visual media and phenomena from illustrated magazines and advertising to film, photography, dance, and cabaret. Kafka’s attention to the modern visual culture of his era was reflected in his writings and in his interest in drawing, a practice in which he received preliminary training and which he took up in his free time during his years as a university student.
