Czech Josef Capek's painting auctioned for record 12 million  read more »

Cimrmanův divadelní kšaft - www.lidovky.cz
Zdeněk Svěrák a Ladislav Smoljak chystají patnáctou hru, kterou by chtěli oslavit podzimní čtyřicítku Divadla Járy Cimrmana. Nová hra by se mohla jmenovat České nebe s podtitulem Cimrmanův dramatický kšaft.

It is characteristic of many things in the Czech psyche that the greatest Czech of all time [also here], as measured by Czech TV's remake of BBC's 100 Greatest Brittons, never existed. It was Jára Cimrman who will celebrate 40 years of non-existence next year. And his 'discoverers', now revered Czech cultural icons themselves, have just announced they are planning to uncover the 15th lost play by this intellectual giant. The play may be called 'Czech Heaven' and with any luck will open in the fall of 2007. This is big news! Roughly on the scale of announcing the new Star Wars. Unlike the Star Wars, though, this is unlikely to disappoint. Want know why? Read this account by an American of the Czech hero's appeal who sums it up pretty well:  read more »

Kundera masterpiece becomes Czech bestseller after 20 year wait
Czech writer Milan Kundera's most famous novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" has become a best seller in his homeland after a 20-year wait for its general release in his native language.

Yes, it is true, Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, perhaps the best-known book written in Czech, was published for the first time in the Czech Republic this year more than 20 years after its original publication in France.  read more »

Emil Viklicky: Patriarch of Czech Jazz Piano
When most American jazz buffs think of the Czech Republic, they probably think of bassists George Mraz and Miroslav Vitous or keyboardist Jan Hammer. However, Europeans knowledgeable about the same topic probably think of Emil Viklicky, the acknowledged “Patriarch of Czech Jazz Piano.”

I was recently asked if there are any well-known Czech musicians along the lines of Abba or Tatu. To that the answer is no (or at least not that I know). However, there a  read more »

Hledání ztraceného času především fotografické fragmenty naší nedávné minulosti
míněné jako upřímná pocta stejnojmenému televiznímu
pořadu filmového historika Karla Čáslavského

Photographic evidence of places and artifacts of special cultural or historical importance to Czechs. This is a very interesting site (created mostly in 1999 - I recommend that anybody interested in recent (last 100 years) Czech history and culture sit down with a Czech and has a conversation about what these things mean to them.  read more »

Prague-Photography Guide Only a few European towns have changed so often and so radically their position as Prague. The seat of emperors Charles IV and Rudolph II, on whose courts leading world artists were acting, was during a 300-year long-rule of the Habsburg dynasty only a provincial shadow of Vienna. At the beginning of the 20th century, it became, however, an important centre of artistic avant-guarde as well. The cubism started to gain ground in Prague only little later than in Paris and its representatives created, in Bohemia, quite a unique cubistic architecture not existing anywhere else in the world. František Kupka was painting some of his first abstract pictures as early as around 1910 in Prague and there was hardly anywhere else such a breeding-ground for the surrealism as in the Czech metropolis (up to the present day, a surrealistic revue „Analogon" is being published there). Happy years of a prosperous and democratic Czechoslovakia, founded in 1918, lasted, however, only two decades and were followed by a Nazi occupation in 1939 and by a Communist putsch nine years later. A totalitarian Communist regime brought Czechoslovakia into a cultural isolation. The country managed to get rid of it only a little and only for a short time during the period of a political liberalization in the 60ies, when, in the international context, representatives of a new wave of a Czechoslovak cinematography shined up - Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová and Jiří Menzel or playwrights Milan Kundera, Josef Škvorecký and Václav Havel. But Soviet tanks ended bloodily a relative freedom of the Prague spring in August 1968 and introduced two decades of the so-called normalization, when, under the rule of one party, there were so many obligations and so little was allowed. Only after the Velvet Revolution, in November 1989, the surrounding world started to discover gradually qualities of the Czech art, almost forgotten and held in secrecy, which, in a short euphoria, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, participated in several important film and theatre festivals or was presented in prestigious galleries and museums. But the interest for works from countries of the former Soviet bloc did not last for a long time and was replaced soon by enthusiasm for creation from China, Japan or Latin America. Nowadays, the Czech art gains ground in Western Europe or in the USA with difficulty and only sporadically. Maybe the photography succeeds best.

A detailed overview of the state of Czech photography that also summarizes the state of Czech art in general. Art-lovers may particularly enjoy descriptions of Prague Art Galleries. This post also made me realize that there is no Art category on Czech Update, so I've added one. If anyone would like to be an art correspondent to Czech Update, please let me know.  read more »