Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Tomáš Pospiszyl, Ph.D.

The dissertation focuses on strategies of framing everyday life as art, primarily in Czech and Slovak art of the 1960s and early 1970s. The concept of framing is used to describe an operation through which a fragment of everyday reality is explicitly delimited (by means of a physical frame, instruction, or verbal declaration) and presented as art without being materially transformed. Framing thus does not alter objects or situations themselves, but rather transforms the mode of their perception, depriving the familiar of its obviousness and opening it to intensified attention.

The main and constant point of reference throughout the dissertation are the Nota Bene actions and invitations of Robert Wittmann, who employed framing in the most consistent and radical way while simultaneously maintaining only weak ties to the institutional field of art. Wittmann’s projects are compared with related works and actions by artists such as John Cage, Max Neuhaus, Alberto Greco, Milan Knížák, HAPPSOC, Július Koller, and Pavel Büchler.

The first two chapters investigate what the material reveals about contemporary understandings of the institution of art. Their theoretical framework is grounded in Dewey’s concept of art as experience, which serves as a tool for interpreting the emphasis on process, active perception, and the attempt to overcome the separation between art and life. The third chapter turns toward everyday life itself and asks what these artistic activities reveal about the ways everyday experience was understood. The fourth chapter shifts perspective and, drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of the cultural field, examines the tension between the declared ambition to overcome art as a separate sphere and the functioning of these practices within the field of artistic production.

Mgr. Viktorie Vítů,

Studio:

Dissertation: Between Art and Life: Strategies of Framing Everyday Life in Czech and Slovak Art of the 1960s and Early 1970s

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