Dokonalý kosmologický princip
A Perfect Cosmological Principle

The Surreptitious Modern Manifestations of Jan Konůpek in the Art Collection of Josef Portman

Summary/Abstract: The paper addresses the collaboration between the private publisher Josef Portman (1893–1968) and one of his principal artists, Jan Konůpek (1883–1950). In particular, it considers the work in which Konůpek managed to free himself from the grasp of symbolism and assert progressive artistic tendencies, even if only in small details, in the manner of cubism, orphism, organic abstraction and surreal visions, that is to say, areas clearly quite remote from Portman. The dimension of this relationship is evidenced not only in the number of unique prints, but also in the extensive correspondence between the men in the years 1918–1949, which is stored in the Literature Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature. At the very beginning, it outlines the different expectations of each of them had. Nevertheless, the educated Konůpek, who was capable of persuasive argumentation, managed to influence the composition of Portman’s literary range and became a gentle initiator of modern artistic tendencies without the publisher being aware of it. Therefore, no serious difference of opinion or personal crisis ever arose between them. Based on his study of the macroworld, Konůpek came to his expression of the metaphysical nature of man and the world, unearthly levitating bodily and physical interpenetrations and the aftermath of eruptive forces as if he were observing the cosmic environment from Earth, as a sample of the entire universe. It appears the same to all, in all places and at all times, and has neither a beginning nor an end. Drawing on Mukařovský’s reflections on structuralism, the paper attempts to address why Konůpek’s works from the 1940s in the Portman Fond of the Art Collections of the Museum of Czech Literature lack this ‘cosmological principle’.

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