Czech Action Art

This is the first ever in-depth interpretation of Czech Action Art as a vast and very original stream of Czech post-war art within the context of the region’s complex socio-political history. Based on the author’s more than decade-long research, her interviews with artists and interpretations of many of their performances and other actions, Czech Action Art also features a list of all Czech Happenings, events, performances, body-art pieces, land-art related and other actions from the 1960s to 1989. With more than 200 illustrations, many of which have never appeared in publications, it provides a vivid picture of the Czech performance art scene.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Preface
Czech Action Art
The Artwork and Its Context – A Historical Framework
The Victory of the Idea over Matter – A Question of Documentation
Czech Performance Art from Futurism to the Present

I. A Breakthrough to the Everyday
1. Milan Knížák's Aktual
2. Czech Collective Actions

II. A Return to Nature
1. A Transformed Landscape
2. Nature and the Body
3. Elements

III. An Experience of the Body
1. The Prague Body-Art Troika
2. Performance Art of the 1970s and 80s

Epilogue
Post-1989 Czech Action Art

List of Actions
Czech Action Art 1960–1989

Bibliography
Index