出版社：Institute of the History of Art of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
摘要：Contortionist (1931) was one of the earliest oils created by the painter
František Tichý during his five years in Paris. The painter returned to this
subject matter in further works that reached their peak in paintings made in
1945. For Tichý, the Parisian period was a time of reassessment of his own style
as a painter and the development of a highly individual technique based on
Seurat-esque postimpressionism. Past interpreters of Tichý's works have already
commented on certain elements of tension and ambivalence in his brushwork,
enhanced by a particular treatment of light and building of space. Similar
aspects are conveyed in the choice of subjects, including the contortionist.
This article draws attention to historical examples of treatments of the
contortionist figure and to links with the Devětsil movement, which shared with
Tichý a strong fascination with circus. The article likewise shows that Tichý's
contortionist figure is indebted to a bizarre drawing of two copulating
homosexuals, its subversive quality further emphasised by scatological themes.
Since Tichý produced other versions of the contortionist theme that allude to
the act of excretion, this figure may be understood as a representative of the
grotesque body as defined by Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin. Tichý's work thus
corresponds in certain points with the art of Jindřich Štyrský and the
Surrealists, who were likewise attracted to scatological themes and also with
the work of satirical draughtsmen and caricaturists, with a longer tradition of
scatological subjects reaching back to the 16th century. Examples of
period reviews demonstrate that Tichý's paintings were rich in associative
meanings, akin to the perception of Surrealist works and the Surrealist
discovery of concrete irrationality. Tichý's works oscillated between social
critique in terms of subject matter, a personally engaged self-stylisation and a
certain subversiveness that disrupted the conventional meanings of the
individual themes.
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