Anton Krajčovič by Iva Mojžišova (review)

256 Books chinery lyingincoffins.Ultimately, theseCoffin-Women, CoffinMen . Coffin-Children hold little visual interest and fall beyond criteria of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ art, but they are exceptional in the Sovietcontext and contrast sharply with the orthodox directions favored by most contemporary Soviet sculptors. Essentially, Sidur’s ‘found art’ is a silent art, unresponsive, destroying one’s preconceptions of esthetic value and, above all, severingany real connection with the discipline of sculpture, i.e. with the art of composition. If such art is to be described at all, then it must be seen as construction, as a branch of engineering without a utilitarian function. Sidur has every right to express his sentiments in this way, but I hope that he will return to his smoother, more harmonious forms of earlier years: works such as ‘Saxophonist’ (1958)and ‘Torso’(1963)indicated a potential and innovative extension of the Moore/Hepworth tradition, i.e. the concern with strictly formal, esthetic elements. At this point, Sidur was maintaining the fine principles of early 20th-century Russian and Ukrainian sculpture-f Archipenko, Korolev and Mukhina. Eimermacher gives particular attention to Sidur’s drawings, all of them figurative and often satirical. Sidur has steadily maintained a deep interest in graphics, producing many preparatory sketches for his sculptures, as well as a number of independent graphic pieces. But Sidur, surely, in my view, is an artist of three dimensions, not of two, and these depictions of copulating monsters and phallic supermen seem strangely impotent on paper and demand a tactile, sculptural embodiment. There are more than enough young Moscow artists who can draw and paint but very few who know how to make works from stone and metal. Anton Krajfovit. Iva MojiiSova. (In Slovak) (Summaries in English. French, German and Russian). Pallas. Bratislava. Czechoslovakia, 1975. 167 pp., illus. 60.00 KE. Reviewed by John E .Bowit* This is a comprehensive album of the artistic work of Anton KrajdoviE(b. 1928),one of Eastern Europe’s leading cinema and television set designers. The author presents a straightforward life-and-work study, tracing KrajEoviE’s development from his enrollment at the Bratislava Technicum, through his assistantship at the State Cinema Studios in Prague to his return to Bratislava in 1952.As Mojziiova implies,cinema and television set design is a young art form, lacking traditional principles, especially in provincial centers such as Bratislava. Krajdovid, therefore, became the founder of the Slovak cinema and television design industry, participating in cinema productions from 1952 onwards and turning his attention to television in 1956. Although KrajfoviE’sartisnot highlyinnovative, itsimagesand style relate to a defined conception of set design, one that treats this as a particular artistic discipline,a true composite of various art forms and not simply a branch of applied art. Essentially, Krajdovic3 approach is a narrative, intelligibleone, although he manifests elements of Constructivism (e.g. in the film ‘Udolie vednych karavan’, 1968) and Expressionism (in the film ‘Dvanast’, 1967) from time to time. For a mass audience, Krajdovic“s exaggerated satirical renderings of theatrical personages should meet with success, and his fine graphic sense should work well in the black and white medium of television. In retrospect, Krajdovic‘s first set designs for both film and television seem trite and, at best, 1940s’ Hollywood, but the elaborate and sophisticated sets of the 1960ssuch as for the films ‘Balada o siedmich obesenych’(1968)and ‘Kubo’ (1966)display an understanding of mobile and immobile elements of formal montage and multiplicity of vantage points. These qualities are visible,aboveall, in the severalshots of ‘Udolievednychkaravan’ with its constructivist frames, superimpositions and geometries-reminiscent, perhaps coincidentally, of Isaak Rabinovich’s work for ‘Lysistrata’, produced at the Musical Studio of the Moscow Arts Theatre in 1923.The set designs of the 1970ssuch as for the film ‘Skryty pramei’ (1973). mark a return to the historical, narrative scenery, a development that somecritics might welcomebut one that I find hard to appreciate after his audacious innovations in ‘Udolie’. I hope that, with his confident technique and acute sense of the interaction of mobile and immobile elements, Krajdovid will continue to investigate more abstract, more formal possibilities. La Genke d’une peinture. Jacques Mandelbrojt. J. P. Collot, Aix en...