Introduction // Captain of the avant-garde // Karel Teige in the eyes of his contemporaries // Karel Teige as such // 1 ART AS HYGIENE FOR THE SOUL // The mischief of youth / Creative flight // “He didn’t reap but sowed and sowed, and did so ninefold” // Early Devětsil. Figures and Prefigurations // Proletarian Art // Theory in practice - Works by the Devětsil artists in 1920-1921 // The 1922 Spring Exhibition // The New Proletarian Art // Paris 1922 // The Devětsil Revolutionary Anthology (1922) // A 180-degree turn? // Life II: The Anthology of New Beauty // Photo Cinema Film // Devětsil and Life II - “Lightning rods of the polemical storm.” // A conflict of two generations // The end of DevětsiPs proletarian period // Stavba - A monthly for the building arts // Alexander Archipenko // Jan Zrzavý // Rudolf Kremlička // Disk - An International Review // Devětsil in Brno: Host and Pásmo magazines // DevětsiPs second exhibition: The Bazaar of Modern Art // Picture poems // “Pantomime” and “On the Waves of TSF” // 2 THE FLOWERS OF THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS // Poetism and Constructivism // Poetism // Poetism and Futurism // Poetism and Dadaism // The debate on Poetism // The Second Poetisi Manifesto, or Poetry for All the Senses // Rebellion in their own ranks - The terror of theory // F. X. Šalda and Karel Teige // The Third Poetisi Manifesto: “Poem, World, Person” // When does Poetism end? // 3 THE ORDER OF CONSTRUCTION AND THE SEED OF MADNESS // Constructivism // Teige versus Le Corbusier // Ilya Ehrenburg in Prague // Contacts with the international Constructivist movement: // Karel Teige and Theo van Doesburg // Teige and the USSR (“the socialist America”) // The liquidation of art and the demise of the painting // Teige’s trip to the USSR // The tasks of the new architecture // Architecture: Science, or art? //
Karel Teige’s dispute with Le Corbusier (1929-1931) // Le Corbusier in Czechoslovakia // A verbal hide-and-seek: The Teige-Le Corbusier debate // Architecture: Art, or science? No resolution in sight... // Teige’s (self-critical) revision of Constructivism: The concept of Functionalism // 4 REBELLION AGAINST ORNAMENTATION // 259 Constructivism, Poetism and typography // 263 Alphabet - The most famous book of the Czech interwar avant-garde // 264 Modern Typo // 267 Typographic poetry: “Rupture” and “With the Boat That Imports Tea and Coffee” // (or: Taming the wild beast of typography) // 270 From Poetist-Constructivist conquests to a functional architecture of the book // 271 ReD - The Devětsil Review // 273 Lowercase and Teige’s reform of Bayer’s typeface // 275 The austere typography of the early 1930s and later // 277 Photomontage - Art for “armless Raphaels” // 280 Typography on the path from Functionalism to Surrealism // 5 THE CONQUESTS OF POETRY // 285 Devětsil in 1926-1931 (the group’s third and final phase) // 288 Teige in public and Teige in private // 290 Paintings and drawings (1926-1931) // Teige on Hoffmeister, Šíma, Štýrský, Toyen, Muzika // 291 About drawing (and more) - Adolf Hoffmeister // 293 “Old Fogies” // 296 Poetisi painting // 300 Artificialism // 304 Josef Šíma // 308 František Muzika // 311 Teige and the theater // 318 Film: Reportage, or poem? // 326 Photography: The triumph of vision “armed” with a camera // 330 Is photography art? // 335 The atomization of a generation: The generational debate, 1929-1931 // 6 THE DISCIPLINE OF THE MINIMAL // Teige and the Bauhaus // Karel Teige and architecture as a sociological science and a psychoanalytical, biological science // Teige’s collaboration with the CIAM // “Factories for living” - The collective house and the minimum dwelling //
Karel Teige and Jiří Kroha // Garden Cities of the Unemployed. Architecture of the Right and the Left // Soviet architecture — and the unfortunate evolution towards “mammoth bodies of monumentality” // Architecture as a psychoanalytical and biological science (1936-1947) // 7 AN INTEGRAL REVOLT // Teige’s relationship to Surrealism in 1922-1934 // From “Intellectuals and Revolution” to “Art Fair” // Surrealism - “The rib and flesh of Poetism” // The first exhibition by the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group // André Breton and Paul Eluard visit Prague // 1936 // 1937 // Karel Teige on questions of the avant-garde and the emergence of a new // artistic generation of Surrealists // The Mánes Debate (S. K. Neumann’s attack on modern art) // Vítězslav Nezval’s conflict with the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group // Surrealism Against the Stream // Typography 1932-1938 // Teige’s late Functionalist typography // A fantastical reality subjected to the dictates of desire: Collages (1935-1951) // The mania of decalcomania // Automatic writings and dream records // Appendix - A transcription of Karel Teige’s automatic writing manuscripts 8 A CLOISTERED REFUGE // 457 Revenge of the principle of pleasure // 467 Three years of freedom: 1945-1948 // 473 1946 // 483 A cardinal revision of concepts and values // 483 1947 // 488 1948: “Night” // 494 “The sleep of reason produces monsters” - The drawings of Karel Havlíček // 497 The Phenomenology of Modern Art (1949-1951) // 499 1950: Anathema // 504 Birth of the group behind “Signs of the Zodiac” // 505 The execution of Záviš Kalandra // 507 The “Signs of the Zodiac” anthologies // 516 Appendix - Karel Teige, Response to the survey on Surrealism, 30 May 1951 // 524 October 1951: The doleful dance of death // 527 Epilogue //
535 Biographical chronology // 573 List of works, bibliography // 621 Translator’s note // 622 A list of Teige’s main book publications with their English and Czech titles // 623 Index