This past week was quite a busy one. I spent the first half of the week in Prague at the Prague City Archive. They have quite the collection of materials pertaining to the construction of the Municipal House, one of the central buildings in my dissertation.
Even in the face of dire financial concerns, Prague’s city representatives gave their approval, on January 5, 1903, to a grand undertaking: construction of a new building that would offer a monument to Czech culture and serve as a “memorial for the nation.” Nine years later the Municipal House opened its doors to the public. My interest centers around the building’s puzzling contradictions: the primary commission for a building understood as a Czech response to the perceived encroachment of Germanic art and culture in Prague would have gone to an artist with distinctly transnational interests. Equally puzzling, the construction of the Municipal House, which began in 1905, was sold to the public as a fierce demonstration of Czech national identity, yet the architects designed a building with all the earmarks of a luxurious cosmopolitan Art-Nouveau villa.
In the archive, I was searching for materials related to Alfons Mucha’s role in the building, especially given the story that is believed to be commonplace: that Mucha was originally tapped to design the entirety of the building, and in the face of an outcry amongst other Czech artists, his contribution to the building was cut back to only a single room: The Lord Mayor’s Hall (which is under the central dome in the photo above).
Upon arrival at the archive, I found a very interesting lack of materials that mentioned Mucha. This was quite interesting, given the story surrounding Mucha’s supposed involvement. The materials that I read were mostly commission meeting minutes and they began in 1902, but there was no mention of Mucha until 1909, when his name was only briefly mentioned. There were also a number of artist contracts, but none for Mucha, which does fit the part of the story that the mayor hand-selected him, and as such his contribution would not have been a standard commission.
This is not to say that I found my time in the archive unproductive, it was a great experience! Even with the lack of material on Mucha, I still found that it told a very interesting story and I look forward to seeing what other materials I consult later tell me about the project. For instance, I did see a very interesting fact about the roofing tiles they used for the Municipal House. One of the references stated that they used polychrome tiles. This fact adds a very interesting lens to the question of nationalism in the region. Ödön Lechner in Hungary used Polychrome tiles for the roof of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, as well as other “nationalist” buildings. Scholars such as Dragan Damjanović have also discussed the role that Polychrome tiles have played in the development of national Styles in the region.
I look forward to later archival visits, such as my work with the Mucha Foundation that will occur later in the year. I do not view the lack of materials on Mucha in the Prague City Archive as a setback, these materials just tell a different story.
Next week, I will be traveling to Liberec in Northern Bohemia (a few hours north of Prague) to see the design for a carpet that Mucha designed for the 1900s Exposition Universelle.
