Slovenska Literatura (Sep 2012)
Experimental poetry and its forms in Slovak visual art
Abstract
Experimental poetry, which became one of the main cultural manifestations in the 1960s, was not only a form of art of that time, but – first and foremost – a great revolution in poetry. Despite the fact that the new culture paradigm mainly influenced the poetry evolution, out of the whole Slovak art community it took strongest root among Slovak visual artists. One of the reasons was our visual artists´ additional response to lettrism already going out of fashion, which made them interested in the question of langauge, raised by experimental poetry. The article thus makes an effort to see how the cultural as well as philosophical-aesthetical problem influenced Slovak visual artists and how different the approaches each of them took were. The focus of attention is visualisation of poetic works of art and poetization of images. The article mainly builds on fundamental theoretical works, which first became well-known in the Czech art scene in the 1960s and subsequently influenced the art scene in Slovakia, too. The examples include works written by M. Bense, E. Gomringer, A. Moles, J. Hiršal, B. Gröger, as well as a semiotic view of the subject, represented by French linguist J.J. Thomas. He applies his semiotic analysis to Dadaist poems, however it can be applied to Slovak experimental works, too. The subject of the article is a response to a hot issue in contemporary art theory, which interferes with visual studies and intermediality.
