Curator from MG Hana Karkanová
“This edition, printed in a single copy in the velvet black of Chinese ink, was clothed on the outside and covered within in remarkable and authentic pigskin, selected from among thousands of hides, flesh-coloured, perforated where bristles once grew, and decorated with a black lacework of wrought iron, miraculously assembled by a great artist.”
Joris Karl Huysmans
The exhibition presents the books and journals of what was known as “the decadence movement” in the Czech lands. This aspect of art in Bohemia and Moravia was first associated with Moderní revue, an art journal, the Library edition of which published the first bibliophile prints in the Czech environment (Prostibolo duše, 1894). The graphic design and typography of Moderní revue were inspired by French (La Plume, Le Decadent, etc.) and English (The Studio, The Yellow Book) models. The approach was particularly manifest in 1896–1898, when the journal’s vignettes, headings and end pieces were designed by Karel Hlaváček. The journal’s design also involved major book artists (František Kobliha, Zdenka Braunerová and others). At the turn of the 19th century, the influence of Moderní revue, like that of foreign journals and books, became evident in certain new editions and private prints (e.g. Symposion, Moderní bibliotéka, Good Authors’ Books). The experiments with type and imagery that appeared in the radical environment of the decadence movement blazed a trail for the development of book design and typography in the 1920’s and 1930’s.