A homage to Vladimír Boudník, one of the greatest Czech avant-garde artists of the 1950s and 1960s, written by his friend and brilliant Czechoslovak writer, Bohumil Hrabal. Published in New York by New Directions in a new translation by PAUL WILSON.
An unforgettable portrait of a major pioneering artist, by “Czechoslovakia’s greatest writer” (Milan Kundera) Hrabal’s anecdotal portrait of Boudník was written in the early seventies. Boudník and Hrabal had a close and often contentious friendship. For a brief period, in the early 1950s, they worked together in the Kladno steel works and lived in the same building in Prague. Boudník developed his own artistic approach, “Explosionalism”, in which the boundaries between life and art become blurred, and everyday events take on the appearance and the substance of art. Hrabal’s portrait captures the strange atmosphere of a time when everyday life in Czechoslovakia was being radically dismantled by the Communists.
The title "Gentle Barbarian" is a reference as well as a very accurate depiction of Boudník's character. His spontaneous and obscene nature co-existed with his highly sensitive and emotional side. In The Gentle Barbarian, Hrabal describes the friendship and frequent encounters of a trio of artists in Liben, Prague, during the 1950s. In addition to Boudník, he also recalls the controversial poet Egon Bondy. The book is, effectively, Hrabal’s art manifesto. The story captures the human tragedy of a genius for whom the meaning of life and his artistic work become a little too linked.
For more information about the book, visit New Directions.
More about Boudník's work in a stunning complete inventory of prints edited by Vladislav Merhaut.
Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997)
Hrabal was born in Moravia and started writing under the influence of French surrealism. In the early 1950s, he began to experiment with a stream-of-consciousness style. Notable works: Closely Watched Trains (made into an Academy Award-winning film directed by Jiri Menzel), The Death of Mr. Baltisberger, and Too Loud a Solitude. He fell to his death from the fifth floor of a Prague hospital, apparently trying to feed the pigeons.
Paul Wilson (1941)
Canadian translator and writer. In 1967 he moved to Czechoslovakia where he performed as a singer with The Plastic People of the Universe. As a result, he was expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1977. Wilson has translated books by Václav Havel, Bohumil Hrabal, Ivan Klima and Josef Škvorecký.
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