Abeceda (which means alphabet in Czech)

On Thursday of last week, Elisa pointed out a sign to me that had a 9 on it that she said looked like a face.

When I looked at the sign, I noticed "devētsil" which is the avant garde group from the 1920s that I first learned about at the Czech museum in Cedar Rapids.  I have been researching the group because some of the members were definitely connected to members of the Prague Linguistics Circle.  I had no idea what the rest of the sign said because it was in Czech, but I came home and googled it and found out it was a special exhibit about the Devetsil group, the first exhibit of its kind in over 30 years, with a lot of new information about the importance of the group.

Here is the gallery's description of the exhibit: http://en.ghmp.cz/5275-devetsil-1920-1931/

On Saturday, I went to the City Portrait Gallery in Old Town Square to see it.

It was really interesting - I feel like I got a better sense of the type of art this group was working on and how they included photographers and architects and poets and painters.  They included everyday objects in their art and were criticized for it.  They were super interested in utilizing the modern: film, lighting, and abstract representations. The early works were very cubist. One of the main members of the group advanced the idea of "pictorial poems", which took many forms, but were most often collages or photomontages.

The exhibit started with a quote that I really liked: "The age has divided in two.  Behind us remains the old time, which is condemned to molder in libraries, and in front of us sparkles a new day." 
- Devetsil Art Association, December 6, 1920

I was looking at the names of the artists to get a sense of the members in the group.  I was also trying to find any mention of the Prague Linguistics Circle or Roman Jakobson (I didn't see anything). I tried to see where they might have met, but got distracted and didn't really research that thoroughly (I should look for that when I go back).

But then I got to the second to last room.  And I stopped in my tracks.

There was a circle of papers hung in the middle of the room, a book in a glass case, a chair, and some prints on the wall.  I read the sign describing what it was and it said it was the Abeceda (or alphabet in Czech, which is how you pronounce the first four letters: a, be, ce, da), a piece by Vitēzslav Nezval.  I had an inkling of what the Abeceda was, based on mentions of it in earlier parts of the exhibit, but I didn't totally know until I got to this room.

The Abeceda is a series of 25 pages with photographs and text and some art deco looking letters.  There is a page for each letter of the alphabet, with J and Q combined on to a single page.  There is text that I am guessing is about that letter, but I haven't translated any of them yet to find out.  And then there is a photograph of a "dance composer", named Milča Mayerova, who is putting each letter into her body.  Here is an example from the website about the exhibit; for the letter K:

And here are some examples that I took in the exhibit:

Here is a video of the images hanging in the circle:

The Abeceda was performed several times in Prague (I think, at least that's my guess from these posters shown below), including March 5, 1926 which is almost 100 years ago today (I went to the exhibit on March 7).

All of the pages were assembled into a book, you could see this page on display in the exhibit:

The book is on loan from the art museum in Olomouc, which is about 2 hours away.  You can see the cover here:
http://www.muo.cz/en/sub-collection-of-20th-century-books--85/

I asked at the gift shop on the way out if they had a copy of the book.  They said there were never any reprints made but you could find an original in an antique shop for 40,000 crowns (roughly $1800).  But I checked WorldCat today and it looks like it was reprinted in 1993 and digging around I can find it on Amazon, of course!  Maybe there are cheaper copies in the city, I will look around.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B083BD4NCW/ref=dp_olp_used_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=used

Also, I've started googling Mayerová and found this article about her and the Abeceda:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3177403?seq=1
It's called

Staging Language: Milča Mayerová and the Czech Book "Alphabet"

Matthew S. Witkovsky

The Art Bulletin

Vol. 86, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 114-135

She is a different choreographer from the one you found last year.  Based on the way the exhibit talked about this piece, I am confident that the Prague Linguistic Circle members would have interacted with it in some way.  It feels like I hit the jackpot with this exhibit!