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present Milan Lukáč
in the film
To "Bebo" and back
I think it is hard for an artist to introduce himself verbally,
for I believe an artist should introduce himself with his work…
or I could invite you to a place where I, as a child,
loved to go for walks and where I still secretly go for walks,
to my country which I invented for myself when I was little.
The country is called Bebo and you always take the same path to get there:
you go straight, right, left, over the bridge, over the river and you are there.
In this country I have basically everything and I also store copies of my work here.
Even if I sell a sculpture or I place it somewhere out of my sight,
I still have it in this country, in Bebo.
Everyone around me probably thought that, one day,
I would also put on the white coat and do the six hard years at medical school to become a doctor…
because my brother, as a matter of course, fulfilled this family dream,
and he is the eighth generation of doctors in the family.
I, being who I am and not even knowing how, became the black sheep of the family
and found myself a completely different profession.
But, a couple of generations back, we did have some artists and sculptors in our family,
and so I did not totally escape the family tradition,
although I avoided the most immediate one.
When as a child I walked in the high grass and among plants,
all those grasses were much bigger than me,
and consequently all the mosquitos and the flies appeared to me to be enormous in size.
As I outgrew the grasses, as if unconsciously,
I let those mosquitos and flies grow up with me
and change into truly large and dangerous beasts. But fortunately,
they are all made of bronze and they are all, as I assert, very good and very friendly,
so there is no reason to be afraid of them.
You only need to be cautious about them in the sense
that it is better not to lift them, so that you do not throw your back out.
A child’s fantasy is actually a catalyst of the adult’s ideas.
If a person does not learn, does not get used to fantasizing in childhood,
then he or she will not be able to fantasize as an adult,
and it is the children’s fantasy, that children’s curiosity,
that children’s playfulness that I think makes life interesting…
In connection with Bebo, I recall the introduction to Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s book,
The Little Prince, where he writes that all grown-ups were once children...
but few of them remember it.
I like bronze, I like quality material, good material,
and in fact I am very sorry to see when a nice antique door handle,
no longer serving its purpose, is taken off the door
and that old, rotten door, which really cannot be helped, goes to a garbage dump,
but that handle still has a chance to have a new life.
This is a challenge for me, a challenge for my fantasy;
it is not just an obsession with collecting old things,
but I rather see it as a way of assembling dreams.
Art does not have to be extremely serious all the time,
does not always have to deal with very difficult topics;
it can deal with things that bring joy, bring amusement,
even make people laugh, in a good, positive sense…
and it can push the boundaries to the point of Dadaism or even beyond it.
The animal kingdom is so amazingly diverse
that in fact man may try to compete with nature,
but in the end we must come to a realization,even when just looking into the atlas of insects,
that nature is so much richer, it is a couple of lengths ahead of us,
and that in fact we have no chance to keep up with it.
This fascinates me a great deal.
I can also do the clapboard.
Well, I myself am a clapboard.
We need to learn from abroad and probably begin where the investment in knowledge,
in living with art, whether it is fine art, theatre or film,
is relatively easily made, i.e. we need to start with young people and children.
One realizes this when visiting galleries abroad,
where you can see school children sitting or lounging about, drawing and making notes.
You can see this in Germany and in France;
you see this in British galleries or in the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg,
where little children come either with their teachers or parents…
and I think it is something that could be encouraged in our country too,
in order to make art, good art, part of our life style.
For me, Milan’s artworks are very communicative.
It is very pleasant to approach them, it feels good to be near them and it is hard to leave them.
And I think this is how it ought to be with good things;
they do not need to intrude themselves on anybody,
they do not need to forcefully present themselves,
they have their own language and speak about things they and their author wish to.
The narrative, though maybe not apparent at first sight,
is another feature of Milan’s work
I very much like browsing in the chapters of his stories,
because I always learn something about myself too.
And this is what art should be about; it should not only be about the author but also about us.
One, two, three, one, two, three and now let’s do one, two, three. Good.
Meanwhile, I was in fact always lucky that, at various times,
I received interesting public commissions, e.g. for The Holocaust Memorial in 1995-97
These were all enormous works which were linked with very difficult and complicated topics
such as the holocaust, political prisoners, the iron curtain
and therefore, after being exposed to these very complex themes,
I am always very happy to return to that garden,
and I quickly run straight, right, left, over the bridge… to that garden
where I have my plants, those botanical dreams, and where I have that beastarium of my own.
The animals that we call beasts, that is just a word
and all those fishes, owls, all those goats, bucks,
they are all good animals, good mosquitos and good flies, good wasps
which all may appear monstrous or bizarre at first sight,
but this is not what evil looks like.
Perhaps, we wish to use the wings of those flies, the wings of those mosquitos to get away from that evil
English translation - Silvia Herianová and Scott Burgess