Július Koller

art. His strategy consisted in using real objects and everyday life as the predefined program for an aesthetic operation: from 1965, in texts rubberstamped on paper that refer to the context of the “anti-happening,” and then in 1967/1968 in pictures for which Koller used white latex paint instead of oils and which saw the first appearance of the question mark—the symbol of Koller’s brands of naming, or “making known,” that was later to undergo many mutations in various media and states of aggregation. From 1968/1969, these “anti-pictures” also took the form of one particular variation: as "Textextily," text images on textiles. The “invitation cards for an idea”—as Koller called the text works relating to the “anti-happenings”—and the palimpsests and serial arrangements of the “anti-pictures” set themselves apart from the academicism of Modernism in more than just formal terms. Koller forwent every form of technical mastery. The “anti-pictures” are amateurish in style, ensuring that they fulfill their task, defined by Koller as “engaging rather than arranging.” In 1970, two years after the dreams of a possible third way for Socialism in Czechoslovakia had been crushed by the tanks of the Warsaw Pact; Koller introduced a new conceptual field into his work denoted by three letters: “U.F.O. - Universal Cultural Futurological Operations.” Over more than 30 years, Koller then created the complex of the same name that is his chef-d’oeuvre. G.S.