Boundaries of Other Worlds: Transitional and Representational Functions of Czech Theatre Curtains

Painted stage curtains from the Czech territory represent a great convolute of specific artistic, media and ideological expressions. A number of pictorial and visual strategies are repeated and varied here over long periods of time – for example an appeal to the audience through stereotypical compositions, recycling of popular pictorial prototypes, hierarchical relationships between the profane and the seemingly transcendent environment, etc. This text is based on two cross-sectional publications (Painted Stage Curtains from the Czech Lands, Volume 1 and 2), in which a large amount of hitherto overlooked artistic material is collected. In the case of theatre curtains, the formal image strategies played a key role, through which this image apparatus influenced the audience. Methods of appealing to the audience and their illusory drawing into the action, and the strengthening of their attention are found on curtains in repetitive forms from approximately the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. We analyse several typical visual tools using the examples where it is not so much the authorship and aesthetic qualities that are important, but rather the typicality that is characteristic of the given period and the given medium.