On Plague, Differently. Epidemic Through Josef Váchal’s Eyes

Josef Váchal (1884–1969) – a graphic artist, painter and writer, and above all a xylogtapher – was considered an outsider (“a great absence”) in twentieth-century Czech culture. Although it is almost impossible to list all the areas in which this eccentric "polyartist" was active, the idea of a book entirely made by one artist (from text to bookbinding) remained at the center of his interests. In addition to his own occult treatises, rewritten esoteric or heretical "secret" prints from centuries ago, he also published essays, poetry and novels, providing them with illustrations, or rather supplementing the meanings given by the texts with the meanings generated by the image, turning books into objects of multifaceted intersemiotic reception. In 1927, inspired by his stay at the Adriatic Sea, Váchal "published" the richly illustrated poem Corcyra nigra – Mor v Korčule using xylographic technique. Stylized as a baroque, didactic text intended for a folk audience, inscribing the plague in the divine plan of restoring the ethical order, constantly disturbed by the age-old human tendency to sin, it not only uses persuasive tricks and imaging techniques that imitate the ways of presenting the world known from the storehouse song and dziadowska, but also implements old typographic patterns, designing, for example, a typeface suitable for an "epidemic theme" called "malaria"