Amateurism Under Socialism.

The etymological kinship of the word amateur with the Latin amator (one who loves again and again) makes it possible to view art as a widely accessible cultural practice. Without seeking perfection or competitive status, the amateur takes prolonged delight in the chosen activity, thus giving substance to the idea of the anti-bourgeois artist. Examining the art worlds of mid to late Socialism necessitates considering so called,parallel spheres of action' - those that lie in between official and unofficial art. In this article I examine three artists-organisers and compare their cultural practice: Jiří Valoch, Milan Adamčiak and Július Koller. Each of them comes from a different field - while Valoch was poet and exhibition maker, Adamčiak a musicologist and action artist, Koller's point of departure was painting. What connects them all is that they were engaged in amateur art. Their continuum of eeducational activity was not revolutionary, and indeed it was not even entirely oppositional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]