Art and everydayness: popular culture and daily life in the communist Czechoslovakia

Abstract

This article analyzes the interaction between art and practices of everyday life in communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. Discussing various forms of adaptations to the politically repressive system - from photography and film to social activities such as 'cottage homemaking' and 'cabining' - the author describes ways in which popular culture under communism resisted the state-induced drive to modernize which, as a political tool, was designed to pacify the masses. The article suggests that by breaching the gap between the quotidian and the extraordinary, which as a systemic division has defined daily life in modernity, popular culture was instrumental in reinvigorating everydayness. © The Author(s) 2012.