Following the political transition in Hungary in 1989, there was an effort to make up for long years of neglect in the realm of cultural policy. This included reviving art that at the time of its production had been prohibited or at best tolerated. Thus, in the 1990s major institutions such as the Hungarian National Gallery and the Mücsarnok Art Museum in Budapest put on exhibitions of the unofficial art of the sixties and seventies as well as retrospectives of the work of artists such as Endre Tót and Miklós Erdély. But today some gaps still remain in the country's attempt to come to terms with the art of the past, partially due to the informal character of the artistic activities of the time, some of which took place »underground«.

A compact, documentary-style exhibition in Budapest's Dorottya Galéria has now managed to close some of these gaps. The central architectonic element is a U-shaped table on which numerous photos and documents as well as some objects are arranged in a clear and unpretentious manner. Co-organizer Tamás Szentjóby (a.k.a. Tamás St. Auby) was himself active in the critical-intellectual art scene of the sixties and seventies, before being arrested in 1975 and deported from Hungary, ending up in Geneva, where he lived until the end of the eighties. The organization behind the exhibition is Szentjóby's NETRAF (Neo-Socialist Realist International Parallel Union of Telecommunication' Global Counter-Art History Fakers' Front). Showcased is rich material by some 70 artists, much of which has never been exhibited before. For example, Györgyi Orsós' folder, »Brezhnev's Art«, which describes in delicate, collaged water colors with an accompanying text how Brezhnev watches the sparrows in his garden and feeds them worms and beetles, trying in vain to make friends with them, and finally turns away full of resentment. Brezhnev also turns up in another work by Orsós, this time as an advertising character in a design for a chewing gum package (»Super-Kondi«, 1975). These omnipresent representatives of Communist history are also the subjects of Gyula Pauer's »Marx – Lenin« (1970), which uses a simple outline template to re-interpret the Karl Marx monument in Berlin as Lenin's face.

»The Party as the Art of the Era« is the title of a film by László Végh that can also be seen in the exhibit. Shot during a New Year's Eve party in 1976, the film's title describes the distribution situation many culture producers found themselves in at the time. The party is viewed here as a performative setting, as an opportunity for personal and artistic exchange, sometimes as the only legal form in which groups can get together. Artists' private apartments were often the only place they could present their work. László Végh, whose works are granted a substantial amount of space in the show, was something of an intellectual father figure for many of his artistic contemporaries. A photo taken in 1963 at a party at the College of Applied Arts shows him as Gregor Samsa with a tortoise shell on his back, reading Kafka's »Metamorphosis«. Another picture shows a neighing horse's mouth (»This is how we laughed about the system«, around 1964). In 1990 László Végh, by then a doctor and still a musician, wrote his memoirs of this »heroic time«. There he writes: »Our fearless resistance meant at the same time being forever relegated to the periphery«.

Lawrence Weiner's statement on the possibility of not actually realizing a planned artwork gained added impact in the face of the actual difficulties involved in exhibiting an artwork in public even if realized. In 1971 under the title »Az elképzelés« (The Conception) László Beke asked 29 artists to send him detailed descriptions and documentation of their work so that he could compile these in a ring binder to show interested parties. The same year Gyula Pauer also carried out a similar project, in which he collected descriptions of the works of his artist friends on pre-printed museum catalogue cards (»Kartoték«, 1971).

Indeed, the formal and intellectual options provided by Conceptual Art seem particularly well-suited for subtly attacking the ubiquitous bureaucracy. The file cards, protocols and official notifications that serve here as models, designed as they are to regulate both life and art, harbor in their ironic over-affirmation of an aesthetic reserved for the machinery of power entirely different worlds of meaning than do their western counterparts.

Miklós Erdély's work, »Two people who decisively influenced my fate« (1972), shows portraits of the artist's wife and of János Kádár, the longtime head of the Hungarian government. After the rebellion of 1956 was put down, Kádár paved the way for a more moderate political course, rewarding the political docility of the populace during the seventies and eighties with growing personal freedoms. Thus arose a certain degree of cultural information exchange beyond Warsaw Pact borders. Bearing witness to this fact is, for example, Ernö Tolvaly's two-part work, »What do Gilbert and George do when they're not living sculptures?«. The two more or less identical photos show Tolvaly sitting in a café; one has the caption »Action photo, 1976.IV.5«, and the other »Breakfast in Rózsa (no action), 1976.IV.6«.

One of the icons of Hungarian Conceptual Art is »János Major's Jacket« by Miklós Erdélyi, György Jovánovics and János Major. Consisting of a simple suit jacket hanging from a coat hook, the artwork contradicts the classic avant-garde search for something new by dully repeating familiar artistic strategies, such as the readymade. This determined commitment to something »not new« proclaims this very repetition to be an innovation. This concept represents an early contribution to Post-Modernism, but also to the discourse on epigionsim that still influences the perception of Eastern European artistic production today. The 1972 work has been »reconstructed« in Tamás Szentjóby's exhibition using his own jacket, in keeping with the general reliance of the show on a kind of broad overview rather than on original works. Many artworks are presented here in reproduction; a pivotal feature is a projection screen connected to a PC with which visitors can call up some 700 images, films and sound bites.

On a desk lie photocopies of Péter Legéndy's pamphlet, »Vocational Art« (1972). Aiming to elevate the vocation to the »art of the people«, he exclaims: »The vocation: is the legal form of the battle against the apparatus! … a bilateral work, a document of communication with social and state forces!«

The exhibition »Hordozható I2 Múzeum (Portable I2 Museum) – Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Actionism in Hungary of the Sixties (1956-1976)« was presented from 15 July to 23 August 2003 at the Dorottya Galéria in Budapest. A further showing is planned for October at Millenáris Park in Budapest. Thereafter the show will travel to Warsaw and Moscow as part of an exhibition compiled by the University of Bremen entitled »SAMIZDAT. Alternative Culture in Central and Eastern Europe. The 60s to the 80s«.

 

Translated by Jenny Taylor-Gaida

 

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