While speaking about the relationship and dynamics between contemporary art practice and art theory in an ex-socialist country, we should first confront the question: do the new critical theories themselves exist at all in the targeted country, and if so, in which way are they present - in our case, in Hungary.

The soil for the cross-fertilization between art and theory is a hybrid mixture of the ruins of socialism and a new phenomenon of aggressive market capitalism in its wild, untamed phase.

Despite the foggy climate of collective amnesia which blurs people’s recognition of the remnants of the socialist structure, these are still everywhere. The heritage of socialism haunts us in the form of mental patterns, old guerrilla strategies and elements of rhetoric and arguments, since the psychological process of working through the double trauma (of a repressed existence under socialism and the decline in prestige of the cultural sphere in the early predatory phase of capitalism) is hardly over.

The once all-pervading socialist cultural policy is losing its dominant position. As a consequence, it constantly tries to reactivate itself , attempting to regain control over foreign exhibitions (forcing these to be national representations instead of curatorial initiatives) and key cultural positions (by commissioning directors of state-owned cultural institutions). It can also regulate cash flow accordingly, as financial support for arts and culture still comes mostly from the state. Permanent financial sources for specialized subfields within the generalized category of culture become more restricted, while a parallel tendency is present: the centralization of the distribution of money. In the restructuring of the cultural power system, professionals find themselves left out of the decision-making process.

At the same time, raw, profit-oriented capitalism is in full swing. Following the boom of the classical, mainly Hungarian art market, at the turn of the new millennium contemporary art began to attract the nouveau riches and art collecting became hip. In the 1960s in the United States, the same process went hand in hand with the recognition of the fact that both the new business world and the new artists walked the same path by favouring the innovative over the traditional approach. This involves taking high risks, but also brings the potential high profit that is the main characteristic of pioneerism. The nouveau riches in Hungary, however, educated in the totalitarian system of socialism, do not look upon contemporary artists as equals, but as losers in the economic race of the transition. Here, such a discrepancy arose that the frontline of Hungarian entrepreneurs, innovative and risk-taking, chose to rely on conservative art in order to gain profit and reputation, therefore turning their backs on the new generation of artists, considering them financially inefficient. Immediate financial success was considered the main component of the value system at the time of transition. So, in this vertical and hierarchical structure of the growing art market, radical, emerging artists were qualified as just »service providers«. This new position of artists was brilliantly exposed by the exhibition »Service« in the Kunsthalle Budapest in 2001, curated by Judit Angel.

The biggest privately-owned cultural institution, KogArt, literally expressed the desire of new Hungarian entrepreneurs in its slogan: [art] »for us, about us«, in which the subject is the financially well-to-do new businessman and entrepreneur. The message of the slogan is that only easily understandable and digestible, conservative art could get into the new posh palace of art. The discreet charm of the situation is that KogArt foundation has placed its headquarters on a site which in the seventies hosted the most radical, underground art: the infamous Club of Young Artists. This transfer itself symbolically embodies a hidden message: namely, that a type of art designed to comfort and please an audience that is wealthy but has no artistic knowledge has taken the place of avant-garde, oppositional and critical art.

At a time when the system of art institutions is being restructured, these ambitious private institutions exert pressure on the scene by promising money and possible exhibitions. This pushes the scene towards conservative media, principally painting, the evergreen darling of the art market. Accordingly, one can detect a blossoming of this genre in current-day Hungary. Even college students find themselves invited to exhibit in classy art galleries. The rush is made obvious by the smell of fresh paint in these small »retailer galleries«.

This new kind of art patronage is irritated not only by radical and critical art, but also by the theory that supports it. Theory is something that is not immediately accessible commercially, and could show that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. Consequently theory in any form is to be avoided. Thus, art that is complex, immaterial or conceptual and elaborated in new media, therefore presuming a certain knowledge in the field, is not within the scope of these new collectors and art patrons, let alone works heavily based on theory.

Alongside the upcoming private institutions that are stirring up the art trade, promotional magazines have been launched, with self-promoting articles by curators and gallery owners, instead of independent critics, using sensationalist vocabulary. Meanwhile a new type of critic has been born, one, who can write flattering articles by the dozen on order, replacing the earlier type typical of the socialist era, the political commissar who policed and controlled the art scene.

These two seemingly opposite attitudes – the socialist heritage and the predatory capitalist mentality – not only coexist in Hungary, but are completely interwoven. For example, openly profit-oriented venues with the ambition of self-representation apply for governmental financial support, and have a good chance of receiving it, thus blocking support for small, alternative institutions ;or they can even get financial support from outside of the application system, outside the competition. It may seem surprising that even the former official critic of the once ruling Socialist Party offered legitimation for such an institution in one of the leading newspapers, as happened in the case of KogArt.

The exhibitions in these institutions are able to round up the prices and introduce newer and newer, still cheap potential investments, mostly in the field of traditional, conservative genres of art. Such an institution can afford to skip the activities of small galleries, such as showing emerging artists, and critical forums, such as specialized magazines with high standards of professional criticism; they prefer mass media instead for self promotion. Thus, the whole range of art professionals and the entire mediating system are left out of the game.

On the other hand, the professional elite retains an aristocratic attitude, keeping its distance from money, promotion, mass media, market competition and even from the competition of new critical theories. Because of this position, the good old formalist-modernist paradigm receives a further patina, is given a shield against the flood of deconstructing theories. Theories like feminism, psychoanalysis, institutional criticism and so on pose a threat to the normative modernist canon, which attained a special local colour under socialism, a kind of unquestionable moral value as being associated with oppositional culture. At the time of transition, this dominant theory managed to gain the protection of local culture, since pro-modernist rhetoric claimed to provide protection against globalization and alien new theories, conveniently forgetting that even modernism was not a local product and that it promoted universalism as opposed to local culture. So there is a twofold fear of new critical theories: fear of the agents of globalism on the one hand, and on the other, fear of a force with the ability to ruin the moral power of ex-oppositional culture gained in the time of socialism and effectively used in post-socialism.

As a result of the double shield, modernism is still the dominant art theory in the education of artists and art historians, in book and magazine publishing, and in the exhibition policies of major art institutions. One can not find a comprehensive reader of critical art theories translated into Hungarian, only some haphazard publications in quite different printed forums. Due to the lack of funds in the cultural field, such publications are not made available (not even in English) in libraries, or on electronic databases.

As a result of the lack of systematic knowledge of the basic tenets and arguments of the critical theories, referential discursivity is completely missing from the debates in the local scene. Instead, there is only a mixture of floating chunks of phrases and terminologies applied as a face-lift to the sagging face of outdated modernism. In its attempt to incorporate the gender-based approach into modernist theory, the local »reform-modernism« killed two birds with one stone: it managed to keep the ailing modernist theory alive and, at the same time, evaded feminism’s critical attack by seemingly embracing its tenets, ignoring the fact that these ideas were born of the criticism of that very modernism. This method reminds us of something that was successfully used by socialism: appropriating and therefore eliminating the threatening theories. An example of this tactic was when feminist criticism was incorporated into official state politics as »woman’s politics«.

Belting’s comments are valid for Hungary as well : »Some experts on modern art take a stand against anything that no longer conforms to their own artistic experience, thus raising the question whether they are still truly engaged with art itself or whether they are merely defending themselves against the flux of events.« The most frequent argument against art and interpretation from the perspective of woman or gender criticism is that it is an alien method and theory, developed in an Anglo-Saxon context, which consequently does not apply to us at all. The other accusation is to associate the work or theory with socialist realism, which equals a »knock-out« in our context. With the same logic, critical art works reflecting on the present reality or socially engaged projects could easily be labelled as being left-wing political propaganda, which once again has a very bad connotation in the region as being associated with the official socialist power system. A more sophisticated rejection would use the good old modernist argument that there is no women’s or men’s art, only good or bad art. This position would push any other alternative voice into the marginalized subculture in the name of generalizing universalism.

The striking appearances of women artists in the nineties did not lead to as harsh an opposition on the part of fellow male artists as in the Czech art scene . However, veiled irritation could be detected in some slightly but obviously sexist works that popped up as a reaction to the increase of gender-based works.

Psychoanalysis evokes the strongest rejection by traditional art practice and theory.
One component of this is the intolerance of modernism: »... modernist critics place an absolute priority upon what they view as the empirical test of quality – which they believe to be disinterested – they also tend to distrust those approaches to art which prepare the way for reaction and response by setting the work of art within some social and historical context.« The other component in this rejection is the strong tradition of rationality as a remnant of socialist ideology and knowledge production. To the political power system, any kind of irrational idea seemed suspicious and dangerous as something uncontrollable. From the perspective of the individual, the only field left outside of the paternalizing socialist system was the private sphere and the psyche. This division between the official and the private self had a strong impact on the art field, which still has a problem recognizing works dealing with identity problems and personal narratives.

When Katalin Tímár criticized the works of celebrated Hungarian photographer Péter Korniss on the basis of post-colonial theory, it stirred up a scandal , while oil paintings of the inhabitants of refugee camps or portraits of Roma qualified as socially sensitive artworks and were praised by the critics. In the meantime, issue-oriented and conceptual projects on socially and politically disturbing problems are still marginalized.

A symptomatic anomaly of the transition is that an artwork which is easily accessible from the perspective of feminist or postcolonial discourse or interpretable as a reflection on local body- or identity-politics is explained in the artist’s statement using verbal tools inherited from the genderless conception of art, or is defined as an autonomous, purely aesthetic object. So the controversial phenomenon of the hybrid local context is that an artist who is connected via his or her product to the current, relevant trends in global art offers a self-interpretation that does not fit this discourse, and instead uses the language of the local art scene, which is dominated by modernist discourse. This controversy is reinforced by the local art scene, which does not push artists to be up-to-date theoretically or to properly articulate their activity.

At the same time a very interesting phenomenon is growing out of the dynamics of art practice and theory in Hungary. These are the »theoretical works« (a term coined by Mieke Bal) which function as a vehicle for the artist to deconstruct outdated notions that are still valid in the local theoretical context, or make it possible to launch new discourses or concerns that are missing from local theory construction. However, these works are not fuelled by a decisive intention to make a verbal statement, but instead come to life as the artist’s visual response to the exclusion of the new critical theory by the local art scene. Emese Benczúr’s whole oeuvre is about questioning and eliminating fossilized theoretical obstacles . She very cleverly and playfully undermines all the basic notions of the male-artist-centred heroic art practice of local modernism. Tibor Gyenis is one of the young artists who deconstruct the heroic (male) ego, agent of the modernist discourse. Endre Koronczi’s project »Clapper Beauty Contest« (a beauty contest involving agricultural machines) eliminates the gap between high and low and between professional and outsider art, and, furthermore, between the creator and the audience, thus presenting the basic concerns of post-modern theories. In their cooperative project, the two latter artists incorporated their private life into their work.

The memory discourse is almost completely missing, due to the collective amnesia which is eager to forget the (socialist) past, considering it as some sort of shameful, false step. This amnesia is fuelled by the euphoria of being accepted into the EU, and by the belief that the imbalanced power system between the eastern and western part of Europe may very well disappear overnight. However, certain works in the art practice warn us about the need for the painful process of working through the past in order to be able to handle it. Ilona Lovas and Mariann Imre deal with the burden of personal past and family history , while the Hungarian artist duo Little Warsaw explore the socialist past and its art-making practice.

These consciousness-raising theoretical works take over the role of theory itself, at a time when most of the theoreticians and art critics put their heads in the sand, as if an artist or a theorist could live in quarantine in the globalized world. It seems that one of the components of the post-socialist condition is this temporary role change between artists and theorists, which is able to fill the void of missing critical theories as a compensation for the shortcomings of the highly hybrid period of transition.

Many thanks go to Bálint Diószegi for his assistance with the English version of the text.

 

 

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