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An engaging and insightful collection of essays and rarely-seen imagery that traces the development of modernism in Hungarian art, from birth to maturation and through several generations. Written in an accessible way for an international audience and reflecting on socio-political currents.
This wide-ranging collection by Éva Forgács, a leading scholar of Modernism, corrects long-standing misconceptions about Hungarian art while examining the social milieu and work of dozens of important Hungarian artists, including László Moholy-Nagy and Lajos Kassák and looks at several permutations of modernism, from the avant-garde to neo-avant-garde. A fascinating portrait of twentieth-century Budapest emerges from the book, which shows how it became a microcosm of the social and political turmoil raging across twentieth-century Europe. Forgács's text is as much a cultural history as it is a deeply satisfying dive into one country's unique art history.
This wide-ranging collection by Éva Forgács, a leading scholar of Modernism, corrects long-standing misconceptions about Hungarian art while examining the social milieu and work of dozens of important Hungarian artists, including László Moholy-Nagy and Lajos Kassák and looks at several permutations of modernism, from the avant-garde to neo-avant-garde. A fascinating portrait of twentieth-century Budapest emerges from the book, which shows how it became a microcosm of the social and political turmoil raging across twentieth-century Europe. Forgács's text is as much a cultural history as it is a deeply satisfying dive into one country's unique art history.
Price: $32.95
Pages: 304
Publisher: DoppelHouse Press
Imprint: DoppelHouse Press
Publication Date:
31 January 2017
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780997003413
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945), HISTORY / Europe / Austria & Hungary, ART / History / Contemporary (1945-), ART / European
A pioneering intellectual survey of Hungarian art in the long twentieth century. Populated by extraordinary figures such as Béla Balázs, whose dream of a great new Hungarian culture amounted to the founding of a new “religion of art,” this authoritative book repositions cultural giants such as László Moholy-Nagy, Lajos Kassák, and György Lukács within a series of fascinating interpersonal, philosophical and political fields. Forgács also entices readers to engage with a host of less well known artists and forgotten initiatives: the European School; the transcendentalist revivers of Malevich; the exponents of the postmodern ‘new sensibility’ of the 1980s; the post-socialist post-constructivists of the 1990s. She challenges canons and attacks key questions head on, provocatively exploring, among other things, whether or not “democracy grows under pressure.” The culmination of decades of sustained research, this erudite publication is an immensely precious resource and a vital contribution to the further exploration of the rich intertextual fabric of European art as a whole.
– Klara Kemp-Welch, Courtauld Institute of Art
– Klara Kemp-Welch, Courtauld Institute of Art
Dr. Éva Forgács, formerly professor of art history at the Hungarian Academy of Crafts and design, has been teaching at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California since 1994. She has a Ph. D. in Art History from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. A former curator at the Hungarian Museum of Decorative Arts and professor at the László Moholy-Nagy University in Budapest, she has published a number of essays and monographs on various chapters of Modernism in edited volumes, textbooks, and journals. She has also been active as a curator and art critic, and has published several books both in her native Hungary and in English.
Forgács was co-curator (with Nancy Perloff) of “Monuments of the Future: Designs by El Lisssitzky” at the Getty Research Institute, in November 1998, and was consultant at LACMA's Central European Avant-Gardes exhibition in 2002. She serves as book review editor of Centropa, is Advisory Board member of EAM (European Network of Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies), member of the International Academic Committee of the Bauhaus Institute, China Academy of Art, and vice president of the Society of Historians of Russian and East European Art and Architecture.
Forgács was co-curator (with Nancy Perloff) of “Monuments of the Future: Designs by El Lisssitzky” at the Getty Research Institute, in November 1998, and was consultant at LACMA's Central European Avant-Gardes exhibition in 2002. She serves as book review editor of Centropa, is Advisory Board member of EAM (European Network of Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies), member of the International Academic Committee of the Bauhaus Institute, China Academy of Art, and vice president of the Society of Historians of Russian and East European Art and Architecture.
INTRODUCTION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ENLIGHTENMENT VERSUS THE ‘NATIONAL GENIUS’
Attempts at Constructing Modernism and National Identity through Visual Expression in Hungary
THE SAFE HAVEN OF A NEW CLASSICISM
György Lukács, Lajos Fülep, Leo Popper and the Quest for Aesthetics, 1904–1912
CONSTRUCTIVE FAITH IN DECONSTRUCTION
Dada in Hungarian Art
BETWEEN CULTURES
Hungarian Concepts of Constructivism as a Political Act
IN THE VACUUM OF EXILE
The Hungarian Activists in Vienna
EVERYONE IS TALENTED
László Moholy-Nagy’s Synthesis of Reform Pedagogy and Utopian Modernism
A FORGOTTEN GROUP: THE GALLERY TO THE FOUR DIRECTIONS
Theory, politics and the practice of abstract art in Budapest 1945–1948
DOES DEMOCRACY GROW UNDER PRESSURE?
Strategies of the Hungarian Neo-Avant-garde from the Late-1960s through the 1970s
“TODAY IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY”
The “New Sensibility” or “New Subjectivism” in the Hungarian Post-Avant-garde of the 1980s
DECONSTRUCTING CONSTRUCTIVISM IN POST-COMMUNIST HUNGARY
László Rajk and the Na-Ne Gallery
AN EXISTENTIALIST PAINTER: ISTVÁN FARKAS
Redress of an Artist’s Suppressed Legacy
MIKLÓS ERDÉLY, TIME TRAVELER
LONE RADICALS
The Brittle Lines of Béla Kondor and Lajos Vajda
LÁSZLÓ FEHÉR
The Enigma of Being There
A MALEVICH REVIVAL IN HUNGARY DURING AND AFTER THE COLD WAR
István Nádler, Margit Szilvitzky, and the Quest for the Transcendental
“ART HAS BECOME A CHARACTER ISSUE”
Péter Donáth, and the Price of Independence
ARTPOOL
A Radically Open Budapest Archive of Experimental Art
WORKS CITED
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
IMAGE LIST
INDEX
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ENLIGHTENMENT VERSUS THE ‘NATIONAL GENIUS’
Attempts at Constructing Modernism and National Identity through Visual Expression in Hungary
THE SAFE HAVEN OF A NEW CLASSICISM
György Lukács, Lajos Fülep, Leo Popper and the Quest for Aesthetics, 1904–1912
CONSTRUCTIVE FAITH IN DECONSTRUCTION
Dada in Hungarian Art
BETWEEN CULTURES
Hungarian Concepts of Constructivism as a Political Act
IN THE VACUUM OF EXILE
The Hungarian Activists in Vienna
EVERYONE IS TALENTED
László Moholy-Nagy’s Synthesis of Reform Pedagogy and Utopian Modernism
A FORGOTTEN GROUP: THE GALLERY TO THE FOUR DIRECTIONS
Theory, politics and the practice of abstract art in Budapest 1945–1948
DOES DEMOCRACY GROW UNDER PRESSURE?
Strategies of the Hungarian Neo-Avant-garde from the Late-1960s through the 1970s
“TODAY IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY”
The “New Sensibility” or “New Subjectivism” in the Hungarian Post-Avant-garde of the 1980s
DECONSTRUCTING CONSTRUCTIVISM IN POST-COMMUNIST HUNGARY
László Rajk and the Na-Ne Gallery
AN EXISTENTIALIST PAINTER: ISTVÁN FARKAS
Redress of an Artist’s Suppressed Legacy
MIKLÓS ERDÉLY, TIME TRAVELER
LONE RADICALS
The Brittle Lines of Béla Kondor and Lajos Vajda
LÁSZLÓ FEHÉR
The Enigma of Being There
A MALEVICH REVIVAL IN HUNGARY DURING AND AFTER THE COLD WAR
István Nádler, Margit Szilvitzky, and the Quest for the Transcendental
“ART HAS BECOME A CHARACTER ISSUE”
Péter Donáth, and the Price of Independence
ARTPOOL
A Radically Open Budapest Archive of Experimental Art
WORKS CITED
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
IMAGE LIST
INDEX
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY