Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 11. (Budapest, 1991)

STURCZ János: Maróti Géza pályaműve a Rockefeller Centerhez

chaclangelo. The general meanings of the chain motif — human bonds, forming connections, and communication — fit well into Maróti's concept.

57 According to the traditional, abstract meaning it refers to the marriage of heaven and earth, which explains the ambiguity of the figure; desirous of heaven but chained to earth. Rodin expressed the state of realizing this basic question of human existence in many of his sculptures

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; Maróti's model was The Prodigal Son (1889, Rodin Museum, Paris), showing a boy in an identical kneeling posture, with his hands stretched hopelessly towards heaven. THE USE OF SYMBOLS - THE ROLE OF QUOTATIONS As we have already seen, the picture is characterised by the piling up and mounting of motifs from different myths, a kind of excited collage technique. The constant spiritual and figurai pulsation of the collage matches the rhythm of the centre of business life and the rapidity of information flow conveyed by the media. Maróti handles the mythological topics rather freely, exchanging attributes; at the same time he mixes different illustrational styles and uses the formal panels of art symbols in an astonishingly great number, even more than we arc used to in postmodern eclcticism. The symbols are often deprived of their original meaning, and used as a mere decoration. This follows from the fact that he learned the trade in workshops of sculptural decoration

59 at the turn of the century. It was exactly this period and artistic field where iconography was made increasingly banal. As a result, the established models of the Baroque and Classicism became meaningless, their clarity vanished, the attributes were exchanged and the allegories became more confused than ever.

60 These phenomena can be well detected on Maróti's preparatory sketches,

61 which can be used as a perfect record of the process of creation. THE COMPOSITION The composition of the picture is no less jumbled than its iconography, mixing narrative and the symbolic types, using many and various sacral elements and recalling different types of religious illustration as a whole. The mother and son pair involves an inverted Madonna illustration, while the middle part implies an inverted and doubled Annunciation scene, where God is replaced by the messenger putto; moreover, there are two more angels mediating between the messenger and the people. The triple division of the picture reminds us of triptychs while the symmetrical, elongated shapes recalls scenes of The Last Judgement. (This effect is emphasized by the middle figures, „awakening" or rising from the earth, from unconsciousness and by the „blessed" marching groups.) With the application of different illustrational styles, Maróti sharply divides the mythical and the human world; while the symbolic figures are painted in the manner of Late Art Deco, the human beings are presented in a naturalistic way.

62 The motifs absolutely lack any connection, since the decorative border, like the tin frame of windows, separates them. The picture claims the function of a centralized symbolic illustration; however, it lacks real focus. The central motif has no spiritual weight, its function is mainly decoration or genre; it is an idyllic derivative of Arcadia, unable to bind the stronger spiritual value of the other motifs together. Maróti docs not explain what he means by the power and intelligence diffusing from the couple of the woman and the putto, pro-