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

STURCZ János: Maróti Géza pályaműve a Rockefeller Centerhez

52. Museum of Applied Arts, Documentary Department, Krtf: 2830, p.,c, chalk; 114 x 43 cm 53. This is expressed by Marées: Periods of Life (1873-74), The Golden Age (1875-85); Kupka: The Spirit of Lotus (1898); L.von Hoffmann: Bucolic Scene with Bathers (without date); Rodin: Campuchian Dancers - drawings, (1906); Duchamp: Young Man and Woman in Spring (1911); Kolo Moser: Light (1913). The female figures in Hodler's Daylight are emanations of cosmic energies, similar to Maróti's characters, who are the receivers of cosmic radio rays. 54. A. Comini: Dance and the Dream: Hodler's Art Vis-á-Vis the International Scene 1881-1918. Lecture. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1973. 55. This type, popular in Viennese Art Nouveau (and often used by Schiele, Klimt and Moser), also appears in Hodler's Spring (1905). /see also Klinger: The Dream (1897-1903) or Bernatzik: Entrance to Paradise (1905)./ About the overall influence of the two pictures mentioned above, see Hodler und das Schweizer Künstlerplakat. 1890-1920. (an exhibition catalogue), Kunstgewerbemuseum der Stadt Zürich. Zürich, 1983. Hodler's pure monumentalism, which necessarily drew him towards fresco-painting, could easily have inspired Maróti when painting his mural. 57. Traditionally, the chain is a symbol of marriage or kinship; however, it also means social or physical integration. For example, the Gauls were often linked by chains when going into battle to reinforce their feeling of interdependence and power. Besides, chains might represent - as shown by Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Mercurial caduceus - the ambiguity of chaos and evolution. In the picture, this is connected with the Orphean creation. 58. E.g. The Thinker (1880), Eve (1881), Meditation (a side character of the Victor Hugo statue, 1885), The Idea (1886), Puvis de Chavannes (1889) - all exhibited in the Rodin Museum in Paris. 59. After the impoverishment of his noble family, i.e. at his age of 15, he started to work in a workshop of decorative sculptors. By 1905, he had evolved his individual style but he always had to accept trends and styles from different masters (Alpár, Fischer, Quittner etc.). He managed to find his own variable a repeated ornaments of floral motifs, putto and female figures. See János Gerle: Határjárás. M.G. építészet és szobrászat határán (Walking the Frontiers. G.M. on the borders of architecture and sculpting.) In. Magyar Építőművészet. Vol XXIV, 1983/6. pp.50-52. 60. See Lajos Németh: A szobrászati műfajok alakulása (The Change of Genres in Sculpting). In. Magyar művészet (Hungarian Art) 1890-1919, ed. Lajos Németh, In. A magyarországi művészet története (The History of Hungarian Art) 6. Budapest, 1981, Vol.1, pp.88-89. 61. For example, on one of them we can see Beethoven and Bach together in the left-hand corner, while on the other Bach is placed on the facing side and his original figure is replaced by Orpheus. On this last version, most of the figures (e.g. Wisdom, New Religion) lack the inscription or the attribute. The figures of „Voice" and „Farne" are, for instance, absolutely identical; they are differentiated only on the last sketch, with the introduction of the scales. The burning Walhala does not appear here, nor „Care" can be seen behind the group of workers; it is only the „engineer" who is present, with hands stretched towards the sky. This gesture is taken over by „Care" on the last version, which lacks the printing machines, the paper ribbons and the apprentices, as well as the „television" inscription below the city emblems. Therefore, a great number of essential and significan features arc not there. At first, Maróti finished the composition of the groups with variable, general symbolic figures; it was only later that he defined their meaning with inscriptions and symbols. 62. Abstract and natural illustration mingle everywhere in the picture. E.G. the „classes" do not move in real space, however, their stepping motion is still realistic and defined in space. A water surface appears in the middle, separating the marching groups. Since they are surmounted by the portrayal of London and Washington, it seems as if they were standing on the shores of the ocean, the workers in Europe, the scientists in America. 63. I would like to thank Mr. Ernő Marosi for this remark, and as his respectful pupil, I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate him on his birthday. 64. As we have already seen, Maróti used only some elements of the given programme (like sound waves going round the world, the motifs of awakening, and the figure of The Thinker. Yet he did not follow the pattern of the Last Judgement, and, in contrast with Faulkner's Holy Trinity, he replaced the figure of Intelligence with a more complex couple of Past and Present (initiated by the public relation manager), adding a few further details. Like Alexander in his programme, Maróti used topics of religious literature and pictures, yet he enlarged the circle of the myths, changed the original meaning of the Orpheus and Beethoven symbols and directed the program of praising telecommunication towards the apotheosis of art in