Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 20. (Budapest, 2001)
Katalin GELLÉR: Walter Crane and the Art Nouveau as a Hungarian Style
With his carefully wrought, meticulously finished works incorporating the tradition of centuries, he lent weight - as well as symbolical or more often allegorical contents - to his designs. The ornaments he used preserved several elements of one-time symbolism and at the same time revived them in the spirit of the typical metamorphosis of Art Nouveau. In his watercolour The Symbols of Spring (1894) the female figures are like flowers, their hats have the shape of flowers, they hold flowers in their hands. The figures of children in his tale illustrations also include flower children (Flora's Feast, 1889) copied widely. In Germany, Ernst Kreidorf, in Hungary Gizella Greguss-Myrkovszky made graphic works closely imitating the English master. Whether the realm of children's stories or that of myths were evoked, the artist tried to conjure up the ideal world of beauty, banishing cruelty or elements that were injurious to Victorian tastes. One of the best examples is the illustration of the story Beauty and the Beast (1874), which turns the tale formulating mythic anxieties into a gentle bedside story. 5 The Hungarians' admiration for Crane was probably enhanced by his writing about Hungarian design inspired by the curator of the exhibition, Rozsnyay, in which Crane stressed as a typical feature the wealth of floral ornaments and expressed his fascination by Hungarian embroidery and folk art. This was like legitimation for the tendencies strengthening from the end of the century to search for a Hungarian national style on the basis of the ornamentation of folk art. He also touched on the motifs proving the Hungarians' eastern origin (comparing the Hungarian works with Persian and Indian embroideries). 6 He went so far as to travel to Transylvania in addition to the Hungarian folk objects he had seen in London, and it was actually he who brought the folk art of Kalotaszeg into vogue. 7 It is usually the Gödöllő artist who come to mind when Hungarians closest to the Pre-Raphaelite ideas and to an exemplary use of folk art are thought of. Walter Crane opined that through beauty, humanity can be ennobled and the bettering of society was possible. 8 As early followers of Ruskin's and Morris's theories, the Gödöllő artists welcomed Crane's familiar views, though there is no indication that they met him in person. Also associating the concepts of beauty and good, the Gödöllő artists believed in the improving, even redeeming role of art. These ideas were advocated, apart from the artists of the Gödöllő colony, by the most prominent figure of the period's socialist movement, Ervin Szabó. In his article in the October 20 issue of Népszava written apropos the exhibition, Ervin Szabó discussed the educative and socially ameliorating function of the beautiful environment, speaking of the works for children. The moral theory of art represented by Walter Crane after Ruskin also implied commitment to the socialist movement. His works for May Day combining the unity of the working class with the ancient cult of spring had their loud repercussions in Hungary, too. Sándor Nagy 's works echoed ideas that resembled Walter Crane's socialism: this is proven by his works in Népszava Calendar edited by Ervin Szabó, by his illustrations to the poems of Sándor Csizmadia and the drawn cover of the Songbook for workers published by Népszava. As a convinced pacifist Sándor Nagy rejected violence, the Marxian idea of revolution. His caricature entitled in Mr Marx's garden, expressing the detrimental impact of Marxism upon children, can be understood on the basis of the ideas explicated in Ervin Szabó 's article. 9 Though the endeavour of the Gödöllő artists to revive the realm of legends, tales and myths rooted mainly in the work of Hungarian history painters, first of all Bertalan Székely, the example of the Pre-Raphaelites also confirmed them in this course. The flair for the atmosphere of tales, the mixing of traditional and new decorative elements, the constant presence of escapism bind the two groups of artists. Aladár Körösfői Kriesch {Prince Argirus and Tündér Ilona, 1910) and István Zichy {Tündér Ilona, 1909) echoed the composition of Walter Crane's title-page of The Sleeping Beauty ( 1876) in their more geometrically constructed respective tap-
