Angi János – Lakner Lajos (szerk.): A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 2017 (Debrecen, 2017)

Történettudomány, művelődéstörténet - Szabó Anna Viola: „A magyar művészet eleven ereje”. Egy építész, egy festő és egy fényképész találkozása a XIX. század végi Debrecenben

„A MAGYAR MŰVÉSZET ELEVEN EREJE"

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rébb lépett. Mirkovszky talán a később Kós Károly, Medgyaszay István által művelt, a nép építészetéből kiinduló stílusirány felé tapogatózott, de törekvéseit maga sem látta tisztán, hiszen azt sem döntötte el, hogy építész, festőművész vagy alkalmazott művész lenne-e inkább, mely terület lenne az ő saját közege. Chylinski számára pedig a néprajz tárgya, a népi kultúra nem volt sem saját, sem megismerendő világ, s nem volt felhasználandó forrás sem, pusztán anyagi értelemben. Aző nemzeti kultúrája az ősi nemesi nemzetben, von haus aus rejlett, az volt a sajátja, amely ekkor mára kacagányos-múltbanéző historizálásban, egy kitalált s megmerevített hagyományban találta meg közegét. Miután hármójuk közül ő élt a legtovább, még láthatta a művészetben „diadalmasan győzedelmeskedő nemzeti irány" jegyében születő, kiüresedett rekvizitumokból és magatartásmintákból összerótt műveket, az ezeket megrendelő, kitermelő és fogyasztó társadalmat-ám számára nehéz lehetett észrevenni a különbséget a századvég törekvései és jelenkorának eredményei között, hiszen ő maga mindkettőn kívül maradt.

A század végének ma is föltehető kérdéseire különböző okok és meghatározottságok miatt bár, de mindhárom alkotó csak pillanatnyi, csak a kortársak, de még inkább csak saját maga számára használható választ adhatott, a magyar művészet számára ma is érvényeset azonban egyiküknek sem sikerült mondania.

Anna Viola Szabó "The vigour and power of Hungarian art".

The coming together of an architect, a painter and a photographer in Debrecen in the late 19th century

The study presents the careers of three Hungarian artists from the late 19th century, including the period of time they spent in Debrecen, which served as a starting point for their temporarily intertwined destinies. The story of architect Kálmán Gerster (1850-1927), painter Géza Mirkowsky (1855- 1899) and photographer György Chylinski (1861-1936) relates the highly dissimilar paths taken by these three artists, whose art and profession held the promise of granting them a decent living and autonomy, while showing the turns taken by their careers partly defined by fate and partly by their own choices. The development of their careers and their meeting were engendered by the fundamental change in the attitudes to art at the time: a new definition of the place of the artist in society emerged, while a great debate was going on at the time of the millennium in regard to the nature and creation of a national art.

The national voice rose to prominence in literature in the mid- 19th century and national characteristics were manifest thanks to the rediscovery of folk poetry. Then, in the decades before the turn of the century, the desire to capture these emerged in the other branches of art but especially in painting and architecture, and intensified as the country was approaching the millennium. In architecture, the representatives of national historicism shared the ambitions later expressed by Ödön

Lechner or the artists of Gödöllő, with the only difference being their stance and motivation. The adherents of historical styles discovered the roots of national art in the finds from the period of the Conquest and sought to enliven, or so to say modernise, historicising buildings with ancient motifs. Others wanted to replace plasterwork decorations with folk ornamentation without changing the structure of the buildings or their historical features. In contrast, the opponents of historicism rejected all this in the spirit of modernism and discovered folk motifs in their search for new means of expression and a new style for the new age. By drawing not on folk art motifs but on the way of life and worldview that they saw manifest in the pure simplicity of the people, the artists of the Secession at the turn of the century sought to achieve the same ancient, original art to recreate it from within and filter it through themselves.

Gerster - who came from a family of architects and artists and was at home using historical styles - regarded the spirit, adornments and the structure of folk art as unfit to be used in his historicising architecture, so when the Hungarian Secession inspired by folk ornamentation began to gain ever more ground in the competitions, he did not try to compete but rather retreated. Most of his buildings constructed between 1870 and 1910 are still standing, attesting to the characteristic image of rural Hungary that was becoming urbanised after the Compromise. Mirkovszky, who originated from a peasant-cum-middle class village background, sought his own voice in the style that originated from folk architecture - and later adopted by Károly Kós and István Medgyaszay - yet his aspirations were rather mixed as he could not decide if he wanted to be an architect, a painter or an applied artist, nor could he decide which medium he felt the most at home in. Although he desired to be an architect and a painter, he never built anything and his large murals in Debrecen were destroyed; thus, his name is preserved through his architectural drawings. For the impoverished noble, Chylinski, the subject of folk art, i.e. folk culture, was neither something that he made his own, nor was it a world for him to be explored. He did not even regard it a source of inspiration, seeing only the material benefits it might bestow and used it only to satisfy the expectations of the general public. For him national culture meant the old aristocratic traditions, which he was able to identify with although by then it had become an artificial and stilted tradition.

It could be said that the careers of all the three men were cut short. After his initial successes and productive years, Kálmán Gerster was unable to renew himself because of his unreasonable attitude and consequently was squeezed out relatively early from his career as an architect. Before he had the chance to develop as a painter, Mirkovszky died at an early age, while, Chylinski, unable to make a living from photography, simply gave it up.

Because of various reasons and factors (their origin, family, studies, material opportunities, personal habits and immediate intellectual/ spiritual milieu) the three artists were only able to provide temporary answers to the questions that emerged at the end of the century which remain unanswered now. Their answers might have been appreciated by their contemporaries or themselves, but they did provide a long-term 'solution' for Hungarian art that would be valid today.