Gellér Katalin - G. Merva Mária - Őriné Nagy Cecília (szerk.): A gödöllői művésztelep 1901-1920 - The artist's colony of Gödöllő (Gödöllő, 2003)
GELLÉR, KATALIN: INNOVATION AND TRADITION
instruction centred on classical fresco and panel painting and the use of egg tempera. Their preference for ancient and folk techniques was no mere historicism; they also expected to revive the spirit these materials implied. In sum, it can be contended that acquaintance with the teachings of Ruskin, Nietzsche and Jenő Schmitt, the life philosophies of symbolism and secessionism paved the way for the Gödöllő artists' breakthrough, for their liberation from the restrictions, their revolt, which, however, they artificially slowed down - partly with reference to the English founders and their later-day followers - returning again and again to the tradition of romantic historicism which provided them with a background, and continuity. A NEED TO CREATE MYTHS Of paramount importance were the mythological, especially Hungarian mythological themes. They were impressed by Wagner's and Nietzsche's concept of symbols: "Every race has their great primeval symbols that were born and grew up with it. If it loses them, it will cut its roots," Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch wrote. 7 2 The need for myths, for founding a religion raised into an ethical dimension is a peculiarity retraced to romanticism, with traces of Johann Gottfried Herder's. Friedrich Schlegel's, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's and Novalis' ideas, who conceived of modern myth creation as an artistic-moral programme starting from the self. Their favourite themes partly explaining their style borrowing derived from four main sources: Greco-Roman mythology, the Bible, the Hungarian tradition, and the stock of theme and form of international secessionism. Hungarian tradition meant 19 t h century history and genre painting, as well as folk tales and folk ballads. Though unwittingly, they adopted Arnold Ipolyi's synchretic method, who tried to reconstruct the Hungarian mythology on the basis of classical, medieval and popular sources in his Hungarian mythology (1854). The legend of the miraculous stag known from the chronicles and the popular stag motif of folk art appeared often and in nearly every genre, almost like a leading motif. In his renderings, Sándor Nagy alluded to the story of Heracles capturing the stag of Keryneia, and later to the legend of St Eustace in his work on the conversion of the Hungarians to Christianity (Chasing the miraculous stag Hunor and Magor reach the spring struck by the Holy Ghost, 1928). 7 3 Körösfői-Kriesch was so rapturous over the art of the Székely villages and people as Johan Joachim Winckelmann over Greek classical beauty. He described the costume of Kalotaszeg women in the following way: "there is no costume outside that of Kalotaszeg [...] whose basic principle is to adjust in line and cut to the articulation and lines of the human body. Not even the ancient Greeks would have found this costume barbarous." 7 4 He added that the red boots lent an "oriental nuance" to the outfit. Just as Paul Gauging and Paul Sérusier earlier in Pont Aven in Bretagne, the Gödöllő artists found the survival of pure religiosity and its material relics in regions far removed from the centre, in Kalotaszeg and Mezőkövesd. István Medgyaszay and Rezső Mihály depicted the villagers going to church in graphic works, Aladár KörösfőiKriesch in painting, tapestry and panneau. Sándor Nagy and Rezső Mihály portrayed Bible-reading old women in Mezőkövesd. In the background to Sándor Nagy's tapestry entitled Bible there is a peaceful village. It added to the significance of Kalotaszeg that similarly to contemporary architects Károly Kós and Lajos Kozma, they regarded the region's churches and folk art as preservers of Hungarian prehistory and perished medieval culture. * The artists of the Gödöllő colony claimed that the basis of national art is folk art because "the art that the Hungarians had brought along with them only survives in the peasant form." 7 5 They took as their starting point the example of Ödön Lechner and the motive researches of József Huszka, but they turned away from Lechner's "furcoat-style" (Sándor Nagy) and Ödön Faragó's applique decoration, it is another question what that meant in practice. They did not want to borrow ornaments but to follow the "way of thinking", to adopt the "soul" of the peasantry. 76 That was why they were fond of Kalotaszeg where, in their opinion, life and art had not yet separated. 7 7 They presented samples of the village expeditions and motif collections in Magyar Iparművészet (1903), which they elaborated later in works of a topographic nature (first of all Árpád Juhász, Mariska Undi, István Zichy) on the one hand, and on the other, in stylised form in nearly every genre. 7 8 After Walter Crane's visit in 1900, Kalotaszeg became the etalon, the theatre of the realisation of Morris' ideas, an example comparable to Karelism in Finland. KörösfőiKriesch was the first to incorporate the fortified churches and carved graveposts as leading motifs in several of his works. They became the emblem of young architects consummated in the theory and buildings of Károly Kós, among others. On the panneau adorning the Székely gate designed by Pál Horti for the St. Louis World Exposition in 1904, and later in his tapestry Eagles above the grave of heroes Körösfői-Kriesch used it symbolically as the sign of the nation and its past. Among the architects of the colony, Ede Thoroczkai Wigand's plans (from 1902-03) based on English function-
