Mihály Mária (szerk.): 5. Fal és tértextil biennálé. Folyamatok - Vas Megyei Múzeumok Katalógusai 51. (Szombathely, 1978)
t is very likely that the 5th Textile Biennial will raise serious doubts and debates as forseen by the Preparatory Committee. When having reduced the circle of submitable works and having chosen one single tendency, as the most desirable, out of many possible ones: they established a rather confusing situation, calling into being even more serious problems. By having denomintated the programme of 1978 Szombathely Biennial in key word „Processes”, they actually not only made a simple restriction of choise of subject and techniques but, at the same time, they also restricted the very attitude of the artists in a rather comprehensive way. According to the Call for Competition by „processes" the Committee meant, „ such an approach of textile, by the application of which, processes (serials, sequences, series) can be interpreted in a coherent system. This means that instead of one single work several complex pieces interpreting and relating to one another can be submitted” The Committee aimed at all probability at satisfying the requirement of the total textile profession. According to this demand- the artistic level should be raised, stagnation of individual achievements should be done away with and dinamics of the whole artistic branch should be ensured even thus the responsibility of a drastic technical, or tematic orientation or material-centeredness should be taken at any rate. Considering that no spontaneous break-through has happened ever since the sensational appearence of spatial-textile and the outbursting success of mini-textile the situation was throught to be ripe for giving an exteriour aid in the order to replace missing interiour impulses. For the sake of exactitude, it is to be stressed that serial works have always been made hence with this restriction the Preparatory Committee did not introduce a tendency completely alien from textile art but on the contrary it launched an already existing one but at this time as an exclusive demand. On the one hand textile art is in a privileged situation, itssponsorsand representatives do not let it to sink into the windstill usually following the great conseptional and technical break-through or into the flimsiness of insignificant technical bravours. Now when the majority of the artists have bound himself to a particular technique or material which very often is equivalent to sticking to a particular world of colours, the Committee seemingly wanted to have them confronted with an unusual task, a new challenge. We have good reason to take it for granted: ecaxtly because of the high general level of textile art in course of the last ten years: that this challenge will inspire the majority of artists trying to find new solutions for new tasks or at least widen their intellectual horizon, consequently it will be fruitfull. On the other hand the chosen programme expecting the processes and serials from the artists is in need of wiseness and safety of a theory. The creation of series as artistic works: that is pieces of art composed of elements, related to one another in a manner chosen by the artist: cannot be considered a question of textile art. Serials had always had their peculiar place in fine arts, i.e. they have been called into being by the constructivist tendencies of the twenty's, as a natural of the process of pictorial abstruction when the reduction of pictorial elements reached the point: quoting Mondrian: "it (the new art) wants to express nothing „1 but relations The principle of seriality has first of all greeted by artists whose pictorial thinking was strongly intellectual and pointed towards system and relations and whose pictorial world as well as their system creating activity stood on a rather high level of abstraction. Nevertheless the notion itself is undif ined and as practice shows the overwhelming majority of artists interprets it freely. We cannot work consisting of only one piece yet revealing a process (Richard P. Lohse), or works of art appearing as processes of associations instead of taking up the form of structural variations (Miklós Erdély). The present Call for Competition however defenitely 1. HEKMANNS, Friedrich W. Dr., ,About the Theory of Seriality in the Works of Art" (preface in the catalog of the exabition of,,Serial Works". Székesfehérvár, Csók István képtár, 1976.)
