Gosztonyi Ferenc - Király Erzsébet - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2002-2004. 24/9 (MNG Budapest, 2005)

NEW ACQUISITIONS - István Nádler: M.M. No. 2 and M.M. No. 3, 2001 (László Százados)

ISTVÁN NÁDLER: M.M. NO. 2 AND M.M. NO. 3, 2001 BY LÁSZLÓ SZÁZADOS István Nádler (1938) belongs the generation of post-war Hungarian artists who, after the intellectual quarantine of the 1950s, while being pushed by official cultural politics to the periphery and driven by the desire to hastily catch up with current trends, executed a 'neo-avant-garde turn' in the art life of the country. Nádler 's openness and his constant demand for self-renewal have enabled him to tackle the hardly easy task of simultaneously treating the Hungarian avant-garde tradition and the various waves of isms 'surging into one another'. Sometimes inspired by contemporary tendencies, sometimes only touching them, his complex but coherent oeuvre took shape autonomously, according to its very own rules. His exhibition at the Műcsarnok (Exhibition Hall) in 2001 presented the synthesis he achieved in his painting and the route he had taken. The pair of pictures the Hungarian National Gallery purchased belongs to the starting, closely related triad of a series of fourteen paintings. The meaning of one of the pictures is clear enough: the clue is the title István Nádler: M.M. No. 2 and M.M. No. 3, 2001. Both oil on canvas, 200x150 cm Inv.: MM. 2002.8-2002.9. Purchase from the artist of an earlier triptych-like series, Meditation with A.K. ( 1999), which refers to Dr. András Kapuváry, the 'conductor', who initiated Nádler into the practice of meditation in the second half of the 1990s. A possible reading of the full title was provided by Lóránd Hegyi: 'Munka és Meditáció' (Work and Meditation). The ring of associations around the two concepts beam with the discipline of monastic vows and rules. They convey a philosophy of life and a mentality that, as a matter of course, lead to relating the points of view of ethics and aesthetics, while also referring to the possibility of a 'connection' between the individual and the transcendent. By involving meditation, painting becomes a practical discipline that sees and treats physical and spiritual reality in union. Objective self-scrutiny, obstinately persistent self-building and self-formation are meant to achieve the state of internal and external harmony. The artist is a medium, and art is a mode of life. Painting is a ritual, the narrative representation of philosophical and psychological