Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Tanulmányok / Studies - Imre Györgyi: A modell / The Model

the picture plane and the research of the composition's unity based on fluctuation Székely reached the notion of fragments, duration and simultaneous processes. This can be accounted for by the interpretation within the independent system of the picture field of the artist's expression of 'twanging-out' as a stretch of time displayed in its own spatial system.

2

" In his opinion the effect of light and shadow is able to create mutual relations between the elements of depiction, provided with a technical model by photography. 'Shadows form connections [...] They make contact between two objects. [...] Physiologically shadows [...] are soothing, peaceful [...] and mysterious and excite the imagination.'

214 Székely made a monochrome picture similar to a stereo-photograph after one of his Ledas

—in all probability acquired subsequently by the National Museum

—rendering the spatiality of the picture possible.

2

" According to Székely reality boils down through the artistic subject and becomes a component of the work of art. '...it is better [...] if one [...] slightly forgets one's impressions so they lose something of their natural rawness, thus accommodating themselves better to the picture into which more subjective features can make their way...'

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1 He believed that artistic perception appeared in works of art as a kind of psychophysical automatism and thus presumed that the prerequisite for the gracefulness of sketches was a rested model and artist. '...The quick seizing of the model's pleasant expression necessitates the frequent resting of both the model and of our own brain...'

2

" It is therefore the 'habitude' of the artist that reports on direct reality. Menyhért Palágyi uses the word (habitude, temperament) in a Zola-like sentence: 'the subject of painting is the world and its content is a perception of the world which

—filtrated through temperament

—is turned into a colourful vision by the work of the paintbrush.'

2

" Székely led the viewer through his imagination to the subjective perception of the artist. The introducing of Bertalan Székely's concept of the artistic vision of a scientist

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9 can be compared to the theoretical work of the French Félix Ravaisson, a pupil of Schelling, that is, the fundamental idea of his book entitled De l'Habitude (On Habitude). 220 Ravaisson explains that the picture's artificial space is the product of the fine artist's studio work and that within the work 'Fate' ('Willpower', the land of the 'inorganic') and Nature ('the land of the organic') appear intertwined. Art gives objects individuality and character, charging them with love and beauty. Székely refers to Ravaisson in the following manner: In art education 'there are two differences in opinion

—the one that prefers taking trouble over plane samples and one that takes trouble over nature itself. The French philosopher Ravaisson defends the latter which makes imagination rich and inventive through the perception of nature, and, owing to its reaction to industry, qualifies the nation who follows this manner for a ruling role.'

221 Supposedly he also knew of the philosopher's entry on 'Drawing' which Ravaisson published in the French dictionary of pedagogy as the chief inspector of higher education institutes. It is here he associates perception with action and impression with pathos due to their close connections, and formulates the correlation between movement, form, body, beauty and time.

222 Henri Bergson's words on Ravaisson could have been applied to Székely as well: 'He was engaged his whole life with charm [...], i.e. the Love that is created from a gently inclining line, which exposes what Leonardo called "the meandering nature of things'"

223

. When Bertalan Székely regarded the unity of composition as an artificially created body and interpreted its smallest component as an equally distinguished ''conscious' part

—that is, he used the categories of characteristic I conscious I expedient

—he did it with the knowledge of the scientific research of the time relating to live bodies and organisms. Terminology such as 'accidental', 'organic', 'natural' or 'original' contrasted with 'conscious', possessing 'willpower', 'expedient', 'selected' and 'habitual', along with the setting up of the connection between the basic notion of physiological origin and composition which Székely—similarly to Ravaisson

—fitted into the early Vitalism developing in Schelling's environment and

—within the natural sciences of the 1850s and 1860s

—into the vocabulary of disputes on the origins of living nature. One of them was termed the accepted but imprecise name of 'Lamarckism' as the alternative to Darwin's theory, reaching back to a doctrine originating in the 18th century, a time preceding Darwin, and exerted great influence over the thinking of the end of the 19th century. In Hungary representatives of Lamarckism from Munich

—like R. H. Francé—claimed that 'life was created continuously in a spontaneous manner, in an extremely simple but expedient form' and proceeds towards complexity guided not by 'chance', but 'by a force that is constantly directed at complicated arrangement'. The sole notion they employed was Darwin's 'natural development' and they considered Etienne Geoffroy de Sainte-Hilaire as their predecessor.

224 Theories on the origin of life became, in the course of the 19th century, closely interwoven with issues concerning the human condition. Székely's psychological research was accompanied by a social interest as well: he wrote a study on the aristocracy's social responsibility in artistic development, mentioning Bakunyin, though not agreeing with his method, and kept track of the convention of the Social Democratic Party in Hamburg. A significant part of his legacy of manuscripts is made up of notes taken while reading Locke and Spencer. He wrote on George R. Drysdale's book published in 1879 in Berlin: 'Die Grundzüge der Gesellschafts-Wissenschaft... have read it

—a good book that discusses the impact of sexual relations on society and the individual. It believes that pauperism is surmountable if the people limit their own prolificacy.'

22

' 'And he was the greatest feminist!' wrote Róza Feszty Jókai. '[...] He lectured us in his kind Babylonian language on the rights of women and the injustice they have to suffer from nature and the

—in his opinion

—mistaken division of social orders. / He fanatically believed that if women were to somehow liberate themselves from the