Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Munkácsy a nagyvilágban (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2005/1)

I. TANULMÁNYOK - FEJEZETEK A MUNKÁCSY-RECEPCIÓBÓL - GOSZTONYI Ferenc: A magyar modernizmus Munkácsy-monográfiája. Feleky Géza: Munkácsy (1913)

útján senkinek sem tárulnak fel", azok a művészet belső törvényeivel függnek össze.

75 Munkácsy, ebbéli hiányait érezve, hosszan vívódva — Feleky szerint ebben is Marées rokona'

6 — maga találta ki a céljainak leginkább megfelelő kompozíciós sémákat. Feleky idézte a bizonytalan hitelű anekdotát, miszerint Munkácsy a Louvre-ba is csak tízévenként járt, mert féltette önállóságát a régi mesterektől. Kompozíciós megoldásai, bár „olykor elég primitívek", mégis jók; és Munkácsy addig ismételte őket, amíg újat nem talált: „Ha Munkácsyt oly 71. kép „Munkácsy első festménye" / "Munkácsy's first painting" statáriálisan végezték ki az impresszionista irány befogadott művészetté változásakor és nem támasztották fel azonnal, amint a formák súlya, tömöttsége s határozottsága visszaszerezte jogosultságát a fénylibbcnésekkel, a színszikrázásokkal, a légies könnyűséggel szemben: az a képek novellisztikus tartalmán kívül elsősorban a kevésváltozatúságnak tulajdonítható."

77 A monográfia kétharmada táján Feleky sort kerített — ezzel generációja elurasítóbbjainak, az értetlenkedőknek is válaszolva — a miért éppen Munkácsy? kérdésének megválaszolására. Erre, Lázár Béla mellért, Feleky volt a legalkalmasabb. De az ő kapcsolata a Munkácsykérdéssel teljesen más, mint amilyen Lázáré volt. Feleky Munkácsyval is a jövő művészete érdekében foglalkozott. point of the development of painting. Nevertheless, we must refrain from passing a final verdict on his arr even after we have developed a thorough familiarity with it, right until the time that the process, to which Rousseau is probably linked not merely by coincidence, ultimately bears results."

68 Feleky therefore recognized that Rousseau's strange art was not merely "coincidental" with the general reaction to Impressionism, bur formed an "essential part of the movement", although in order to find out in what way it was actually linked to it one had to wait until the conclusion of the "process". Regardless of the fact that he failed to mention Rousseau in his monograph of 1913, the concept of his book owed much to the Paris exhibition of 1911. This was also the exhibition, where Feleky first encountered African art: "Fifteen years ago, Maillol contrasted the closed masses of Egyptian sculpture with Rodin's art. Now, a great many of the most powerful artists of the new generarion explore the possibilities m the direction of rhe synthesis of North-African wooden sculpture and the grotesque characteristics of small oriental gods made of bronze."

69 The most interesting development from our perspective is that at the end of the article — after the preliminaries outlined above — Feleky urged the Nyolcak to show their work to the Pans audience as soon as possible. In Feleky's opinion, Munkácsy could become a CentralEuropean "primitive" at the middle of the 19'

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' century, because he was an autodidact who developed his art without being affected by any artistic traditions. After 1

913, Feleky repeated his interpretation of Munkácsy's art again m 1

921 (to my knowledge, for the last time). He was the author of the foreword to Munkácsy's memoirs published in 1

921." Perhaps on account of its shorter length, the latter text was more compact than the 1913 study. I shall cite Feleky's thoughts about Munkácsy's taintlessness from tradition, a reasoning tinged with Taine's milieu theory, from the Foreword he wrote in I 921. According to this, in the I 860s Munkácsy emerged from a social milieu, where people associated painting with handicrafts, rather than with art. "The present began to affect Munkácsy relatively late; this is why his relationship to the past could remain so pure, deep, and naïve. Rather than seeing through the perspective of the 19

th century, Munkácsy observed the past with an eye that was almost independent of his own age. Even people with very strong personality could not achieve such independence in a milieu that had a lively art culture. This was the kind of independence that Gauguin sought on the island of Tahiti..."'

1 After Gauguin, it was Marécs's turn to bear out feleky's views: in his opinion, Marées, precisely in recognition of rhe subjectivity of his own perception rooted in the present age, strived for "the eternal and objective laws of art, which arc independent of the changing times and the actual movements." " However, Munkácsy had no need for that, since he was so little soaked in his generation's artistic problems that "he sought [...] the guardianship of the past as an orphan, rarher than by disowning his father: as someone being forcibly separated from the artistic perception implanted in him by his [fathers'] generation."'

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