Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
FROM PARIS TO NAGYBÁNYA - PÉTER MOLNOS: Budapest: The "Paris of the East" in the Hungarian Wilderness
produced in 1912 on the basis of the annually published List of Exquisite Prints, Gyula Benczúr, the uncontested authority of the period, topped the chart with no less than forty-nine reproductions on offer, followed closely by Jenő Knopp, the epitome of Palace-of-Artkitsch, and Sándor Bihari, "the inimitable master of genre paintings," the latter still boasting a very respectable forty-five prints to his credit. As for the modern movements, the Szolnok artists' colony was represented by Adolf Fényes, and the Nagybánya artists' colony by Károly Ferenczy, Béla Iványi Grünwald and Oszkár Glatz; however, the total number of prints produced by modern artists, even counting János Vaszary and József Rippl-Rónai, failed to match Benczúr's absolute record. But the oddest print was based on Kernstok's epochal composition, Riders by the River Bank (1910), the success of which probably derived from the promotional value of in-your-face novelty. No sociological survey could have illustrated the general backwardness of popular artistic taste in Hungary at the beginning of the 20 th century more faithfully than the contemporary print catalogue published by Könyves Kálmán Magyar Műkiadó Társaság (Kálmán Könyves Hungarian Artistic Print Publishers) did. The near hopeless isolation of a small Budapest elite in their endeavour to have modern art accepted in Hungary only becomes evident in the light of the actual facts. Established in 1909, the art society Művészház (House of Artists) mainly organized group exhibitions. Contrary to the original intentions, it was made up by a rather heterogeneous group of artists. 21 In the catalogue of their first exhibition (at least at the level of declaration, which was not reflected in the principles of selection), they described themselves as being wholly committed to modern art, determined to provide an opportunity "for the uncompromising and the intractable, for those who explore uncharted territories, for the young artists, and the 'chercheurs' [seekers]". 22 They had a very energetic leader in the person of Miklós Rózsa, whose support for modern art was clamorous and based on solid, but rather unpolished principles. On the model of the Salon des Indépendants, he organized the first jury-free exhibition in Budapest in the winter of 1910. Then at the end of the same year, again following the French lead, he organized a 'counter salon" for those artists who regularly stayed away from the Palace of Art, either on principle, or for other reasons. The "international Impressionist exhibition", which Művészház held in April 1910, was based on material selected exclusively from Hungarian private collections, featuring four compositions by Picasso, and two each by Van Dongen and Matisse. 23 Interestingly, but also very revealingly, the works exhibited by contemporary Hungarian artists were not as daring as the material by foreign artists. Representing the most modern movements, Iványi Grünwald, Rippl-Rónai and Kernstok had their works shown in the room designated as "Neo-lmpressionists, Synthetics and Decorative Tendencies". The organizers selected a female nude —recently identified as being formerly owned by Marcell Komor—and the portrait of Czóbel (Cat. No. 145) by Kernstok. In addition to the exhibitions held in four different locations during its five-year existence, Művészház regularly organized lectures on art matters; it also launched the society's official magazine, which was entitled Új Művészet (New Art) and published reproductions of rather conservative taste. On top of that, it published a graphical album by the title Modern Magyar Képtár (Modern Hungarian Gallery), featuring the works —mostly lino cuts —of twenty Hungarian artists. 24 Tibor Boromisza: Harvest, 1911 Cat. No. 87. Cafés "The fate and the career of an artist entirely depend on his good luck to be accepted by this or that table in a café." 25 Lipót Herman, the Bohemian art chronicler of the early 20 th century who wrote this line, had a tendency to exaggerate in order to make his point. Nevertheless, there is a grain of truth in the above comment. In Budapest —just as in Paris —the cult of cafés was largely bound up with their close association with artists and art in general. It would take far too long to list all the cafés regularly frequented by artists; the time of their formation and break-up, as well as the seating order, were mainly determined by the common interest and only occasionally by the differences in theoretical or aesthetical positions. "In the evenings, the younger generation usually gathered in the cafés, first at Korona in Váci Street, then at Abbázia and Nicoletti on Octogon Square, and lately at Royal and Kairo. More often than not, these also constituted different positions in the trench warfare of art politics." 26 Károly Lyka also made the point that it was not the styles that took shelter behind the onyx tables and opened fire at each other, but group interests eager to assert themselves. The age of "great fights" and of roads departing naturally led to spectacular secessions here, too. The most famous coffee-house-style secession in the history of Hungarian art began at Café Abbázia and ended, after a short walk, at Café Japán on Andrássy Street. The legendary artists' table that thus became established in this new locality admitted a broad spectrum of styles, from Gyula Kardos, a follower of Meissonier's, to Dezső Czigány.
