Bakos Katalin - Manicka Anna szerk.: Párbeszéd fekete-fehérben, Lengyel és magyar grafika 1918–1939 (MNG, Warszawa–Budapest, 2009)

I. PÁRBESZÉD FEKETE-FEHÉRBEN - Bakos Katalin, Anna Manicka: Valami történik közöttünk. Szubjektív előszó a Párbeszéd fekete-fehérben. Lengyel és magyar grafika

KB: Let me mention a single case that made me understand a lot about self-knowledge and the need to understand the Other. In the early 1990s I took part in Ludvik Vaculik's literary night at the Institute of Czech Culture in Budapest. Relentlessly sincere and persistent Vaculík shocked the Hungarian audience by distributing mid-19th-century Czech songs reviling Lajos Kossuth and noted that as long as Hungarians took it amiss, mutual understanding would be out of the question. I must admit I was embarrassed, too, because Kossuth is for me one of the most honorable personalities of Hungarian history. What's more, after the fall of the 1848 revolution he realized the grave nationality problems of the region and fought, almost by himself, for a confederation of peoples living along the Danube. Now I'm sorry I did not overcome being affronted and did not give it a second thought to learn why those songs were written, why our "hero" was seen negatively by another nation. We decided we would pay great attention to each other in the preparations for this exhibition. We would both recommend so me works that are deemed outstanding in our collections but the right of choice would be yielded to the Other. AM: Significantly, the past experience of our mutual contact has been exceptionally positive. There is a deeply rooted conviction of Polish-Hungarian friendship. During the times of "practical socialism", we used to visit Budapest and Lake Balaton (the sea we have access to is rather cold). In his memoirs Jerzy Tchorzewski

10 writes of artists' package tour. On their way to Bulgaria, they had a stop in Budapest. "Based at the Gellért, we kept running along and across the city, a fine and congenial one, but the true magnet was the museum. It was the first time that I could see Goya, Velázquez, Raphael and many other beautiful paintings. Though neither a Louvre nor a Prado, it was a museum with quite a few fine pictures in its holdings."

11 You see Budapest had always been a different, better world even to us who have been regarded as perhaps the most emancipated in the Eastern Bloc... KB: For Hungarian artists, first of all poster designers and university students, Poland was a favourite place of pilgrimage. It was a natural summer program for young Hungarians to hitchhike across Poland. 'Polish poster' was a household word. In the Polish Institute in Budapest it was the most popular commodity beside amber. We went into raptures about the liberty, boldness, openness of Polish art life, the jazz clubs, the small galleries. AM: I remember people trading in all sorts of things, taking crystal articles abroad and bringing what? Sheepskin coats, perhaps? After all, trading is better than fighting. Kapuscinski writes that it is better to be a customer than an enemy though it is not quite predictable who the Other is to us at a given moment and who we are to him/her. KB: To be frank, my mother also obtained a fine and cheap nutria coat through amateur Polish vendors. If I remember correctly, the "Polish market" became widespread all over Europe around the political turn when many could only survive with the help of retail trading based on price differences between countries. Hungarians did not lag behind in barter trade capitalizing on socialist shortage economies, in border-zone trade or the travelling business. Somehow everybody was aware what was cheaper and better, and where. AM: In the philosophy of dialogue much is said about the plane of coming together not only in the literal sense but also that of the "background" of the meeting, a joint background that is. In our case, in the physical sense of the term the museum is the meeting place, and then the show, the retrospective. I hope that our exhibition will serve as the background and that it will turn out that our experience, experiences and desires are similar and so are our sensitivity and engagement. I hope that what Józef Tischner calls "your and my hierarchy", from within which we come towards each other, will be our asset; that the exhibition will bring us close to each other more effectively than any official co-operation agreements, let alone trade ones, may declare.