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

II. HÁROM SZÓLAMBAN A LENGYEL ÉS MAGYAR MŰVÉSZETRŐL, MŰVÉSZETTÖRTÉNETRŐL ÉS TÖRTÉNELEMRŐL - Lidia Klein: Lovagi és keresztény arculat... Lengyel-magyar művészeti kapcsolatok a két világháború közötti időszakban

THE KNIGHTLY AND CHRISTIAN ASPECT... ARTISTIC CONTACTS BETWEEN POLAND AND HUNGARY IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD Dialogue in Black and White {Dialog czarno na białym) was created as a dialogue between Hungarian and Polish art of the period between the wars, a dialogue written from our presentday perspective, therefore one which tries to capture what seems to be the most important from our point of view. But what would happen if we changed the perspective for a moment and tried to look at the art of these two nations through the prism of exhibitions, reviews and articles done between the wars? If we decide to do so, we will see how approaches to one phenomenon can differ and depend on the epoch and the historical and cultural policy. While dealing with Polish-Hungarian artistic contacts, the Polish artistic and cultural press of the interwar period focused particularly willingly on exhibitions of Polish art in Hungary and underlined their success and the interest they aroused. They were usually cross-sectional presentations, mainly composed of works of the "great masters". If modern art was to be exhibited, the chosen paintings, engravings or sculptures usually presented religious or folk themes. The avant-garde was hardly present. Against this background, the Exhibition of Polish Art in Budapest in 1938 differed markedly from the rest, and - despite being also cross-sectional - focused on modern art in a different way than the other exhibitions. What is surprising - and meaningful - is that the reviewers clearly preferred to write about Jan Matejko and the admiration of the Hungarian audience for his Báthory at Pskov exhibited there, than about the contemporary artists.

1 Not only the way in which Polish art was seen in Hungary seems very limited, but also the Hungarian art exhibited in Poland was presented very one-sidedly. Most of these expositions - according to their initiators' declarations - were intended to be complete, full and reliable surveys of Hungarian art and the predominant artistic trends. The Second International Exhibition of Wood Engraving organized by the Institute of Art Propaganda in 1936 in Warsaw can serve as a conspicuous example. We can read in a catalogue accompanying the exhibition that efforts were made to ensure that "the artistic output of any of the countries did not lose a trace of its character", and the jury "strived to consider all trends in the scope of the same engraving technique prevailing on a given territory."

2 What is more, "because of the number of countries, artists and works, The Second International Exhibition of Wood Engraving, just as the first one three years before, surpasses all other analogous events which have been created on the two continents. As no other exhibition, it shows the fullest and therefore the most representative picture of the international wood engraving output."^ The aim of the organizers of the exhibition was to establish the characteristic features of contemporary wood engraving, and it was found that the basic hallmark was the general turn toward traditionalism.

4 If the objective of the creators of the exhibition was - as we read in the catalogue - grasping the characteristic national features, Hungarian art appears rather conservative, dominated thematically by various religious scenes, and formally by folk inspirations. It seems that in the case of Second International Woodcut Exhibition the thesis about the common turn toward folk and religious themes determined the choice of the works. Obviously, Hungarian art of the interwar period cannot be limited to the "traditionalistic" trend, and thus examples chosen by the creators of the exhibition were representative not of Hungarian art as a whole, but of the organizers' theses which they were to prove. James Clifford, one of the most important anthropologists for the modern museology, states that "collections, most notably museums, create the illusion of adequate representation of a world by first cutting objects out of specific contexts (whether cultural, historical, or intersubjective) and making them 'stand for' abstract wholes."

5 These wholes are always the effect of a subjective choice of those who