Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Rippl-Rónai József gyűjteményes kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1998/1)

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - BERNÁTH Mária: Egy közép-európai modell. Hatás és asszimiláció Rippl-Rónai József festői munkásságában

od of his career. Rippl-Rónai himself does not make it easy for us. He handles dates casually in his Memoirs, and the important letters relating to this period were only written in 1905, 1906 and 1907,

35 that is, some fifteen years later. He became acquainted with some future members of the Nabis at the Julien Academy, in which he enrolled soon after coming to Paris. There is no knowing how accurate is his statement that he only attended the Academy for three weeks.

36 It is at any rate probable that he met Vuillard, Bonnard, Ranson and Sérusier there. The Nabis staged their first show in the editorial office of Revue Blanche in 1891,

37 and another thirteen in Galerie Le Bare de Bouteville. It is conspicuous that among all these exhibitions, Rippl-Rónai was only represented by a single canvas - Woman reclining in bed (cat. no. 10.) together with a drawing in the fifth show in 1893. At the same time, in Bings Art Nouveau gallery his pictures were regularly shown with those of the Nabis from 1895 onwards.

38 It is therefore beyond question that it was Siegfried Bing's patronage that brought him closer to the Nabis, disregarding here Bing's support for his lithographic art. The sometimes loose, sometimes close collaboration with the Nabis ended with the show at Durand Ruel's in 1899, where he showed ten pictures. The connection was in fact not very intimate, the possible causes of which will be returned to later on. The characteristics of the Nabis' work can only be plotted along values seemingly quite distant from one another. The primary symbols of Gauguin's synthetisme referred to verbally inexpressible experiences mediated by colours, forms and lines. This background to the work of the Nabis rests on conclusions drawn from the tenets of Gauguin.

39 Their pictures show highly decorative, expressive contours, as well as pure colours transferred unmixed from the palette to the canvas to fill out the contours. A preoccupation with decorative effect, and the relegation of the role of the third dimension to the background, are features typical of the entire group, although individual artists naturally deviate from the general principles to a greater or lesser extent. The cult of Puvis de Chavannes characterized all of them, and the assimilation of his ideal-laden art was typical of Denis in particular. "Puvis de Chavannes was a great and wonderful example for us all," Denis wrote.

40 Among contemporary influences, Japanism that permeated all genres of art from Whistler to Gauguin and the Nabis deserves specific mention. The exhibitions of Japanese art

40 in Paris in the second half of the 19th century supplied a reservoir of inspiration, the results of which could be seen in secessionist linearity or asymmetric composition.

41 In the following, I will briefly elucidate the stylistic elements which Rippl-Rónai borrowed from the movement of French art launched by Gauguin. The most profound spiritual and visual support undeniably came from these artists, together with a stance different from the one he had adopted in the Munkácsy period. His My Grandmother (cat. no. 26.), shown at the Salon of the Champ de Mars in 1894, brought him the appreciation of the circle of the Revue Blanche and personally of Gauguin, in addition to acquaintance with the Nabis.

42 (Plate 8) Cinder the influence of the Nabis - and, it must be stressed, not of Gauguin - Rippl-Rónai assimilated three visual building blocks for his art, namely: contouring; larger, unbroken units of surface inside the contours; and a shift towards two-dimensional representation. All these factors naturally originated with Gauguin, but for Rippl only the variations adopted by the Nabis seemed acceptable. It is a conspicuous idiosyncrasy of Rippl-Rónai's art that no matter which artist or movement is mentioned as a source enriching his style, only formal or visual phenomena can be regarded as having direct influence. The desire to suggest more than mere representation can provide runs through the œuvres of all the artists and groups that have been mentioned. All reached out for different stylistic means to reveal some content. The elongated picture format, that seems to sever all ties with the earth, the affected Pre-Raphaelite female faces, pour out a torrent of symbolic content, similarly to that in the work of Whistler; for Whistler's nocturnes and Capriccios manage to combine music and colours into a single current. Carrière's visions swimming in smog test the abstract meaning of Motherhood with their ever renewed monotony. Meanwhile Gauguin, in the period of his art that affected the Nabis, was able to eliminate the detrimental belletristic flavour haunting the painting of symbolism by creating self-contained symbols from lines and patches in the language of visual forms alone. The symbolism of the Nabis was again saturated with literary references and mysticism harking back to PreRaphaelitism: the content is conveyed by the contours, the pictorial units created from unblended colours, flatness - the secessionist appearance. Or one could call to mind Klimt's early female portraits, also confined to elongated picture formats. The essential difference is that Rippl's female models are shown in profile, underscoring the decorative message, a sophisticated ideal of beauty of a picture having also the effect of a silhouette. With Klimt, the faces turn towards us, allowing psychological interpretation, intimation, and emotional allusion, and revealing the symbolic content. Rippl-Rónai's female figures are beautiful and exquisite, without aiming to elicit associations with sensuality (Klimt), Sin (Stuck), Jealousy (Munch) or mystic rapture (Denis). Rippl-Rónai seems to have been left untouched by all this. To my mind, the point is that Rippl was captivated solely by visual phenomena. In actual fact, he was never preoccupied with the essence of symbolic expression, and theoretical problems rarely tormented him. "I have never held theories in high esteem," he wrote,

44 and he accused Besnard of being "too intelligent".

45 He made use only of the formal and aesthetic conclusions of symbolism; thinking in another dimension was alien to him. Doctrines of philosophical or literary roots, neocatholicism and mysticism, the themes and implications of which saturated the young members of the Nabis - otherwise called "des peintres intelligents" had no appeal for him. I think this was the reason why, as I noted earlier, no closer artistic association evolved between him and the Nabis. What Rippl-Rónai wished to suggest was at most an aesthetic truth. He assimilated only the formal innovations from which he could