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

environment (plate 13). In his early work The Sick Girl (1885-86), Munch tried to achieve a homogeneous effect by scratching the entire surface with a palette knife. Bearing in mind the style of Rippl-Rónai's interiors, and taking into account what has been said above, one must conclude that the homogeneity of these pictures is largely due to the fact that in Paris Rippl had not been educated by Impressionism. For him, Impressionism was no longer a pre-destined imperative, but a domain the constituents of which could be used to enrich his vision and enlarge his artistic freedom. It is demonstrable that valeur was more important for him than the values of plein air. His forms became more compact and he now consciously used a well-constructed system of patches, producing a simplified but carefully thoughtout art.

73 The pictures imply an element of decorativeness, some of them shifting the post-Impressionist pictorial principles in the direction of synthesization. His "Transdanubian colourfulness"

74 is no longer the mirror of a reflex: although these were not yet pure colours, as they were to be after 1907, they were nonetheless important elements in a carefully maintained equilibrium. This stylistic formula, unique in Hungary, was transplanted by Rippl-Rónai into a type of painting greeting visitors from the walls of the Palace of Exhibitions: namely, the genre interior. Nothing could be more familiar, customary and especially more unambiguous than the pictures of homes (plates 14., 15). It was a pronounced trend in the painting of Historicism at the end of the 19th century, and one of doubtful value, although its roots were still firmly in the academies. The variant of genre painting that had spread in Hungary was tied to the Munich academies, its most characteristic protagonists being their graduates. Their realism was widely misunderstood, since they only practised the realism of the style. An episode recorded about Courbet may serve to throw this statement into sharper relief. Having viewed a show of German landscapes, Courbet exclaimed: "Were these people not born anywhere?"

75 This remark sheds light on the real essence of realism, on the importance of the subject also undergoing transsubstantiation in emotional terms. And all this despite the fact that genre painting had profoundly realistic traditions - mainly traceable to 17th century Dutch genre pictures

76 - and, to do it justice, had made use of this as a reliable guide up until the last third of the 19th century:

77 it suffices to recall a range of Hungarian painting from Miklós Barabás to Károly Lötz to Munkácsy. There were respectable exceptions later, too - one thinks of István Réti, who managed to avoid artistically weak solutions in his interiors (plate 16). From the 1870s or '80s, however, the genre picture ceased to be a simple representation of a situation, and was no longer able to homogenize sentimentality. It laid claim to a greater role, one that went beyond art: its practitioners became obsessed with the over-exploitation of the content, its over-explanation and indeed exaggeration. To Rippl-Rónai's credit is the bravura of his instinctive assimilation. His interiors seem to be narrating stories, yet there are no stories. The stories have no beginning nor ending, and cannot be continued as if they were Hungarian genre scenes. There is no script. He paints pictures, not stories. What there is is a panorama of existence, with its lonely figures, its meditative ambience, its aloofness. The pictures are simply the representation of states. The rendered situation is not meant to provoke thoughts, to mobilize our imagination, but merely to generate an impression of mood. "Intensified, impression switches over to maturity and permanence, and assumes a religious character."

78 Rippl's interiors seem to have sentimentality hidden in them, yet they remain entirely free from sentimentality itself. It is rather the sentimentalism that is suggested by the idea of eternity. Sometimes the feeling is melancholic, but there is no tragedy; it is mildly psychologizing but avoids becoming too profound; it speaks plainly and in a straightforward way. This slight sentimentality also implies an aesthetic quality. In Rippl's pictures there is nothing from the obligatory accompanying feature of Hungarian genres: namely suavity.

79 It is worth deliberating the daring self-restraint Rippl-Rónai exercised here. He handled his figures with love, keeping control over his emotions with prudent restraint: there is no cheap aftertaste or gesture. He simply "made everyday life more beautiful, and thus fulfilled his mission," to adapt Biatostocki's words about the Biedermeier to our theme.

80 To sum up what has been said about Rippl-Rónai's period of interiors, his capacity to assimilate should again be ascribed to his domestication of the postImpressionist synthesis in the Hungarian soil, the reformation of the Hungarian genre picture on the basis of West European experiences, that is, to a sort of bridging role between cultures. The "matchless worth" of RipplRónai's art "lies in the fact that when Hungarian art was so beset with difficulties in putting out feelers in the most diverse directions, ... he was the first to strike an alliance between the profound, inborn characteristics of his nation and the artistic freedom of which Paris had been the supreme example for a hundred years."

81 Apart from the Nagybánya line, it was Rippl-Rónai's programme, consciously or unconsciously formulated, in his interiors, that modernized Hungarian 20th century painting. As previously mentioned, it was Rippl-Rónai, with his awkward disposition for putting his thoughts on paper, who showed up the slogan of "national art" on more than one occasion. It is probably not too much to say that his stylistic attempts at his time were dictated by the synthesizing will of a conscious Hungarian artist but one who was committed to "Europe". "MAIZE-STYLE" PICTURES "Colours shall not be put one on top of the other" Rippl's fourth show in Budapest, in the Könyves Kálmán Salon in 1906, all of a sudden made him famous and rich. He regularised his private life by marrying his companion since the early Paris years, Lazarine Baudrion, and hired a studio in Budapest, in the house of ateliers in Kelenhegyi street. Soon he had