Balázs Eszter: Art in action. Lajos Kassák's Avant-Garde Journals from A Tett to Dokumentum, 1915-1927 - The avant-garde and its journals 3. (Budapest, 2017)

Merse Pál Szeredi: Kassákism - MA in Vienna (1920-1925)

that read “Art is Dead, Long Live Tatlin's Machine-Art".20 Umansky arrived in Vienna in the winter of 1920, where he worked for the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) led by the Hungarian cartographer Sándor Radó.21 On Kassák’s invitation, Umansky presented an illustrated talk to the “MAists" on the development of the Russian avant-garde until 1919.22

In spring 1921 Béla Uitz, Kassák’s brother-in-law and co-editor of MA, travelled to Moscow to take part in the third congress of the Communist International, with a delegation of the Hungarian Communist Party that had reorganised itself in Vienna. A large-scale exhibition of Russian avant-garde art was organised for the occasion, various manifestos were published, and during the congress, Tatlin's model for the Monument to the Third International was exhibited for the first time. While in Moscow, Uitz collected publications, graphic albums, manifestos and photo reproductions, and sent a portion of these to his colleagues in Vienna over the summer. [Figs. 16-18] It was thus the editorial board of MA who were the first in Europe to have the latest documents of Russian Constructivism in their possession.23 Kassák therefore had the opportunity to make his journal the first European mediator of Russian Constructivism, however, he did not publish these works. He concentrated his attention on Western European art, and MA primarily published works by German and French Dadaist artists. Kassák first published Russian materials only in May 1922, in MA’s anniversary double issue. [Fig. 19] This issue included reproductions not only of Russian artists, but also a representative cross-section of all contemporary constructivist activity: Raoul Hausmann, Oskar Schlemmer, Francis Picabia, Willi Baumeister, El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin and Man Ray. Kassák was therefore not interested exclusively in (Russian) revolutionary art, but rather the revolution in abstract art, and accordingly, tried to accord all international artists equal weight.

AVANT-GARDE CANON -THE BOOK OF NEW ARTISTS

From the May 1922 edition of MA onwards, Kassák began to unambiguously follow the editorial strategies of international constructivist journals. Similar to the methods used by Bemb/Objet/Cegenstand [Object], Kassák paired

20 Richard Huelsenbeck (ed.), Dada Almanach, Erich Reiss Verlag, Berlin, 1920, plate after page 40.

21 Sándor Radó, Dóra jelenti [Dóra reports], Kossuth, Budapest, 2006, 40-52.

22 Béla Uitz, Jegyzetek a MA orosz estélyéhez [Notes to the Russian evening of MA], MA,

6/4., 1921, 52.

23 See MA, 6/8., 1921,116. Cf. Éva Bajkay, Hol a kontextus? [Where is the context?], Artmagazin, 14/3., 2016, 58-64.

119