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)
subordinated to architecture, such as Cert Caden, Adolf Behne, Werner Graff or Ludwig Hilberseimer.39 [Fig. 32] The “Music and Theatre Special issue”, containing texts in German, French and Italian, was one of the few occasions when MA reacted to one of the significant events in Viennese artistic life. The constructivist artist Friedrich Kielser organized a large-scale exhibition in Vienna in 1924 on experiments in new theatre techniques, on the occasion of which Kassák published this representative special issue of MA. MA IN VIENNESE ARTISTIC SPACE During the First World War, Kassák had run MA in Budapest as a form of alternative “Gesamtkunstwerk” institution: besides publishing the journal, he opened a gallery, ran a free school, organised theatrical and musical performances, thus becoming an unavoidable presence on the progressive literary and fine arts scene during the revolutions with MA's attractive, diverse events. Compared to the complex institutional system that existed in Budapest, Kassák had no similar opportunities open to him in Vienna. He did not find partners in Viennese artistic life, but neither did he try to build Austrian contacts. In 1920, he made his first - and for a long time only - contact in Vienna with the Freie Bewegung [Free Movement] group led by Adolf Loos, in whose city-centre gallery Béla Uitz’s winter 1920 exhibition was held.40 During their exile years in Vienna, Kassák and his activist circle held smaller reading soirées, performing their own poems, manifestos, and works by international representatives of the “new art”. It was then that Jolán Simon became a Dadaist performance artist, and masterfully performed even Tzara’s “Maori” poem consisting of “meaningless" sounds.41 During the Vienna soirées, Kassák came to know young, Zionist Jewish intellectuals around the journal Das Zelt [The Tent] edited by Eugen Hoeflich, many of whom took part in these events as musicians or performance artists. This contact came about thanks to two Austrian artists, Josef Kalmer, nominally MA’s publisher in Austria, and Mirjam Schnabel-Hoeflich who, in Novem39 Adolf Behne, Architektur [Architecture], MA, 8/5-6., 1923, [8.] Werner Gräff, Vergnüglicher Überfluß durch Neue Technik [Amusing abundance of new technology], Ibid., [15-16.] The text was later published in the fourth issue of G in 1926. Ludwig Hilbersheimer, Bewegungskunst [Movement art], Ibid., [14-15.] The text had been published earlier in the Sozalistische Monatshefte in 1921. 40 Ewald Schneider, Die Künstlergruppe "Freie Bewegung”, 1918-1922 [The artists group “Freie Bewegung”, 1918-1922], unpublished manuscript, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, 1999. 41 For more details, see Ferenc Csapiár, Kassákné Simon Jolán, op. cit. 140
