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)
Hubert van den Berg: Lajos Kassák, the Viennese Edition of MA and the “International” of Avant-Garde Journals in the 1920s
dowsor as intellectual pastime in some journal rack in a café or reading room.18 [Fig. 3] Together with the imprint of MA at the bottom of the page, in a way as its foundation, in a way as its summary and bottom line, with the letters “MA" highlighted in red, the ensemble assumes the iconic shape of a square as well. Again, as in Buch neuer Künstler, apart from the names of the journals presented and the respective cities, where they were produced - virtually without text, yet for any reader understandable. The ensemble was a clear- cut programmatic statement, not just for the Hungarian readers, who might have noticed a subtle change of the Hungarian subtitle of the journal, previously “activist journal for art and society”, from now on “international activist art journal”, but also for an international readership, in particular for an avant- garde minded audience. CONGENIAL, COMPETING AND QUARRELLING JOURNALS Kassák’s abstract-stylised journal mosaic was a firstling, both in MA and in the landscape of constructivist “little magazines”. Regular sections of “journals received" were common feature in many journals in those days as were advertisements promoting congenial journals (and generating some takings as well), yet not in MA. As far as MA contained advertisements, they made “propaganda” for the journal itself, events organised by the editors and other publications also produced with MA imprint. References to and contributions stemming from other journals and groups could be found in MA as well, showing in the years 1921-1922 a univocal turn to Constructivism (as well as to Dada as a constructivist subsidiary).9 In this respect, Kassák's advertorial ensemble was a novelty in MA and a firstling of its kind as a chart being neither a section of “journals received” nor a classic advertisement page, but rather a cautiously composed ensemble that presented the allegiances of the journal with other like-minded journals. In the following years, Kassák’s design was imitated and echoed by similar charts in other journals in the constructivist network. Among others, the Ly- onese Manométre,20 the Polish Blok,2 Het Overzicht,22 the Yugoslavian Zenit,23 18 As in an advertisement of the Brno bookstore St. Kocí in Pásmo, 1/5-6., 1924, [12.] 19 Hubert van den Berg, Dada, Een geschiedenis [Dada, A history], Vantilt, Nijmegen, 2016, 103-119., 132-136. 20 From 1923 on, each issue of Manométre contained a chart. Manométre, [3]/5., 1924, [back cover.] 21 Blok, 1/6-7., 1924, [23.] 22 Het Overzicht, 2/22-24., 1925, [back cover.] 23 Zenit, 4/25., 1924, [back cover.] 18
