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)
Judit Galácz: Avant-Garde Experiments Committed to Paper - the MA “Music and Theatre Special Issue” (1924)
Kassák reacted first to the exhibition in the Viennese journal Komödie [Comedy].9 He strongly criticised the works’ lack of ideological and art theoretical background, and expressed disapproval of the exhibition’s organisation and direction, as well as of the installation of the objects and the editing of the catalogue. The criticism was directed not only at the event and the works on display, but also the organisation of the exhibition and the role of Friedrich Kiesler in selecting the materials on show. Although we do not know whether they met in person, they certainly knew each other’s work, and since they had similar ideas in many ways on the renewal of theatre, Kassák could have viewed Kiesler as a rival. The relationship between them, therefore, was one of tension.10 11 The exhibition provided Kassák with a good opportunity to present his own ideas on avant-garde theatre to a wider audience. THE MA “MUSIC AND THEATRE SPECIAL ISSUE” The MA “Music and Theatre Special issue” may be regarded as Kassák's own canon in terms of who and what he found important among contemporary theatre artists and theories. The special issue was introduced by Kassák’s theoretical essay Über neue Theaterkunst [On New Theatre Art]. This text includes motives already found earlier in MA's theatrical programme, namely that “theatrical art cannot be placed under the reign of one single factor. Artistic creation is synthetic form-creation", the elements of which all play an important role in the end result.12 Theatre differs from other art forms in that acting is a form created simultaneously in space and time. As Kassák puts it: “the stage is no more and no less than a constructive game (life-movement) united from a single point”.13 A new type of director was needed for this new formation, whom he called the “organiser". Kassák believed that two paths led to the creation of theatre according to the new rules. First, the western European 9 Ludwig Kassák, Die Wiener Internationale Theatertechnische Ausstellung [The International exhibition of new theatre techniques in Vienna], Komödie, 5/39-40., 1924,3-4. 10 See Barbara Lesák, Die Kulisse explodiert, Friedrich Kieslers Theaterexperimente und Architekturprojekte, 1923-1925 [The scenery explodes, Friedrich Kiesler’s theatre experiments and architectural projects, 1923-1925], Locker, Vienna, 1988,159. 11 Ludwig Kassák, Über neue Theaterkunst [On new theatre art], MA, "Music and Theatre Special issue", 9/8-9., 1924, [2.] The text was translated from Hungarian into German by Endre Gáspár. The Hungarian version of the text was published in Lajos Kassák, Tisztaság könyve [Book of purity], Horizont, Budapest, 1926, 57-60. English translation in Timothy O. Benson-Éva Forgács (eds.), Between Worlds, A Sourcebook of Central-European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930, LACMA- MIT Press, Cambridge-London, 2002, 444-447. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 190
