Vaderna Gábor (szerk.): Önarckép álarcokban. Kiállításkatalógus (Budapest, 2018)
Summary
unachievable genius of language, Self-Portraits in Self-Made Masks presents the fallible János Arany, who was struggling with his doubts and human dilemmas. It was our aim to show points in Arany’s poetry which connect with the present Zeitgeist: how as a poet he reacted to the challenges of modernity, the feeling of a “narrowing- broadening”, pulsating world, the experience of rapid focal changes and the changed media environment. During Arany's long life European civilisation changed explosively, means of communication became mass-oriented and changed in quality; journals developed and literature began to take on different meanings. All this took place in a historical era whose basic encounter involved the experience of eternal waiting and disappointment. It was an era when the interpretation of what “cosmopolitism” meant for Hungarian culture and the necessity of understanding the foreign and the strange presented a challenge. The whole installation, the organisation of space, the contrasts of colours, the mobile effects of light and shadow, as well as the stage-like arrangement, serve this purpose. Reception is based on highlighted points of content and visual effects. The original objects (works of art, manuscripts, books) present the above idea as a theme. Several digital interactive objects - associative works by young artists - provide an opportunity for visitors’ activity. The exhibition is bilingual, an audio guide in English, appropriately created with foreign visitors’ knowledge in mind, makes it easier to approach this master of classical Hungarian literature. *** The first part of the present volume is an annotated catalogue of the exhibition Self-Portraits in Self-Made Masks. A list of the exhibited objects, which includes their name and genre in English, is published following the description of each part of the rooms. The second part of the volume contains writings about the origin and the history of the major Arany archives. After János Arany’s death his cult immediately began simultaneously with his estate reaching the archives. Interestingly, his son, László Arany, did not think in terms of establishing a large collection, but decentralized his father’s legacy. He donated most of the poet’s furniture to his birthplace of Salonta but gave objects (especially manuscripts) to Nagykőrös, Debrecen, Geszt and the National Library, and left some objects and documents at the Academy, his father's last residence. The articles published here analyse the history of the Arany legacy from archival-historical, museological and collection-political aspects. Finally, the third part includes studies connected to the exhibition. They discuss the issues of Arany’s modernity. János Arany’s use of pseudonyms, his everyday life as a clerk and his attraction to cartoons present the urban citizen. You can read about the dynamic transformation of the urban environment, the social relevance of urban life and about how the poet saw it all. And finally, the last two articles in the volume show that Arany was not only engaged in the new ways of modern poetry, but he also took an interest in the changing arts. 442
