Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)

The Art of Book Design and Advertising: An Exhibitio

THE ART OF BOOK DESIGN AND ADVERTISING: AN EXHIBITION The first exhibition of the Society of Hungarian Book and Advertisement Artists opened on 12 April. Though there is hardly anyone among the exhibitors who was unfamiliar to most educated Hungarians from some other area of graphic art, we must see this exhibition as a new and grand debut for all its participants. The artists, appearing thus as a group, have entered a new relationship with one another, as though a noble competition were taking place between them before the public eye. The lay viewer and the advertising businessman need not share the opinion, the possible bias, of the "professional" critic. If one is capable of seeing and looks at the exhibition, he will, even from his lay position, discover values that represent serious achievements not only by Hungarian, but also by European standards. This is highly significant, and, in view of our general economic and political condition, it gives us reason to rejoice. Around thirty book and advertisement artists are participating in the exhibition. Clearly, they have displayed the best of their work, thus the exhibition, with all its virtues and faults, is representative of Hungarian art. The artists exhibiting do not belong to any one school, they each have a message, and they are able to convey it through the formal language of art and their individual characteristics. These various formal endeavours do not discompose the purity of the arrangement, and individual qualities ensure the general standard. The large material presented is-by any measuresurely beyond mediocrity, and certain works by individual participants are among the most beautiful works of modern advertisement art. Among the materials displayed, posters dominate, overwhelming the space with their sizes and elementary colours. From a critical standpoint, the work of Sándor Bortnyik and Róbert Berény should be lauded. Róbert Berény had already been a reputed painter when he appeared to the public with his posters. And he arrived, as it were, with his very first step. He brought new colour to the streets of Pest, a pure and cheerful humour, and it is probably this very cheer that brought him such quick success. He is a radically modern artist, but he makes no use of the easy tricks of modernity. He works with elementary colours, his forms are exceedingly simple, and his message is always enriched by an epic element. He wishes his posters not only to create an effect optically, but also to influence the mood of the observer and to go all the way to intellectual motivation. Obviously, Berény not only constructs and paints but also works as a psychologist when creating posters. His expressive capacities are witnessed by his generally flawless ability to transmit and synthesise this rich inner range in his posters, otherwise created by simple means and in accordance with the laws of the plane. Despite his painter's attitude, he never falls into pictorialness, and however epic in quality, his posters never become superfluous in detail. He gives character to the task he is undertaking with one or two resolute forms and one or two elementary colours. This can only be achieved by an intuitive artist. And Berény is an intuitive artist of a superior critical culture. Department store brochure, 1926 Compared to Berény, Sándor Bortnyik starts out from a quite different position and moves in a completely different direction. He is no painter by nature. His best posters place him more in the domain of applied arts than picturesqueness. It is this approach that accounts for the stiffness of his compositions and the cold, outward value of his colours. For Berény, the base of the plane is only one constitutive element of the poster as a whole, while for Bortnyik, the plane appears as a surface to be built on, nay decorated. He constructs his colours and forms not from within the plane going outwards, but actually seems to inhabit the plane with his messages; most of his work therefore creates the impression of neither depth nor inner closure. His colours are no more than colours, his forms are no more than forms; the intuitive driving force, the evocative power, of the creative artist, is lacking in them. This is not to depreciate Bortnyik, I am only attempting to define the character of his individuality and the place of his work on the occasion of the exhibition. Bortnyik is usually thought of as a Hungarian representative of Bauhaus. His "modern" critics, when they intend to say something very good about him, tell us, feigning great expertise, that he works in the Bauhaus style. But he undeniably stands closer to the dry and monumental positioning of Gebrauchsgraphik. In the effective distribution of spots 21