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

The Poster and New Painting

The plain, detailed manner of the classics depicting religious themes will not do for the current subject-matter, in fact, it is out of tune with it. We are living the century of technology and sociology in the huge metropolises. Mystical delving into the godhead has been superseded by burning, more immediate issues, the apotheosis of calm village idylls have been driven out of us by the insatiable greed of our modern psychic structure to live for the moment. Instead of patriarchal acquiescence, we dizzy in gales of troubles, and whoever works in this century and wishes to capture its character must be modern in nerve, in blood, in work. It is futurists, expressionists and other "lunatics" that are like this today; they fight for a conscious way out from under the influences of their age, as opposed to the "sane" who lean ladders against classicisms thoroughly dead. Our century is a chaotic mixture of a society to be settled, and in this sense they are the primitives of a classical painting to be (not to be confused with backboneless neo-primitives or Henri Rousseau, who might well be an ingenious autodidact, but has no bearing whatsoever on new painting). It is only in the Africans and in the classical primitives of the twelfth century that we find counterparts to today's quests. Like the ancient primitives, we live amongst the divine babblers (though in a more cultivated, complicated form). The vicissitudes of the world befalling man cannot bear forms made into aesthetic law; and man toils only to find the existing means of expression lacking for his messages evoked from a burning life. This is why the lay public sees senseless chaos, and this is why the questers often fall into an excess of manner. But this in no way diminishes their truth. They are fighters, prophets and men within their own artistic circles, just as poster artists are. With their pictures, they want to thrust a purifying force into their age, their works are signposts for a parturient century. Their paintings are not meant for decorating walls, but always for presenting question and exclamation marks to the sensible crowd. (With this we do not submit to the schools mentioned, they are only stairs toward the grand whole, and it is only through their conscious union that genuine value will be created.) The new painter is an ethical individual, full of faith and desire for union! His paintings are weapons for his fight! He does not bother much about aesthetics; nuances are never important, only the essence is (in both theme and realisation), which in its essential grandiosity is always a lively and offensive union. New painting is produced under the aegis of monumentally and the revision of reason, and, all in all, serves a more gratifying aim than that of today! Like that of the poster, its character is individual demonstration and free force! We have been cured of the emerald seas, creamy birches and "sanely" seen wax shins. We know we exist, and our existence accepts existence even in art. We wish with all our desire that a painting - like a poster, this magnificent supplement to the modern city - should fill our rooms with a life that is exterior to us and overwhelm all industrial objects, and that paintings should compete with each other - like posters do on bill-boards with their obstinate and world-subverting gusto - in today's stuffy and stolid exhibition rooms! MA (TODAY), VOL. I, NO. 1, NOVEMBER 1916, PP. 2-3. Advertisement: "Propagate New Art" / Ma 1-2 (Vienna 1925): back cover, 310x310 mm PROPAGÁLJÁTOK UJ AZ MŰVÉSZETET MA Internacionális aktivista mUvészell folyóirat • Szerkeszti : Kassák Lajos M Felelösszerkesztö: Hermann Suske • Szerkesztőség és kiadóhivatal: Wien, XIII. Bezirk, Amallenstrasse 26. I. 11 • Megjelenés dátuma 1925 Január 15 • Előfizetési Ar: EOY ÉVRE: 120.000 osztrák kor., 60 c. K, 120 dlnâr, 300 lel m ENNEK A SZÁMNAK AZ ÁRA: 15.000 osztrák korona, 7 szokol, 20 dinár, 40 lel, 1 arany-márka • IX. évfolyam, S-ö. szám A lapban megjelenő cikkekért a szerző felel. Kiadó: Kassák Lajos Druck: „Elberoiihl", Wien, IX., Bergfassí 31. 6