Csaplár Ferenc szerk.: Lajos Kassák / The Advertisement and Modern Typography (1999)
Ferenc Csaplár: Kassák the Book and Advertisement Artist
gesting the characteristics of the advertised object, might be an effective method of advertising. The photograph with its objectivity, exactness, and capacity to record almost anything promised to be particularly apt for this purpose. Thus, it lent itself to combination with geometric elements into compositions. This conjoining, this encounter between the concrete and the abstract, produced a novel tension that intensified effect. The photograph had become a regular part of Kassák's work as early as 1922. While editing Új művészek könyve and arranging the photographs of buildings and machines as well as the reproductions of works of art collected by Moholy-Nagy, Kassák realised the capacity of the photograph to suggest industrial civilisation, metropolitan life, the world of city outskirts and factories, and to illustrate ideas and aspirations, and he also recognised the possibilities inherent in the conjoining of a photograph and a work of fine art. 5 2 His new regard for the photograph was signalled not only by the anthology but also by the fact that Kassák published a part of the photographic material in the 1 May 1922 issue of Ma and that almost all later issues of the magazine contained photos of machines and buildings in order to illustrate the aspirations of Constructivism. The transformation in his views was hastened not only by the photographic renewal which had begun after 1920 - in the work of MoholyNagy and that of German and Russian avant-gardists in this area - but also the fact that, as a prose writer, he sought more and more to record the realities of everyday life from the end of 1923; it was during the Christmas of this year that he began to write his autobiography entitled Egy ember élete (The Life of A Man), and upon his return from exile, he wrote a whole series of novels portraying the age. In 1927, Ernő Kállai's article, "Painting and Photography", published in the Amsterdam avant-garde magazine i 10, led to a debate, to which Kassák also contributed: he summed up his years of experience by characterising photography "as representative of a new period in civilisation": "The eye of a painter is subjective, the lens of a camera has an objective effect. In an age that strives for collectivity and structural austerity, this objective mode of vision and the anti-psychic nature of the camera make photography necessarily superior to representational painting." 5 3 Photographs or montages first appeared in structures of pictorial architecture. 5 4 Kassák himself never took photographs. It was from among shots made by others that he selected the cutting that would suit the object and aim of an advertisement or, placed in a composition, be the substantive centre of a book cover or poster. The relationship between Kassák's literary aspirations and those of graphic arts in advertising is shown by the fact that he put photographs on the covers of the novels in a series called "The New Hungarian Novel", which sought to reveal everyday Hungarian reality and the social problems of the times; he thought these photographs would suggest the world of the novels. It was no coincidence that Kassák made his first montage for the first three volumes of his autobiography printed in 1927, which was a rich portrayal of both individual and community destiny, an expression of both a literary and a political programme. 5 5 The multi-dimensional literary work necessitated the application of a montage technique based on the principles of Simultaneism - the juxtaposition of the expressive elements of photographs taken in different places and at different times. Kassák's full-length photograph is thus removed from a group shot, which was taken at the Ma evening on 22 March 1925 and is placed at the centre of a montage invoking the world of a metropolis, factories and tenement houses, where another element is a red rule, a reference to political commitment, which runs upwards from behind Kassák's figure to connect the montage with the title printed in red and black. On the montage advertising "Hungária Hírlapnyomda" ("Hungária Newspaper Printers"), the parts of shots of machinery taken from different angles, as a result of changing perspectives, suggest the dynamism of the work process. 5 6 Kassák's montage art is related to that of Russian and German avant-gardists with respect to various characteristics of his choice of theme and motif and his creation of structure. It may be regarded as a sign of his special interest in and respect for Russian montage art that he produced a montage for the cover of Lajos Gró's Az orosz filmművészet (Russian Cinema). 5 7 As early as 1930, as the editor of Munka, he had called attention to the satirical montages of John Heartfield in connection with the appearance of Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. 5 8 The first Hungarian publication of a Heartfield montage was also prepared by Kassák. In 1933, a series entitled „A Munka könyvtára" ("The Munka Library") published Hans Jáger's Mi a hitlerizmus? {What is Hitlerism 7) 5 9 Kassák designed its cover by adapting Heartfield's montage Krieg und Leichen - die letzte Hoffnung der Reichen (War and Corpses - The Last Hope of the Rich). Kassák modified Heartfield's work in accordance with the timeliness of the book itself. He changed the medal of honour hanging around the neck of the hyena into a swastika, mounted drawings of swastika Hans Jäger, Mi a hitlerizmus? (What is Hitlerism?) (Budapest: Munka, 1932) Cover, 153x120 mm munka könyvtára munka könyvtára munka kÄvtaÄ» könyvtára 75
