Szilárd Klára: UTAK A TÉRBEN (Kiállítási katalógusok - Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2006)

paintings 'Machines in the sea' made in 1975 might refer to this state of things. This metamorphosis of the objects may not so much evoke the melancholic and surrealistic atmosphere of passing, it is rather a kind of 'return to nature' Utopia. Claire Szîlard's statues have no punchlines and no definite meaning. They may be interpreted in a similar way as we observe how two or three details of a photo or film montage unite to produce a third or fourth new entity. Let us see how one of her reviewers, Pierre Brisset interprets Claire Szilard's art works: "she collected small scraps in a junk yard, rusty pieces of metal in a rubbish heap, strait or curved iron sticks, steel tubes, pieces of rails, broken saws, rings, springs, nails, screws, shovels, forks, fittings and hinges and God knows whatever broken and patched things." Let us complete the list: grills, frames, thorns, wheels, hoops, spokes, stands, pillars, scissors, keys, screwdrivers, shafts, spindles, plates, cogwheels, spirals, chains, pistons, cages, wires and cables, taps, cylinders, files, vices, clamps, straps, spades, balances, baskets, bands, supporting rods, drums, racks... Machines, tools, appliances, constructions, structures - anything made or produced from iron. Those elements, which describe the sculptor's activity refer to the creation of sculptural meaning. Pierre Brisset wrote: "she hits, cuts, saws up with iron saw, hammers, bends, rounds, presses, nails and welds the metal...; she sets together the machinery from the heaviest pieces, she hammers them and crushes them with double-hand hammer...; she criss-crosses long, rigid iron rods..." Let us complete the list: she bends, punches, cuts, assembles, rearranges, puts together, sets upright and puts down, twists and compresses... Her works can be associated with special living creatures, jungle tangles, tree trunks and cactuses, ranks and lianas, exotic flowers, monsters and animals, grasshoppers and locusts, skeletons, anthropomorphous creatures and robots as well. When we describe Claire Szilard's world of images in the network of these notions, the question to what an extent her statues are rusty, becomes not unimportant, but marginal. From the point of view of artistic meaning and status of genre, I consider Claire Szilard's recently made "statue drawings": the most special it is impossible to tell whether they are notes taken down from ideas or drafts, or memos of finished statues, or merely anthropomorphous, biomorphous, biomechanic or bioconstructive fantasies. Concerning other drawings, we can make objective and subjective statements. The accurate description states that the drawings on paper made in three different sizes, in standing or laying form are created with black poster paint (not water soluble ink!) applied with brush either in thick layers or thinned like watercolour, and some strokes of the pen are added. Not all are sculptor's drawings, but there are a few: some strait stripes are ordered in a loose bunch, or a waving, looping line meanders among grey patches, creating a hardly definable space. Other drawings show sharp, black corners and edges put against merging colour shades. The drawings are not united by a homogenous style. The tendency goes rather in the direction of abstraction. Sometimes a form hardens and becomes an object in front of the merging greyish-blackish fields. The uncertainties of shapes and extensity result from the fact that the artist is not constructing while drawing but improvising: she projects on the horizontal paper instinctively and spontaneously her emotions, which she didn't express verbally. Therefore, the subjective approach is justified in my opinion: these drawings constitute a heavy and gloomy background to the statues, even when the motion of the hand is spontaneous and easy. A general, dull wreathing, a soft, cloudy, grey atmosphere floats in front of our eyes, and the veil of a rainy Sunday afternoon mist clouds our soul if we allow these shapes and shades to affect us. Dr. László Beke art-historian LES SCULPTURES DE CLAIRE SZILÁRD • Il n'est pas difficile de démontrer qu'au cours des temps l'association liée au fer rouillé était celle de la destruction, de la disparition, excepté l'acier inoxydable. Du passé récent hongrois je cite d'abord le roman "Cimetière de la rouille" d'End re Fejes, se joint à celui-ci "Le pays de la propagation" de Ferenc Juhász, et plus tard "Le tango du Satan" de László Krasznahorkai. Dans la peinture nous avons tout d'abord "Le débarcadère à Újpest" de Tibor Csernus, où la facture richement appliquée embrouille la terre franche avec les déchets et le fer rouillé jusqu'au point d'être méconnaissable. Cette pâte délabrée, mais d'une manière quelconque luxurieuse des années 1960, cette "masse générale" qui trouve en Hongrie son expression artistique dans le "surnaturalisme", se replit par un nouveau dynamisme dans une autre partie du monde, et dans le Pop Art une nouvelle estétique est née du fer et de l'acier, en vagabondant depuis des chantiers de débris jusqu'aux fournaux de fonderie. Les possibilités d'une 5