Sári Zsolt (szerk.): Jávor Piroska és Asszonyi Tamás kiállítása (Szentendre, 2011)

SUSPENSION OF THE TIME • BEFORE THE EXHIBITION OF PIROSKA JÁVOR AND TAMAS ASSZONYI "Because man builds his house as he understands himself, his life or his ideál (like religious ideál)"

1 Nicolai Hartmann The time of great narratives is over. We repeat this endlessly but often without stating precisely, which are the great stories, which cannot be told further any more. Still, there are somé stories, which can - even must - be told further. These are myths; exemplary stories referring to events in ancient times but which determine at the same time the demeanour of present-day man as well. Universal history as great tale and - closely linked with it - art-history as another great tale, certainly cannot be told further. The mythical interpretation of history, called historicism förmed the bases for the creation of new ideas. It was then that comprehensive treatises were produced, rooted in the study of history and aimed at the examination of the origin in order to approach the essence of art beyond ages and epochs and in order to unravel the direction of development.

2 Because the universal or world history, as art-history too, are universal - says the Germán philosopher Marquard - for the reason because they knead the stories to one history, to the story of progress and fulfilment, leaving aside all which has no place in this linear, salutary, revolutionary history of emancipation, or if still it can be included, under the condition to explain the remaining bad by turning it into "good".

3 Art-history does the same, and that is why art histórián Hans Belting claims categorically that art-history is over. They can say so because already at the beginning of the 20th century, due to World War I "all completeness broke into pieces" - as the poet Endre Ady wrote in one of his poems. After this, there is no homogenous zeitgeist to serve as a compass in every field of life, in science, in art or even in the daily life. The unity of the great triad: sciences, arts and - organising them in one process - history has been disintegrated. Science left the association and claimed the first place in our times. Marquard describes the modern times as such, where people make "laboratory objects" and "projectable activities" of their scientific, technical and informational environment. This can happen only when they purposely neutralize their linguistic, religious, cultural and family traditions. Our only freedom left is our capacity to teli about whatever we cannot change - so Marquard. Therefore, our myths and stories have to be told permanently. Our modern times do everything to sweep out the myths from our world. Our age wants to overtake the myths - but the myths follow us stubbornly. Our age tries to eliminate the myths because acceptable is only that can be expressed by mathematical formulas. As we shall see, myths cannot be "talked out" of our world - because the archetypical elements of the myths have been living in us since ancient times. However, our modern times do their utmost to chase them from our "life-world" in such remoteness where they are "inefficient". Piroska Jávor and Tamás Asszonyi are "homo compensator": our age failed to "talk out" myths from their art. They know and feel that we are short of the absolute due to our finiteness. They know that we, humans are "deficient creatures" who want to compensate our physical incompleteness by culture, the modern world void of magic by reviving the thinking in terms of aesthetics. Piroska Jávor and Tamás Asszonyi help us with their work to bear the truth about our finiteness. Marquard claims that the myths are not "merely forerunners or replacements of the truth; the technique of the myths - teliing the stories - is something completely different. It is the art to involve (not the missing but) the already found truth into the sphere of operation of our life-capacities."

4 The truth has to do with knowledge and the stories with the need to bear the truth. Knowledge is linked to truth and error; stories are linked to happiness and ill fate. Myths and stories don't have a task in the matter of truth but their role is the modus vivendi associated with the truth. The exhibiting artists revive on pláne surface and in space the most ancient myth, the beginning of evolution into man, the creation of the house. André Leroi-Gourhan said: "The par excellence humán activity is less the production of tools, it is rather the domestication of time and space. It means the creation of a humán time and of a humán space... It is domestication in the literal sense because starting with house and from the house, it led to the creation of a controllable space and of a controllable time." Whatever the scientist knows, the artist feels. Like obsessed, Piroska Jávor paints, Tamás Asszonyi forms in space the "house" because they wish to come closer to the secret with every new work 4