Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)
ANNUAL REPORT - A 2006. ÉV - JUDIT GESKÓ: Van Gogh in Budapest
great expressionist: Van Gogh. Expressionism allows tor a wide range of forms and possibilities: it is not the phenomenon which counts but the emotion." In the history of Hungarian art —as some examples of the present exhibition also attested to —we are not dealing only with the direct impact of Van Gogh but also with some parallel trends of artists working at the same time. Mihály Munkácsy's works well illustrate this: in some of his genre paintings he elaborated the impact of Jean-François Millet, in the same way as Van Gogh did in the initial phase of his career. László Paál is also a good example; he was influenced by the enthusiastic way that the Barbizon painters and the Dutch old masters painted landscapes, which in a similar manner influenced Van Gogh's own early landscapes. Those analogies are also worthy of attention that make a connection between Van Gogh and Mednyánszky in the use of paint and the textural effects of the canvas and which link Van Gogh and Csontváry in the symbolic use of objects. Van Gogh had a later, long lasting impact of a different nature that manifested itself right up until World War II in the works of János Nagy Balogh, István Nagy and Gyula Derkovits. In their paintings the artistic influence is inseparably linked to Van Gogh's ascetic lifestyle known from his letters. The last section of the exhibition, i.e. the one that expressed the above-mentioned artistic influences on Hungarian painters, was staged separately in the Doric Hall. It was Péter Alolnos who selected the artworks that are most representative of the Van Gogh-analogies and which best illustrate his direct impact. The organizers of the exhibition were convinced that presentation of this influence showed an important segment of Hungarian art at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, as well as its orientation and aspirations to join the latest trends of European art. This last part of the exhibition was based on the research of Péter Molnos and Árpád Tímár, and their new findings and article in the exhibition catalogue recalled the time when the Museum of Fine Arts was first opened. The chief aim of the catalogue was to outline how the life and works of Van Gogh are interpreted today in art history. The articles reflect the present state, directions and methods of academic research as well as the models of thought, or alternatively the framework within which today's interpretations come into being. The exhibition catalogue is the result of extensive teamwork on an international scale. Besides such acknowledged Van Gogh experts as Roland Dorn, Sjraar van Heugten, Cornelia Homburg and Teio Meedendorp, Hungarian art historians Judit Geskó, Zsuzsanna Gonda, Mónika Kumin, Enikő Róka and Ferenc Tóth contributed with new interpretations of the works painted in Etten, Hague, Nuenen, Paris, Aries, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise. Art historians of the Hungarian National Gallery, Gábor Bellák, Judit Boros, Mariann Gergely, Orsolya Hessky, Edit Plesznivy, György Szűcs, together
