Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)

Funeral Art in the Second Half of the 20th Century

(F 25), or of László Inke by Frigyes Janzer (F 25). Attila Józsefs new tombstone by Csaba Horváth and Levente Bálványos was unveiled in 2005 (K 35).

The one most important work of funereal art completed in recent years has undoubtedly been the reconstruction of the central mortuary of Farkasrét Cemetery to plans by Imre Makovecz in 1975—77. What was involved was certainly more than a simple reconstruction job, as it was here that a major Hungarian example of organic architecture was born with the establishment of a type of funeral parlour unique in this country. Following from the peculiarities of the genre, it is with its interior, and with the emphatic central hall of the mortuary in particular, that Makovecz’s work makes an impression. A dominant aspect of the biform, cavernous space is the wooden fluting that suggests a human rib cage with the flutes conjoined in a spine-like central line above, and the place of the casket is assigned to the spot where the heart of the symbolic body would be. The interior thus alludes to the resurrected

■ György Jovánovics: Monument for the Martyrs of the /9s6 Revolution

69