Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 2006 (18. évfolyam, 1-50. szám)
2006-10-13 / 41. szám
From Abstract to Representational, Historical and Activist Artist Zsuzsanna Cseke talks about her art (Excerpts form an Interview by Dorcas Gelabert, ART & IDEAS Internet Magazine) The new work of Hungarian-born artist Zsuzsanna Cseke is a departure from the work she has been creating for over a decade. Known in European venues primarily for her abstract painting, her new body of work takes a decidedly representational, historical, activist, if still poetic turn. This conversation was originally published on the eve of the artist’s first public exhibition of her new body of work in her native Hungary this summer, to be followed by exhibitions in France and the U.S. later this year. DG - For the benefit of the reader who is unfamiliar with your work, I’d like to start at the beginning of your professional career as an artist. Back in the late 80’s your work started to gain attention through a number of exhibitions in Europe at some reputable places— museums and galleries. How did that happen? CsZs - It started in 1988. I was invited to do my Master’s here, in America, because of a one-person show of etchings I had in Budapest. I began to exhibit in Europe while staying in America. In my country I didn’t have any information about international competitions. That was closed, insider information. There was no web at the time. DG - Did you come straight to New York for the Master’s? , CsZs - I went to Aknherst first. I had won an international scholarship from the University of Massachusetts. I left before I finished the Master’s there. DG - Why did you leave UMass and the scholarship? CsZs - I was invited there free of charge for only one semester. I was going to return to Hungary, but I met a Hungarian philosophy professor who applied for a Soros Foundation grant for me. I also met a Hungarian anthropology teacher who sent me to many art schools to look around. I ended up with another scholarship and a quick student visa from the Art Students League. In 1992 I left to Italy for three months. I had such success with my work there that I stayed for two years. In 1994 I showed and stayed all over in Europe—Paris, Stuttgart, London, Budapest. I had a German sponsor who had helped me to do this. She was a theology and philosophy professor. I met her in Italy. In Germany, people have kept the old European tradition of buying original art instead of copy alive. If they cannot afford the original oil painting, they buy an original print or watercolor. They know the difference between original and copy in value. They know that culture is the real currency of a country, not gold. They recognize the collective value of it, and by buying artwork they not only enrich themselves, but they also support artists—so the artist can be independent and free to look at them (society) from a distance and create a mirror for them, and a mark about them in history... In Holland, at that time, every fine artist who had a diploma got about $800 a month from the government. It was enough for basic expenses, so they didn’t have to commit themselves to something else and work at night, or give up art. I returned to New York in 1995. I’ve been here since then. * * * DG - Given the freedom to express yourself and the successes that you had in Europe with your abstract work in the decade of the 90s, why did you break with abstraction in this new body of work? CsZs - In my last body of abstract work I was very involved with Eastern philosophy. For a while, I painted white paintings. I hardly used other colors. ... I was trying to see the white through the colors. I tried to go beyond, to capture something of the unseen and unknown with my inner guidance, my intuition. Next, I tried to express that our modern civilization, through the miracles of technology, causes us to live in a hectic, clockwork world where mechanized thinking has taken man away from his real nature. I created contrast. I used transparent materials, such as plexi glass, vellum, transparent and iridescent colors, to make the paintings dream-like. I put glass beads in the paint sometimes to bring the optical light into the painting directly. I was the mirror. My paintings were my reflection. It was impossible to photograph that work well enough. It gave me a lot of problems. After a while I didn’t have new ideas. I needed a change. I was waiting. I felt that I had gone in a wrong direction. I had followed something that doesn’t go anywhere. I didn’t see the trap. It was a nice period. I expressed myself the best way I could, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t take responsibility. Artists shouldn’t do artwork for themselves or their colleagues, or for the critics. DG - Were there any other reasons or circumstances, besides the ‘dead end’ or ‘trap’ that abstraction became for you, that pushed you in the direction of your current work? CsZs -1 think it’s true that people are lost in abstract art, and that most of them do not like it. Artists should work for the people—but not on a banal level. The great masters uplifted people. They civilized them through art. Not long ago, in Hungary, my father died. He left me a small booklet from his childhood. I didn’t think much of it at first. Then, I just began to play with it... DG - What is in the booklet? CsZs - My father was born in 1926, this book was published in 1930, when he was a child. It was a book for children on many topics, and on history. The title is Travel in Transylvania. There were no pictures in it, only the blank places where the pictures go. He had to order them one by one. There was some task to accomplish for each picture. As you see, there are about 40 pictures in it. He collected and pasted each one. My father was a very true Hungarian. He had a very hard life, but lived it keeping his head up always. He could have been anything he wanted. He was the best student everywhere. I had his grade books. There is nothing less than ‘excellent’. But he stopped after vocational high school. He loved the land. His parents had a lot of land and forests. They used to hire seasonal workers. Then, the land was taken away from them. It broke his soul. We got back most of our lands a few years before he died, but it was too late. I was not there to take over. I inherited my mother’s artistic talent. She won an illustration competition of a newspaper when she was a young girl; but couldn’t go to art school in those difficult times... I grew up in a house that was like a museum, full of the most beautiful folk art—painted furniture, embroidery, my grandmother’s clothes, and ceramics—but slowly everything disappeared. The people who made this kind of art made it valuable not only for its look and craftsmanship; but because their arts actively took part in carrying and recreating their culture, like a drop of water in the sea. This folk art influenced the art of the aristocracy, the nobles, and the middle class, and connected them to one another. Every single piece was unique and collective at the same time on many levels—and it was always Hungarian. Children wanted to be involved already at the age of four and five. By the time girls got married, they were masters of these techniques. They sewed their dreams, hearts and souls into these pieces. After 1945, their identity and pride was taken away from them. They were humiliated. Today, instead of their crafts, we have cheap manufacture and we buy labels. I’m trying to influence people, as much as I can, to learn and practice again the old tradition and to make it part of their everyday lives again—not just to keep a few old pieces in collections DG - The loss of craftsmanship, along with its value and beauty, is almost a universal phenomenon in practically all industries of modern society. Only the specific, circumstantial causes for such a loss vary from place to place. You were talking about your father’s booklet?... CsZs - Yes. Going back to the story, it seems that these boys really took this trip, and that the story was written by one of them. The book doesn’t show any other writer, only a professor who looked over the text. DG - What is the story about? CsZs - The story is about four high school students who lived in the same building in Budapest. One from upper Hungary, Pozsony, the city where most of our kings was crowned. The place is now called Bratislava, and it is the capital of the created country of Slovakia. The second student was from Transylvania. The third one was from Szabatka, lower Hungary, which was given to the Serbs in 1918. The fourth student was from Budapest. Their families had come to Hungary as refugees. Each of the students wanted to go back home. Finally, they threw a coin to decide where to go first. Each boy had a task. One was the treasurer, the second one was the diary writer, the third one the illustrator and the last one was the guide. The guide was the refugee from Transylvania. He prepared for months. His parents helped him and made him promise to bring a flower from his grandparents’ grave. But when they got to Transylvania, they got lost everywhere— they couldn’t follow the notes sometimes. They saw changes in the street names, the destruction, the neglect of Hungarian monuments like statues and castles, and they saw how everything was turned around to fake history. They even stole our national heroes. They created a history in which Historical Hungary didn’t exist at all. They saw how Hungarians were terrorized and treated in these towns, despite the fact that everyone spoke Hungarian everywhere. They saw how, at first, only the officials were Rumanians. (Later, Rumanians made big changes. They brought Rumanians into Transylvania in huge numbers, and moved Hungarians to Bucharest, isolated them, and took their land in Transylvania away. It became worse and worse. The Rumanians also forced them to call themselves Rumanians, so they could claim that Hungarians were in a minority and couldn’t claim their territory back.) I learned a lot from this book... DG - Besides these things, what else have you learned in the process of making this body of work? CsZs - I learned that one of the gates of historical Hungary (the Carpathian Valley surrounded by high mountains) was at Vorostorony. It was a natural border. Huge mountains divided us from Rumania—a part of the Balkans called Olahland before. There was a river, too, the Olt. In 1916 this was the place the Olahs broke in for the first time. But the Hungarian army pushed them back in the same year. A film came out a few years ago about Trianon, when our country was cut up in six parts. Parts were given away to other countries around us, and two parts to create new countries, one called Yugoslavia and one Slovakia (Czechoslovakia at that time). We got most of our territories back in 1940, but we lost the Second World War. The Russians invaded us. The Russians insisted in reestablishing the Trianon borders—and it happened, tragically. Their intention was to create a Pan-Slavic Empire. Except Austria, every country around us is Slavic, plus Poland in the north and Bulgaria in the Balkan. (Rumania, which is also Slavic, consistently tries to come up with different versions of their origin in order to claim the right to occupy and keep Transylvania since the 1800s: first the daco theory, later they switched to the Roman. Both of them are fabricated). Transylvania Hungarians organized to show the film Trianonin a center or club. The Rumanian police came and arrested and put in jail most people. In Rumania this film has been banned. DG - This new work has a certain sense of urgency and precariousness behind its nostalgic beauty. I know that for you it comes from the thought that something of great value, for you and your native country is at risk of being lost forever. Who are the people that appear in your images? How are they significant to the work? CsZs - They are all Hungarians, despite the countries where they find themselves today. We all belong to the same nation. DG - In your images there is always a title or name in Hungarian to indicate a town or village; and there are people in all kinds of traditional costumes, often performing what we would read as a traditional or ‘folk’ dance. Sometimes there are soldiers on horses in parade formation, wearing the military dress of another period. There are ubiquitous flowers and bits of folk art such as embroidery with exquisite patterns and color combinations. For those viewers who do not speak Hungarian and who have little or no idea about the history of the culture and the region, a good part of your intended message and meaning will escape them—even as they appreciate their visual beauty. It seems to me that this work is really more of a private dialogue between you, your fellow Hungarians, and those peoples in the region that have directly affected the fate of your native country and culture. It also seems to me that in a significant way—if not specifically articulated— the work is also a conversation or an attempt to connect with your father, through the continuation of the little book and the spirit in which the book was made by its ‘authors’. How are you attempting to speak to these various peoples through these images, and what are you trying to convey? CsZs - I wanted to show all the people in my country who voted against or who didn’t vote in 2005 for the equal citizenship of Hungarians living in the territory of historical Hungary, what they threw away. So, I brought together and united us in my own way. AMERICAN ■■^jIWHIMJIIJMMII Hungarian Journal The Castle of Deva (Transylvania). In the bottom right corner. Brother Csaba Bojté, a Hungarian Franciscan monk who founded a school for orohans. Október 13,2006
