Gärtner Petra (szerk.): Csók István (1865 - 1961) festészete - Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei. A. sorozat 45. (Székesfehérvár, 2013)

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449

III.

István Csók's Recollection of his school years (References)

IV.

EMESE RÉVÉSZ

Variations on Arcadia

Variants, creative transfers and transitions

in the painting of István Csók

There is hardly a form among the scores of types of copies for which Csók's seven-decade long career would not offer an example. The reconstruction of his sequences together with a definition of copying as a cultural phenomenon can also serve to provide new data. Contemplating the spheres of copies, creative variations, and medial and thematic translations from here, they might appear to be cultural phenomena worthy of attention.Those moving within the network of media and art scenes, as well as market expectations, determine their movement and flow.

The primary motifs of the myth of origin of Gathering Hay (cat. 9), formulated from a distance of a half-century in Csók's mémoires, are authenticity and nostalgia. The inspiration for the scene is the idyllic medium and figures of the homeland, those born from these lands. At the time it was made, around 1890, the subject matter of the image was highly favoured in circles of both French and Hungarian naturalist painters, with scenes of peasants who work the land taking a rest appearing also in the works of Millet, Jules Breton and Bastien-Lepage. Csók's objective way of seeing is akin to his contemporaries, facilitated also by the use of photos. The use of photos as studies was characteristic of Csók's practice from the outset, just as it was especially prevalent within French naturalism, as attested to in the oeuvre of Dagnan-Bouveret. We can find the true cousins of the youths in Gathering Hay not within the circle of Csók's direct French contemporaries, but rather in the "romantic realism" of Jules Breton, in which the nostalgic melancholy of the completeness of being pervades the agrarian work.

From the turn of the century, in Csók's painting, the demonstration of the national character takes on increasing importance. From 1902, he worked in the Southern Transdanubian village, Őcsény, in Tolna County. The colourful, rich traditional costumes of "Sárköz" provided an alluring subject for him. In 1902, he showed his picture, Baptism in Őcsény (cat. 43), which we can view as the pair to his Lord's Supper ("Do This in Memory of Me", cat. 7) of Sárköz. His painting, Forbidden Fruit, was acquired for the royal art collection.

From the summer of 1904, instead of Sárköz, he worked in nearby Mohács. The inhabitants of the settlement on the bank of the Danube were "Socac", Roman Catholics resettled in the 17th century from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Bácska and Baranya County, and the colourful opulence of their attire rivalled that of those from

Sárköz. His composition, Resting Socac, presented in the winter of 1904, can be considered a Socac transcription of Gathering Hay, but with the ethereal figures of the group of resting Socac girls enjoying the nature embracing serenity with leisurely devotion. General thinking found the ostentatious apparel of the Socac exotic, separate from the puritanical, moralistic notion of their "own" (national) group. Csók began working on his pictures of Sárköz and Socac during his years in Paris. Viewed from Paris, Tolna and Baranya both presented interesting landscapes due to their alienness, and their exoticism made them exciting to the French viewer. From this standpoint, Csók's approach in his folk genre paintings of Sárköz and Socac, placing the strange and the alien within Arcadian scenery demonstrates a kinship with orientalist painting.

The interest of the Parisian audience in "exotic" Eastern European genres spurred Csók to continue to paint folk genre paintings, and not only in his choice of subject matter, but also by way of his freely colourful painting style, he strove to orient himself to the new tendencies. This shift indicates that following his earlier figurative genre paintings, he turned toward the genre of still-life, providing the possibility for deeper studies of colour and form. The majority of objects appearing in the background of his folk genre paintings by this time belonged to Csók’s own ethnographic collection. These were collected during the painter's summers in Sárköz.The influence of both LipótÁcsand Lajos Fülepcan be felt in the conscious discovery and depiction of the Sárköz folk object culture. During his 1906 sojourn in Paris, Fiilep developed a closer relationship with István Csók. By highlighting folk art treasures in his works, the painter became a part of the discourse on the national style that was going on in Hungary. The primary novelty in Chest with Tulips (cat. 48) sprang from the fact that Csók, leaving behind completely the elements of narrative genre paintings, placed the folk objects at the focus, and within that extended the leading role to ornamentalism. The painted chest, dress and vase are the visual representations of the ornamentalist theory of the secession - the mapping of a natural floral motif onto various vehicles: textile, ceramic, and furniture. With the artist placing ornamental folk art at the focus of his symmetrical still-lifes in an archaic style, he connects to the discourse on turnof-the-century national ornamentalism. The cardinal question of the theories unfolding at the end of the 19,h century was the evidence and exploration of the archaic layers of folk motif treasures. The only figurative motif in the maelstrom of ornamentalism is the doll dressed in Sárköz costume. Its appearance may be connected to the general and extraordinary sensation caused by the children's drawings from Sárköz presented within the framework of the exhibition of children's artwork opened in the Museum of Applied Arts in 1910. The Sárköz doll placed at the central axis of the ensemble thus evokes the direct, penetrating visuality of the children's drawings (children's toys).

During the period around 1910, István Csók's painting demonstrated the indisputable influence of the French Fauve movement.

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