Gärtner Petra (szerk.): Csók István (1865 - 1961) festészete - Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei. A. sorozat 45. (Székesfehérvár, 2013)
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454 RESUME Vili. ERIKA MOLNÁR The End of Melancholy István Csók's Venus, with the eye of the restorer The Birth of Venus Bertalan Székely, figure drawing and painting teacher, was just working on Zrinyi's Charge from the Fortress of Szigetvár, and Károly Lotz was working on After the Bath, when the 17-year-old István Csók gained admission to the Royal National Pattern Drawing School. Through his first masters, and aided by his diligence springing from his sense of duty, his talents soon unfolded. His flawless sense of character, and his confident graphic and painting technique made it possible for him to continue his studies in Munich, and then in Paris. In 1889, at the age of 24, he already knew everything about the historicising romantics, the academic idealising naturalists, the neo-baroque genre painters, and the plein-air symbolists. For a few years, he himself easily and successfully moved between the styles, genres and techniques acknowledged and beloved in the salons, when in 1897, at the age of 32, in Nagybánya (Baia Mare, today in Romania), he recognised that his experiences of reality and his thoughts expressing his virtuosity, spontaneity, and personal feelings would be damaged, if he didn't align his personal style to the primary characteristics of his talent. He rebelled against paraphrasing, he rebelled against himself, because due to his talent, he could. This was not as great a rebellion as Klimt's secession in the same year, but the reasons were similar. One of the signs of Csók's inner rebellion was that prior to the exhibition of Nagybánya painters, he cut up his large-scale picture, Melancholia.The remaining fragment of this picture is the painting known today as Venus, (cat. 11) Aiding us with the conception of the entire composition is a monochromatic illustration published in 1904, which Csók produced for the poem of Bálint Balassi, "My love is angry with me now", (cat. 128) First Impressions This Venus much rather conveys the inner loneliness of the figures of Bastien-Lepage or Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, than the provocative sensuality of the nudes painted by Csók in the early 1900s. The plein-air composition justifies the impressionist brushwork, but this is only characteristic of the landscape elements. The emphatic aerial perspective, the defining dark and light, and the masterfully applied complementary contrast lends a strong plasticity to the finely modelled figure. Despite the diffuse light, just as in an atelier, the light's direction can be determined. The red drapery and the lack of clarity in the relation of the arms reveal the extent and the courage of the modifications while painting, and the "complete" incompleteness of the composition. The condition of the painting, 114 years after its creation The thin layer of paint and the even thinner layer of primer are bound well to the carrier. Due to the thinness of the priming, it is clear that the solvents permeating to the verso during painting unusually pronouncedly trace the reflection of the figure of Venus. The texture of the canvas is palpable throughout, with the exception of the surface of Venus'body that Csók has reworked more than once, and the pastosely painted roses. When stretching the painting, the right-hand edge was folded, and no tacking edge was made. Over time, the canvas carrier has slackened and lost its tension. Examining it in tangential light, vertical ruptures in the paint layer can be observed. They are most pronounced in the grainline of the canvas on the upper left portion of the picture, as well as in the breaches running through the body of Venus. The picture surface was highly contaminated, and the thin layer of varnish had yellowed and silicified. The layer of contamination that had become sediment in the recesses of the texture of the canvas was especially high and significant. The Rebirth of Venus During the photo-technical examinations, I took normal, infrared and luminescent photographs of the painting. In the luminescent photos, the paint layers that were dark, stain-like and diverging from the outlines, which manifested primarily scattered through the shaded parts of the body surface, reinforced the conjecture that the painter had vigorously reworked the figure of Venus a number of times. After cleaning the verso and the stretcher, I removed the optically disturbing layer of varnish with alcohol, and then the additional layers of contamination with fatty alcohol sulphate and mechanical cleaning. I left alone the repainting layers bearing witness to the process of alterations in form, the diverging brushwork on the body of the figure and the later corrections. I smoothed out the unevenness of the surface, the ruptures and the impressions by ironing and pressing. I replaced the missing wedges for tension. I reinforced the paint layer locally with Medium for consolidation (MFCO), along where it was peeling. I replaced the missing parts of primer and paint layer with chalk and adhesive based filling putty. Then, following aquarelle retouching, I varnished the picture surface, and then I finished the final aesthetic restoration with pliable oil resin retouching. Venus in a New Context Venus, separated from the speculative visual metaphors and symbols, freed Csokin his later works, from his mannerism, aloof rigidity, pathos-soaked poses, and his uncertainties in drawing. Thus, henceforth Venus, bound to new contents, and as a part of the personality of every female figure, could appear in an indirect form. Csók, proceeding from his own experience, at the age of 58, from 1923 as rector of the Royal Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, and then from 1925 as a master, with his reforms, urged a heightened role of figurai studies in place of storiated drawing.
