Gärtner Petra (szerk.): Csók István (1865 - 1961) festészete - Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei. A. sorozat 45. (Székesfehérvár, 2013)
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these pieces, Chinese porcelain and bronze sculptures are the focus. One of his best-known pictures is the Little Buddha Statuette from 1914, which depicts a small boy holding a ceramic plant pot with lotus ornaments, (cat. 40) Csók's attraction to Oriental themes was not characterized by immersion. Other than his recurring depiction of Oriental objects, only the Nirvana theme can be traced throughout his various periods. The theme of seeking redemption was widespread at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, and is palpable in his grandiose painting of Nirvana, first displayed in 1909. The creation of the central figure of Buddha was inspired by the iconography of the Japanese buddhist Adima Njora's sculptures. We can see swirls of women around a young female figure. A significantly repainted version of this piece was published in the columns of Magyar Művészet in 1933. The central Amid Buddha figure of the painting kept its iconography but Csók painted a lotus throne under the base. A kneeling male figure with a yellow diadem appears next to a fragile, kneeling female figure on the right side of the picture. The swirling scene on the left is even more crowded, whereas the kneeling figure at the main figure's throne is blurred. The now wellknown large Nirvana canvas, which has been on display in the Hungarian National Gallery since Csók István's death, is dominated by two main figures with different iconographies. The feminine buddhist main figure with a broad face and a slight sensual facial expression has towering hair and the diadem over herforehead is ornamented with tiny Buddha-figures.The swirling figures emerge from the dark blue background and their connection to the main figure is more organic than before. No cognitive or philosophical immersion can be discovered in the fact that the Nirvana picture was repainted continuously. The first impulse to paint the picture was prompted by the redemption-seeking of the 20thcentury and the fashionable turn to Oriental teachings. However, the painting today can be interpreted very differently: as one depicting exile. The artist faintly appears in the figure of the old man at the throne with all his painterly oeuvres in the background and beneath him.The kneeling figure is looking towards the throne and glancing at the god as if he were searching for the paths of the afterlife. István Csók often dealt with themes that provided dualities and contradictions. The Buddha figure in Nirvana displays the Oriental wisdom and spiritual world for the artist who was faced with the direst questions of life in a form that was acceptable in Hungary in the second half of the 20th century, a time in which the question of an afterlife was taboo. The works of a painterly career take shape around and under the central Buddha-figure.The saintly and the profane, the transcendent and the materialized existence are seeking the authentic answers to life's most serious questions. XI. GYÖRGYI FAJCSÁK István Csók's Legacy in the Ferenc Hopp Museum of East Asian Arts (Introduction of objects) XII. LÁSZLÓ GIPPERT The Restorer before István Csók's "memorial to an event" Rendering Nirvana to display condition Restoration work begins with the procedure for assessing condition. In the case of the picture Nirvana, the work also began this way, in the course of which we saw the following, (cat. 38) A quarter of the tacking edge was frayed and split off. The lower third of the picture surface was wavy and deformed; this was on a relatively large surface of about one square meter. On the dusty, dirty surface of the picture, an unevenly dividing, yellowing layer of varnish was visible. There were defects and smaller tears, but also damage and lesions that, as a whole, were not the work of time, nor were they the consequences of some tragic event. There were retouches pastosely applied and of inconceivable hue, and painted, unsmoothed (deriving from the omission of smoothing) defects. It became increasingly clear upon seeing this, that this intervention could not be written off as the work of some sort of slap-dash, maladroit colleague. Because it was impossible that a restorer would have smeared the colors on the picture this way, so senselessly in many places; furthermore, s/he would not have modelled the paint layer with a knife or abrasive paper in such a way that in a few places even the canvas would show through; nor would s/he finally simply paint without smoothing. No professional would undertake this. It didn't take much imagination to discern that the master himself, i.e., István Csók, did this to his own picture. It should be noted, at the same time, that there are also repairs on the painting from the hand of a real restorer: patching, smoothing and retouching. And then comes the question: who are those who have worked on it? Most probably, upon getting the painting back following the 1955 exhibition, the master, already in his 90s, tried to modify it in accordance with his own visions and desires at the time. It is visible, that in the portion beneath the central buddhist divinity (Amitabha Buddha), Csók strove for some sort of softer, more glazed transition, and this is why he abraded and scraped off the paint, and then repainted - as if he used a new primer - the damaged parts. The blue layer of paint on the back of the figure leaning towards him is completely foreign in its pastosity and its hue from the original parts of the picture. The situation is similar with the female figures that the painter wanted to emphasise with new highlights, and also with the completely repainted young couple seated in a lotus flower. On the basis of this, it became obvious that
