Lengyel László (szerk.): Devóció és dekoráció - 18. és 19. századi korolstormunkák Magyarországon - Studia Agriensia 7. (Eger, 1987)
Summary
teries but also those who created or possessed them in noble, aristocratic or civil circles. These pictures, puppets, figures, compositions and reliquaries carried meaning and emotions. We can read and understand their contents today and their message is useful to us in many ways. They are messengers from a largely sunken world and also human documents for us. Like a rosary’s many decades they are the rememberances of the acrobatics of patience. Those who stand here around me, spectators and directors, researchers and historians or simply aesthetes, will confess with me that the works shown here are not very close to their hearts. The works please us, we like the craftsmanship, the beautifully or pleasantly formed objects and sometimes we involuntarily respond well to the atmosphere while the object which we see here produce rather wonder and even aversion in us. On the other hand we are pleased with one more remarkable work. Let us rise above this and observe that this artistry was a part of an incomparably bigger artistic and religious horizon. Behind it and far above it stands “great art”, which is known by this small world, this modest and small relative living within an intimate and personal sphere, who humbly acknowledges the well respected, close relation. From the viewpoint of this modest sphere and naive fervour it is possible that it has a border significance, but here this means the bringing into focus of the masses and nation ; that the kind of world in which they lived is illustrated in their demands, fantasies and hand made skills. In this whimsical art it can be revealed to us who are todays visitors to exhibitions and museums that contemporary art does not contain such new ideas. Elements of the Makart style appeared in the 18th century — and even earlier — in the polion type objects of the small art works. Obviously collage has been well know for centuries! The showing of daily objexts as art works, the exhibition of the timely object, the different imitations, even the trick of astounding the ordinary visitor were well know in the pious monastery cells and in devotional picture decorations as well. The one who dreamt of a “hortus conclusus” a number of centuries ago and crafted it from painted-carved objects, foliage, pearls, glass paste, paint, gold-plate and with small silver objects in the form of large and small house-altars, expressed the desires of this world, escape, the inclination to retreat and the hopes of the after world in the work. The “thing” signified a lot to them, the source of this world and the promise of the next and also served as a house sacrifice in a small way. Thus 131
