Gosztonyi Ferenc - Király Erzsébet - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2002-2004. 24/9 (MNG Budapest, 2005)

NEW ACQUISITIONS - István Nádler: M.M. No. 2 and M.M. No. 3, 2001 (László Százados)

concepts and processes through abstract spaces and shapes. Influencing meditation, too, the assertion of consciousness (see practice, repetition) results in serialisation and a simplification or reduction of 'language' and motif stock, as well as in an organisation of mature colouring, formation and compositional symbolism along the lines of conceptual structure. Being synthetic, the paintings of the 1999-2001 period are grave, monumental, solemn and dynamic at the same time. They are permeated by depth, mellowness, force - the circulation of energy. They blend the fundamental, decades-old directions of his oeuvre - the geometry of consciousness, the expressive, painterly manifestations of emotions - at a qualitatively new level. Within the closely related triad (its first part now in an Austrian private collection), the initially reduced colouring becomes ever more constrained; grey and sun yellow renounced, but black, white and blue remain. Clear and cold colours as they are they could be harsh even, but here they convey emotion and feeling - as a result, partly, of the strokes of brush and palette knife ruffling, furrowing and snarling the surfaces of colour fields, partly, of representing the contrasts of black and white, light and dark. This treatment of colour, the layering of paint, the dough of paint created by gestures of brush, the changing collusion of facture and lighting suggest both abstract and elemental notions of space. The constant acoustic agent of this spiritual-metaphysical space and the 'transcription' of the processes within is the ritual music of Tibet at the moment of shaping the initial situation and of Japan at the moment of performing the all-decisive gesture. Horizontally streaked, black paint material - transcendent space - encircles the focal point of the composition: a regular form, the standing rectangle - pool or gate of which is the symbol of the painter subject clasped within the bounds of rationality. The sensitive form, which is filled with ultramarine blue and worked up by palette knife, and which has a nimble surface, is surrounded and accentuated by a white aura. The black around it is neither sombre, nor melancholic: it is 'nothingness replenished' with general energy. The 'rectangles' are at the intersection of a horizontal-vertical system of co-ordinates, the Above and the Bellow, the Past and the Present. In M.M. No. 2, the equilibrium of the starting picture, M.M. No. 1, is rearranged by energy-conveying gestures shaping form and space: a wide, U-shaped brush mark starting from above, then changing direction at right angles, finally heading upwards again, creates the connection between the Above and the Below, the Transcendent and the Individual, the Past and the Present. In M.M. No. 3, the earlier, initial situation reoccurs, but it is, as it were, 'stretched out' on the wide, vertical brush ripple drawn 'behind' it in the rectangle, and then it is fixed by a resolute, horizontal brush mark running across 'in front' of it. This cross motif, repeated in and scratched into the terrain of the subject, suggests the creative process. The gestures serve the initiative toward the transcendent: they are meant to gauge the origin of preparedness, to help experience the measure of internal power and mode of care this needs. Whether good or bad, the important thing is the capacity to integrate and internalize what is without. It is the maintenance of an open, dynamic relationship both physically and spiritually - offering the possibility of identification. The 'way' is known: this leads Nádler to a newer level, the 'black' series of the next two years. S 9