Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Tanulmányok / Studies - Berecz Ágnes: Egy bizarr délután / A Bizarre Afternoon

are in fact only two models, i.e. that what we see in the painting and in the painting-in-the-painting are not four poses struck by four models, but two models striking two poses each. This seemingly irrelevant detail discloses the framing narrative of My Models in My Garden in Kaposvár, and makes it obvious that the picture was not made in the manner represented in the painting, i.e. not after a group of four models standing in the garden. Working against the fiction of his own making, Rippl-Rónai prevents the viewer from interpreting the painting as a mimetic representation that has direct ties with reality. He does so in the face of the picture-within-the-picture motif, which seems to encourage the viewer to accept the fact of mimesis, as he or she will be bound to invest the original of the painting-in-thepainting (the garden scene) with the fiction of reality, and assume that the work he or she is looking at is, in addition to anything else, documentary evidence of the process of painting. It is tempting to read the difference in the sequence of the models and the fact of four-in-two as a manifestation of the typically modern self-reflexive attitude which says "Watch my hands!" but Rippl-Rónai's oeuvre as a whole discourages such a reading. The presence of elements that disrupt the reality effect in My Models in My Garden in Kaposvár are due more to its allegoric quality, a frequent trait of studio scenes. As Walter Benjamin put it in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, the more something is in agreement with the inner logic of allegory, the less it is able to remain connected to reality and refer to its own signified. In other words, the more Rippl-Rónai's painting asserts that it is not merely about a morning in Kaposvár spent painting but - not without the elements of a secular apotheosis - also about the painter, his environment and the art of painting, the more it has to transform and transpose the genre-like, apparently real and everyday elements of the picture. Furthermore, the transposition of elements of reality in the painting derives not only from Rippl-Rónai's flirting with allegory, but also from the painting's decorative mural-like quality. Doubling the models and the canvas within the painting not only unmasks the reality effect, but also makes it evident that in Rippl-Rónai's picture the models are not in any way different from the canvas or the chairs. Represented in poses both artistic and artificial in sharp contrast with the contentment of the dogs and the female family members, the models are present not only as objects to be looked at and as objects of desire (as expounded by John Berger and Linda Nochlin in their discussion of modern nude painting), but also as actual objects that can be used as devices and replaced at will. The affinity between the model and the canvas is nowhere more apparent than in the atelier, where both have the same, rather unenviable, fate of being manipulated by the painter.

2 My Models in My Garden in Kaposvár enhances the difference between the clothed and naked figures, in the vein typical of paintings that cross the nude with the studio scene. Standing on the right of the stage-like space as a Master of Ceremonies, the painter, whose position is further emphasized by the objects and persons belonging to him, inevitably appears as the representative of masculine creativity, capable or ruling and recreating nature, while the unclad female figures are represented as elements with the same status as nature, subjected to the artist. If, as Carol Duncan assumes,' nude painting demonstrates more obviously than anything else that the root and sap of artistic activity is masculine erotic energy, then what is the generic hybrid of nude, studio scene and self-portrait but the visualization of the relationships between sexual and power hierarchy on the one hand and pictorial representation on the other? Charles Harrison notes apropos of Picasso's series of drawings L'atelier du sculpteur that the atelier - and consequently Rippl-Rónai's garden which functions as an interior - is a meeting place for the model and the picture, where the relationships between the various levels of pictorial representation are shown as the various relations of a psychological and sexual hierarchy.

4 The relationship of looking and possession through the eye as it appears in the painting reinforces this hierarchy. Everyone watches the models, while the most their role allows is looking outside, at the viewer, which is what the third model from the right does. Lazarine and Anella can look simultaneously at the models, at the painter and at the viewer before the painting. Entering apparently as a mere minor character, the painter is simultaneously watching and, according to the fiction of the picture, painting what he sees, recreating it like Pygmalion, Frenhofer - like a demiurge. Rippl-Rónai, similarly to his human and animal family members, is in possession of the power to look and see, and is consequently in a privileged position vis-à-vis the models. Since My Models in My Garden in Kaposvár was painted to decorate a grand home in Budapest, the overlapping roles of owner, viewer and painter - roles that converge in the figure of Rippl-Rónai - anticipate the roles of client, future viewer and owner. The unknown person who ordered the painting was given more than a nude. By presenting not only his models but also himself and his environment, RipplRónai is handing over, as it were, his business card to the viewers, guests in the grand home in Budapest; he does so not only in his capacity as a visibly respectable representative of Hungarian modernism, but also as a painter versed in the representation of naked and clothed women, and as a husband and well-to-do member of the Hungarian middle class. Standing on the side of his stage, the figure of Rippl-Rónai unites elements representative of craftsmanship, class-consciousness and status, as well as of masculine consciousness. My Models in My Garden in Kaposvár represents the