Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
FROM PARIS TO NAGYBÁNYA - PÉTER MOLNOS: Budapest: The "Paris of the East" in the Hungarian Wilderness
The i/'f/e page 77ie title page of the magazine of the magazine Modern Művészet A Ház (The House) Designed by Artúr Lakatos chitecture, but the articles on painting were complemented with illustrations of first-rate quality. György Bölöni wrote an extensive study on Kernstok, Lajos Fülep discussed Rippl-Rónai's art in a lengthy essay, and Rezső Bálint regularly sent detailed exhibition reviews from Paris. On the pages of the magazine, several works of modern conception were reproduced, such as the portrait of Béla Czóbel by Kernstok (Cat. No. 145) or one painting each by Manguin and Matisse. When the editors decided to publish Matisse's writing, The Notes of a Painter in the fourth volume of the magazine, it was an exceptional act and, from the viewpoint of our subject-matter, a singularly important decision. In relation to all the other contemporary magazines, A Ház had undoubtedly the most radical tone and clear-cut direction, appearing to be the exception that proved the rule. That this was only an appearance can easily be seen from the fact that, although the magazine was able to disseminate the values of modern Hungarian art without making compromises, the unbending line it took probably contributed to its early expiration. Although it managed to stay in existence only for one year, Aurora, a monthly magazine of art, theatre and music, employed an unbeatable team of authors. Its editorial policies in relation to art were developed by György Bölöni, an unflagging supporter of Nyolcak. Edited by Andor Cserna, the magazine published writings by Béla Balázs, Géza Csáth, Ede Kabos, Dezső Kosztolányi, Anna Lesznai, Józsi Jenő Tersánszky, Margit Kaffka, Emma Ritoók and Georg Lukács, among others. The illustrious list faithfully represents the small circle of extremely talented Budapest intellectuals who constituted the social base for the emerging Hungarian modern painting. The Social Background: Friends, Supporters and Patrons Although new Hungarian painting was born in Paris, the audience that embraced it back at home and joined arms with the progressive artists fought its campaigns here in the Hungarian capital. The most vociferous supporters were philosophers, sociologists, writers and journalists: the progressive elements in Hungary, who almost without exception lived in Budapest and longed to be in Paris. In the early years of the 20 th century, members of this young generation became acutely aware of the country's backwardness, a feeling that was most forcefully expressed in The title page of Title page of Endre Ady's Uj versek the magazine Aurora (New Poems, third edition, 1912) Designed by Mihály Bíró Designed by Elek Falus Ady's poetry. After 1906, when he published a volume of poems under the title New Poems, this experience came to permeate the entire society. All this was, however, bound up with the demand for change: high hopes and Utopia characterized the entire period, probably the most turbulent period in Hungarian history. Everything was imbued with the desire for something new, as well as with a deep-seated urge for public action. This demand favoured the formation of new communities, which emerged and dissolved rapidly. In tracing out the circle of patrons for the new Hungarian painting, we come up with those societies, academic circles and groups, which in their own areas of interest fought for the same new ideas as Czóbel, Berény and the others did in fine art. To list all the tiny islands of progressive thought would take quite long: the magazine Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century), the social science society Társadalomtudományi Társaság, the Galileo Circle, Thália Társaság, UMZE—the most important forum of modern music —, or certain Free Masonic lodges. However, the closer links between the societies and fine art developed on another level and they were much more pertinent to the history of Nyolcak than of the "Hungarian Fauves". In the interpretation of contemporary progressive thinking, artworks were public acts and, as a consequence, the political content permeated almost everything. However, when the new painting was born, and when Czobel, Berény, Perlrott and their friends started out in Nagybánya and Paris, they focused on purely artistic problems, independent of any elements alien to art. These few years proved to be an experimental period for creating a new vocabulary of forms, and the appearance of Nyolcak brought about a radically new situation both as far as form and content were concerned: the deliberate emphasis on structure and composition was fundamentally incompatible with Fauvism's preference of spontaneity and colours at the expense of composition. The rationally and conceptually well-founded "Cézannism", finetuned by Nyolcak, was much better suited to the purposes of the radical bourgeois intellectuals in their fight for social reforms. This is one of the reasons why, in our study of the Budapest basis of the "Hungarian fauves", we need to focus on a later stage of the "evolutionary development", a period that can be reconstructed with much more clarity, because that will enable us to shed light on the inherent confusion of the murky beginnings. There is no need to draw a clear distinction between the various tendencies of modern art on the basis
