Veszprémi Nóra - Szücs György szerk.: Vaszary János (1867–1939) gyűjteményes kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2007/3)

Tanulmányok: - PLESZNIVY EDIT: „Aranykor". Vaszary János művészete 1896-1910 között

EDIT PLESZNIVY The "Golden Age" THE ART OF JÁNOS VASZARY BETWEEN 1896 AND 1910 SYMBOLISM : 1896-1901 From the mid-i890S, a new period began in the work of János Vaszary, in which, though maintaining the earlier naturalistic features, he sought to convey a conception pointing far beyond pure sight, and conjure up ancient myths and collective experiences. This was the time he produced his Art Nouveau works that brought him fame at home and abroad. Numerous prizes, foreign exhibitions, public and private purchases attested his achievement. Visionary shapes unfolding from various hues of green characterize his work at this time. Regarded unique even by contemporaries, his 1898 Golden Age (Cat. No. 23) is an emblematic picture. It was selected for the most prestigious international muster, the 1900 Paris World's Fair, where the jury awarded it with a bronze prize. Vaszary's combination of naturalism and Art Nouveau decorativism can be related to the symbolist art of German-speaking areas, his works recalling those of Ludwig von Hoffmann, Franz von Stuck, Gustav Klimt, and Hans Thoma. At the turn of the century, many an artist sought to hold up the classical community ideal in an antique environment. They believed they could find the harmony of an "earthly paradise" in an ancient medium. Moreover, such an Arcadian milieu and an idiosyncratically recreated mythological imagery presented possible answers to social, philosophical and psychological questions arising in the period. Some artists had their creatures flee to the happiness of yore, while others shrouded their world in metaphysical timelessness. Adam and Eve (Cat. No. 27) and Boy Feeding Peacocks (Cat. No. 29) are Vaszary's dreams of an undefiled, pristine state. Fellows of his stalky adolescent boys in the latter often recur in the European painting of the time. The panneau entitled News was his first commission for a public institution. Its plane-like decorativism and Arcadian scene is suggestive of Puvis de Chavannes, through whose mediation the classical harmony of early Renaissance fresco painting was revived in the canvases of the painters of the era. One of the major life-philosophy issues of the Fin de siècle, the relationship between man and woman, sexuality, was expressed in a mythological or Biblical guise and by way of cultural topoi. Vaszary has couples appear as Adams and Eves either seeking refuge with a nostalgic resignation in Paradisal security, or, expelled from there, living defenceless in a world of anxieties. The female figures of the time often take on the images of their archetypal predecessors: Eve, the mother of humankind, or Salome, the femme fatale. Though influenced and shaped by contemporary aspirations, Vaszary's visual development was autonomous, the self-determined way he took as a painter excluded direct influences. The European parallels mentioned meant a broadly defined intellectual perspective, points of orientation, helping or justifying his personal quest. NUDES, INTERIORS AND GARDENS Nudes have a distinguished place in Vaszary's art. From the beginning of the 1900s, he serially painted naked women. The prototypes of his gently shaped figures looming out of dark backgrounds can be found in the art of Eugène Carrière, the impulses of which may have reached Vaszary through József Rippl-Rónai. The fin de siècle was fond of erotically charged studio pictures. In many of his nudes, Vaszary couples and contrasts naked and dressed figures with a particularly refined sensuality. Naturally, he had nothing in common with the voyeuristic boudoir lewdness of 19th-century salon painting; instead, he approached the intimacy of the private sphere with a reticent reverence and an outstanding painterly craftsmanship. His withdrawn attitude came to its fulfilment in his series of interiors. He modelled his female figures living their everyday lives and easing up harmoniously in their activities usually after his wife. The precursors of these taciturn pictures of states are the interiors of the impressionists and the Nabis. The duality of his character remarked on by several contemporaries is manifest in his Self-Portrait (Cat. No. 36). He was an aristocrat in his manners, dress and life-style, but a rebel and fighter in matters of art. Described by so many, the eruptive force of his being can be sensed by posterity in the thick masses of oil, the glowing colours and the full-tilt stroke of brush in his pictures of his expressive period and the passionate tone of his writings on art. Between 1904 and 1907, his art underwent a major stylistic change. His brushstrokes, which had tediously circumscribed forms and been kept contiguous, now loosened up, fell apart into small spots of colour, blurring the contours of objects. In several of his interiors, he, as it were, opened up space and went out into the open air. He now had a circle with a larger radius to enclose his personal world in: going beyond the subjective space of the studio, he began to accommodate a garden at Tata, a pathway at the Balaton or the view of a verdant hillside. FOLK SUBJECT MATTER, NATIONAL ART: 1900-1904 At the beginning of the 1900s, some of Vaszary's paintings dealt with the everyday life of peasants. This subject matter had already appeared in the naturalistic conversation pieces of the 1890s. In addition, it was folk motifs and elements of folk art he exclusively used in his applied-art work unfolding at the turn of the century. Moreover, he sought to treat the issue of a national art in terms of theory, too; though he made sure to distance himself from folk themes in his later periods, he kept returning to the theme as such in his writings. His situation was rather precarious: he had to formulate answers worthy of a progressive artist in an intellectual climate dominated by a conservative cultural policy increasingly manifesting itself solely in formalities and catchphrases. The pictures he produced in this period are organically related to the traditions of Hungarian Great Plains painting. Primarily, however, they have affinity with Adolf Fényes's series entitled The Life of the Poor, the spirit of which has its roots in German "Arme Leute" painting. Artists working in the regions of the Great Plains could hardly keep aloof from the grave economic hardships people living there had to undergo. At this time, Vaszary had official connections to the artists' colony in Szolnok, a centre of traditional realistic genre painting. The best of his folk-theme paintings are the compositions in which his figures acquire monumental proportions, mature to symbolic