Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Rippl-Rónai József gyűjteményes kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1998/1)

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - KESERŰ Katalin: Műfajok és műtípusok Rippl-Rónai művészetében

KATALIN KESERŰ The lifework of RipplRónai illustrates the 19th century development of unification that took place in the technical, thematic and functional genres of art. Parallel with that, art types that came to characterize the 20th century can also be demonstrated. These picture types appear together, too as regards function (autonomous, subjective, metaphysical) and mode of presentation (representative, evocative, abstract). From this complexity, one can infer a peculiar feature of synthetisme. Its basis is a complex notion of the picture to be unravelled from Rippl's picture-in-the-picture motif. This suggests that he was guided by a conscious will to innovate: to correlate the sight with the plane, and at the same time, to bring the concept of the picture as the visualization of the real, the inner and an ideal world and their combinations (pointing to spiritual and formal abstraction) to bear. The temporal structure of the picture is indefinite, with the role of memory emphasized. This also links Rippl to the synthetism of the age. 1. His art genres and types imply an individual interpretation of sythetism. This is apparent, in technical terms, in the merging of drawing and painting, in the emergence of the (purified) picture reduced to the beginning of visualization, to drawing (1891), and in the demonstrable significance of drawing, paper (cardboard, paste-board) and pastel, then in contouring, all through his lifework. Another point of departure in his painting is a colour scheme reduced to black (1889). In the use of the short brushstrokes of vivid colour from around 1907, he represented a new pictorial concept but in all these ways the mimetic and non-mimetic (abstract) types unite in his work. In regard to technique (also in his flair for lithography) the inspiration drawn from Japanese art and the contemporaneous efforts of the Pont-Aven circle can be cited as parallel phenomena. 2. As for his themes, he is a portraitist in the first place (faces and busts, 3/4th and full figures, double and group portraits), if we take his figures shown in conversation scenes, in interiors, landscapes or gardens as portraits. His portraits are synthesizing, mainly pictures of states, showing the inner world in a floating (metaphysical) or interior space. Pensive faces and the peculiar subtle gestures of figures holding something in their hands turn his portraits unique in the Nabis's circle; in another group of his portraits, the singularity is the figure filling the entire picture field. The spiritual and real meaning and significance of the picture and the personality can be inferred from these pictures. A subgroup of his portraits contains representations of artists (Nabis, Revue Blanche circle, Hungarian artists, writers of the periodical Nyugat). In genre painting, he revived and renewed the actionless standing type, conceiving it synthetically, like still-lifes. This he did differently from Vuillard but with a similar approach, which is indicative of the importance of their relationship. The garden as interiorized landscape represents the inner life. Similarly to his portraits and genre pictures, his garden scenes, at times in "open" perspective, in an indefinite (free) space, are pictures of states, too. Their graphic series (Les Vierges) does not only have neoPlatonist implications through the title, but being based on the variation of pictorial elements, it also anticipates the later serial works, and (with Rodenbachs subsequently written text) the merging, synthesis of literature and fine arts. His interiors with motifs of the garden (wall carpet, stained-glass windows, glassware, china sets) identify the garden and the interior. His garden scenes with nudes show the idea of "Beauty" in the unification of the earthly paradise and Arcadia. His interior pictures are like still-lifes, also in his artistic circle. By structural reduction, the early multi-layered interiors (places of the visible and inner worlds) became the starting point for formal abstraction. 3. In terms of function, he combined the fine and applied art functions of picture. In his first tapestries (1892), the richness of the message is conspicuous, so is the communal function of the works. From the mid'90s, with the ascendancy of the decorative function, the personal purpose also comes to a head: to work out the complex, formal and spiritual effect of the interiors. The fusion of arts - fine and applied -, of genres, functions and techniques could be effected in RipplRónai's oeuvre on the basis of a fundamental reduction (return to the roots). That was coincidental with the contemporary process of "demotion and promotion", resulting in the joint existence of the real, abstract and spiritual types of art: a unity prior to, and in anticipation of, the diverging tendencies of the 20th century. Genres and art types in Rippl-Rónai's œuvre