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

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - BERNÁTH Mária: Egy közép-európai modell. Hatás és asszimiláció Rippl-Rónai József festői munkásságában

also in Hungary to transcend Impressionism and to endow highly intellectual content with a less obviously "artistic" form. In 1910, it was not a Margitay genre or Zemplényi interior but Tihanyi's Dance or the pictures of young artists just leaving the group The Circle of Hungarian Impressionists and Naturalists (abbreviated in Hungarian as MIENK) and soon to form The Eight which must be compared with Rippl-Rónai's Park with nudes. It was inevitable that the artists of the Eight having left the MIENK group, organized their show in 1911 leaving Rippl-Rónai out, although he himself still felt, at 50, that he was the leader of young painters. He was still trying to naturalize the stylistic technique of the Fauves when his younger colleagues were no longer concentrating on the formal consequences of this trend, instead probing into the intellectual content, whose expressive system of connotations could be manifested in this style. The question of whether the developmental tendencies of Hungarian art

101 were in need of what Rippl-Rónai mediated in this stylistic period, and whether he succeeded, as in his previous periods, in transplanting the French style into the Hungarian content, cannot unequivocally be answered in the affirmative, undoubtedly, however, these pictures are the outcome of his most spectacular, and apparently his most modern and triumphant period. His dotted pictures constitute a unique range in the map of Hungarian art. He founded no school with them, and attracted no active followers.

102 Against the background of a period beset with myriads of stylistic problems, the distinguished place of these pictures is guaranteed by an explicit joy in life that is rare in Hungarian art, and by technical mastery. But the bridge between the spiritual currents of West Europe and Hungary was already being constructed by another generation. His pastels do not adjust to his typical stylistic periods, being subordinated to the dictates of the technique. The procedure of dotting could only be truly effective in oil, while in pastel, the tones were achieved by rubbed surfaces. The method of "painting all at once" cultivated by Rippl often resulted in a formidable tempo of composition, whereby a picture was completed at one sitting. Rippl never waited for inspiration: work was no relaxation for him, but it was as natural as breathing. This implies that "he was in pursuit of the line of the least resistance from which he swept everything aside that might disturb the tasteful ease of his solution."

103 Writing in 1925, Ernő Kállai strongly disapproved of Rippl's manner of problem solving. The slightly mawkish, stuffy atmosphere of his pastels, the provocative beauty have proved a sensual attraction for decades, although we are aware that they were somewhat inadequate answers to the spiritual and artistic problems of their age. They are addressed to an existing layer of reception and taste in which the longing for harmony and beauty is enduring and insuppressible. Nevertheless, he also clearly laid claim to a sort of prophetic role. Not discouraged by a degree of didactic unanimity, he periodically portrayed himself and the outstanding writers, aesthetes of Hungary in great pastels; "I will portray ...all those who are making this small trunk country great, its culture well-known..."

104 He determined his presence and role in the "spiritual advancement" of his country with this clearly stated intellectual programme. Rippl-Rónai's intellectual alignment ran counter to the political and geographical mainstream of his age. This "otherness", this intellectual withdrawal from Vienna, the Monarchy and, stylistically, from the academies, was understandably judged as an apparent rootlessness in his native environment. Zsigmond Justh saw clearly that "in the spiritual atmosphere of Paris... normally those members of artistic and literary trends could find their intellectual abode who were a few generations ahead of their times in refinement."

105 As a key figure of modern Hungarian art, Rippl-Rónai's escape from artistic norms that were of long standing in the Monarchy, his remarkable negation of the artistic environment into which he had been born, was of decisive influence for the subsequent course of Hungarian art. That holds true, despite the fact that he was not alone in rejecting the stylistic ideal of the Monarchy. He assumed fully consciously the role of the mediator, which was not a popular or lucrative role at the turn of the century. "... we are branded as unpatriotic, although the international currents of culture, correctly understood, also imply patriotic intentions," he said.

105 Rippl was not adrift on a current: he knew what wanted to do, and did it. Cumulatively he added the stylistic impulses of the West to the Hungarian artistic patrimony. The œuvres of few artists active around the turn of the century have included so many clearly differentiated periods of style: he grasped an immense amount from Western culture, held it up to view, and translated it into a "Ripplean" and pecularly Hungarian language. Obviously, the heterogeneous impressions he had received could only be hammered into a homogeneous œuvre under the guidance of his talent. His life-work marks the dividing line between past and present in Hungarian art, and, with a bit of exaggeration, it might be contended that his painting became such a standard of measure from the very first years of this century that the acceptance or rejection of it became the criterion of openness to modernism. What he could experience and elaborate, he did: when he had completed the work, there was nothing to add to it. "... he enjoyed this life to the full, enthusiastically and lavishly."

107 NOTES 3 The register of Kaposvár gives May report sheet in Paris. HNG (Hungarian 25th as the day of József Rippl's birth National Gallery) Data Coll., inv.no. ' Rippl-Rónai 1957. 130. (Horváth 1995. 11). In a questionnaire of the 1324/1920/b, and idem, inv.no. 4882. His 2 Several other studies in this catalogue Museum of Fine Arts filled by hand on 1 Dec. own statement should be taken as authentic, as well as the chronology can be consulted 1908, he indicated 23 May as the date of his 4 Letter of József Rippl-Rónai to his parfor the career path and bibliography. birth, and noted the same date in the police ents. Kahlsburg, 14 Dec. 1883. MTA