Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)
Funeral Art in the Second Half of the 20th Century
(F 44/6). On the other hand, Szervátiusz's son Tibor has made several funeral works of great importance standing now in Farkasrét Cemetery, Unveiled in 1985, his work marking the grave of László Nagy is an idol-like stone reinterpretation of the traditional Flungarian wooden tomb-piece made in the shape of a totem pole adorned with a human face and an epitaph written in runes (F 25). His Christ-head of a moving beauty made for the tomb of Zoltán Káldy (F 28) was made in 1989, and in 1992 he completed Jenő Szervátiusz’s tombstone evoking the atmosphere of a ballad (F 24/3). Tibor Szervátiusz's most recent work was finished in 2004; representing the miracle stag bearing the sun in its antlers, the piece marks the grave of Mihály Czine (F 6/2). The only work of his set up in Kerepesi út Cemetery so far stands over the grave of Gyula Gombos (K 42/1). A large number of funeral commissions have been carried out in an individual style by Imre Varga. The creativity of his well-known chromium-steel compositions cannot be doubted; his works certainly transcend the conventional formulae of funereal art. However, their virtue is their one greatest weakness, too: these pieces stand out of their funeral environment and, ignoring the traditions of the genre, promote the idea that anything will do as a funeral monument. That is especially true for Varga’s works in Kerepesi út Cemetery, where these avant-garde installations create a jarring effect in an historical ambiance created by much more conventional monuments, as is the case with Mihály Mosonyi's tomb unveiled in 1995 (K 29/2). Varga's best-known works can be found in Farkasrét Cemetery. These include Hanna Honthy's funeral monument completed in 1982; on it, the traditional place of the headstone is occupied by a chromium-steel dressing table with makeup paraphernalia, a vase with a bunch of roses, and a mirror above vaguely suggesting the prima donna's likeness. With the excesses of the monument meant as a reflection on the operetta genre, the work is by no means a piece of kitsch but a composition of acute thematic relevance (F 25). The same cannot quite be said for the tomb of Lajos Básti unveiled in 1980 (F 22/1), topped with a throne of stone wherein a crown and a pallet, props belonging to the actor's greatest tragic role, the part of King Lear, are placed. Both works revive a widely used funeral motif: a subdued, metonymic, indication of evanescence, so that rather than representing a likeness of the deceased, the tomb features the abandoned objects associated with the person of the decedent. Tibor Déry's tomb gives a decidedly pop-art interpretation to another conventional motif: a pathway set in real cobblestones lead up to the tomb where it continues in the shape of a chromium-steel relief before it gets to the traditional representation of a gate (F 22). 63
