Őriné Nagy Cecília (szerk.): A népművészet a 19-20. század fordulójának művészetében és a gödöllői művésztelepen (Gödöllői Múzeumi Füzetek 8. Gödöllői Városi Múzeum, 2006)

Folk Art as Reflected in the Art at the Turn of the 19,h and 20th Centuries and in the Art Colony of Gödöllő. Abstracts in English / Angol nyelvű összefoglalók

Abstracts in English 223 Edit KATONA ethnographer, The Museum of Ethnography of Budapest: ON THE "DECORATIVE BEAUTY" OF THE WEAR OF KALOTASZEG The artists of Gödöllő who were creating in the spirit of secessionism (Jugendstil) in the beginning of the twentieth century have chosen most of the times the wear of Kalotaszeg they held to be "decorative in a distinguished manner" as documentary and inspiring source for the creation of their symbols. Why the attraction to the people of just this particular region? For, these artists have been fighting against the serialized industrial mass production not by idealizing and returning to the Middle Ages and to the Far East, but by relying on contemporary folk art, especially on the one they found in Kalotaszeg and by promoting self sustaining domestic economy based on craftsmanship applying medieval technologies capable of giving the pleasure of doing creative work. The clothing of the people in Kalotaszeg was different from that pattern typically held rural which appeared in the end of the nineteenth century and in which the number of petticoats increased while the became shorter and, upon the influence of the then fashionable hoop-skirts and the pannier. The Kalotaszeg raiment has remained untouched by the influence of this new trend preserving its previous structure characterized by the long skirt with only a few petticoats; suggesting the ideal of a slim, slender stature. The dress of Kalotaszeg called "muszuj" is not whipped in the front and is kilted up at the sides showing a curvaceous, dashing "S" line so much characteristic of the women appearing in Gothic works of art; on the spirit of which art drew also the Pre-Raphaelites, the secessionists' paragons. Among the different ways in which the skirt is turned up, the one applied in the waist at the sides known since the age of Gothic art is the variant of the clothes-adjustment originally made for working and going about, which modification has got petrified in the Sunday best and which withdrew more and more to isolated areas by the time of the twentieth century, surviving for the longest time in Kalotaszeg. In this period of pragmatically creating the "national Hungarian art", the fact of identifying in the folk art and in the wear of Kalotaszeg a lot of preserved archaic features held also to be as national of old times has played an important role in the artists' overall cult of Kalotaszeg. On the other hand, the clothing style of this region was in line with the most modern trends of this period, for, the line in "S" was an essential element of the fashion inspired by secessionist art.