{"id":2588,"date":"2010-11-15T16:26:21","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T15:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meonline.hu\/?p=2588"},"modified":"2011-01-13T17:35:07","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T16:35:07","slug":"a-tekozlo-utokor-bauhaus-kiallitasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meonline.hu\/en\/magyar-epitomuveszet-hirek\/a-tekozlo-utokor-bauhaus-kiallitasa\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bauhaus Exhibition of Prodigal Posterity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hungarians in the Bauhaus, Janus Pannonius Museum, P\u00e9cs, 08. 15\u201310. 24., 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Text: Gy\u00f6rgy Szeg\u0151<\/p>\n

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Moln\u00e1r Farkas: V\u00f6r\u00f6s kockah\u00e1z, 1922-23, makett: Pel\u00e9nyi Margit, 2009<\/p><\/div>\n

Hungarian Bauh\u00e4uslers at home \u2013 the adjective itself right away raises the question: who are these Hungarians actually? International in character, the school was born at the time of the disintegration of historic Hungary, leaving a large number of artists outside the frontiers all of a sudden. After the shock caused by the war many of them turned to the Bauhaus which was to form a basis of European culture wishing to renew itself. Seven of these artists were from P\u00e9cs facing disannexation threatening Baranya county and\/or P\u00e9cs. The joint German\u2013Hungarian exhibition is a great chance, the venture itself is large-scale, but also a lopsided one because of the forcedly ungenerous exhibition site: this is the paradox of a prodigal posterity. In a worthy medium in Berlin (December 1st, 2010\u2013February 21st, 2011) this stop-gap exhibition shall most probably be even more sensational.<\/p>\n

Last year, on the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus its universal emanation earned it the title \u201eone of the cradles of the united Europe\u201d. Hungarian participants include three teachers: Moholy-Nagy, Breuer and Berger Otti, and 22 students: Zsuzsa B\u00e1nki, Ir\u00e9n Bl\u00fch, Lajos Tarai (\u010ca\u010dinovi\u0107), Etel Fodor, P\u00e1l Forg\u00f3 (Fr\u00f6chlich), Hug\u00f3 Johan, Judit K\u00e1r\u00e1sz, Zsuzsanna Leppien, Ern\u0151 Lichtenthal, Farkas Moln\u00e1r, Zsuzsa Markos (Ney), Gyula Pap, Istv\u00e1n Sug\u00e1r (Schwarz), Henrik Stef\u00e1n (Szelle), Margit T\u00e9ry (Adler), Tibor Weiner, Andor Weininger, the Transylanian Saxon-Hungarian Georgina Geuberger, Henrik Neugeboren and Ida Thal, from Vajdas\u00e1g (in the south of historic Hungary) Mikl\u00f3s M\u00fcller and Istv\u00e1n Z\u00e1dor. The list of Hungarians known to have contributed to the Bauhaus is completed by the Transylvanian Ern\u0151 K\u00e1llai editing the Bauhaus journal, and S\u00e1ndor Bortnyik, also from Transylvania, who was an independent painter establishing later on a school of his own in Pest, Alfr\u00e9d Forb\u00e1t (F\u00fcchsl) from P\u00e9cs, who went to work for Gropius\u2019 team and Istv\u00e1n Seb\u0151k from Szolnok.
\nThey had dramatic destinies: B\u00e1nki and Berger died in Auschwitz, Seb\u0151k was killed in Moscow. Moln\u00e1r died in Hungary after being deadly wounded in the war. The Jewish-born Breuer, Moholy-Nagy and Weiniger died in the USA, Forb\u00e1t in Sweden, Etel Fodor in South Africa, Neugeboren in Paris, Stef\u00e1n \u2013 being a Swabian \u2013 was relocated to Germany. Many of them emigrated to remote places all over the world and only a minority lived to be neglected in Hungary after World War II being forced into inner emigration. Some of them chose it so that they could work and even fewer could refute that by today experimental art as such has been forced to live a diaspora life. The school itself could only exert its influence indirectly in the dictatorial regimes formed later on as its spirit was \u201eleftish\u201d for the Nazis and \u201emiddle-class\u201d for the Communists.
\nWith a more positive approach the lives of the artists may be interpreted as follows: the Bauhaus-Modern is a new language created by emigrants to replace their lost mother tongues. According to the list provided by trustees this is the \u201elanguage school\u201d that Gy\u00f6rgy Kepes, Vasarely and Imre (Amerigo) T\u00f3th attended among others.
\nThe exhibition embracing several hundreds of works of art (especially those of fine arts) proves that Hungarian artists of the Bauhaus played a key role in culturally establishing today\u2019s European Union, shaping the character of the modern world \u2013 whether it is liked or not. Of works by Breuer we can see here the Wassily tubular steel chair inspired by a bicycle frame as well as the teasing women\u2019s dressing table. The latter evokes the Light-Space modulator by Moholy-Nagy, the reconstruction designs of which were made by Istv\u00e1n Seb\u0151k in 1930. Important works by Seb\u0151 displayed at the Schirn\/Frankfurt Moholy-Nagy exhibition are missing now but it is much of a surprise to see here the designs of the theatre in Gy\u0151r. Epochal theatre designs by Weininger are exhibited according to their rank \u2013 the model of the K\u00fcgel Theater was constructed by Margit Pel\u00e9nyi and Mikl\u00f3s Szab\u00f3 (just like those of other houses) especially for this occasion. The mechanical stage, pieces of scenic music by Weininger as well as \u201eform-producing plays\u201d narrated in stage situation by Gyula Pap and Vilmos Husz\u00e1r also strengthen the stage section. To efficiently illustrate correlations, works by Bortnyik are displayed in a separate room \u2013 much in the same way as an entire unit in the minor exhibition building of Janus Pannonius Museum was devoted to the early years of P\u00e9cs Artists\u2019 Circle. Here there are genuine architectural sensations such as three Futuristic mausoleum designs by Lajos Tarai (\u010ca\u010dinovi\u0107): they appear as earlier \u201eversions\u201d of Scarpa\u2019s tomb design preceding them by 40 years. Works by the artists\u2019 circle of Kass\u00e1k made in Vienna and Budapest are also flashed as the antecedents of Bauhaus. The Red House by Farkas Moln\u00e1r had already been displayed at the first contemporary Bauhaus exhibition presenting the impetus of activists as an unruly kind of architecture. Everyone had genres in mind back in those days, it was Hungarian students who proposed to have a separate section of architects as they were experimenting with \u201ewhat and how an architect should study\u201d. And at last, the temporary proposal that bus tours are organized twice every week to visit the houses designed by Forb\u00e1t still existing in P\u00e9cs is even more tangible and self-evident than models.
\nThe task trustees \u00c9va Bajkay, Annamarie Jaeggi and Gy\u00f6rgy V\u00e1rkonyi had to undertake was made impossible by ECC (Europena Cultural Capital) P\u00e9cs due to the ungenerous and wasteful gesture of choosing the location. The exhibition hall planned to be one of the main projects of ECC had not been completed. That would be suited to present the topic with a different set of instructions and more ambitious visual concept than here in the zigzagging row of spaces amongst JPM dwelling houses in K\u00e1ptalan Street. The primal debate generated apropos of the possible focuses of ECC P\u00e9cs had already lost sight of the fact that Bauhaus does not mean trench war at present \u2013 it should mean the values of a recognized tradition (this sort of historic approach now also holds true for Modernism as such much in the same way as for the anti-avantgarde, typically Hungarian Neo-Baroque and Neo-Classicist painting and architecture of \u00c1rk\u00e1dia). It is only \u201edelayed development\u201d and the contrast of vernacular-urban opposition that prevents us from fair judgement. The unavoidable conclusion of peace is also hindered by the commitment of the movement to avantgarde… The co-existence of arts had already asserted itself in Itten\u2019s school in a similar way, just like in Mathildenh\u00f6he and G\u00f6d\u00f6ll\u0151. The naive reviewer however, has the feeling that it is yet another missed opportunity: P\u00e9cs could have realized now a permanent Bauhaus exhibition and research basis within the framework German-Hungarian cooperation of this scale. The archives in Berlin was the joint (!) production of the two German states in 1986\u2026
\nA positive fact: being an organic part of the visual image of the exhibition, the 420-page catalogue designed by Zsolt Czak\u00f3 is a genuine masterpiece including 20 studies and 450 illustrations. The same holds true for the film made by K\u00e1roly Kism\u00e1nyoki on the Bauhaus in P\u00e9cs. Despite the difficulties described above the evocation of Bauh\u00e4uslers from P\u00e9cs is a large-scale and high-standard one. It may also help us to finally take the warning advice by Simone Weil: \u201eLet us learn to appreciate what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

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