Beyond the Meat-Grinder
An introduction to Kovásznai György’s life-work by Brigitta Iványi-Bitter
“My dear artist gentlemen, You have become dulled by your own avant-gardism. The aesthetic devices have become so coarse that they are stirred only by the loudest gestures of fashion. With the compromise of vision, in bad faith, they have placed the kitsch vision on the same level as authentic vision, which could be accomplished again only with the aid of intentionally degraded means.” 1
This is the discourse of György Kovásznai with Takamura, his Japanese animation colleague, and imaginary debating partner, on the state of art in the late 70s and early 80s, as considered from the East toward the “West”. And as I read this essay of art philosophy encoded with vitriolic humour, I feel with increasing conviction that Kovásznai is more timely today than he ever could have been for his contemporaries.
Kovásznai was incidentally a seasoned debater and critic, clearly and keenly diagnosing the absurdities of the cultural condition of his age. For him, unconditional tolerance of the plurality and simultaneity of genres, styles and isms was the essential condition, as he himself was a writer, painter and animation filmmaker, all in one person.
The art historical styles playfully alternating in his works are truly virtuosic quotations, and not passages aspiring to become one with the artist’s identity. The manifold application of various formal systems is based on a comprehensive knowledge of music, literature and art history, and the canalisation of a diversity of expertise into synergies. Kovásznai, considerably overtaking the intellectual velocity of the era of building socialism, consciously attempts to pass between genres: “..it is high time for those who have deteriorated their chosen traditional-classical genres into mere materialism, to abandon their assumed roles as destiny; in other words, to resoundingly kick aside their flashy dioramas.” 2
This open artistic approach to interdisciplinarity was not common in his time, and it is due to this that the myth of eccentric genius soon hovers over his figure and his work among smaller circles. “Perhaps it is just this versatility that is the reason that no single guild, clique, association, or organisation safeguarding common interests or resistance has ever accepted him in his life. He was not a member either of the Art Foundation, or of the Writers’ Association. He never had a solo exhibition as long as he lived, his writings were not published, and his plays were not staged.”3
The circumstances of his departure
Within the conditions of 1950s Hungary, the particular individually variegated tone of his works meant that he relinquished the possibility of public exhibition. He could not proclaim that he was enthusiastically researched as many directions as possible. “The members of the generation born in the thirties, due to their age, did not possess either personal experience or memory of the art prior to “Soc-Real”, “officially” could not even know of the existence of other traditions, and the perception of their absence was not even obvious to them all. Namely, every direct channel to modern art was closed to the young; they could not balance or correct their uniplanar picture of conservative training and the strictly controlled exhibitions with journeys abroad, Western publications or catalogues.” 4
He commenced his “examination” and questioning of the art world surrounding him early on.
His naive belief in a worthy career as a painter maintained itself to some degree while he attended the high school of fine arts, but the bigoted teaching faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts disillusioned him from his professional dreams with tempestuous velocity. In 1954 he even abandoned the academy, but two years later he returned on the invitation of Aurél Bernáth. By this time, however, he is no longer of the opinion that the completion of the academy of the time is at all a prerequisite for credible artistic work. His former classmate József Bartl related that once before a class, Kovásznai said to him, “listen, there is so much greyness here, that if we would bring in a red apple and put it on the table, and paint it, it too would become grey.” 5 Already by the age of twenty-three, he expressly rejected the – as he put it – stylistic dictatorship of Soc-Real, and Endre Domanovszky and Aurél Bernáth fiercely attacked his paintings, one after the other; finally, in due form, he is kicked out of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. His scepticism, however, in the authenticity of cultural production born on either side of Cold War Europe discourages him, after all, from seeking to belong to any sort of fashionable trend whatsoever. Neither here, nor there.
His relationship to the avant-garde
Outside of the institutionalised art world, as he put it: beyond the artistic meat-grinder of the fifties he finds the living artistic tradition that he feels to be authentic. Through Dezső Korniss, he discovers the Szentendre School, the Rottenbiller utca art colony, and the members of the European School forced to go underground.
Korniss is a prominent living bridge between the avant-garde of the early 20th century and the young generation setting out in the late 50s. This is especially visible in his creative collaboration with Kovásznai. They have in common that they both like to think about art in broad perspectives, and that their extraordinary professional knowledge is redolent in all their works. Korniss and Vajda’s far-reaching artistic programme of the 30s, constructive surrealist schematic, is conceived in the spirit of the new art of Central and Eastern Europe, and which is intended to constitute a bridge between French and Russian art. Kovásznai?s approach is similar: he endeavours to create a synthesis between genres and styles.
They both have an affinity for experimenting with various formal solutions simultaneously. The associational field created through the works that provided a main role for so-called “chance” was dominantly surrealist. With the amalgamation of modern formal language and the animation technique that was entirely new in Hungary in the early 60s, the five experimental animation and live-action films they produced together bore witness to the potential dialogue between cultural identities and generations.
What could the European School and the modernism mediated by it have meant for Kovásznai? According to the texts cited in this volume, a ray of hope that there is life beyond the meat-grinder. In Hungary, at the time of Kovásznai’s departure, modernity and the avant-garde played a heroic role in their illegality, while in Western Europe they ran out of steam, short-winded. It was a paradoxical situation. In a number of essays, Kovásznai attempted to reduce the modernist and socialist ideals to a common denominator. In his essay entitled Self-Interview in this volume, we find a reference that in parallel with the crisis of the avant-garde in 1960s Western Europe, Kovásznai attempted to distinguish the particular Eastern European task of this artistic phenomenon: the avant-garde should realise the radical phase as characteristic of socialist society: its own continuation.
His artistic position is interesting because his conviction is unequivocally based on the conceptual system of the avant-garde. In his art theoretical writings, he works on the belief in every development of modernism to discover “the socialist art that is more avant-garde than the avant-garde” while at the same time, he sharply criticises the existing socialism, and participation in the official art scene. While in the Western Europe of the time, the focus is on “high vs low”, Kovásznai contemplates on the era from the mid-50s, as to how he could filter the proletarian life experience into his own artistic approach. At the age of 22 – at first, by his own devices – he leaves the academy and works in the mines, in part so that he will not be drafted into the army, and according to his later recollections, in order to perhaps comprehend the reality of the socialist ideal from a more authentic source, “the Real Model”(see p. 34). The result strikes him down: the socialist, just as the modernist ideal, does not offer a clue to either the new society or the new art even under ground.
It is worth noting how the modernist and socialist ideals meet in the inner dialogue of artistic synthesis-creation. Towards the end of his life, he writes in a unique essay: “Unfortunately, the naturalism of the past century has embedded itself more deeply into our cells than we may have believed. Unfortunately, the avant-garde, after the truly authentic playfulness of its beginnings, has sunken into its much deeper positivism and toadying, and it is overcome with the solemnity of the schools.” 6
It belongs closely to the interpretational framework that Kovásznai in the late 60s received a concrete invitation for a stipend from the Volkwang Museum in Essen, but he turned it down and he continued his active creative work in Hungary (see p. 38). In connection with this, he declares in one of his dialogues in Homeland-Animation: “Instead of this higher edifying alternative entitled system-denigration or system-glorification which is unfortunately quite deeply ingrained in us, wave a concrete and differentiated Hungary-image before our creative eyes. Not to mention the system-denigration camouoflaged in fashionable parables, which by now winks so indiscriminately that finally it doesn’t know itself which way to wink. Save this grammar-school intrigue and parlour games for the film festivals.” 7
Adventures in the Hungarian Disneyland
While he didn’t go to Essen, it was a pleasure for him to travel to Annecy, where his painting-animationfilms were shown together with the best of his international contemporaries. Kovásznai creates a significant part of his oeuvre within the animation genre. “Life brings” the possibilities concealed in the animation technique, when in 1961, first as a writer, József Nepp invites him to the Pannónia Film Studio to write a script. Kovásznai soon senses the untapped possibilities inherent in the genre, first and foremost, that in this genre he can fulfil his talents as a painter, graphic artist and writer simultaneously. They swiftly take notice of him at Pannónia, which is the creative oasis of the era.
“We had to fight hardest for the film proposals of a lanky, extremely thin, awkward young man. His name: György Kovásznai. He did not belong to the staff of the studio, familiar with the ins and outs of the profession from their praxis, labouring under their burden of the staff of the studio. He was an outsider. With every advantage and disadvantage that goes along with it. The disadvantage was that even the professionals were dumbfounded by his ideas. Anyone who has ever had a taste of the mindboggling Sisyphaen labour of phase-drawing – the drawing of each movement sequence millimetre by millimetre – truly must have considered Kovásznai to be a fantasizer. He, however, didn’t give a hoot about professional-technical impossibility, and this was the immense advantage of his outsiderness. Which cannot be confused with dilettantism, nor amateurism. It simply meant the freedom of his outsiderness, a graceful and poetic overcoming of the technical absolutism of the craft and the workshop. [...] He obstinately always achieved the impossible. And by then, not as an outsider. By then, up to his neck in the profession. [...] He was a remarkable, autonomous painter of an original world – and I would not dare to say that he was first or only a painter. He was just as much of an inimitable and original animation filmmaker, but his talent could not be expressed exclusively in this genre, as here too, it was painting that he did. Moreover, not applied, but sovereign painting, without compromises – and yet animation films valuable in their own right were produced by his hand. Yet he was also a writer, and a creator of just as an original formal and expressive world. He was not only the scriptwriter of his films, but also a writer of prose and drama. In such a way that the writer did not occupy the painter, so that his visual universe did not become novelistic, or worse, anecdotal.” 8
In no matter which genre he created, he was always engaged in the possibility of a credible sapproach to reality. He undertakes the elucidation of this in his Letter to my Philosopher Friend and his philosophical study, Aspects of the Total and the Incomparably Concrete, and this is also why he realises his filmmaking concept which he calls “anima verité”, and which he first formulates in the conception of his animated film entitled “Blossoming No. 3369″ (see p. 52).
For Kovásznai, animation was the genre most closely linked with the fine arts.
“We approach the complex-self with a complex-genre, i.e., animation. And yet, we do not consider it an independent genre, but rather just a technique, which leads us back to the lost, classic, genuine genre.” 9 Kovásznai always scrupulously watches, so that the formal framework does not become the aim instead of the means. His experiments within animation are as far-flung as collage-film to painting-film, to the amalgamation of live-action elements, so that he is capable of authentically bringing his finished thoughts and experiences into these freshly employed frames, into which the genre and the technical solution is poured, as into a mould. The true-to-life quality of his paintings and films is due to this.
Dr László Végh and his circle
He deliberately forms his intellectual milieu around the older representatives of modernism still to be found and the selected writers, composers and visual artists of his own generation. The underground public, as the sole inspiring environment, begins in 1958 to emerge at the events of Dr László Végh. ?Of course, the neo-avant-garde, in its semi-illegality, spreading the then evolving subculture through its various channels, did the most for the official notion of art for radical change. Alongside the isolated smaller circles (such as those assembling in the Muskátli Presszó around László Végh, among them: Kálmán Kecskeméti and György Kovásznai will be members of the latter No. 1 group) [...] the communities of friends organised around a common interest comprised the core of the later neo-avant-garde organisations.”10
“In 1958 László Végh launched the new Hungarian avant-garde movement. In the year of the execution of Imre Nagy, he commenced the most active intellectual-political opposition possible at the time. It was in his flat that György Kovásznai read his drama aloud before a group of fifty.” 11
Dr Végh’s artistic platform embracing 50-200 people was nurtured by his commitment to contemporary music; he composed the first electronic musical works in Hungary. Contemporary music always played an important role at his events, which had an inspiring influence on the ever increasing number of writers and artists taking part, as well. ?As a demonstration of our activity, for instance, in 1964 we had private events taking place on an average of every two and a half days. Here this should be understood as private or public happenings, as well as dance occasions. We were aware of the secret agents, and we deactivated them in a direct fashion. There was, for instance, an event in which a large bulletin board was posted with the following text: Don’t report us, we’ve already reported ourselves! And what in fact did the authorities do meanwhile? They harassed us, beat us, kicked us out, spied on us, banned us, kept us in fear.” 12
The readings and presentations of each other’s works meant an exchange of ideas with an audience who understood, and feedback. And not least, the greatest source material for today?s researchers, since from 1958 until about 1970, Dr Végh meticulously archived the sound recordings and occasionally film material of the lectures, performances and readings. (It is thanks to this that the sound material recorded of György Kovásznai?s readings of his dramas, novellas and philosophical essays has remained.) The period around 1970 was the turning point in the world view of this group: it was around this time that the hope died in them, that the existing socialism could bring an uncompromising, new and radical cultural breakthrough.
“Both of us dreamed of a world that would never come, recalls Dr Végh, which appears to say that one needn?t starve and live from hand to mouth as a Csontváry, nor does one need a Gideon, who by chance saves his life?s oeuvre. In the 60s, we still believed that perhaps one could turn to the human face of socialism, and then in ‘68 we understood that it was all over, that no good would ever come of this. In 1970 the “rise of the middle-class” commenced, and the doors were opened to the West, and the rubbish came rushing in, because, of course, it is always the shit that swims above. We didn’t want the Western world lock, stock and barrel. From then on, we had only the ovational “Who-knows-what”s. But we weren’t interested in this: in the 70s this is why I too rather withdrew and I closed the apartment-theatre.”
Reception history of Kovásznai’s life-work
We are still awaiting the complete mapping of the apartment-salons of the 50s and 60s, and thus, the weight and extensive impact of the receptive and illegal public organised by Dr Végh and not least by film aesthetician and photographer Csaba Koncz also await further expounding. The current writing, however, does not extend to the detailed analysis of the neo-avant-garde public of the era; we only refer to its determinant significance. The research that attempts to elucidate the past comes up against serious difficulties; to be more precise, it frequently finds itself in some sort of labyrinth of memory politics: the credibility of memories can be distorted at times by nostalgia, at times by the assertion of the current interests of the individual. It happened too long ago – in another regime. I consider the silence surrounding Kovásznai?s life-oeuvre as the unprocessed deteriorating, degrading, negative radiation of Kádárism. We can also comprehend the silence around his life-work as an isolating reaction, or even as a total lack of comprehension.
Twenty-five years have passed since Kovásznai’s death.
One or two obituaries have been published after 1983, and his colleagues at the Pannónia Film Studio under the leadership of director György Matolcsy decide to establish a foundation to conserve his oeuvre.
In 1992, Kovásznai’s drama entitled Csontváry is published for the first time in the periodical Színház (Theatre), and it is here too that Kálmán Kecskeméti and Gábor Görgey’s brief recollections can be read.
“Beyond his paintings, films and a few plays, I am not aware of a perhaps hidden legacy. But I would not be surprised if it would turn out that he had also composed music. I would not be surprised at all, but I would say, but of course, why wouldn’t he have composed as well? As long as he lived, he truly longed for a theatre performance. If I remember well, there was even talk of this at the Vígszínház (Comedy Theatre). He spoke of this with modestly reserved, terrific excitement. But then I don’t know what happened to the plans” 13
During the past 25 years, however, the scholarly processing of his life-work has not taken place either from an art historical, or aesthetic, or literary, or film historical perspective; a few chamber exhibitions have been arranged, among which the exhibition entitled Legacy I, organised at the Fészek in 1989 is conspicuous, in whose brief catalogue Lóránd Hegyi wrote an introduction and Ilona Keserű, close friend of the artist in their youth, spoke at the opening. In 1998 a selection of his works was shown in the Barcsay Hall (at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts), as organised by András Kisfaludy, then chair of the Kovásznai Foundation. What else happened?
Friendly gestures: a documentary film from András Kisfaludy (Körúti esték/Nights on the Ring-Road, 1997), and a nostalgic short fiction film by animation director Elek Lisziák (Forget-Me-Not – Mr Joker, 1998).
The Kovásznai Foundation in the 90s – in spite of its plans – was unable to realise a life-work exhibition, although in 2005 a chamber exhibition enjoying high attendance combined with 2 days of screenings was organised at the Odeon-Lloyd cinema in Budapest. The last solo exhibition – combined with a symposium – was in 2004 at GAG Gallery.
Beyond this, the urban legend, the oral history is not negligible – though difficult to express in footnotes – and preserves Kovásznai as the legendary hero of Hungarian animation for the interested young generation. Though for us, we have barely had the chance to encounter his original paintings, and certainly not with his entire painting oeuvre.
Of his 26 films, just a few could have been ?caught? by the lucky attentive one, on TV or in the cinema. From his literary oeuvre, on the other hand, we can have met with almost nothing, due to the lack of publication. There is no publication presenting his complete oeuvre. Curiosity, however, in spite of all this, has remained, and upon hearing his name, the eyes of many will sparkle, and they will watch and listen to Kovásznai’s works with joy.
It seems as if the knowledge of the influence of the oeuvre that concluded already twenty-five years ago overcame an amnesic period, until the Kovásznai Research Workshop was established in 2007 and this volume was published. The impact of Kovásznai’s oeuvre until now was rather exclusive, and it is not only the closed world of Hungarian animation that is responsible here, but unfortunately, his oeuvres of painting and literature neither circulate in either public or private collections. There are issues of civil law and rights for this: the ownership rights of his heirs haave been unclear for a long time, and this fact hindered circulation either in museums or commercially. The present volume is the first thorough attempt at revealing the professional processing of Kovásznai’s works.
Instructions for Kovásznai’s texts in this book
In the further sections of the book – following the artist’s biography – we have selected from Kovásznai’s own writings. The published material is merely a sample from his oeuvre as a writer, unpublished until now.
We intend this volume as a brief introduction to a Kovásznai anthology, and we do not include excerpts from his literary or philosophical works, but have selected from only his essays of an art theoretical or biographical nature, reflecting his own artistic position. Beyond their titles, there is no further editorial explanation to the cited texts; thus, some information is necessary in order to outline the context.
One of Kovásznai’s most informative writings is his Self-Interview of the late 70s, from which we have taken seven excerpts; from these, we can become familiar with Kovásznai?s gutsy opinion about the artistic training, schools, teachers an classmates of the 50s, and here he also speaks fluidly about his relationship to the various artistic genres. We learn why he abandoned the Academy of Fine Arts and how he put to use his years spent in the mines. We learn how he took a position alongside Csontváry and Lajos Németh. We can understand how the basis of his conceptual system constitutes the “concrete”, why he is missing the beat, pop and advertising world. We can read how exasperating he finds imitation of the West and the lack of an authentic new art appropriate to the socialist ideology.
We have highlighted four excerpts from his 1982 essay entitled Charm, Thoughts from the book by Piroska Szántó, in which from his childhood memories almost through the rest of his life, he reconstructs his passionate relationship to the Szentendre School, as the European School, linked to the underestimated vessel of the avant-garde. With the appraisal of Hungarian modernism before 1948, he tangibly outlines in parallel the suffocatingly conservative tendencies that he understood through his own tormenting experiences. In Charm he also shares his devastating opinion of the Hungarian artists lording over their isolated territories. A century-long trajectory ties the naturalist tendencies to the Soc-Real “curse” and he engages in interesting expositions of how and why the Szentendre School could free itself from the “shackles?”of naturalism.
In the final two texts, we can gain a glimpse into Kovásznai’s unique animation film concept, and we can read about his “anima verité”, in which he sets forth his avowed viewpoints on the feasibility of his philosophical essays and artistic theory.
This brief publication serves as an introduction to Kovásznai’s extensive life-oeuvre. In future, his concise published monograph will include complete material from his oeuvre, variegated also in terms of genres.
Footnotes:
1. Kovásznai, György: Szülőföld-Animáció, Kalandozások Takamurával a magyar Disneylandben [Homeland-Animation: Adventures with Takamura in the Hungarian Disneyland]. Budapest, Pannónia Film Vállalat, 1988, 7.
2. Ibid., 27.
3. Kecskeméti, Kálmán: Kovásznai felfedezése… [The Discovery of Kovásznai?]. Színház [Theatre], 02.04.1992.
4. Zwickl, András: Túl a táblakép keretein ? a szürnaturalizmus, a Zuglói kör és a gesztusfestészet [Beyond the Frame ? Surrealism, the Zugló Circle and Gesture Painting]. In: Magyar képzőművészet a 20. században [Hungarian Art in the 20th Century]. Budapest, Corvina, 1999, 162.
5. Excerpt from the author?s interview with painter József Bartl in July 2007. András Kisfaludy and János Major also both referred to the same anecdote in interviews with the author.
6. Kovásznai, György: Op. cit., 23.
7. Ibid.
8. Gábor Görgey?s reminiscences on Kovásznai, with whom he became acquainted in the 60s at the Pannónia Filmstúdió, in his article published in the periodical Színház [Theatre], György Kovásznai tündöklése (see note 13).
9. Kovásznai, György: Op. cit., 25.
10. Pataki, G.: Minden egyszerre – művészet és művészeti élet az ötvenes, hatvanas évek fordulóján [Everything at Once ? Art and the Art Scene Between the Fifties and Sixties]. In: Magyar Képzőművészet a 20. században [Hungarian Art in the 20th Century]. Budapest, Corvina, 1999, 159.
11. Tábor, Ádám: A kezdet ? Dr Végh, avagy a magyar neoavantgárd születése a zene szelleméből. Kiegészítés A váratlan kultúrához [The Beginning ? Dr Végh, or the Birth of the Hungarian Neo-Avantgarde from the Spirit of Music. Supplement to The Unexpected Culture]. Élet és Irodalom [Life and Literature], vol. 48, no. 37.
12. Dr Végh, László: A mi undergroundunk és avantgardunk az 1960-70-es években [Our Underground and Avant-Garde in the 1960s ? 70s]. Budapest [MS], 1990.
13. Görgey, Gábor: Kovásznai György tündöklése [The Rise of György Kovásznai], Színház [Theatre], 02.04.1992.
Published in the album “Kovásznai – beyond the meat-grinder” by the Kovásznai Research Workshop, 2008 Budapest