Galleries, exhibitions - Art in Budapest - Budapest National Gallery

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Adam Albert in his work Never Take a Trip Alone places the query of the history of representation and the history of seeing which the 17th-century perspective box entails with the oeuvre of two influential German figures of cultural history Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt in the gallery space by re-modelling their work studies — the symbolic monuments and memorials of their real and imaginary adventures — within these boxes.
The integration of these study interiors into the perspective box format gains another layer as Albert juxtaposes the visual experience the baroque device offers with the visualizing method of the latest computer based animation, which literally stages (by simulating the visitor's or the owner's moving around in the room) the darting around of the eye in the rooms. The third piece of Albert's work is the traditional perspectival depiction of the rooms in a copper engraving, while the fourth is also a two-piece coloured drawing, which emphasizes an emblematic object of each room, the ladder and the monocular.
The four-piece work made by different visualising techniques, which inhabits the gallery space thereby, creates a well-designed installation in which all four pieces reflect on each other. The inscriptions on the paper based drawings, pictorial surface and representational canon explicitly refer to the historical scope involved in Albert's work. Moreover, the traditional perspective design of the engravings juxtaposed with the viewing position the perspective boxes requires, make up a more sophisticated referential grid to the changing role of the canon, and that of the viewer.
(Tunde Varga); IMG_3162.JPG; iPhone 5; f/2.4; 1/20; 200; ©ROY_GRUBB [4517]
Imre FOLDES (Feld) The Strength of Hungarian Earth. 1916; Imre Foldes, the master of the silent movie poster, tended to portray the actors in entertaining sketches and melodramas from close up, in interaction, as though trying to create the pictorial equivalent of a chamber piece. He earned many commissions from the Hungarian film industry, which was growing rapidly at the time of the first world war, and he worked with solutions of a similar nature in, for example, one of the posters for Lyon Lea, from a play by Sandor Brody. However, for this same film he also conceived a grand, panorama-like scene (both versions are in the poster collection of the Hungarian National Gallery).
The film by Mihaly Kertesz (later Michael Curtiz) called The Strength of Hungarian Earth inspired Foldes to a dramatic depiction with a heightened atmosphere. The tone of tragedy and pathos was common in his posters for the press and for military loans during the war and the revolutions, and this continued in his political posters calling for the preservation of Hungary's territorial integrity. In his portrayal of the pain of loss, and of heroism as the patriotic willingness to make sacrifices, Földes not only used the political symbols of contemporary propaganda, but also the theatrical gestures of nineteenth-century stage artists, in all probability inspired by The Strength of Hungarian Earth. The world of imagery created by Kertész in his films, most of which are now lost, is preserved today mainly in the surviving posters, which makes them extremely important. Foldes clearly felt his work had a more general meaning than just to illustrate a film, as shown by the fact that he also published it under the title of The Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul for the Hungarian Red Cross. This version is also known from the Julius Paul collection.; IMG_3240.JPG; iPhone 5; f/2.4; 1/15; 400; ©ROY_GRUBB [4552]
Mihaly Biro is the outstanding figure of Hungarian poster art, who also enjoyed fame in Europe thanks to his genre-founding political posters. His renown helped him get by during his years in exile following the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, earning him commissions to design posters and illustrations in both Vienna and Berlin. His posters were "gold currency" among the Berlin-founded Friends of the Poster (Verein der Plakatfreunde), and some made their way into a number of foreign museums. When the Julius Paul Collection was sold, special mention was made of the wealth of material it contained by this artist, and the collector was praised for his frequent support in having the Hungarian designer's works published and displayed. The exhibition offers us an opportunity to look into Mihaly Biro's working methods, by comparing this poster with its original draft, previously acquired by the Hungarian National Gallery from the artist's sister.
One splendid piece of the collection of drawings is Biro's self-portrait as a soldier. The worn and weathered face and the attentive, pensive expression reveal the intellectual civilian casting off the severity of military life. It is as though we are glimpsing the Bohemian artist, whose joie de vivre laughs in the face of the catastrophe of the age, for this creator of passionate political placards and witty commercial posters led a lifestyle with habits that made him, first and foremost, a metropolitan Bohemian.; IMG_3248.JPG; iPhone 5; f/2.4; 1/15; 500; ©ROY_GRUBB [4556]