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Part I · Moving People
a short-range as well as long-range effect, represented an innovative approach in the development of architecture-related art in the GDR. Josep Renau, who relocated to East Berlin on the invitation of the GDR government, was born in 1907 221 in Valencia, Spain. At the age of 12, he en- rolled as a student at S. Carlos art college (1919–25). Renau was political- ly active and a committed artist and cultural functionary in the Commu- nist Party. The early 1930s, in particular, significantly shaped his artistic and intellectual development. He worked in the disciplines of poster art, photo montage, and film. During the Spanish Civil War, Renau acted as head of visual-arts propa- ganda for the Republican Army and as political commissioner. 222 In 1939, he fled the Franco regime and emigrated to Mexico. 223 During the time of the Spanish Civil War, he had met the Mexican muralist David Alfa- ro Siqueiros. 224 Having arrived in Mexico, Siqueiros welcomed Renau into his painters’ collective. In 1939, they worked together on the mural enti- tled The Face of the Bourgeoisie on the electricity union building in Mex- ico City. 225 Renau wrote about this collaboration: “My initial concept of mural painting, which I derived from my work on posters, underwent a pro- found and salubrious transformation, starting at the moment I came into contact with the Mexican master. In Spain, that happened on a theoretical level, and then in Mexico through our collaboration.” 226 Along with Diego Rivera (1886–1957) and José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949), David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) was part of the so-called “Big Three” of the postrevo- lutionary Mexican muralismo art movement. The mural, as a democratic art form with an extremely high number of recipients, was considered to be a highly appropriate medium with which to communicate a historical aware- ness, revolutionary successes and the new ideals to a mainly illiterate popu- lation, creating a sense of identity. 221 17 March 1907 in Valencia. 222 Josep Renau, “Erinnerungen an Spanien,” Bildende Kunst 12 (1982): 581–84. 223 Luis Suarez, “José Renau in Mexiko,” Bildende Kunst 8 (1968): 409–13. 224 Siqueiros came to Valencia in 1937 to work in the art of agitation and propaganda. Immediately upon ar- rival, however, he joined the Spanish army in support of the fight and became an adjutant and later a com- mander. See Raquel Tibol, ed., David Alfaro Siqueiros. Der neue mexikanische Realismus (Dresden: Fundus, 1975), 45. 225 Pictures in Suarez, “José Renau in Mexiko,” 412. 226 Suarez, “José Renau in Mexiko,” 409. Siqueiros and Rivera, who both spent several years in Europe, took back home their impressions of the avant-garde movement and the frescoes of the Italian Renaissance. The artists combined these impressions with the new form of art demanded in Mexico, a form of art “within the framework of a cultural-political program, whose fundamental pillars were nationalism, the people and education.” 227 Mexican folklore motifs were mingled with a mod- ern, avant-garde conception of art and with revolutionary themes. The monu- mental paintings were intended to have an impact on the masses and to illus- trate and convey to the people a sense of their own culture, Mexican history and the necessity of social change. After he had emigrated to the GDR, Renau was asked in an interview about his strongest impression of Mexico. He replied: The phenomenon of mural paintings. In it, I realized for the first time how a realist and modern expression can unfold its full abundance, its highest form, which is at the same time its most traditional. I find it fasci- nating to see that this abundance occurs in the work of personalities who are equally strong and yet diametrically opposed to each other concerning their understanding of the wall area, as is the case with Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros. . . . Orozco was, without doubt, the person who impressed me the most with his deeply Spanish-Baroque resonances. Siqueiros, on the other hand, influenced me with the open and dynamic character of his pictorial conception, with his revolutionary boldness in his treatment of the wall and, above all, with his stupendous creative assimilation of the tradition of pre-Hispanic glyptics. . . . I lived with David, worked, argued and almost brawled with him. 228 The design drawn up for Halle-Neustadt was Renau’s first project for a monumental mural in the GDR. His proposal to create a panorama pic- ture—a joint composition stretching across several buildings—which would be matched visually and with regards to content, represented a novelty in ar- 227 Nana Badenberg, “Wandbilder-Bilderwandel. Diego Rivera im Blick seiner europäischen Betrachter,” in Wildes Paradies—Rote Hölle. Das Bild Mexikos in Literatur und Film der Moderne, ed. Friedhelm Schmidt (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1992), 130–59. 228 Suarez, “José Renau in Mexiko,” 409. 108 109 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People chitecture-related art in the GDR. On 11 November 1969, in a letter to the Director of Economy in the main contracting body, Komplexer Wohnungs- und Gesellschaftsbau, Renau wrote: I consider it absolutely necessary to emphasize the fact that the dimen- sions of the two walls of the hall of residence (7 times 35 meters each) in conjunction with their vertical position poses problems for both the con- ception and the execution, for whose solution in the area of exterior wall design there is no precedent anywhere in the world. As far as I am aware, this is the first time a practical solution for such problems is being under- taken. He initially started his preparations with a motion study which assumed that the direction of movement would be from the dining hall toward the hall of residence. 229 Even though the buildings are staggered, to the distant viewer they appear to be on one level. Furthermore, the distant viewer should perceive the ensemble in its entirety as an abstract formation. He simulated the effect of close and distant vision in several studies. 230 Renau’s design was implemented with the numerous corrections regard- ing the style, colors, and content, which were time and again demanded by the contracting body in a long-winded, bureaucratic process. 231 The ensem- ble consists of two murals in extreme vertical and ribbon-like horizontal for- mat. The images, which are visible from a long way off to the east, are dis- tinguished by their remarkably modern and experimental visual aesthetics, intensive chromaticity and enormous stereoscopic effect. On 28 December 1970, Renau stated in a letter to the main contracting body, Komplexer Woh- nungs- und Gesellschaftsbau: It is by far my best monumental work. In it, I have succeeded in mak- ing flesh the most essential aspects of my artistic experience in the area of mural painting which I collected during my twenty years of emigration 229 Picture in Thiele, “Neue Wandbilder von José Renau,” 227. 230 Picture in Thiele, “Neue Wandbilder von José Renau,” 226. 231 Stadtarchiv Halle, Correspondence of Renau and the main contracting body Komplexer Wohnungs- und Gesellschaftsbau (HAG), Halle City Archive, Halle-Neustadt City Council, file number 3263 IV b. in Mexico, in personal collaboration with David A. Siqueiros, my great teacher, comrade and friend. Furthermore, it is the most optimal result of those twelve years in which I’ve been fighting on the theoretical and prac- tical level for a new, a socialist monumentality in the GDR. 232 The compositions, executed in majolica on stoneware tiles, gloriously pro- claim—in compliance with the overarching theme—the socialist utopia of progress and the future far into the urban space. Concerning the design of the complex, it is advisable to read it from north to south. The northernmost staircase gable is themed Unity of the Working Class and Foundation of the GDR. The illustration opens with a monumen- tal handshake. Behind that appears a demonstration, out of which flags and banners protrude. From the center of the crowd grows a monumental ear of wheat, flanked to its right by a microscope and to its left by a giant organ pipe. The composition is crowned by an all-dominating head of Karl Marx. The wheat symbolizes agriculture, the microscope represents science and technol- ogy, the organ pipe denotes the arts. The wheat as the central element also stands for fertility and growth, in the picture it grows out of the unity of the workers and the farming community. The second staircase gable, entitled The Forces of Nature and Technology Mastered by Man, is dominated by a moving crowd of people who appear to be conducted by a workman. He stands in front of proceedings, arms raised, his right hand clenched in a fist. In contrast to the anonymous demonstra- tion on the northern gable, the people here are portrayed as individuals. Re- nau modeled them after studies of friends and acquaintances—he, himself, is even depicted among them. Like Karl Marx’s head, their facial features are re- alized in a woodcarving style. Skyscrapers, industrial plants, and a rocket shoot out from the crowd, crowned by a depiction of a soviet star which floats above the proceedings. The giant cogwheels and cosmic figures emphasize the perceived upward movement. Unlike the northern gable, which celebrates socialism, or rath- er, the socialist state, the second gable refers to the power of the working class and the resulting technological and cultural progress under socialism. 232 Halle City Archive, Halle-Neustadt City Council, file number 3263 IV b. 110 111 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People The most impressive of the three murals is the one on the dining hall wall, under the motto March of the Youth into the Future. It is 5.5 meters high and 43 meters long, and it covers the whole of the building’s facade. In contrast to the upward-reaching gables, a dynamic horizontal movement governs the image composition here. The scene opens at the northern end with a group of young people who stroll from right to left. Following the walking direction, the veloc- ity of the people increases. Ahead of them, the movement breaks out toward the front. Following the movement, the people grow in size. A group of athletes break away from the crowd. Their goal is an open book, The Communist Manifes- to. Above them is a group of bayonet-armed revolutionary fighters. In contrast to these dynamics, a group at the lower end of the picture are engaged in topograph- ical surveying. The strict separation of both groups becomes abundantly clear, but so does their shared goal. Ahead of them both flies a flock of stylized doves. The depiction continues around a curved corner of the building toward a landscape destroyed by war, above which a plucked eagle is enthroned. Oppo- site this, two doves are seated, symbolizing the new era. The composition was ingeniously aligned to the perspective of the passer-by. The third design, con- tinuing the theme of socialist state and technological and cultural progress, shows—almost at ground level—the universally educated, new socialist peo- ple, jointly and optimistically striving toward the ideals and objectives of so- cialism, accompanied by their merits and achievements. The sequence of the compositions, often simultaneously aligned, is reminiscent of montage and evokes cuts and cross-fades, lending the design a strong momentum. 233 Renau’s murals in Halle-Neustadt were unmistakably influenced by rev- olutionary Mexican muralism. They were of a decidedly superior quality to the often simplistic solutions found elsewhere. The integration of avant-garde tendencies, such as cubist, futurist or surrealist influences—which only a few years previously were frowned upon in the GDR as being formalist—were conspicuous in his work. Despite the limited opportunities the architecture afforded the designs, the expansive and highly visible compositions could, in their gray surroundings, be understood to form a synthesis. 233 Due to irreparable damage, the redesign of the building was planned in 1988 and executed in 1996. During its removal—despite being a listed piece of art—large parts of the mural were destroyed, which made pro- posals to install it elsewhere redundant. Today, the remnants of the majolica painting belong to GWG and are stored in Halle. However, the murals in Halle-Neustadt did not achieve the intensity and dynamics of the Mexican murals, nor their expressive formal vocabulary. This was doubtlessly influenced by the contracting body’s heavy interference with the stylistic and creative process, their insistence on simplistic forms and their enforcement of changes in content, which ultimately also resulted in the dilu- tion of the planned aesthetic effect of the composition. Nonetheless, this de- sign of Renau’s is one of the most outstanding and most experimental exam- ples of architecture-related art in the GDR and is regarded as epitomizing the synthesis between architecture and visual arts. 112 113 Part I · Moving People A round the early 2000s when i first came to work on the subject of con- temporary Hungarian women artists, i encountered a more or less solid pro- fessional consensus: a discourse of lack. 234 It proffered the credible insight that in Hungary there was no grassroots feminism in the 1960–70s that would compare to the Western movement of the same period, and many of the related intellectual discourses were not widely endorsed either. The assess- ment then stalled here to conclude, therefore, that, no meaningful art prac- tice had developed that could be interpreted from a feminist perspective— until, in the mid-1990s, a younger generation of artists could find inspiration in “international” feminist discourses which finally became available after 234 The usage of the lowercase ‘i’ pronoun signifies my reservations about a unique convention in the English language. English capitalizes and thus prioritizes the first-person singular, which comes across as a remark- ably self-centered disposition conveyed by the current lingua franca, and as such may deserve to be denatu- ralized. My usage continues T.R.O.Y.’s practice in his essay, “The New World Disorder—A Global Network of Direct Democracy and Community Currency,” submitted for the Utopian World Championship 2001, organized by SOC, a Stockholm-based nonprofit organization for artistic and social experiments. The text is available from http://utopianwc.com/2001/troy_text.asp (accessed 11 July 2007). Beata Hock 9 Women Artists’ Trajectories and Networks within the Hungarian Underground Art Scene and Beyond 114 115 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People the Iron Curtain was lifted. 235 In the midst of this vast lack there stood Hun- gary’s only self-identified feminist artist: Orsolya, a.k.a. Orshi Drozdik. Despite this well-established narrative framework, for me it seemed plau- sible to devote some attention to the “socialist way of women’s emancipation” that, in Eastern European societies, ran parallel to the second wave of mod- ern feminism, both a social and artistic movement. True, this “emancipation” had its many flaws and caused discontent, but recent social science research acknowledges that it also propounded an intense political rhetoric on “wom- en’s equality” and implemented actual pieces of legislation and very real so- cial policies, which together brought enormous and documented changes to women’s lives and identities. Hence, it also seemed plausible to posit that the unprecedented state-administered attempt in socialist countries to rearrange gender regimes just might have impacted in some ways on women’s self-per- ception as well as creative aspirations. This article draws on the findings of research that was aimed at a critical reconsideration of the alleged absences and presences of feminist art in Hun- gary from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. 236 I started out from the recogni- tion that (a) cultural production—and feminist art-making especially—is al- ways embedded in a given social, cultural and material context; and (b) that the gains or grievances, the demands and identity constructions of women in the “Second World” were arguably different from those in developed capital- ist democracies. Therefore, rather than looking for the emergence of readily recognizable feminist artistic rhetoric and subject matter as we know these from Western-based feminist cultural criticism, my exploration tried to clear up a more open space for the kind of gender-related critical interrogations that may emerge from a different social and cultural context. In a conscious attempt to move away from the existing conceptual frame- work greatly reliant on the terms and definitions of a Western-developed feminist agenda, i set out to interrogate records, works of art, persons and 235 See, for example, the contributions by Keserü or János Sturcz in Katalin Keserü, ed., Modern magyar nőművészettörténet: tanulmányok (Budapest: Kijárat, 2000); Edit András, “‘Megoldotta a nőkérdést’: An- drás Edit művészettörténész. Szőnyei Tamás interjúja,” Magyar Narancs, 5 October 2000; and, to give a re- gional dimension to the topic, Katrin Kivimaa, “Introducing Sexual Difference into Estonian Art: Femi- nist Tendencies during the 1990s,” n.paradoxa 14 (February 2001). 236 This investigation is presented in a broader socio-cultural framing in B. Hock, Gendered Creative Positions and Social Voices: Politics, Cinema, and the Visual Arts in State-Socialist and Post-Socialist Hungary (Stutt- gart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013). events that have eluded the attention of the nascent feminist art critical dis- course in Hungary. My initial clues were some unprocessed documents found in the Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest: a small pile of handwritten and typewritten sheets. One of them bore the date 1979, was signed by art historian Zsuzsa Simon, and its heading read: “Four questions I asked myself after Dóra Maurer’s feminist meeting.” As a next obvious step, i interviewed the women named in the above sources and consulted their private archives. Artist Dóra Maurer directed me further to a handful of fellow artists and art professionals who had been receptive to feminist ideas—certainly including Orshi Drozdik as one of them. Orsolya Drozdik (b. 1946) graduated from the Budapest Fine Arts Acad- emy in 1977; she left the country the following year, and later settled down in New York. Since 1989, Drozdik has partly been based in Budapest again. In the 1970s she started to confront traditional male-biased art practices and problematized the limited choice of role models available to her as a female artist. According to her statements from the 1990s, she started to operate from a female perspective without an awareness of an ongoing feminist dis- course on the same topics elsewhere. 237 The source of her “inspiration” was rather the masculine atmosphere of the neo-avant-garde in which she was to start her creative practice. 238 When talking about the reception of her prac- tice, Drozdik relates that she perceived herself as an equally accepted member of her early-career artist community, but the fact that her works brought a fe- male perspective into play was met with indifference. Even if these endeavors were not exactly refused, the blank indifference gave Drozdik the impression that she was dealing with this topic in a vacuum. 239 Her recollections of the neo-avant-garde circle convey that the patriarchal perceptions of the alterna- tive art world did not differ much from patriarchal perceptions defining offi- 237 Interview with Orsolya Drozdik, 2001. October 27 (Budapest). See also other interviews taken with the artist: Orsolya Drozdik, “Kulturális amnézia avagy a történelmi seb. A feminizmusról,” Balkon 1 (January 1995): 7, and Orsolya Drozdik, “Fátyol alatt. Tarczali Andrea interjúja,” Balkon 7–8 (July–August 1999): 6. 238 In the state-socialist period “avant-garde” and “neo-avant-garde” became umbrella terms to signify any ar- tistic activity that did not submit to official party ideology. This non- or semi-official cultural underground of state-socialist Hungary came to be referred to as operating in a second, or parallel, public sphere. Turn- ing away from official public activity, members of this “counterculture” relied on a parallel set of channels of social communication. 239 Orsolya Drozdik, interview, Budapest, 27 October 2001. See also the artist’s testimony in O. Drozdik, Individuális mitológia. Konceptuálistól a posztmodernig (Budapest: Gondolat, 2006), 53–57. 116 117 2. The Moscow Underground Art Scene… Part I · Moving People cial culture, and women’s perspectives could not form part of the prevalent artistic idiom of the period. Later phases in Orshi Drozdik’s œuvre continue to show a clear correspon- dence to the developments in feminist criticism—indeed, as art critics asserted, she had built her career around this matrix. 240 When back in Hungary, Droz- dik wrote in the art press about, and edited a rather advanced reader in, feminist theory, 241 took care to explicate her artistic position in interviews and articles, 242 and published a monograph on her own creative work. 243 As both the artist and a reviewer of her book pronounced, the purpose of this monograph was to rem- edy the omission of local critical attention to duly assess her œuvre. 244 Through these discursive activities, the artist took an active share in constructing and re- ifying her persona as the first and only Hungarian visual artist who exhibited an informed interest in subject matter inspired by feminist theory even in the relative absence of any accessible knowledge of this intellectual trend. In her re- cent monograph, however, the artist gives an account of a short-lived feminism- inspired exchange with some of her female colleagues. In earlier accounts of women’s art in Hungary, Dóra Maurer (b. 1937) was usually mentioned for her systematic, rational thinking, her creative “perse- verance and ‘masculine’ consistency” as well as her dynamic activity as an art organizer. 245 The artist herself has never been identified as feminist and her œuvre—painterly experiments with geometric shapes, color qualities, and spatial effects—could hardly be associated with feminist thinking and artis- tic expression. Nevertheless, as the archival traces and the interviews with her and other artists revealed, not only is she an enthralling informant from the perspective of the availability and perceived relevance or irrelevance of femi- 240 Andrea Tarczali, “A ‘női’ hang megjelenése Drozdik Orsolya művészetében,” in Women’s Art in Hungary 1960–2000 (Budapest: Ernst Museum, 2000), 96; Erzsébet Pap Z., “Az én fabrikálása: Drozdik Orsolya ret- rospektív kiállítása,” Új Művészet 12 (December 2001): 20; Beata Hock, “Vector Art: Orshi Drozdik’s Ret- rospective Exhibition and the Ensuing International Symposium Anatomies of the Mind, the Body and the Soul,” Praesens 1:1 (Winter 2002): 71. 241 Orsolya Drozdik, ed. Sétáló agyak: kortárs feminista diskurzus (Budapest: Kijárat, 1998). 242 Drozdik, “Kulturális amnézia”; Orsolya Drozdik, “‘Én voltam a modell és a modell rajzolója,’” Élet és Iro- dalom, 1 March 2002. 243 Drozdik, Individuális mitológia. 244 Ibid., 79, 134; see also Andrea Máthé, “Megírni önmagunkat. Drozdik Orsolya: Individuális mitológia. Konceptuálistól a posztmodernig,” Balkon 2 (February 2007): 43. 245 János Sturcz, “Identities and Contexts: Masters of the Old and New Generations in the 60s: Dóra Maurer,” in Women’s Art in Hungary 1960–2000 (Budapest: Ernst Museum, 2000), 35. nist critical perspectives in Hungary in the 1970s, but she also turned out to be an engine of related inquiries. 246 Most of the newly discovered documents turned out to be hers: a tran- script of an interview with the members of the Vienna-based “Internation- al Action Community of Women Artists” (IntAkt), her notes taken after the interview and a tape-recorded radio broadcast (all documents date from 1979). The radio broadcast ( “F”: Nők a művészetben [“F”: Women in the arts]) was a discussion that Maurer initiated and moderated about the position of women in the visual arts on the occasion of a small-scale all-women exhibi- tion in Budapest organized by Lóránd Hegyi and where Mauerer reported on her encounter with the IntAkt members. Apparently, Maurer—who had partly been based in Vienna since 1967—mediated relevant information be- tween the Austrian capital and the Hungarian scene just as a number of oth- er artists, disseminating and sharing information on personal experiences of international art events and tendencies. Maurer’s research also documented how the Austrian feminists and fellow artists were intrigued by the working of a gender regime in Hungary that legally guaranteed women’s rights to pro- fessional self-development. Maurer today says that her interest in feminist thought was part of a gener- al intellectual openness and was not more personally motivated than “the in- terest of a bug collector in any unfamiliar creature,” 247 but, as the above doc- uments reveal, she made substantial efforts to disseminate, both publicly and more privately, issues of feminist criticism. The manuscripts of both Maurer and Simon, as well as the speakers’ contribution in the radio broadcast, show a clear understanding of feminist thought on the identity of women as social subjects and creative workers and the inequalities they face on both levels. But at the end of the day, Maurer or Simon did not feel that feminist concerns could really speak to them. Their accounts agree on the view that the discourse on women’s equality was indeed liberating, and that their perception was that they as women had never encountered open resistance or institutional dis- crimination as long as their professional output proved to be good. Another clue i found in the Artpool Archives were bits of documents refer- ring to an ensemble of work by Judit Kele—a participant in Maurer’s radio dis- 246 Dóra Maurer, interview, Budapest, 10 January 2009. 247 Email correspondence with D.Maurer, 3 December 2008. |
