I asked everybody, I even turned to specialists, but no one could tell me when the art fair recently renamed as Art Budapest was going to be opened. I found it rather foreboding that even those who were directly interested in this event, which used to be high-ranking, were indifferent. Finally the editor of one of the special journals interested in the event informed me about where and when it would take place. Accidentally it was actually this editor who helped me to get in, because I did not have an invitation card, and the cash desk closed an hour before the opening ceremony. Six finely built heroes guarded the entrance against all those arty people to make sure that no disturbance was created around the tables laid in the hall with plates full of biscuits.
So when I started to lose all my hopes, this editor came carrying the copies of his journals, and luckily he happened to have an extra complimentary ticket with which I managed to sneak in through the gate. Inside the hall there were very few organisers, gallery directors, exhibitors and ”external” visitors like myself hanging around, and I definitely did not see more than two critics. I was astonished, nearly shocked, as I had good memories from the beginning of the 90’s when this hall was full of life. But this time the number of people in the whole, together with the protagonists of the jewellery exhibition opened at the same time, was about the same as the number of players and supporters altogether at a fourth-class football match. All in all, there was this utterly empty yawning hall, with only a few high quality stands, high-ranking artists and art service providers, and of course with tremendous indifference and heaps of very average junk. Only those artists were present who had the possibility to exhibit their works under the aegis of their galleries or – in a few cases – at their own cost. A private exhibitor from Slovenia was also there, very probably only because he had got lost. He will definitely be cleverer next time and not go the wrong way.
The people who gathered around the speaker listening to the opening speech obviously did not live in the same world. On the right there were members of the scruffy artists’ society, while on the left there were the well-dressed representatives of the jeweller aristocracy surrounded with a cloud of perfume. The manager of one of the well-equipped stands – Van Gogh, Schiele – even made a remark: one of them might venture to look around in this part of the hall and buy something. It was difficult to imagine that it could happen the other way round.
The publishers and journals were represented by Új Művészet [New Art], Gyűjtők & Gyűjtemények [Collectors & Collections] and Műértő [Connoisseur], but even they made a much less spectacular appearance than earlier, when the event was still called Art Expo and when it was organised by specialists and art historians, such as László Beke and Krisztina Jerger, and even prominent foreign personalities were members of the jury and the art council or accompanied the sponsors (e.g.: Johan van Dam, Bryan Montgomery). Only two or three of the galleries dared to challenge the public taste, the average and the trash, undertaking the risk of promoting contemporary modern art at all times and all places (they were represented by Ilona Lovas, Péter Türk, Gábor Roskó, etc.). I sadly thought about the times when among others Éri Gallery, Liget Gallery Várfok 14 Gallery appeared here as well as the Erdész-Meinschikoff Gallery, which exhibited works by the greatest artists of the first half of the 20th century. And then I have not mentioned the individually exhibiting artists.
It is obvious that an event organised in such a mediocre way does not make much sense, it is in vain, because nobody is satisfied at the end: neither the organisers, nor the exhibiting companies, nor the artists. The organisers are not satisfied, because an exhibition like this does not attract publicity, which is not too potent anyway, but even repels them, the galleries because they wasted a lot of money which may never be returned, and the artists because they also come out badly both financially and morally. Some kind of an intermediate solution is needed so that both the artistic world and Hungexpo finds their mutual interest. However, this time even the structure of organisers was obscure, and on the homepage of the Fair it was not possible to click on the event called Art Exhibition. The advertising of the event used to be much better: whole page colour advertisements in the special journals and in other places. Now there was a hardly noticeable three-line announcement on the edge of one of the pages in Pesti Est saying: Beauty – Sparkle – Art. Well, there was plenty of sparkling, but you could only find art with a magnifying glass.
Now we should only wish for what they said to be not true. Namely that this was the status of contemporary Hungarian art in a nutshell.