{"id":400934,"date":"2014-08-03T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-03T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/?p=400934"},"modified":"2023-08-29T22:00:25","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T21:00:25","slug":"ezoterikus-avantgard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/kritika\/ezoterikus-avantgard\/","title":{"rendered":"Esoteric Avant-garde"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cAll is water\u201d (Thales)<\/em><\/div>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

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According to Charles Harrison, curators and art critics resort to the umbrella term \u201cconceptualism\u201d when they have run out of ideas for defining a given phenomenon of art, and use it to describe \u201canything that looks like avant-garde practice.\u201d (1)<\/a> The terminological superficiality of journalistic practice condemned by Harrison is related to the general confusion surrounding the phenomena of conceptual art and the different narratives of different schools and theoreticians, among which Art & Language\u2019s practice of language philosophy is only one of many interpretations of Western conceptual art. Within the discourses developing in parallel with art practices from the late sixties, the narrative represented by Benjamin Buchloh and the circle around the journal October, did not correspond, for instance, with the artistic endeavours of institutional critique and the related line-up of artists. Introduced by Lucy Lippard, the term focusing on the \u201cdematerialization\u201d of art has, (2)<\/a> although intended to serve simplification, become yet another cornerstone of the debates on definition conducted in dominant discourses, not to mention the fact that it neglects the phenomena termed proto-conceptual by certain authors. (3)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

From this perspective, it is therefore understandable that in the ever so \u201chorizontal parallelism\u201d (4)<\/a> of the extraordinarily heterogeneous Western theory and art practice, Eastern theory faces difficulties formulating its standpoint regarding its analogous art products from behind the former Iron Curtain. Sometimes it even refrains from the endeavour. Having devoted himself to researching and collecting resources on Hungarian conceptual phenomena since the early eighties, curator and art historian Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k has practically been following L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke\u2019s model of \u201cidentification\u201d (5)<\/a> when pointing out in his study of fundamental significance that \u201cit is impossible to write about conceptual art, as its premise is that it considers the role of critic or interpreter unnecessary.\u201d (6)<\/a> According to him, this attitude gives rise to the impossibility of conceiving definitions and completing a comprehensive historical research; to the perception of the job of author\/curator as restricted to the presentation of works; to the \u201canalysis of influences\u201d; and to the basic motif of his method: approaching writing and exhibition as conceptual works of art. This \u201cexcessive\u201d identification might be one of the reasons for the inadequate reception (7)<\/a> which I am not addressing in the present essay. Instead, I am making an attempt to rise above it, and taking the exhibition curated by Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k at the Paks Gallery (8)<\/a> as my point of departure, to outline a kind of narrative for the further interpretation of conceptual phenomena.<\/p>\r\n

Borrowing the title of Gyula Konkoly\u2019s 1969 action<\/a> (Five Identical Persons Apply Here<\/i>), the exhibition presented works of art classified under the term conceptual art from the nearly two decades between 1965 and 1983. Counterbalancing the dominance of photography with films and installations, the show featured originals, copies or reproductions of a number of canonical pieces from the Hungarian avant-garde. Thematic solo projects (9)<\/a> alternated with more emphasized groups of artworks by some artists. The conceptual series of D\u00f3ra Maurer \u2013 who also participated as consultant \u2013 and Imre Bak had a prioritized status at the exhibition, partly owing to the interviews made with them, along with the \u201cpar excellence\u201d conceptual artist Gyula Pauer, the 2009 reconstruction<\/a> of whose Protest-Sign Forest<\/i> was installed in the central space. A separate screening room on the upper floor showed a selection of experimental films by Bal\u00e1zs B\u00e9la Studio (partly in collaboration with members of the New Music Studio), which referred to a significant aspect of the period, interdisciplinary thought. The same floor featured a photo series of Design for supporting the objects on the ceiling<\/i> (1971) by Gy\u00f6rgy Jov\u00e1novics (with action photos<\/a>) by Jov\u00e1novics, Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Lakner, Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by), as well as Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s emblematic object<\/a>, Cooling Water<\/i> and documents of the first exhibition of visual poetry in Balatonbogl\u00e1r (curated by D\u00f3ra Maurer and G\u00e1bor T\u00f3th, 1973). The same section housed the curator\u2019s collection of video documentation as well as the video recordings of the 1997 symposium on conceptual art. (10)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Having been organized with a forty year delay, the exhibition was originally planned for 1983-84, when it fell through. This is the reason why part of the show comprises reconstructions, as it revives a past curatorial concept, while taking into account the various events and research results in which Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k had a fundamental role, and which have been realized since the 1997 update of the manuscript accompanying the exhibition. (11)<\/a> This hybrid exhibition concept thus simultaneously reflects a state and orientation projected back to the mid-eighties, and elements of the projective and permissive approach of the period of post- or neo-conceptual art. The prevalence of the latter is already manifested in \u201cconceptualism\u201d in the exhibition\u2019s subtitle, a term which \u2013 as Terry Smith points out \u2013 conceptual artists refused to embrace during the sixties-eighties, and which would only come into art world existence with the exhibition Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s<\/i> in New York in 1999, essentially in order to satisfy the contemporary art world\u2019s claim for paradigms. (12)<\/a> Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k took into account the tendencies of contemporary art when curating the exhibition (the reverse precedent of which had been Erzs\u00e9bet Tatai\u2019s exhibition of neo-conceptual art, (13)<\/a> which rejected art-historical orthodoxies that approached the products of art with a definitive intention, and considered \u201cperiods\u201d closed from an interpretative aspect.) (14)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

From this approach ensues that, although the author is aware of the historical ontology of such terms as concept art, conceptual art, conceptualism and the latter\u2019s variants, he uses them as freely and synonymously as his references, the majority of the works presented at the exhibition do. The extended notion of conceptualism implies the methodological simplification that every \u201cconcept based\u201d work of art and equivalent document, design, draft, photographic idea can be classified as such. Perceiving the exhibition as an \u201copen work\u201d allows greater subjectivity in selection, (15)<\/a> makes it possible to avoid comparative-linear modes of presentation, ensures the ontological \u201cliberation\u201d of works connected to specific artists, and instead of their agglomerated systematization, it can reflect the Kosuthian paradigm\u2019s (16)<\/a> principles regarding the theory of identification. (17)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k\u2019s exhibition modelled self-reflexivity, the fundamental feature of conceptualism, as well as the non-hierarchical reciprocity of art and theory, and as such \u2013 already owing to its scale and resource value \u2013, it offered a greater than ever opportunity for becoming acquainted with the Kosuthian thought<\/i> and the related object manifestations. However, the exhibition also featured works of art that belonged in the paradigm of concept art<\/i>, which is, to say the least, in controversial relation with the Kosuthian paradigm both historically and philosophically, even if the other, dominant discourse overshadows these Fluxus-related phenomena.<\/p>\r\n

Precisely for this reason, in my opinion it is indubitable that neither the underlying typology of objects, (18)<\/a> which is in many cases based on L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke\u2019s previous analytical writings, nor the subversive-genealogical model provided for contemporaneous socially critical\/activist art are enough today to understand the history of the Hungarian phenomena of conceptual art. Making up for the lack of adequate reception cannot be deferred any longer: if not in the eighties, but in 2014, statements, even definitions, and most importantly, accurate terminology (19)<\/a> are necessary in order for the local, micro-historically founded, context-based narrative of the history of avant-garde art to be written. The task is exceptionally complex, but perhaps every experiment and additional information can contribute somewhat to making the picture clearer. (20)<\/a> In order to accomplish this, I am resorting to results of some of the Central and Eastern European region\u2019s researches that are at a more advanced stage, as well as to the discourses relevant with respect to Hungarian art, which have generated locally specific denotations in order to define a terminological framework for the art created in this scene.<\/p>\r\n

When Boris Groys introduced the term Romantic Conceptualism<\/i> (21)<\/a> in 1979 to describe the phenomena of unofficial Soviet art and distinguish them from Anglo-American conceptual art (a term that he himself would criticise a few years later), he was confronted with a problem that one could also apply to the Eastern Bloc, namely the dichotomy of the authentic and the derivative. The principal question is, therefore, whether we consider the products of scenes far away from Western art as authentic phenomena of art, or merely derivatives of Western phenomena. Groys primarily emphasizes similarities between the conceptual art of Moscow and the West, without which the phenomena of Moscow could be reduced to mere exotic commodities. (22)<\/a> Of course, the proposition was not new, for it had been present throughout the entire history of twentieth century modernism and avant-garde art, and is closely connected to the questions of self-identity and synchronicity. In the Hungarian context, analogy may be drawn with the sphere of problems described by Katalin Tim\u00e1r along the notions of post-colonial theories, historically close to conceptual art, arising in connection with the evaluation of works that can be related to pop art. According to Tim\u00e1r, the dilemma faced by the art history of Hungary or any other peripheral country is twofold: \u201chow to apply terms that are coined locally in an international context without remaining unequivocally provincial, and how to embrace an internationally valid terminology in a local context without risking overlooking local specificities and thus colonizing our own culture, art, and thinking.\u201d (23)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Returning to the theoretical construct of Romantic Conceptualism, the term was conceived within a comparative analysis of the Western and Eastern scenes, throughout which the author took into account the contextual specificities of unofficial Soviet art: operation without a market; the organization of micro-communities of friends, partly on account of censorship; and imagination in the utopian space of universal art history. Groys concludes that \u201cMoscow conceptualism was indeed a kind of conceptual art, but much more than that it was a kind of discursive pop art.\u201d The historical background for bringing pop art and conceptual art onto a common notional platform is provided by the quasi simultaneity that can be observed in the Hungarian context (as well as other countries of the region), namely the temporal parallelism of pop art, Fluxus, actionism, concept art, conceptual art, body art, land art, etc. At the same time, in my opinion, the basis for the accurate use of terminology lies precisely in taking historicity into account, namely the \u2013 in terms of historical perspective \u2013 seemingly insignificant temporal differences (one or two years) between the appearance of different tendencies, as in the relation of Fluxus, concept art and conceptual art. Partly owing to the orientation of my interest as a researcher, my essay focuses on this area, the frontier between Fluxus and conceptual art.<\/p>\r\n

Most examples for the attempts to clarify the notions of conceptual art in the discourse of the CEE region are to be found in the Yugoslav and ex-Yugoslav scene. Following the first comprehensive volume published in 1978, (24)<\/a> publications on the subject appeared one after another. In the volume of studies co-edited by Mi\u0161ko \u0160uvakovic, (25)<\/a> besides the more canonical aspects of conceptual art (tautological, self-reflexive, linguistic, etc.), he highlights its metaphysical character, evoking the terms \u201cmystical conceptualism<\/i>\u201d by Renato Barilli and \u201ctranscendental conceptualism<\/i>\u201d by Tomas Brejc. In Hungarian terms, based on the esoteric philosophy of B\u00e9la Hamvas and keeping his extended pool of inspiration in mind, this approach might be termed \u201cesoteric avant-garde\u201d. (26)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Sticking with the ex-Yugoslav context, Tihomir Milovac subordinates every kind of artistic and non-artistic conceptual phenomenon including linguistic phenomena, actions and strategies to change everyday life, under a term borrowed from social psychology: \u201cmisfits<\/i>\u201d. (27)<\/a> One of the distinct characteristics of the Yugoslav scene in the sixties-seventies was collaboration and collective operation, from the Gorgona group through Red Peristyle to the Bosch+Bosch group, of which B\u00e1lint Szombathy and Katalin Ladik were members. Similarly to Tony Godfrey\u2019s chronology, Milovac defines the temporality of conceptual phenomena as such: proto-conceptual (fifties-sixties, coinciding with Fluxus), conceptual (1960-70), post- and neo-conceptual art (1980s and 1990s).<\/p>\r\n

Regarding the Polish scene, Lukasz Ronduda also writes about great diversity in the art of the seventies, but contrary to the previous examples, he approaches the period from the aspect of the relation to reality. He uses the terms \u201cpost-essentialism\u201d and \u201cpragmatism\u201d to describe the characteristic of the seventies that he summarizes as openness to reality, and within this framework, defines conceptualism as the most typical \u201cpost-essentialist movement\u201d. (28)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

These selective examples well illustrate the methodological heterogeneity arising largely from the complexity of the problem. Moderna Galerija of Ljubljana \u2013 one of the first in Europe to start collecting avant-garde art since the early 1990s \u2013 organized a conference on Eastern European conceptual art in 2007 upon the initiative of Zdenka Badovinac, where the participants (Zdenka Badovinac, Eda \u010cufer, Cristina Freie, Boris Groys, Charles Harrison, V\u00edt Havranek, Piotr Piotrowski, Branka Stipan\u010di\u0107) endeavoured to establish consensual notions and develop the methodological basis for the regional interpretation of conceptual art. The talks, published in two parts, (29)<\/a> show that within the sociocultural diversities formed behind the Iron Curtain, specific pivots can be identified, but the consensual minimum regarding the relation of the region\u2019s (as well as unofficial Soviet and Latin-American) art and Western art can be summed up in a few points.<\/p>\r\n

In the following, taking into account these discursive consensuses (deconstruction of modernism, synchronicity, ideological criticism, etc.) I will attempt to delineate a narrative of Hungarian proto-conceptual thought emerging in the sixties, with a focus, as opposed to art historical traditionalism (which principally interprets avant-garde art from the perspective of panel painting) (30)<\/a> on the phenomena of immaterial quality of art and anti-art gestures.<\/p>\r\n

Happening and language \u2013 the emergence of concept art<\/i><\/p>\r\n

Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly observed that the practice of conceptual art in Hungary had much preceded theory: \u201cFirst of all, here, in Hungary, concept, the activity called concept started pervading everyone\u2019s activity without them even noticing it. For long they had not even been aware of the existence of concept art, but they had all made such works.\u201d (31)<\/a> According to the periodization in Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k\u2019s study, this early \u201cconcept\u201d period (1966-68) was followed by expansion (1970-71), and after its pinnacle (1972-73), some artists chose their individual paths and some turned away, until 1976, from when the development of a consensus can be observed, which involved the circle around R\u00f3zsa Pressz\u00f3. (32)<\/a> The phenomenon of protochronism that is outlined in artist interviews and texts, namely the stressing of how they were the ones who introduced certain tendencies and ways of thinking (even preceding the \u201cWest\u201d) into local discourses, already directs attention to the early period of 1966-68.<\/p>\r\n

It is almost moving how in a 1983 interview Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly emphasizes his own primacy in the Hungarian introduction of conceptual art, anecdotally describing the resistance, or at least ignorance surrounding his activity. To illustrate the phase shift between him and the Iparterv Group, (33)<\/a> he cites his 1968 happening, which was met by incomprehension on the part of the underground art scene, moreover, his six-piece textual photographic work was left out of the catalogue of the 2nd Iparterv exhibition (1969), entitled Document<\/i>. According to Erd\u00e9ly, the reception of his early conceptual works was hindered by the fact that at the time of Iparterv, in 1968-69, no one had understood the theory of conceptual art, up until further information seeping in from the West gave foundation to the phenomenon he had already represented. (34)<\/a> This was all very similar, he says, to the way happening emerged. At the same time, as opposed to the Szentj\u00f3by-type \u201csurrealist happening\u201d, he \u201csided with\u201d conceptual actions. (35)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Erd\u00e9ly\u2019s \u2013 sometimes parodic \u2013 self-mythicization has embedded itself into art history writing\u2019s claim to conceive of the new avant-garde of the sixties and seventies as a movement on the model of the historical avant-garde, and to construct a \u201cfather figure\u201d for it. (36)<\/a> He \u201csucceeded\u201d to such extent that it even influenced international literature: Piotr Piotrowski forthright ascribes such fundamental \u201cmilestones\u201d of the sixties to him, as the happenings The Lunch<\/i> (1966), and Golden Sunday<\/i> (1966). (37)<\/a> This distorted genealogy needs to be corrected because happening was in fact a paradigm-shifting event in the visual culture of the sixties, and as such, it expressed the turn that comprised a break with traditional media and panel painting, yielding the emergence of an anti-art attitude. Happening marks the moment of a radical new avant-garde replacing modernism and the appearance of concept art in the Hungarian art scene, but it was not Erd\u00e9ly, deeply embedded in modernism, (38)<\/a> who had undertaken this endeavour, but two representatives of the new generation, G\u00e1bor Altorjay and Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by.<\/p>\r\n

Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by has given accounts on several occasions of the break with the tradition of modernist poetry represented by S\u00e1ndor We\u00f6res and J\u00e1nos Pilinszky, and the individual and collective improvisational experiments. (39)<\/a> These linguistic-semantic experiments reflect a characteristic feature of Hungarian actionism, namely that happening \u2013 as opposed to its origins in action painting overseas \u2013 was not rooted in the mediatization of painting as a happening, but in the actionist reinterpretation of the relationship between text and reality. Reducing the elitism of art to a performative series of events manifested in primitive corporeal rites (eating, vomiting), happening as anti-art rejected both the linguistic conventions and the politics of social reality. On the other hand, by reinterpreting the function of art and the new language, which was incompatible with traditional concepts, happening brought about the emergence of conceptuality<\/i>: \u201cThe first happening was based on language, and ridiculed the relation between the sign and its meaning (the series of operations traditionally associated with it). However, this subversion of language is not equivalent, in fact, it is contrary to the continuous deterioration of language on a social scale, because happening gave rise to proposals for language reform. It is only natural that this can only take place through action (happening) if we accept the operationalist postulate: the identical nature of concepts and associated operations. In this spirit, language reform is impossible to carry out in a sterile \u2018professional\u2019 environment and devices, just as art was not conceived in its autonomous, classic form. Therefore, the conceptual experiment of language reform is at once a ritual. Similarly to primitive rites, it connects with elementary forces, but at the same time with the mechanisms of civilization as well. (\u2026) The rite that made it possible to eliminate the compulsion of the language game to denominate everything new, structure, style, in other words, everything that forms the \u2018language\u2019 of different arts, was the direct opposite of conceptuality.\u201d (40)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Happening rearranged the former definitions of art, which had hitherto been based on a relation of passive presentation, and shifted emphasis from spectatorship to participation, from spectacle to interactivity. Its appearance rendered such notions and principles uninterpretable as the material quality of the artwork, marketability (critical references even in terms of conceptual art), or monomedia. These were replaced by the notion of the found space for reception, constructed of ephemeral objects \u2013 the environment, (41)<\/a> and the notion of intermedia. \u201cHappening integrates the endeavours of poetry, music, painting, sculpture, theatre and film\u201d \u2013 summarized G\u00e1bor Altorjay in a contemporaneous writing. (42)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Simultaneously with the practice of happening, also defined as the total extension of poetry, Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by was creating visual poems that had a somewhat conceptual character in the sense that they realized the non-hierarchical unity of image and text. In Boris Groys\u2019 definition, \u201cConceptual art can be characterized briefly as the result of putting image and text on the same level. The image is replaced by a written commentary, by a description of a certain art project, by a critical statement. This use of language can be seen as a dematerialization and hence decommercialization of art.\u201d (43)<\/a> Groys\u2019 observation can be considered partially valid for such visual poems of Szentj\u00f3by as GLOBART<\/i> (1966-67), a project<\/a> for designing new space-time relations as part of the Parallel Course Study Track program, or Moving House Plan I.<\/i> (1967), which realizes change in the form of forced transmigration<\/a>. Such works introduced a new quality into the art of the sixties (so that by the early seventies, their significance would be recognized by others), but these only coincide with the Kosuthian paradigm in certain aspects, given that they essentially accommodate the possibility of action directed at change, in other words, actionism.<\/p>\r\n

As observed by L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke, when Szentj\u00f3by switched to visual poetry, he essentially became independent of the Hungarian tradition, (44)<\/a> and had at best the scarce heritage of Dadaist poetry (such as K\u00e1roly Tamk\u00f3 Sirat\u00f3) to rely on. As opposed to their innovative typographical solutions, surprising arrangements of words in a plane, Szentj\u00f3by implemented a dimensional change inasmuch as he considered the poem an object. \u201cSzentj\u00f3by applies the principle of substitution: his starting point is that anything<\/i> can replace the text, so far as it is considered poetic material; the poem is the image, the poem is the material, the poem is the object, the poem is the action \u2013 in perspective, anything can become poetry!\u201d (45)<\/a> This is how a mesh of marks created on a waiter\u2019s white smock pocket by constantly removing and replacing his pen becomes poetry (action poetry), to bring up a later example from 1973, which, after the visual poetry exhibition in Balatonbogl\u00e1r, was now selected into the Paks show. In his also exhibited visual poem, Stocks<\/i> (1967), the crumpled, illegible text appears<\/a> in its new dimension as object, to illustrate that in terms of concept art, the actual material of the object is not the paper, but the modified language. But as word fragments referring to current politics make it obvious, instead of treating language organized from a network of concepts as a closed aesthetic system, Szentj\u00f3by considered it a communication tool that was ever so closely related to reality.<\/p>\r\n

But who is Henry Flynt?<\/i><\/p>\r\n

Szentj\u00f3by uses the notion of concept art connected with happening in the sense as it was introduced in 1961 by composer, mathematician and philosopher Henry Flynt, who was loosely connected to the Fluxus network (46)<\/a>: \u201cthere is an absolute correlation between concept art and happening. (\u2026) When one does something consciously, one enters the world of concepts, and in the world of concepts, one then receives a calling to exit and transform one\u2019s experience into action. Concept art and happening represent the unity (and hope) of word and image.\u201d (47)<\/a> In Flynt\u2019s interdisciplinary thought the background of concept art was comprised by mathematical systems, while its actual goal was to apply change<\/i> to traditional art, which he termed \u201cstructure art\u201d, and which would eventually yield something new: concept artworks. (48)<\/a> Concept art therefore has an essentially critical approach to the traditional, hierarchical and market-oriented aesthetic system of elite art, similarly to the way situationism and Fluxus defined themselves in opposition to elite art from the late fifties.<\/p>\r\n

As Gyula Konkoly has summed up, two tendencies of different directions developed by the second half of the sixties in Hungarian art: the first was connected to pop-art (L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Lakner, Gyula Konkoly), and the other to Fluxus, with Erd\u00e9ly\u2019s \u201cdiscoveries\u201d, G\u00e1bor Altorjay and Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by. (49)<\/a> The first encounter of the two tendencies in a common exhibition happened in 1969, at the second Iparterv exhibition, where he and Szentj\u00f3by both exhibited works that could be associated with the ideas of Harald Szeemann. In Konkoly\u2019s self-interpretation, the problem of synchronicity was connected to the most important point of reference of Hungarian conceptual art, Harald Szeemann\u2019s exhibition<\/a> When Attitudes Become Form<\/i> (1969) in Bern, in which the isolated young generation recognized its compatibility with Western tendencies. As Imre Bak phrased in relation to the new art, which fascinated with its lack of devices: \u201cwe should have come up with this\u201d. (50)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

The discourses related to Iparterv emphasize the continuity of progressive Hungarian art on the one hand, and the claim for reintegration into international progress on the other, which was also a basis for rejecting accusations of mimicking with regard to conceptual art. The basis for the consensus on synchronicity was, on the one hand, the intuitive mode of operation resulting from the lack of information, and cultural determination on the other (\u201cbelonging\u201d to the \u201cWest\u201d, and the forced isolation of Hungarian culture from Western civilization). According to Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by, conceptual art could have no \u201cinfluence\u201d, because synchronicity was global: it emerged with slight differences in time, but essentially simultaneously all over the world. (51)<\/a> Gyula Konkoly perceives the historical role of Iparterv in reintegration, while also genealogically connecting the emergence of conceptual art to it: \u201cIn early 1969 I made a gigantic paintbrush, and a small one, and a gigantic telephone, and that summer, fumbling around at the second Armory Show (the 1969 Iparterv Show), I invented Art conceptuel. And St.Auby also invented it. We were part of the world\u2019s flux of time, and similar causes simultaneously led to similar conclusions.\u201d (52)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Konkoly\u2019s use of terminology is analogous with the way Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly interpreted the new art phenomena, which were spreading gradually following the gradual liberalization of the repressive society: \u201cart increased its level of freedom in these years\u2026 So, a series of exhibitions should be directed in a manner so that it shows how there was only so much in the sixties, but already this much in the seventies\u2026\u201d (53)<\/a> In other words, in the sixties, happening and the Fluxus thought (concept art) brought about conceptualism in Hungarian art, which was justified by the emergence of the Western paradigm, and hence more conscious \u201cauthorial\u201d practices started to develop, which had abandoned the reproduction of known motifs and were built on an original program, like Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s happenings of ideological criticism after 1967. By 1969, the practice of happening had prepared the conditions in the underground scene for the reception of the conceptual art paradigm and thus the Szeemann-effect, which turned the majority of those still \u201csiding with\u201d panel painting towards the Kosuthian philosophy, for a while at least. This, however did not mean the integration of concept art into conceptual art, much rather the simultaneity of the two. This simultaneity, however, was somewhat obscured by the dominance of the international discourses on the conceptual paradigm (\u201cWho is Henry Flynt?\u201d \u2013 asked back Joseph Kosuth in an interview), which, in Hungary, had the consequence of concept being assimilated into the mainstream in art historical discourses. (54)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

The Paks Gallery\u2019s exhibition follows this system of relations when disregarding the need for context of works related to Fluxus thought, and integrating G\u00e1bor Altorjay\u2019s 1967 action series<\/a> (15 actions for Marta Minuj\u00edn<\/i>) and Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s Cooling Water<\/i>, visual poetry and actions into the dominant discourse. (55)<\/a> But how can the philosophical-aesthetic difference between concept art and conceptual art be summarized? In her volume Fluxus experience<\/i>, Hannah Higgins devotes a separate chapter to understanding the system of relations between the two paradigms, to conclude that the substantial distinction is to be found in the relation of Fluxus to reality: \u201cFluxus work, in the end, is a concept art, but not a conceptual art in the commercial sense, since it rejects the minimalist form and linguistic scientism outlined by Sieglaub, Lippard, or Kosuth. Following this distinction, Fluxus becomes concept in a broader, more physically inclusive sense \u2013 one could even say a physically charged intellectual sense.\u201d (56)<\/a> This could be translated into the Hungarian context insomuch that the sensual intellectualism of Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s poetic realism was fundamentally incompatible with Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly\u2019s scientific, linguistic rationalism, despite their close cooperation. (57)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

On the occasion of the \u201cstudy exhibition\u201d he curated in 2001, (58)<\/a> Gy\u00f6rgy Gal\u00e1ntai outright posed the question \u2013 in analogy with the pop-dilemma \u2013 whether \u201cHungarian concept art and Fluxus\u201d had even existed at all, another instance of using the term concept art as the synonym of conceptual art. It pertains to the history of the exhibition and its reception that Gal\u00e1ntai has formulated his answers upon the curatorial initiative of the Fluxus East<\/i> (2008-) series of exhibitions, which posteriorly integrate Eastern European Fluxus phenomena. His most interesting experiment has been the transformation of Marcel Duchamp\u2019s Trap<\/i> into a textual work with the method of Joseph Kosuth, resulting in a fictional work. Gal\u00e1ntai\u2019s conclusion is not far from Hannah Higgins\u2019 observation: \u201cTo me, one of the interesting conclusions of this exhibition was that I started to see the difference between Fluxus and concept as similar to the difference between the two hemispheres of the brain. Realizing identification with life, Fluxus is irrational, emotional, surreal. In contrast, concept is rational, constructivist and minimalist. Nevertheless, both approaches are realist, each represent an area of realism in the terrain of impossible realism, perhaps on its two poles.\u201d (59)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Although Gal\u00e1ntai extends certain creative specificities of Fluxus (such as playfulness or humour) to the whole of the network, (60)<\/a> and his text fails to discuss the Hungarian emergence of Fluxus from a historical perspective, the notions offered by him can be well applied in describing the problem. The key notion is by all means reality, or the relation to reality, which Fluxus uses to replace the conceptualist self-reflection of art, in order for the questions it poses to transcend the autotelic nature of a self-contained philosophical system. Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by is canonized as a \u201cFluxus artist\u201d (which I would like to strictly refrain from using as a category) not by way of canonizing exhibitions or the genealogical primacy of introducing the \u201cfluxidea\u201d, (61)<\/a> but by being connected to the circle of artists of similar mentality by the basic idea of \u201cexpression in terms of concrete reality\u201d. The objects, visual poems, happenings and actions conceived in Hungary in the period between 1965 and 1975 are centred not on the tautological question of \u201cwhat is art?\u201d, but instead on the research dealing with how the societal, political, social, existential and artistic reality of the status quo could be changed. In other words: while conceptual art was posing questions aimed at defining or extending the notion of art, without ever doubting its raison d\u2019\u00e9tre, Szentj\u00f3by \u2013 as an avant-garde artist prioritizing reality \u2013 reached the negation of art.<\/p>\r\n

The case of the <\/i>Cooling Water<\/p>\r\n

All of these considerations could be applied to reposition Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s works that have been canonized by art history without regard to their context, as conceptual objects, and that were presented as such at the exhibition in Paks. Without intending to polarize the concept-conceptual relation, I shall attempt to deconstruct the conceptual status of one of his earliest emblematic objects, Cooling Water<\/i> (1965) and reinterpret it as action object related to Fluxus in accordance with the narrative outlined above. My choice is justified by a number of reasons: Cooling Water<\/i> was featured at the second Iparterv exhibition in 1969 as one of the earliest Hungarian examples of object art (together with the New Unit of Measure<\/i> and the Portable Trench for Three<\/i>), in other words, its genealogical temporality renders it ideal for the representation of the emergence of new paradigms, and as such, the relevant conclusions can be extended to other action objects. Moreover, the tableau of images compiled by Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k and presented at the exhibition as a \u201clegendry\u201d of Cooling Water<\/i> highlights not only the emblematic functions of the work in the history of the genre and within Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s activity, but also the neuralgic points resulting from its interpretations. The text brings up relevant questions regarding dating (that is, determining the date of the appearance of object art in Hungary), the notion of multiple, the problems of original and fake, interpretation and self-interpretation. However, the legendry tableau of Cooling Water<\/i> provides no answers; it merely confronts different sources in the form of a montage, evoking suspicion in the artist that there is \u201csomething fishy\u201d about the Cooling Water<\/i>.<\/p>\r\n

The confusion sensed by the curator \u2013 the dysfunction of context regarding Cooling Water<\/i> \u2013 is further complicated by a peculiar methodology, inasmuch as Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k founds the entire presentation on a formalist approach that is incompatible even with the notions of conceptual art. He attempts to describe the history of the object via a comparative approach to the medium, namely an apothecary\u2019s flask. In other words, presuming the existence of an \u201coriginal\u201d, he presents the later versions in relation to it, in the same manner as with a classic artwork, like a painting. He presents examples from the 1975 exhibition at FMK, a copy in the collection of the Modern Hungarian Gallery of P\u00e9cs, which is \u201cthe object most similar\u201d to the version presented at the exhibition in Paks, as well as the piece produced by Pl\u00e1gium 2000, about which he states that \u201cformally it differs in several aspects from the earlier version that can be identified on the same page via the linked image.\u201d Backed by references to texts by various authors, this methodology is a cul-de-sac even if we disregard the shortcomings of the Hungarian reception of Fluxus. At the same time, it serves well to illustrate the circumstance wherein the reinterpretation of the reinterpretation of the Duchampian tradition poses problems even to an art historian\/curator so familiar with the conceptual paradigm.<\/p>\r\n

The difficulties related to the interpretation of Cooling Water<\/i> are, at the same time, multi-layered, and fail to make the curator\u2019s situation easier: for want of critical evaluation, he can only rely on the self-interpretation of authorial texts, the first of which is L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke\u2019s interview with Szentj\u00f3by from 1971, around the time of the first presentation of the piece. (62)<\/a> Following this, the points of reference are primarily Beke\u2019s writings: the retrospective exhibition at the Young Artists\u2019 Club (FMK) in 1975, the year of the artist\u2019s emigration, presented Cooling Water<\/i> in the context of other action objects and action relics, which provided an opportunity for Beke to write the invariably most significant summarizing study in the history of Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s reception. (63)<\/a> Therein, he resorted to the system of genres and notions in analysing the objects based on the intermedial functioning of disparate qualities, in the context of Hamvas and Beuys, but his question regarding Cooling Water<\/i> (\u201cHow can we classify Cooling Water<\/i> [1965], ordinary hot water in a closed white medicine bottle?\u201d) remains a mere unanswered rhetorical question. Although in 1989 Beke took a much more distinct stand, when naming the notional framework of the object, he considered Cooling Water, along with the New Unit of Measure and Portable Trench for Three \u201cbrilliant examples of the Fluxus thought,\u201d (64)<\/a> while in his study, Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k mentioned the conceptual levels of the practice related to the Fluxus movement in connection with Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s study track, until in the single comprehensive publication amongst all Hungarian literature on conceptual art (65)<\/a> it was eventually canonized as a conceptual artwork. In the subchapter \u201cSources of Hungarian neo-conceptual art\u201d Tatai states that \u201cthe art of Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by, G\u00e1bor T\u00f3th and Endre T\u00f3t realized the \u2018personal intertexture\u2019 of Fluxus and conceptual art\u201d, and locates New Unit of Measure<\/i>, 70g Ground Lens<\/i> and Cooling Water<\/i> in the context of canonized conceptual works of art. (66)<\/a> She maintained this narrative based on contemporaneity in the exhibition she curated in 2013, (67)<\/a> where she also presented Cooling Water<\/i>. There is another tendency, which classifies the piece along with New Unit of Measure<\/i> as minimal art, interpreted as a branch of conceptual art: in her influential study, \u00c9va K\u00f6rner referred to these as minimal art objects. (68)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Practically, therefore, there is no consensus among Hungarian art historians regarding the status of Cooling Water<\/i> (just as its dating also varies between publications); it is located somewhere on the frontier between Fluxus and conceptual art. Additionally, it has to be taken into consideration that the majority of these texts were written around or much after the 1989 change of regime. The first (published) text that is closest in time to the creation of the first objects is the aforementioned interview from 1971, in which Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by sums up the conception of Cooling Water<\/i>. According to this narrative, in 1965 Szentj\u00f3by and G\u00e1bor Altorjai were planning an exhibition in P\u00e1l Petrigalla\u2019s apartment gallery, where they wanted to present a series of Dadaist objects that would have represented an attitude that was meant as a parody of their perception of art at that time (which comprised a mindset that refrained from questioning the status of elite art). Cooing Water<\/i> (together with New Unit of Measure<\/i>) was to be displayed at this intentionally provocative exhibition. (69)<\/a> Szentj\u00f3by remains consistent in terms of this genealogy, (70)<\/a> and \u2013 with a slightly conceptualist attitude \u2013 dates the piece at the birth of the idea and the genre, and not the object\u2019s actual creation (1969). (71)<\/a> In the text, he consistently speaks about \u201cpop objects\u201d and regarding the poems, about \u201cinstructions for actions\u201d, also bringing up the notion of readymade, but his terminology at this time does not yet include the terms intermedia, Fluxus, or multiple. As Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k points out, Cooling Water<\/i> would not become a Fluxus object, more precisely, the explicit product of Fluxus thought until the creation of the multiple dated 2008, by way of the Pl\u00e1gium 2000 (71)<\/a> project\u2019s research and Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s own reinterpretation. (72)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

However, the doubts around the dating of Cooling Water<\/i> and along with it, the first Hungarian objects, are dispersed by none other than Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s terminology: the notional identification of the work is related to the theoretical problems regarding 1965 (the subversive consequences of pop art) and not the period after 1966 June, when they learned about the international movement of actionism after they had realized the happening. (73)<\/a> Until the first happening, the intuitive or uninformed quality of their activites as outlined by Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly was indeed in effect. Later, however, they had the opportunity to get acquainted theoretically with contemporary actionism: they acquired Wolf Vostell and J\u00fcrgen Becker\u2019s collection of sources from 1965, (74)<\/a> which contained current authorial texts, interviews, scores and chronologies of pop art, Nouveau R\u00e9alisme, happening and Fluxus. The period between 1966 and 1971 saw not only the beginning of intense theoretical orientation and conscious integration, (75)<\/a> but also the planning of the first flux concerts. After Altorjay planned a happening-action concert in 1967, which fell through, (76)<\/a> Szentj\u00f3by organized an event at the Pesterzs\u00e9bet Culture House that was banned halfway through, (77)<\/a> followed by one with L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke in 1973, which could not even start for similar reasons, and so they had to wait until 1993 to perform the selection of classic scores. (78)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Every theoretical apparatus was therefore available in 1971 in order for Szentj\u00f3by to define Cooling Water<\/i> as a work related to Fluxus, but instead, he followed the interpretative method that ensured from the logic of his inner \u201cdevelopment\u201d: the stressing of its poetic origin. Cooling Water<\/i> is an object that transforms the inevitable change (as he puts it, \u201cintimate tragedy\u201d) of physical and emotional reality (79)<\/a> into poetry, limiting the materialism of the object to a minimal level in favour of the transparency of thought. The neutrality and sterility of the medium is the result of deliberate decision, (80)<\/a> and as such, it might as well be substitutable with any readymade vessel, since nothing more is \u201cexpected\u201d from it than to be an undisturbed medium for the abstraction of a physical process. This is why there is no significance in what variants of different formal characteristics were made during the Duchampian reuse of the object to accommodate the conceptuality of Cooling Water<\/i>, and so the formalist approach exercised towards it is also unsustainable.<\/p>\r\n

This minimalism of the object alone would not contradict the criteria of conceptual art, but the work is connected to reality not only by the concrete ordinariness of the apothecary\u2019s flask, but also by the process taking place within. \u201cPractically it was an action enclosed in a bottle\u201d, as Szentj\u00f3by put it. It is the action taking place in the bottle unperceivable to the eye, called event in Fluxus terminology, which goes beyond the (mono)mediality of conceptual art, and leads to the intermediality of the action-object. (81)<\/a> As noted by Kristine Stiles, action-objects mark deep dimensional connections (commissure) between the object and the action it comes out of. (82)<\/a> In Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s summary, \u201cThe actionist object is intermedial, as neither is the object itself a medium in the artistic sense, it is just what it is, nor is the action it carries out, just as the looking eye is not the sight itself. Nevertheless, it is an interesting question whether the conceptual object is intermedial or not, because it is questionable, on the one hand, to what extent the \u2018concept\u2019 as such is a medium (according to Flynt, it is, inasmuch as the material of music is the sound), and on the other hand, to what extent the object that \u2018carries\u2019, \u2018triggers\u2019 or \u2018generates\u2019 the concept (which the spectator, in turn, interprets in the Duchampian manner), is a medium. I am inclined not to regard conceptual objects, and conceptual artworks in general, as intermedial.\u201d (83)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

With respect to the relation of action objects and conceptual objects, there are cases when both qualities are mixed in an artwork, and when as compared to the original idea, the realized work is dominated by action. Among Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s sketches from 1965, which are contemporaneous with Cooling Water<\/i>, we can find \u201crecipes\u201d for several conceptual objects, such as Post Hummus (Earth)<\/i>, a variant of which was exhibited at the Young Artists\u2019 Club under the title Model Moon Study Track<\/i>, as an action object in this state (as a scale model). His collection of slingshots entitled Object Idiom<\/i> was featured at the same show (in Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s description, it comprised \u201cvarious slingshot designs of different \u2018cultural spheres\u2019, \u2018Dialects\u2019\u201d), (84)<\/a> which had definite conceptual foundations, but its quality as action was equally evident.<\/p>\r\n

Although Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s above interpretation and use of terminology is quite recent, the notion of intermedia connects Cooling Water<\/i> (and along with it, the objects New Unit of Measure<\/i>, Scented Magnet<\/i> or Iambic Tetrameter<\/i>) to the works of such international Fluxus artists as George Brecht, featured in the IPUT program. It was the Cage-disciple Brecht who introduced the genre of short event scores of very simple content, consisting of only a few words, but featuring some kind of call for action or process or flowchart. (85)<\/a> Such is, for instance, Three Aqueous Events<\/i> (1961), which models a natural law just like Cooling Water<\/i>, but not with the devices of poetry, just by pure observation and description:<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

Three Aqueous Events<\/i><\/p>\r\n

ice water steam<\/p>\r\n<\/center>\r\n

Mieko Shiomi\u2019s multiple Water music<\/i> (1964) is even closer to Cooling Water<\/i>. It comprises a small flask of water with a label that caption reads: \u201c1. give the water still form. 2. let the water loose it\u2019s still form.\u201d (86)<\/a> Cooling Water<\/i> (although for want of a market it was presented as a single piece at the Iparterv exhibition and other shows before the change of regime) is now considered a multiple of infinite copies in museum collections in accordance with Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s decision. As illustrated by the example of Paks, this status calls for interpretation, as Hungarian sources discussing the phenomenon are scarce, and contemporary museological practice has just begun facing the problems of canonization related to the phenomenon of multiples, with the collection policy of recent times. In the seventies, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke said that \u201cthe multiple is a unique hybrid, which resembles traditional graphic art inasmuch as it has limited copies, often signed, it is expensive, but it is a three-dimensional object. It has no original, but it has a prototype.\u201d (87)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

This definition is inaccurate inasmuch as presently the dominant aspect of multiples is their cheapness, ensuing from the intention of the democratic distribution of art products, and the number of copies is not necessarily limited, as it may well be infinite. Nevertheless, multiples indeed have no original, only a prototype of which anyone can create an equivalent replica, similarly to the way event scores can be performed by anyone (and may serve as samples for writing new scores). Fluxkits, the historical multiples of the sixties related to George Maciunas are boxes generally containing ordinary objects and cheap, reproduced cards, aimed at the liberation of authoriality (\u201ceveryone is an artist, anything can be art\u201d) besides conscious market\/commercial considerations. The ideas of Maciunas about the mass-production of the products of nonprofessional artists were directed at the elimination of elitism in art, emphasizing notions of simplicity, insignificance, entertainment and boundlessness. (88)<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Even though Fluxus itself was declared history relatively soon, in 1969, Cooling Water<\/i> represented the emergence of the new art paradigm (concept) in Hungary. The subtitle of G\u00e1bor Altorjay\u2019s Happening\/Action<\/i> concert was In memoriam Fluxus<\/i> as early as 1967. Still, the propagation and promotion of the consequences of Fluxus and the role of attitude and network took the shape of a kind of curatorial program (together with the novelty of this role) in Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s enterprise, who was active in Budapest until 1975. At the Telex-talks held on the occasion of the 1973 flux concert, he said: \u201cI consider it very important to emphasize when presenting these works that these significations were formulated 10-12 years ago, and thus they can only be conveyed now as documents, traces of the past.\u201d (89)<\/a> Connection to the international Fluxus mentality, however, did not mean uncritical identification: according to Szentj\u00f3by, the reason Fluxus could be considered a historical phenomenon in the early seventies was that it had failed to make good on its promises related to the deconstruction of elite art. (90)<\/a> The presentation of Subsistence Level Standard Project 1984 W<\/i> (LSP1984W<\/i>) in 1975 at the Young Artists\u2019 Club was not simply a closure to Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s Hungarian period, but it also announced the program of superseding the Duchamp-Brecht (Dada-Fluxus) tradition.<\/p>\r\n

As a summary, it can be established that the synonymous terminology used in Hungarian discourses, which equates concept art with conceptual art, obscures the historical fact that concept art engendered a paradigm shift by introducing an immaterial, text-based and actionist approach to art in the mid-sixties. Conceiving of language as the authentic material of art, this paradigm is not identical to the scientific and linguistic practice that was propagated in the underground circles of Budapest through semiotics, especially as a result of J\u00e1nos Zsilka\u2019s university seminars. (91)<\/a> Analogous to Fluxus, concept art endeavours not only to liberate the way people think about the notion of art by simplifying the use of media (like the Kosuthian model), but it also prioritises taking social reality into consideration. Owing to its ideological criticism, it can be considered a successor of classical avant-garde, but with a critical reaction to this programmatic heritage. Hungarian concept art was borne out of extra-institutional existence, it is anti-institutional and anti-professional, taking the side of the unskilled and the untalented, and therefore representing the opposition of elite art.<\/p>\r\n

The two paradigms are connected by the context that was defined by Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k, on the basis of \u00c9va K\u00f6rner, as the heritage of B\u00e9la Hamvas, and which I referred to with the term \u201cesoteric avant-garde\u201d, while conceding that this term is inaccurate. (92)<\/a> Still, I think that the diversity of the turn of the sixties-seventies can best be described by this, or a similar methodological umbrella term of contextual origin. All the more so because the available terminology of Hungarian discourses, K\u00f6rner\u2019s theory of the \u201cabsurd as concept\u201d, defined by the element of the political, is in need of revision. The question is to what extent canonized works, which in fact strengthen a different paradigm \u2013 such as Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s action Be Forbidden! Punishment-preventive Autotherapy<\/i>, also referenced in Paks \u2013, underpin ideas about the socially critical dimension of conceptual art.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

During the writing of this essay, the author received the Ern\u0151 K\u00e1llai Grant for art historians and art critics.<\/em><\/div>\r\n
\r\n

(1)<\/a> Zdenka Badovinac, Eda \u010cufer, Cristina Freire, Boris Groys, Charles Harrison, V\u00edt Havranek, Piotr Piotrowski, and Branka Stipan\u010di\u0107: Conceptual Art and Eastern Europe. Part. I., e-flux journal<\/i> no. 40, December 2012. http:\/\/worker01.e-flux.com\/pdf\/article_8961350.pdf<\/a>. The second part of the talks: Zdenka Badovinac (et al.): Conceptual Art and Eastern Europe. Part. II. e-flux journal<\/i> no. 41, January 2013. http:\/\/worker01.e-flux.com\/pdf\/article_8962432.pdf<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(2)<\/a> Lucy Lippard: Six Years. The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972<\/i>, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973.<\/p>\r\n

(3)<\/a> Tony Godfrey: Conceptual Art<\/i>, London, Phaidon, 1998.<\/p>\r\n

(4)<\/a> On the \u201chorizontal\u201d perspective replacing the \u201cvertical\u201d perspective, and the relevant concepts of traditional art history, see Piotr Piotrowski: Toward a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde, in: Bru, Sascha (et al.): Europa! Europa? The Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent<\/i>, Vol. 1., De Gruyter, Berlin, 2009, p. 49-58.<\/p>\r\n

(5)<\/a> \u201cAt that time, to me as a young art historian and critic, Kosuth\u2019s deduction proved revelational above all, namely that conceptual art makes the mediation of the \u2018critic\u2019 unnecessary, as it realizes this function itself. From this, I drew the consequence that insofar as the critic is rendered unnecessary, all there is left for him is to become an artist.\u201d L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke: Kosuth in Hungary, in: Joseph Kosuth: Texts on Art<\/i>, trans. B\u00e1nki Dezs\u0151 et al., Knoll Galerie, Wien & Budapest, 1992, p. 105.<\/p>\r\n

(6)<\/a> Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k: The impact of conceptual art in Hungary. The extension of the notion and function of art, 1983-85<\/i>. The manuscript, taken up for publication in 1988 and amended several times later on, has never actually made it into print. Available in Hungarian online: http:\/\/www.c3.hu\/collection\/koncept\/index0.html<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(7)<\/a> The most recent comprehensive paper on the lack of reception is by Katalin Sz\u00e9kely. We also owe the summary of literature on Hungarian and regional conceptual art to her: Katalin Sz\u00e9kely: Because everybody is just sitting and standing. Footnotes to a book never written, exindex<\/i>, 11 November 2013. \/index.php?l=hu&page=3&id=909<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(8)<\/a> 1, 2, !? \u201cFive Identical Persons Apply Here\u201d. Concept Palimpsest, or Hungarian Conceptual Art<\/i>, Paks Gallery, 28 March \u2013 9 June 2014.<\/p>\r\n

(9)<\/a> The emergence of conceptual art in Hungary also brought along the role of the curator, principally through L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke\u2019s thematic projects.<\/p>\r\n

(10)<\/a> Conceptual art in Hungary<\/i>. Lectures in C3 Center for Culture and Communication, 1997. http:\/\/catalog.c3.hu\/index.php?page=work&id=822&lang=EN<\/a> (last access: 14 November, 2014)<\/p>\r\n

(11)<\/a> In connection with the exhibition, Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k published a list of literature and events related to conceptual art on the website of C3 (concept.c3.hu<\/a>). Additionally, he made two valuable referential interviews in 2014 with D\u00f3ra Maurer and Imre Bak, which were on display at the exhibition in Paks along with recordings of earlier lectures and interviews. To some extent, these video recordings substitute for the lack of socio-cultural and social-political context for the works.<\/p>\r\n

(12)<\/a> Terry Smith: One and Three Ideas: Conceptualism Before, During and After Conceptual Art, e-flux journal<\/i>, Nr. 29. November 2011. http:\/\/worker01.e-flux.com\/pdf\/article_267.pdf<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(13)<\/a> Conceptualism Today. Conceptual art in Hungary since the early nineties<\/i>, Paks Gallery, 15 March \u2013 2 June 2013.<\/p>\r\n

(14)<\/a> This approach is well reflected by the notion of intermedia represented by Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k as head of the Intermedia Institute at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, which has distanced considerably from Dick Higgins\u2019s \u201cproto-definition\u201d from 1966, and follows the changes in meaning that have ensued since, which by today principally tend to stand for the scientific quality of art. Cf.: Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k: What is Intermedia? Balkon<\/i>, 2000\/7, no. 8. I discuss the paradigmatic modes of interpretation related to the notion of intermedia as well as Tam\u00e1s St.Turba\u2019s twenty years of pedagogical activity at the Intermedia Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in my soon to be published study entitled \u201c\u2019Ask IPUT!\u2019 The Theory and Practice of the Parallel Course Study Track\u201d.<\/p>\r\n

(15)<\/a> Although a more emphasized presence of some authors, like L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Lakner or the members of the P\u00e9cs Workshop would have been altogether justified.<\/p>\r\n

(16)<\/a> This semiotically based thinking is reflected in such details of the exhibition\u2019s curation as the presentation of Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly\u2019s conceptual object Vase with Flowers<\/i> (1970) in different material realities: in front of the \u201coriginal\u201d work\u2019s planar reproduction on the wall stands a pedestal with the three-dimensional reconstruction of the \u201coriginal\u201d.<\/p>\r\n

(17)<\/a> As if the curator followed Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly\u2019s idea about the \u201cideal\u201d exhibition of conceptual art to be realized sometime. According to Erd\u00e9ly, \u201c\u2026this exhibition would be good, if this classification were to be intermixed and the works exhibited as heterogeneously as possible, in any way but grouped. Because what is interesting is how a painting is changed by a conceptual approach, or how artistic-visual sensibility modifies someone\u2019s concept.\u201d Interview with Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly, spring 1983, \u00c1rgus<\/i>, 1991, vol. II. no. 5., September-October, p. 75.<\/p>\r\n

(18)<\/a> Another reason the typological approach to conceptual art is not purposeful is that \u2013 as pointed out by Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k \u2013 after some time, Hungarian art starts repeating the visual mannerisms of conceptual art, which is to be considered formalism, regardless of the medium.<\/p>\r\n

(19)<\/a> Perhaps it may seem as art-historical orthodoxy, I use the phrases \u201cconcept art\u201d and \u201cconceptual art\u201d \u2013 just as well as avant-garde \u2013 as historical terms, to describe two different paradigms of art, which are opposed, but both have an aptitude for \u201cconceptuality\u201d. This terminological \u201cpragmatism\u201d serves the better understanding of the nature of the two paradigms.<\/p>\r\n

(20)<\/a> This is the point where I express my gratitude for J\u00f3zsef M\u00e9lyi\u2019s remarks, which have helped tremendously in perfecting the final version of the text.<\/p>\r\n

(21)<\/a> \u201eNamely, the term \u2019Romantic Conceptualism\u2019 seemed to me a suitable name for a combination of dispassionate cultural analysis with a Romantic dream of the true culture that was characteristic for the artists whom I was interested with\u201d Boris Groys: History becomes Form, Moscow Conceptualism<\/i>, The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, 2010, p. 7.<\/p>\r\n

(22)<\/a> \u201eIn my text \u2019Moscow Romantic conceptualism I tried to create a kind of tension. It is people say Russian communism wasn\u2019t a true communism, But it was communism, nonetheless \u2013 if it wasn\u2019t, nobody would be interested in arguing wether it was true communism or not.\u201d Groys, in Zdenka Badovinac (et al), 2012.<\/p>\r\n

(23)<\/a> Katalin Tim\u00e1r: Is your Pop our Pop? The History of Art as a Self-Colonizing Tool, Artmargins<\/i>, 2002, http:\/\/www.artmargins.com\/index.php\/archive\/323-is-your-pop-our-pop-the-history-of-art-as-a-self-colonizing-tool<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(24)<\/a> Marijan Susovski (ed.): The New Art Practice in Jugoslavia: 1966-1978<\/i>, Zagreb, Gallery of Contemporary Art, 1978.<\/p>\r\n

(25)<\/a> Mi\u0161ko \u0160uvakovic: Conceptual Art, in: Dubravka Djuric, Mi\u0161ko \u0160uvakovic (eds.): Impossible Histories: Historic Avant-Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post-Avant-Gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918-1991<\/i>, Cambridge Mass., The MIT Press, 2003, pp. 210-245. p. 212.<\/p>\r\n

(26)<\/a> In the second half of the sixties, the model of esoteric philosophy provided essential inspiration for both the paradigm of panel painting (represented in this respect at the exhibition by Imre Bak) and of actionism, even if each came to different conclusions. In the social-intellectual reality of the K\u00e1d\u00e1r-era, the modern thoughts of Hamvas about the invalidity of traditional, imitative art and his conception of art as activity<\/i> provided a clear-cut theoretical background for Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s critical program Parallel Course Study Track launched in 1968, which was centred on the notion of change and the criterion of illegal operation, the moral imperative of \u201cbe forbidden!\u201d. In terms of material, the objects he made in the second half of the sixties contained sulphur, salt, blue vitriol and other alchemical substances, which relate them to Hamvas\u2019 ideas on high culture, the Kabbalah and alchemy, and represented the introduction of new materials into the creation of art objects.<\/p>\r\n

(27)<\/a> Tihomir Milovac: The Misfits, in: u.\u0151.: Conceptualist Strategies in Croatian Contemporary Art<\/i>, Zagreb, 2002, pp. 7-17.<\/p>\r\n

(28)<\/a> Lukasz Ronduda: Between Postessentialism and Pragmatism, in Lukasz Ronduda (ed.): Polish art of the 1970s<\/i>, Warsawa, 2009, pp. 8-15. p. 8.<\/p>\r\n

(29)<\/a> Zdenka Badovinac (et al.) op. cit. 2012.<\/p>\r\n

(30)<\/a> This traditionalism is by all means the reason for the fact that Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by and the notion of happening, written down by art history as \u201cradical\u201d with a slightly pejorative overtone, has often been left out of, or only marginally present in history writing. A typical example of this art historical attitude is the exhibition and catalogue The Sixties<\/i> at the Hungarian National Gallery, which unequivocally attempts to interpret the period from the perspective of panel painting.<\/p>\r\n

(31)<\/a> Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k: Interview with Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly, spring 1983, \u00c1rgus<\/i>, 1991\/5.<\/p>\r\n

(32)<\/a> The \u201eR\u00f3zsa Circle\u201d was formed in the Caf\u00e9 R\u00f3zsa opposite to the Academy of Fine Arts, where the students-participants (among others \u00c1kos Birk\u00e1s, Andr\u00e1s Hal\u00e1sz, Zsigmond K\u00e1rolyi, Andr\u00e1s Koncz et al.) organised their art actions around 1976.<\/p>\r\n

(33)<\/a> Andr\u00e1s Ecsedi-Derd\u00e1k (ed.): Groupe Iparterv – Le Progres de L’illusion : La troisieme g\u00e9n\u00e9ration de l’avant-garde hongroise : The third generation of the Hungarian avant-garde, exh. cat., Institut hongrois de Paris, 2010.<\/p>\r\n

(34)<\/a> \u201c\u2026this is how concept seeped in. So it was cut off by the resistance of the Iparterv group, but no one had yet heard of concept art then. Kosuth\u2019s work reproduced in the catalogue When Attitude Becomes Form<\/i> was a chair with a bunch of newspapers. No one got it. No one got what he wanted with this table with some newspapers laid out on it, and a chair next to it. Obviously, Kosuth had already conceived of concept by then.\u201d Ibid. p. 78.<\/p>\r\n

(35)<\/a> Ibid. He describes the difference in their approach in terms of their relation to science.<\/p>\r\n

(36)<\/a> \u00c9va Forg\u00e1cs describes Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly as a \u201cversatile tutoring master\u201d and compares him to Kass\u00e1k in \u00c9va Forg\u00e1cs: The Avant-garde in Hungarian Culture., in: The Second Public. Hungarian Art in the 20th Century<\/i>, compiled by Hans Knoll, Enciklop\u00e9dia Kiad\u00f3, Budapest, 2002, p. 63.<\/p>\r\n

(37)<\/a> Although Erd\u00e9ly produced a very diverse body of works, the artist\u2019s greatest contribution to the history of Hungarian neo-avant-garde was made in the 1970s. Erd\u00e9ly began his career in the 1950s, producing Art informel-inspired drawings. During the 1960s he turned to happening, creating such milestone works as Lunch \u2013 in Memoriam Batu Khan<\/i> and Golden Sunday<\/i>, both from 1966. Piotr Piotrowski: In the Shadow of Yalta<\/i>, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2009, p. 281.<\/p>\r\n

(38)<\/a> \u201cAll in all, it is very interesting that Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly is considered a true \u201cavant-garde\u201d, and it gradually turns out that his well-read, educated intelligence and circle of friends are all held together by an approach that may be called modernistic, but is ultimately traditional. The new only gradually grow out of it \u2026\u201d Annam\u00e1ria Sz\u0151ke, in: Interview with L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke, 21 February 1989., Ildik\u00f3 Nagy (ed.): The Sixties. New Tendencies in Hungarian Art<\/i> (cat.), K\u00e9pz\u0151m\u0171v\u00e9szeti Kiad\u00f3 \u2013 Magyar Nemzeti Gal\u00e9ria \u2013 Ludwig M\u00fazeum, Budapest, 1991, p. 196.<\/p>\r\n

(39)<\/a> In most detail in his lecture at C3 on 5 October 1997: http:\/\/catalog.c3.hu\/index.php?page=work&id=826&lang=HU<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(40)<\/a> Katalin Keser\u00fc: Language Flirting with Art in Hungary, Holmi<\/i>, vol. II. no. 9., September 1990., pp. 1021-1022.<\/p>\r\n

(41)<\/a> In Allan Kaprow\u2019s summary, \u201c[f]undamentally, Environments and Happenings are similar. They are the passive and active sides of a single coin, whose principle is extension. Thus an Environment is not less than a Happening.\u201d Allan Kaprow: Assemblages, Environments and & Happenings, in: Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (eds.): Art in Theory 1900-1990<\/i>, Blackwell, Oxford-Cambridge, 1992. p. 705. This is why it is necessary to emphasize the difference in meaning between the terms installation, preferred by conceptual art, and environment. (online: http:\/\/emc.elte.hu\/seregit\/Art%20in%20Theory.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\r\n

(42)<\/a> G\u00e1bor Altorjay: Life, Material, Happening (1966), Magyar M\u0171hely<\/i>, 128-129. sz., 2004, pp. 15-16.<\/p>\r\n

(43)<\/a> Boris Groys: History becomes Form, Moscow Conceptualism<\/i>, The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, 2010, p. 82.<\/p>\r\n

(44)<\/a> L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke: Centaur. Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s \u201cStudy Tracks\u201d, Magyar M\u0171hely<\/i>, vol. 16. no. 51-55. 30 June 1978., p. 67<\/p>\r\n

(45)<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

(46)<\/a> \u201c\u2019Concept art\u2019 is first of all an art of which the material is \u2018concepts,\u2019 as the material of for ex. music is sound. Since \u2018concepts\u2019 are closely bound up with language, concept art is a kind of art of which the material is language.\u201d Henry Flynt: Concept art…, 1961, in: La Monte Young, Georges Maciunas, Jackson MacLow (eds.): An Anthology<\/i>. Ed. by, New York, c. 1962, reprint: 1963. (online: http:\/\/www.henryflynt.org\/aesthetics\/conart.html<\/a>)<\/p>\r\n

(47)<\/a> Tam\u00e1s St.Auby, 1997 http:\/\/catalog.c3.hu\/index.php?page=work&id=826&lang=HU<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(48)<\/a> Henry Flynt, op. cit., 1961.<\/p>\r\n

(49)<\/a> \u201cTam\u00e1s visualized the Fluxus-behaviour\u201d Gyula Konkoly, http:\/\/catalog.c3.hu\/index.php?page=work&id=823&lang=HU<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(50)<\/a> Video interview of Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k with Imre Bak, Budapest, 2014.<\/p>\r\n

(51)<\/a> http:\/\/catalog.c3.hu\/index.php?page=work&id=826&lang=HU<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(52)<\/a> Istv\u00e1n Hajdu: Emanation and Charm. The effect of 1968 on Contemporary Hungarian Art, Balkon<\/i>, 2008\/9, pp. 14-29, p. 16.<\/p>\r\n

(53)<\/a> Petern\u00e1k, op. cit., 1983, p. 75.<\/p>\r\n

(54)<\/a> As Erzs\u00e9bet Tatai observes, in Hungary the Kosuth-type art, which used the epithet \u201cconceptual\u201d, was considered authoritative, while authors who were competent in the subject (L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke, Istv\u00e1n Hajdu, Mikl\u00f3s Petern\u00e1k, and later \u00c9va K\u00f6rner and Edit Andr\u00e1s) were more inclined to use the term \u201cconcept art\u201d by Henry Flynt. He himself uses the phrase \u201cconceptual art\u201d for linguistic (and not historical) reasons. Tatai: Neo-conceptual Art in Hungary in the Nineties<\/i>, Praesens, Budapest, 2005 p. 14.<\/p>\r\n

(55)<\/a> Szentj\u00f3by works represented at the exhibition: Cooling Water (1965); visual poems<\/a>: Stocks<\/i> (1967), Coca-Cola with Vodka<\/i> (1973), Ballpoint pen marks in a headwaiter’s white smock pocket<\/i> (1973); action: Expulsion-Exercise. Punishment-preventive Autotherapy<\/i> (1972); and documents of the reconstruction initiated by Little Varsaw (2005), the invitation to the Fluxconcert<\/i> planned for 12 May 1973, but banned, and eventually held on 12 May 1993 at the Russian Cultural Centre of Budapest.<\/p>\r\n

(56)<\/a> Hannah Higgins: Fluxus Experience<\/i>, University of California Press, 2002, p. 121.<\/p>\r\n

(57)<\/a> On Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly\u2019s notion of \u201cnatural scientific concept\u201d, see S\u00e1ndor Hornyik: Avant-garde Science? The reception of the modern natural scientific world view in the oeuvres of Tiham\u00e9r Gyarmathy, Tibor Csiky and Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly<\/i>, Akad\u00e9miai Kiad\u00f3, Budapest, 2008.<\/p>\r\n

(58)<\/a> The IMPOSSIBLE REALISM in an International Context – the territory of flux, concept and conceptual art<\/i>, 19 October \u2013 9 November 2001. http:\/\/www.artpool.hu\/lehetetlen\/real-kiall\/bevezeto.html<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(59)<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

(60)<\/a> Authors of academic literature on Fluxus practically agree in one thing: that Fluxus is not unified.<\/p>\r\n

(61)<\/a> George Maciunas autocratically defined who could be considered a Fluxus artist and who could not, so on several occasions he excluded artists from the network, only to rehabilitate them later on. At the same time, in 1966, Maciunas appointed a number of co-directors, and this is how Mil\u00e1n Kniz\u00e1k became the leader of Eastern, and Ken Friedman of Western Fluxus. But as emphasized by the latter, \u201c[it] is unrealistic and historically inaccurate to imagine a Fluxus controlled by one man. Fluxus was co-created by many people and it has undergone a continuous process of co-creation and renewal for four decades\u201d. Ken Friedman: Fluxus and Company, in Ken Friedman (ed.): The Fluxus Reader<\/i>, Academy Editions, Wiley & Sons, 1998. pp. 237-253., p. 252.
\r\n(online: https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/250737\/Friedman._1998._Fluxus_and_Company<\/a>)<\/p>\r\n

(62)<\/a> Interview with Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by. Tape recording by L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke, on 11 March 1971. Jelenl\u00e9t \u2013 Sz\u00f3gett\u00f3<\/i>, ELTE BTK journal of literature and art, Budapest, 1989\/ 1-2.<\/p>\r\n

(63)<\/a> L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke: Centaur. Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s \u201cStudy Tracks\u201d, Magyar M\u0171hely<\/i>, vol. 16. no. 51-55. 30 June 1978.<\/p>\r\n

(64)<\/a> L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke: Differences, in: Hommage \u00e1 Iparterv 1968\/69<\/i> III. cat, F\u00e9szek Gal\u00e9ria, 14 February \u2013 3 March 1989., curated by \u00c9va Moln\u00e1r, n.p. It is slightly confusing that in his later \u201csubjective\u201d interpretation (L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke: A Subjective History of Conceptual Art, in: P\u00e1l Der\u00e9ky\u2013 Andr\u00e1s M\u00fcllner (eds.): Mu\/te? Studies in Hungarian Neo-Avant-Garde<\/i>, R\u00e1ci\u00f3 Kiad\u00f3, 2004, pp. 227-239,: 233.) he highlights Cooling Water<\/i> as an early conceptual object.<\/p>\r\n

(65)<\/a> Erzs\u00e9bet Tatai: Neo-conceptual Art in Hungary in the Nineties<\/i>, Praesens, Budapest, 2005.<\/p>\r\n

(66)<\/a> Tatai, op.cit., 2005, p. 63. \u201cTam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s work Cooling Water<\/i> (a glass flask containing water, with a label saying Cooling Water) reminds with absurd humour about relativity, the changing relation between statements and the reality.\u201d p. 66.<\/p>\r\n

(67)<\/a> Conceptualism Today. Conceptual art in Hungary since the early nineties<\/i>, Paks Gallery, 15 March \u2013 2 June 2013.<\/p>\r\n

(68)<\/a> \u00c9va K\u00f6rner: Absurd as Concept. Scenes from the History of Hungarian Concept Art, in: Katalin Aknai and S\u00e1ndor Hornyik (eds.): Avant-Garde \u2013 With and Without Isms<\/i>, MTA M\u0171v\u00e9szett\u00f6rt\u00e9neti Kutat\u00f3int\u00e9zet, Budapest, 2005, pp. 420-427., p. 424.<\/p>\r\n

(69)<\/a> \u201d\u2026the Pop-object exhibition planned for \u201965 would have rather been blasphemy, scandal, gag, at least that was how we thought back then.\u201d Interview with Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by. Tape recording by L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke, on 11 March 1971. Jelenl\u00e9t \u2013 Sz\u00f3gett\u00f3<\/i>, ELTE BTK journal of literature and art, Budapest, 1989\/ 1-2., p. 259.<\/p>\r\n

(70)<\/a> Throughout the writing of this text I was consulting Tam\u00e1s St.Turba on the subject of action objects and conceptual works, and he shared with me some scanned notebook pages from 1964 and 1965, which unequivocally corroborate the genealogy of Cooling Water<\/i>. \u201cI kept using my 1964 calendar for a while in 1965, which was when I named some objects I considered intermedial and conceptual \u2013 of course, I didn\u2019t use these terms at that time \/ I had never heard of the existence of objects denoted as such.\u201d (Tam\u00e1s St. Turba, personal communication, 17 October 2013.) The pages I was shown contain several work titles that were later realized as action objects, such as Scented Magnet<\/i> (1965), Two hundred grams of ground lens (final title – 70g Ground Lens<\/i>, 1965) or New Unit of Measure<\/i> (today all of these in the collection of Ludwig Museum \u2013 Museum of Contemporary Art). Cooling Water<\/i> is the first on this list. The name of P\u00e1l Petrigalla also appears among the titles of works, which proves the idea of the unrealized 1965 exhibition. I would hereby like to express my gratitude to Tam\u00e1s St.Turba for sharing these sources with me, which confirm the proposition that the appearance of the genre of object art in Hungary should be dated 1965.<\/p>\r\n

(71)<\/a> The events are hard to reconstruct from such distance in time: G\u00e1bor Altorjay does not remember this planned exhibition.<\/p>\r\n

(72)<\/a> http:\/\/plagium2000.wordpress.com\/tag\/plagium\/<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(73)<\/a> The case somewhat resembles the history of origin of Joseph Kosuth\u2019s early works (Art as Idea as Idea<\/i>), which are dated 1965 by their author, but were not exhibited before 1967-68. As Ian Burn notes, \u201c\u2019If they were made in 1965 like he claims, they are Pop Art. If they were made in 1967\u20138, when they were exhibited, then they are among the first conceptual works, strictly speaking.\u2019\u201d Kosuth, in turn, explains this time-shift with being an art student at the time, \u201cwho had the ideas but not the resources to realize them; by the time he did have these resources a few years later, everyone (including Burn) was dating their work to the moment of conception.\u201d Terry Smith, op. cit., November 2011. p. 5.<\/p>\r\n

(74)<\/a> \u201cThis was what made us understand that we were not solitary psychopaths, but in fact in the very centre of an enormous intercontinental movement.\u201d Zsuzsa L\u00e1szl\u00f3, Tam\u00e1s St.Turba (eds.): The Lunch (In memoriam Batu Khan<\/i>), Budapest, Tranzit Hungary K\u00f6zhaszn\u00fa Egyes\u00fclet, 2011, p. 18.<\/p>\r\n

(75)<\/a> J\u00fcrgen Becker \u2013 Wolf Vostell (eds.): Happenings. Fluxus, Pop Art, Nouveau R\u00e9alisme. Eine Dokumentation<\/i>, Rowohlt Verlag, 1965.<\/p>\r\n

(76)<\/a> After the happening, Altorjay contacted Wolf Vostellal, Dick Higgins, and J. Chal\u00fapeczky via mail, and the documentation of The Lunch<\/i> was shown to the most important Eastern European happener, Tadeusz Kantor.<\/p>\r\n

(77)<\/a> Along with Cornelius Cardew\u2019s, Henning Christiansen\u2019s, Ben Vautier\u2019s and Tomas Schmit\u2019s Fluxus scores, G\u00e1bor Altorjay, Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by and Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly would have presented their own works.<\/p>\r\n

(78)<\/a> http:\/\/www.c3.hu\/collection\/tilos\/krono.html<\/a><\/p>\r\n

(79)<\/a> Cf. Tam\u00e1s St. Auby: Documents of the Banned Fluxconcert Planned for 12 May 1973. Orpheus<\/i>, vol. IV., 1993\/1. pp. 52\u201372.<\/p>\r\n

(80)<\/a> \u201c\u2026when the idea of cooling water came up, I was specifically interested in, and captured by, its tragedy, its intimate tragedy.\u201d Interview with Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by. Tape recording by L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke, on 11 March 1971. Jelenl\u00e9t \u2013 Sz\u00f3gett\u00f3<\/i>, Budapest, 1989\/ 1-2., p. 260.<\/p>\r\n

(81)<\/a> \u201cthe reason I chose an apothecary\u2019s flask was mainly to make the subject transparent, simple and sterile for both the senses and the thought.\u201d Ibid.<\/p>\r\n

(82)<\/a> At least two types of action-object can be distinguished, in terms of their connection to an event. The first, such as Cooling Water<\/i>, or action-relics (e.g. the relics of the happening The Lunch<\/i> at the exhibition in FMK), presupposes a symmetrical relation between object and action\/intervention, as it involves an event that has definitely taken place; the second, such as the action object For Taming the Devil<\/i> (or other instruction-based works) are asymmetric, as the event itself is fictional, contingent.<\/p>\r\n

(83)<\/a> Kristine Stiles: Out of Actions: between performance and the object, 1949-1979<\/i>, Thames and Hudson, 1998, p. 230.<\/p>\r\n

(84)<\/a>Tam\u00e1s St. Turba, personal communication, 21 October 2013.<\/p>\r\n

(85)<\/a> Tam\u00e1s St. Turba, personal communication, 24 June 2014.<\/p>\r\n

(86)<\/a> As Julia Robinson noted, the first events originated from the synthesis of Cage\u2019s and Duchamp\u2019s legacy, on a textual and ready-made basis, such as Motor vehicle sundown<\/i> (event, 1960). Julia Robinson: In the Event of George Brecht, in Alfred M. Fisher (ed.): George Brecht Events. A Heterospective<\/i>. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther K\u00f6nig, K\u00f6ln, p. 54.<\/p>\r\n

(87)<\/a> \u201e1. give the water still form. 2. let the water loose it\u2019s still form.\u201d The classic Fluxus score was featured in Ken Friedman\u2019s selection (together with Brecht\u2019s), in: Ken Friedman, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn (eds.): The FluxusPerformanceWorkbook, digital supplement to Performance Research Vol. 7. No. 3. \u2018On Fluxus\u2019, September 2002, Routledge, London. p. 98. (online: http:\/\/www.deluxxe.com\/beat\/Fluxusworkbook.pdf<\/a>)<\/p>\r\n

(88)<\/a> L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke: Recurrence and Repetition in Art, in L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke: Art\/Theory, Studies 1970-1991<\/i>, Balassi Kiad\u00f3 \u2013 BAE Tart\u00f3shull\u00e1m \u2013 Intermedia, Budapest, 1994, pp. 39-48, p. 42.<\/p>\r\n

(89)<\/a> Although conceived in different economic and ideological environments, the sulphur-filled wooden box of Szentj\u00f3by\u2019s Parallel Course Emblem<\/i> (1968) or his Moon Landing Object<\/i> (1969) are the Eastern European counterparts of the multiples of Maciunas, Beuys and Brecht (evoking Duchamp). G\u00e1bor Altorjay\u2019s Fluxus objects, however, were conceived in an entirely different context. Following his emigration in 1967, Altorjay joined the German Fluxus circles (in collaboration with Wolf Vostell, Bazon Brock, Joseph Beuys and J\u00f6rg Immendorf) and with a characteristically Fluxus method, realized Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly\u2019s design of the Newspaper-cake<\/i> (1967). His multiple, the object Short Circuit Instrument<\/i> (1968), of which ten versions were planned, but only three completed, was conceived in this Western European market environment and Fluxus spirit strongly influenced by the New Left thought.<\/p>\r\n

(90)<\/a> Tam\u00e1s St. Auby: Documents of the Banned Fluxconcert Planned for 12 May 1973. Orpheus<\/i>, vol. IV., 1993\/1. p. 60.<\/p>\r\n

(91)<\/a> \u201cSomething becomes past inasmuch as it no longer represents present interests. The presentation of Fluxus pieces is justified today only by two layers of meaning: the subversion of elite art and keeping alive the possibility of new proportions.\u201d Tam\u00e1s St. Auby: Documents of the Banned Fluxconcert Planned for 12 May 1973. Orpheus<\/i>, vol. IV., 1993\/1. p. 63.<\/p>\r\n

(92)<\/a> J\u00e1nos Zsilka\u2019s seminar was attended by several members of the underground art scene, G\u00e1bor B\u00f3dy, Mikl\u00f3s Erd\u00e9ly, Gy\u00f6rgy Jov\u00e1novics, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Beke among others, but Tam\u00e1s Szentj\u00f3by recalls that Zsilka himself only marginally and occasionally participated in the performances. However, his engagement is hinted at by the action theatre<\/a> entitled Tether the Cow with a Rope<\/i> (referring to an example sentence by J\u00e1nos Zsilka), University Stage, 1973.<\/p>\r\n

(93)<\/a> The inaccuracy of the term is related to the avant-garde component, insofar as such artists who represented an even more traditional approach within the traditionalism of image production, like, for instance, the members of the Sz\u00fcrenon group (coined from Surrealism & Nonfigurativity), were also inspired by Hamvas\u2019 philosophy of life.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cAll is water\u201d (Thales)   According to Charles Harrison, curators and art critics resort to the umbrella term \u201cconceptualism\u201d when they have run out of ideas for defining a given phenomenon of art, and use it to describe \u201canything that looks like avant-garde practice.\u201d (1) The terminological superficiality of journalistic practice condemned by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":630881,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kritika"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2021939,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400934\/revisions\/2021939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exindex.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}