Description: An engaging and insightful collection of essays and rarely-seen imagery that traces the development of modernism in Hungarian art, from birth to maturation and through several generations. Written in an accessible way for an international audience and reflecting on socio-political currents.
This wide-ranging collection by Éva Forgács, a leading scholar of Modernism, corrects long-standing misconceptions about Hungarian art while examining the social milieu and work of dozens of important Hungarian artists, including László Moholy-Nagy and Lajos Kassák and looks at several permutations of modernism, from the avant-garde to neo-avant-garde. A fascinating portrait of twentieth-century Budapest emerges from the book, which shows how it became a microcosm of the social and political turmoil raging across twentieth-century Europe. Forgács's text is as much a cultural history as it is a deeply satisfying dive into one country's unique art history.Review Quotes: A pioneering intellectual survey of Hungarian art in the long twentieth century. Populated by extraordinary figures such as Béla Balázs, whose dream of a great new Hungarian culture amounted to the founding of a new "religion of art," this authoritative book repositions cultural giants such as László Moholy-Nagy, Lajos Kassák, and György Lukács within a series of fascinating interpersonal, philosophical and political fields. Forgács also entices readers to engage with a host of less well known artists and forgotten initiatives: the European School; the transcendentalist revivers of Malevich; the exponents of the postmodern 'new sensibility' of the 1980s; the post-socialist post-constructivists of the 1990s. She challenges canons and attacks key questions head on, provocatively exploring, among other things, whether or not "democracy grows under pressure." The culmination of decades of sustained research, this erudite publication is an immensely precious resource and a vital contribution to the further exploration of the rich intertextual fabric of European art as a whole.
- Klara Kemp-Welch, Courtauld Institute of Art