“You Feed Us So that We Can Fight Against You”. Concepts of the Art and State in the Hungarian Avant-Garde
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Éva Forgács
Abstract
Although the Hungarian avant-garde (1909-late 1930s) was radically innovative, it contains a classicist element that has not been adequately studied, probably because it contradicts quintessential avant-garde features. The young György Lukács supported the avant-garde painters because he preferred their newfound order and control to the ephemeral and the subjective in Hungarian Impressionism. – The classicist vein of the Hungarian avant-garde related to its political program. Poet, writer, painter, editor and publisher Lajos Kassák, who became the leader of the avant-garde, articulated several times his position with regard to the state: as a social democrat and anarchist anti-war activist during World War I.; as an oppositional artist during the 1919 Hungarian Commune who nevertheless claimed state support; as a leading avant-garde authority in exile (1919–1926); and as an editor and poet with increasingly classicist leanings after his return to Budapest. Between 1919 and the 1930s, he aspired both to the position of an anti-establishment artist and to that of a rival to political leadership. – Kassák adopted Dada in 1921 but categorically rejected it a year later in favor of the austere order of constructivist geometry. His choice indicated not only his preference of clarity and authority but also a Central-European (mis)understanding of Russian Constructivism.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- The Avant-Garde and Modern Sovereignty. By Way of Introduction
- Militant Politics and Avant-garde Performance Art in the Early Futurist Movement
- “You Feed Us So that We Can Fight Against You”. Concepts of the Art and State in the Hungarian Avant-Garde
- Reciting Shells. Dada and, Dada in & Dadaists on the First World War
- Dada as Politics
- L'avant-garde littéraire roumaine et la politique
- Mapping Old Traces of the New. Towards a Historical Topography of Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde(s) in the European Cultural Field(s)
- Wiener Gruppe und Transfurismus. Zwei Beispiele für die literaturgeschichtliche Weiterwirkung der historischen Avantgarden im deutschen und russischen Sprachraum
- Schwebe der Körper, Stammeln der Sprache. Strategien literarischer und sexueller Subversion bei Julia Kristeva und Gilles Deleuze
- How to Do Things With Poems Performativity in the Poetry of C.P. Cavafy
- Regarding Paintings. Works of El Greco in Simon Vestdijk's Het vijfde zegel
- Istanbul, 1945 Erich Auerbach's Philology of Extremity
- Rezensionen
- Inhalt des 41. Bandes (2006)
Articles in the same Issue
- The Avant-Garde and Modern Sovereignty. By Way of Introduction
- Militant Politics and Avant-garde Performance Art in the Early Futurist Movement
- “You Feed Us So that We Can Fight Against You”. Concepts of the Art and State in the Hungarian Avant-Garde
- Reciting Shells. Dada and, Dada in & Dadaists on the First World War
- Dada as Politics
- L'avant-garde littéraire roumaine et la politique
- Mapping Old Traces of the New. Towards a Historical Topography of Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde(s) in the European Cultural Field(s)
- Wiener Gruppe und Transfurismus. Zwei Beispiele für die literaturgeschichtliche Weiterwirkung der historischen Avantgarden im deutschen und russischen Sprachraum
- Schwebe der Körper, Stammeln der Sprache. Strategien literarischer und sexueller Subversion bei Julia Kristeva und Gilles Deleuze
- How to Do Things With Poems Performativity in the Poetry of C.P. Cavafy
- Regarding Paintings. Works of El Greco in Simon Vestdijk's Het vijfde zegel
- Istanbul, 1945 Erich Auerbach's Philology of Extremity
- Rezensionen
- Inhalt des 41. Bandes (2006)
