From filigree to underground

Art historian László Beke on the development of Hungarian avant-garde

MúzeumCafé 31.

As part of a series about the recent past of Hungary’s museums, for this issue MúzeumCafé talked to László Beke about exhibitions in which he played an important role. Beke began his career in an era and indeed a subculture which today is in focus due to the files of informers being made public, and whose analysis is currently at least as much ideological as aesthetic. As an art historian Beke not only organised and evaluated, but also helped to shape the art which involved the birth of such genres as the happening, conceptual art and performance – Beke played a major role in introducing them to Hungary. Today he continues to work as a researcher as he did at the start of his career, with the difference that he no longer researches the history of medieval filigree but that of underground art.

You began working in the Art History Documentation Centre as soon as you graduated, yet at the same time you were involved with prohibited art alongside artists of the so-called Iparterv Group and of R Exhibition. How did you get mixed up with such “bad company”?

I graduated in the summer of 1968 – an interesting year from several aspects. I visited Paris in March not long before the revolutionary events sparked off by students and I had the opportunity to see some important exhibitions. I was already very much interested in the avant-garde.

That can’t have been included in the curriculum of art history in the 60s. How did a university student in Budapest know about it?

I wanted to research medieval art, yet at grammar school in Mosonmagyaróvár between 1958 and 1962 I strove for everything that was modern – a typical secondary school pupil’s story.

So while you attended taboo-breaking exhibitions in apartments, which were often prematurely ended by the authorities, did you have a job where you continued to research medieval art?

I soon made friends with Miklós Mojzer whose wife Éva Kovács was the top scholar of metalsmith’s craft in Hungary. Miklós called my attention to filigree as a remarkable genre, ‘truly Hungarian’ (at least it seemed to be at the time, today we would say unique to Hungary). I wrote my thesis about the gold background on winged altars from Upper Hungary and my doctoral dissertation about filigree. I was employed by the Art History Documentation Centre, which soon continued as the Art History Research Unit of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences based in Budapest’s Castle District and headed by Nóra Aradi. At the time I worked exactly one floor above my present room.

Secret service documents continuously being made public feature prominently in the research of that era. Your name can be seen among those who were observed in connection with the Rottenbiller Street people, the Zugló Circle, the Petrigalla apartment and the music history lectures by László Végh. You were visibly very active.

Each is a different story, but they are not worth delving into. I remember going to Petrigalla’s twice and on one occasion I met Rudolf Ungváry there. Today the files are said to be the best and most detailed sources. I would like to write the history of art history from today’s point of view. Today I see that the art in the decade from the mid 60s was incredibly political in its own way, though subsequently it may seem a somewhat innocent engagement in politics. Szentjóby or the ‘activist’ Miklós Haraszti were perhaps really hard, the others played very cunningly and provoked cunningly.

Do you think that research based on informers’ files has tried to make out the art of that period to be more political than it was?

Yes, indeed. But of course, that is only one aspect. With postmodern research, methods involving cultural anthropology, visual anthropology and new critical history have appeared, which turn to the object of research using the approach of a rock-hard ideology. In the autumn of 1973 Tibor Hajas, his wife and I were walking in front of 112 Népköztársaság Avenue (today the Kogart building). Light and sound filtered through from the building and a pleasant young man appeared and invited us in. He was the director. That led to me working in the Young Artists’ Club (YAC) for three years. At the time we knew exactly who was the informer from the interior ministry, mixing in with the crowd. The chief offensive came from the municipal and district party committees, and neighbours also regularly reported.

What did your employer have to say about exhibitions in the YAC? How did Nóra Aradi who was widely known to be a character with rather traditional thinking tolerate it?

They knew precisely who I was, though no hard reprisals were taken against me. At the same time I felt threatened that if I did something like that they would dismiss me, although the job also provided me with some protection.

The elaboration of that period in effect began in 1980 with the jubilee exhibition of Iparterv, followed by exhibitions of individual artists from Szentjóby to Harasztÿ in the Hungarian National Gallery and the Kunsthalle. That seems to have turned the 60s and 70s into art history.

Regarding Iparterv, I was not particularly involved in 1968, I only became familiar with and made friends with the artists. However, in 1980 we made a jubilee semi-samizdat publication as a summary, which was designed by László Rajk. Péter Sinkovits and Lóránd Hegyi also participated in the compilation. Sándor Altorjai was a more complicated matter. Miklós Erdély, who was a close friend of his, ‘presented’ him.

After the research institute and the world of the underground you were appointed to important posts in large museums. It was a different kind of public sphere. How did you experience the change?

I was appointed to head the 19th-20th century department of the Hungarian National Gallery in 1988. Loránd Bereczky wanted to change the system and that included me showing up as someone from the opposition. I contributed to several significant exhibitions during my seven years there.

Looking at it today, how do you evaluate the art of the 60s and 70s? To what extent has it lost its magic?

Generally speaking, I feel some responsibility for what happened in Hungary’s underground art from 1968 on. It has not lost its value at all. At best certain matters have crystallised and, as is true for any period, there were important works of art and there were others which have faded and lost their strength. It is quite clear that numerous works were created that reflected the era. We don’t know a lot, albeit an increasing amount. I myself continue to document what happened and I regard my task as keeping track of the changes, of how that period of art has been evaluated since. We could define this work as a particular process of canonization.