“Her clothing is too revealing …”
The forgotten history of a 1900 Kernstok scandal in Nagyvárad
MúzeumCafé 30.
If someone ever gets round to writing a monograph about Ká-roly Kernstok, then the exaggerated reception of the painter’s art from the beginning will have to be dealt with. Kernstok’s novel imagery was the real stumbling block. The Nagyvárad affair can be regarded as the prelude to the chronicle of scandals which surrounded the artist as he began his career. The story, which spread from the journalistic writings of Endre Ady in Nagyvárad to the press in Budapest, reaches back to the autumn of 1900. A large-scale fine arts exhibition was organised in the rooms of the Trade Hall in Nagyvárad. Kernstok’s work Love caused fuses to blow and the picture was banned from display. How did Kernstok react to the incident? It has never turned out. Not much is known about the original painting, either. However, as Géza Paur has noted, the banned Love had already appeared in Budapest at an exhibition of the Fine Arts Association in the winter of 1899-1900. The exhibition in Nagyvárad, which involved 98 artists and 277 works, opened on 24 October 1900 without further incident. The opening speech was given by Cardinal Bishop Lőrinc Schlauch, who had contributed 1000 crowns to help cover the costs. The bishop purchased Károly Telepy’s painting Árvaváralja. The defamed work was associated with a curious episode in connection with the 1903 exhibition in Vienna organised by the Hungarian painter Béla Lázár. A reporter for Budapesti Hírlap wrote: “The sovereign was greatly pleased by József Rippl-Rónai’s self-portrait and especially by Károly Kernstok’s Love, which he gazed at with great admiration for a long time.” (9 April 1903) What to make of this? The sovereign was a crowned king, not a prude.