Shaped in line with the times…

For more than half a year Zoltán Vécsi Nagy has been in charge of the Transylvanian Arts Centre (Eműk) in Sfântu Gheorghe. The exhibition space of the new centre is housed in the town’s former post office building, on the top floor of which Romania’s former Securitate operated listening devices. Eműk opened to the public with the exhibition Bisecting Time 2, presenting works by Transylvanian artists between 1965 and 1975. Zoltán Vécsi Nagy is an inheritor of the Kemény Castle and estate.

– You are a descendant of one of the most noted Transylvanian Hungarian aristocratic families. What memories do you have of your grandfather, János Kemény, and your grandmother Auguszta, who grew up in Britain?

My granddad is said to have been a real gentleman, a kind man with good manners. Those who saw him more critically believed he was so unsuspecting that he would not notice when ill-meaning people approached him. He was a peaceful person, a pacifist. That was one reason why he studied theology, so that he wouldn’t have to join the army. As a grandfather he held the family together, paying attention to all its members. For example, until 1971 he staged memorable family Christmases in their small two-room flat. They were like theatre performances – actually, theatre was his great love. Since my grandmother grew up in Britain, English Christmas customs were mixed with local ones. Her parents were Scottish and Greek. We children didn’t know that our grandparents’ first child, Jánoska, died of a then incurable illness at Christmas – that was why those rituals were organised, so that by making Christmas beautiful he would divert his wife from the depressing memory. In addition, we had a gathering in Târgu Mureș every Wednesday. Elderly men and women, former aristocrats, would visit – there was five o’clock tea and biscuits. My grandfather supported young writers morally, even when he lived in financial hardship. Lajos Páll, for example, showed him his first poems.

– Did you take the title of Vécsi out of respect for Marosvécs?

There is a more prosaic explanation, but I was pleased to commit myself to that intellectual heritage. I know what Vécs means for Transylvanian culture and that’s obliged me to represent its mentality. But there is a simpler reason: when I started being published I had to differentiate myself from other authors writing about the arts who were called Zoltán Nagy. In my childhood I spent a lot of time in Marosvécs but not, as many would think, in the castle which had not belonged to us for a long time then. At the explicit request of my parents, we were treated in the same way as the village children. Of course, I experienced odd things, after all my grandfather was referred to as “Baron”. He only used this title at the time when doing so it was easier to support good things.

– Your mother had disadvantages since she was not allowed to attend university in the old system. Did you have any disadvantages later due to your roots?

Right up to the army I didn’t feel any of that, but then I sharply faced it. When I asked where I was going to be sent I was told to the Danube Canal, to the company of refractory soldiers, where people to be punished for some reason were taken. In the end I didn’t go there because an acquaintance took my file and smuggled it to another box. He also told us that it said “aristocratic roots with many relatives abroad”. My mother was working in an editorial office by then and my father was an acknowledged teacher and painter. Until then I had not been faced with discrimination.

– Your parents, teacher and painter Pál Nagy, and Zsuzsanna Kemény, a journalist, were killed in a car accident in 1979. You and your brother were very young. In the 60s and 70s your apartment had a similar role among Târgu Mureș intellectuals as the Helikon meetings for Transylvanian writers in Marosvécs between 1926 and 1944.

Yes, in the 60s and 70s our flat in an apartment block functioned like a literary-art salon. Lajos Erdély wrote about it in an article after my parents’ death. Artists, writers and poets at the beginning of their career were guests in our home. My father was surrounded by many and was loved by his students – lots of people say even today that it was due to him that they became prominent artists. Yet my mother was the real soul of that salon, the way of life in Vécs was passed on to that apartment. They had a greater regard for culture and the arts than anything else: when someone was talented they made allowances for the person if he perhaps fibbed or neglected his family – if someone wrote a good poem or painted a good picture he had a place in our home.

– Although you had such a cultural background, in the stifling atmosphere of the 80s you decided to move to Hungary. Did professional challenges attract you or could you no longer live under the dictatorship of the time?

I couldn’t settle down, I couldn’t lead the life I had imagined for myself. I would have liked to be an art historian, but at that time art history was taught only in Bucharest and only ‘reliable’ cadres were admitted there. I was involved in many things. I was employed as a window dresser in Târgu Mureș, later I was an industrial designer in a factory and I also painted and wrote visual poems and art reviews. I got married and then faced what everybody does: the dilemma what school the child would go to, as well as financial matters. I was a member of Mamű (Marosvásárhely Studio, later Works Created Today). Our exhibitions were banned from one day to another. That was one reason why, similarly to others in my generation, I decided to emigrate. Moving was not simple, at that time I was literally tuned to the changes underway – I listened to the radio intensely. I arrived in Hungary in the autumn of 1988 with the illusion that it would be far freer there. I did not settle in Budapest but in the small town of Hatvan where things were slower. It was like being in the provinces of the political changes. In the 90s I could at last study art history at ELTE. I was able to do that because my employers in Hatvan were very decent in letting me attend university as a full-time student. That is what I regard as my main excuse for having left Transylvania. But I also compiled other important experiences during the 20 years I spent in Hungary. I was in charge of a gallery for four years and it was there where I learnt how to run a contemporary art gallery in a hidden place, such that not only the locals would take notice. I was proud of TV channels and professional publications paying attention to the exhibitions in a provincial factory’s community centre. They didn’t know me very well, didn’t know that I was Pál Nagy’s son and didn’t know who János Kemény was – I had to stand on my own two feet.

– What took you home in 2008? You didn’t choose Târgu Mureș but started to work for the Haáz Rezső Museum in Odorheiu Secuiesc – a museum where the last five years have been very important.

Meanwhile I remarried. My wife is from Lupeni. We often visited it and there was the inclination to move home. As a museum director I was at the peak of my career – I staged exhibitions, was published in leading professional journals and worked as an encyclopaedia editor, yet I thought I could do far more in Transylvania for the culture I was committed to. I returned home and slowly tried to show that the fine arts could be approached differently from what was customary there. I was lucky, other areas were revitalised in the museum, the new director, Zoltán Miklós, came with fresh ideas [for an interview with Miklós, see MúzeumCafé 26]. Although in the beginning he doubted that contemporary art exhibitions could be effective – he thought pictures could not entice visitors – later he became convinced that the fine arts can have a mobilising effect on the public. I always stress that besides modernity tradition also deserves respect, and my problem with the practice is actually that different artistic endeavours are often regarded as opposing one another. A person who became an artist in the 90s should not be set against someone whose art developed in the 70s. Of course, there are trends in the arts but they exist alongside and enrich one another. When in Odorheiu Secuiesc or Cristuru Secuiesc if someone exhibits a particular object and someone else pulls a face because Marcel Duchamp had already done that in the 1910s, I say that it has not yet been done in Cristuru Secuiesc. These gestures must also take place in the locality.

– You assisted at the birth of the Transylvanian Arts Centre and became its director. How did it come about and what is involved?

The Transylvanian Society of Artists wanted to have its own museum for a long time. It was actually Miklós Jakobovits, a painter in Oradea, who put the desire into an action plan and many of us received his letter about founding an independent Transylvanian Arts Institution. The idea was very popular among artists in the Miklós Barabás Guild and was seriously received and highly supported in Sfântu Gheorghe. The director of the Sekler National Museum, Mihály Vargha, took on the organisation [see MúzeumCafé 9]. Fortunately, there was also the political will. Both the president of the county authority and the mayor of the town were ready to assist with its foundation and to support its operation. It was also a great help that Hungary’s Foreign Ministry provided resources. Meanwhile the board of artists and art professionals was set up in which almost all art regions of Transylvania are represented and whose professional supervision and relations enhanced the project. At the same time, concrete donations were offered by administrators of artists’ estates and artists themselves.

– What does the basic collection of the Arts Centre comprise?

The collection is not large yet. It has 40-45 works in the inventory and others which have been offered for donation later. Since we imagined the exhibitions to be staged in joint cooperation with the Sekler National Museum, we reckon with its significant post-1945 collection, which has expanded by these donations.

– At present the centre is in a temporary location – what are the long-term plans?

There is the promise of becoming an independent institution with an essentially extended scope of activity and correspondingly larger staff in an entirely new building. At the request of our supporters, I have compiled a concept draft with our museum principles and practical requirements. It includes what activities and the appropriate premises such an institute should have, for example store rooms, rooms for sessions, etc. Now we are indeed working in a temporary but recently renovated old office building. Our offices and store rooms as well as two galleries are on the ground floor, while the large hall on its third floor was turned into a high standard exhibition space for contemporary art.

– How do you select? Whose works can be included?

The core of our collection would basically consist of works by Romanian Hungarian artists from 1920 to the present. But of course those who are closely connected to this category would also be represented – there are artists born in mixed marriages or those who exhibit as part of a Hungarian artists’ group. I would also like works of Romanian, Saxon and others, as well as foreign artists to be part of the collection. At the moment it is difficult to talk about it because it is a long-term plan. For the time being the core collection has to be compiled. All the prominent works of artists who are regarded as significant by me and the professional board should be included in the collection. At the moment I don’t see it is possible to purchase works of art, but I can imagine obtaining the finances for specific projects. We are staging exhibitions and publishing high quality catalogues. There are no books or albums about many artists and their legacy, or they have not had an appropriate, professionally grounded exhibition. If we accept donations I think it is our strict duty to ‘pay’ with that. We could say that we primarily exhibit those who offer one or two works that represent their oeuvre. We aim to give the institute a positive attitude and prestige. We would like our artists and the administrators of estates to feel that it is the Transylvanian collection where works have an esteemed place. I hope that the building exclusively designed for Eműk will have a permanent exhibition, which will show the world what Transylvanian Hungarian art is like, similarly to many such exhibitions around the world which present regional art. By placing local art in the centre the art of the peoples living there is presented, thus the inter-culturalism which is characteristic of the region is modelled. Our first task would be to take some chronology into local art consciousness. Thus we ourselves and the artists could see what our art was and how it was shaped in line with the times, so that we would not think only in terms of great individuals. A bridging solution could be for the oeuvres of the most significant artists to be analysed by periods and not in their entirety. For example, with regard to our present exhibition I would be very pleased if some people pointed out that there were works of art from between 1965 and 1975 perhaps more significant than those displayed and which should be presented. Such a criticism, besides showing that my work is paid attention to, would also mean for me that the person has understood that our exhibition is not about the presence or absence of individuals, but what the spirit of a certain period was and what its valid ways of expression were like. To embed art historical time in the Transylvanian artistic consciousness is the most important professional challenge for me at this moment.

– Since the opening what does your everyday work in the centre involve?

What I do here requires at least another half person. I wake and retire to bed with the problems of the centre on my mind. Since we are few in number, I try to be as efficient as possible. What do I do? Until now we were involved with the exhibition Bisecting Time 2. It was a huge task since we had to establish an institute alongside staging the exhibition and resolving a lot of practical matters, while there was no time at all for the essence of my work – research. Now I must focus on the next exhibition. Meanwhile, I’d like to shape the fundaments of an equally important future research centre environment for the Transylvanian Arts Centre, which at present is launched as an exhibition space. I would like to bring into being a serious reference library, which is being helped among others by the Museum of Fine Arts. We have also received donations from the editorial board of Új Művészet and the Idea Publishing House in Cluj. I also regard it important to establish a documentary archive, for which we’d like to acquire work diaries, sketchbooks, correspondence and photographs of the period currently hidden in artists’ estates, articles, catalogues, invitations, posters, sound recordings, films and video recordings, if in no other way at least for digitization. We ourselves would like to take photos, make portrait films about artists, studios and exhibitions. Our aim is for future art historians who want to research what happened in Transylvanian Hungarian art to find a reliable starting point in our archives. As a researcher I know that today there is nowhere to turn in this matter and we must take on making up for this.

– The heirs of the Kemény family were returned the Marosvécs Castle only in the autumn of this year. How did you all feel about that moment? What plans have you for the castle?

We would like to make the most of it and preserve the intellectual legacy of János Kemény, to put it to the service of culture. There are seven of us, grandchildren who have inherited it and a discussion precedes all our steps. It’s not easy because we have gone in different ways and don’t always think similarly, but our grandfather’s legacy still unites us. He made use of the place in the best possible way by creating an intellectual atmosphere where every cultural field had a home. If we address each of today’s intellectual heirs who have represented all the trends at the Marosvécs meetings we could mobilise a high number of people and have the opportunity to get united in the field of culture. Many think I am too optimistic, but what comforts me is that my grandfather was also accused of that. I think an exhibition radiating the spirit of the place over the borders and presenting the Marosvécs Helikon literary and cultural historical memory authentically would be a very good fundamental step in utilizing the building. If we managed to set right one of the wings to hold the exhibition – of course, it can be done only with outside help – I am convinced we would be on the right path. There is another aspect of the spirit of the place which would also provide an interesting exhibition, and that is a historical exhibition about the changes to the building, which was constructed on the ruins of a Roman castrum, and presenting the life of the castle. The director of the Maros County Museum sees possibilities in that, since they own objects which came from Marosvécs and which they would exhibit there under appropriate conditions.