7. Chance, choice and constraint
On setting rules… and creating with and around them
“I use chance, not the other way around - hopefully.”
Vera Molnár, in Barbara Nierhoff, “Vera Molnár and the computer”, 2018.
I first encountered Vera Molnár’s work at the Venice Biennale, a few weeks ago. A series of her Computer Drawings from the 1970s was displayed in the main exhibition, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani : through incremental chance, the eleven drawings consisting of segments, dots, and shapes form variations on a pattern, each one responding to the parameters she had entered.
Vera Molnár, Computer drawings.
Born in 1924 in Budapest, Vera Molnár is a Hungarian artist who pioneered algorithmic and computer art. Academically trained at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts of Budapest, she moved to Paris in 1947. In the 1950s, she started to create abstract compositions based on the repetition of codified geometric shapes. She invented a method which she called her “machine imaginaire” :
“I imagined I had a computer. I created a program and then, step by step, I realized simple, limited series which were self-contained, and thus did not skip any shape combinations.”
Vera Molnár, in Barbara Nierhoff, “Vera Molnár and the computer”, 2018.
It was in 1968 that her machine became “real”, as she started experimenting with algorithms for actual computers, enabling her to get rid of the subjectivity of traditional pictorial tools - she set the rules, the computer did the work, she selected what to keep. There are elements of haphazardness and chance in her work - but chance that she both controls and provokes.
I encountered her work again in Budapest, at the Vintage Galéria which represents her - Zsófia Rátkai was kind enough to show me around. She also introduced me to the work of Kamilla Szíj, a Hungarian artist born in 1957, whose creative process is similarly based on rules she sets herself. With her “drawing systems”, she creates infinite variations, using simple shapes and lines, and a pencil.
Kamilla Szíj, Untitled 1-3, 2014, Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest.
Far from the notion of artistic creation as a process of unbridled freedom, both artists create a strict framework within which they work. They set rules, create limits, and explore the variations within these boundaries Yet they maintain freedom and agency through, precisely, the designing of the framework and all the choices they make along the way.
***
From the 1950s until the 1980s, artists in Hungary all worked within boundaries - although they did not set them themselves. The limits to creation can be external, and in this case, political. After the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, the Kádár government introduced a cultural policy known as the “policy of the three T-s”, for “támogat, tűr, tilt” (support, tolerate, prohibit), creating a spectrum from active support and acknowledgement on the one hand (through government funds and places of exhibition), to disfavor and censorship on the other. Abstract work generally fell into the prohibited category - although the categories were never completely stable, and applied to works rather than to artists.
These external constraints necessarily determined to a certain extent the art which was produced at the time, as artists navigated the rules set by the government. Zsófia Rátkai also emphasised many artists’ desire to gain access to the art on the other side of the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War, travel from Hungary to the West was limited - although the travel restrictions varied over the years - and upon returning to Hungary, luggage was restricted to one suitcase. One suitcase into which to fit all the artistic creation and innovation they had seen in the West. (I am not taking more than a rucksack back either - it is indeed quite restrictive.)
Public cultural policy thus creates a framework too, within and around which artists create. A set of rules, limits and boundaries, which determine to a certain extent what is possible, but also enable artistic creation through funds and other types of support. And cultural policy is not necessarily public, for that matter - it has been argued for instance that the CIA supported and contributed to the success of Abstract Expressionism in the United States during the Cold War.
***
But back to today. I had come to Budapest to see Vivianne Duchini’s sculpture of János Czetz, in the Lékai Bíboros Park - right up in the North of the city, in the third district. I went there on Monday morning, the day after my arrival. It felt like quite a trek, as I was learning to navigate the transport system in a language I had absolutely no grasp of. Several bus and tram trips later - and a ten minute walk which turned into twenty because I got lost - I finally made it there. At first, it was the church of the Blessed Eusebius which caught my eye, its pyramidal shape rising from amongst the surrounding one-story houses of the residential area. It was a striking and modern building, in an area which otherwise seemed rundown.
It was as I turned around, looking for the park, that I caught the first glimpse of the statue. There he was, János Czetz, the youngest general of Lajos Kossuth in the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-1849, the war hero of the battles of Medgyes, Nagyszeben and Piski, the creator of Hungarian military parlance. He struggled to come to terms with the defeat of the cause of Hungarian freedom, and in his disappointment, he emigrated to Argentina, where he became a colonel and founded the Argentine Military Topographic Office. Or so his memorial plaque reads.
Vivianne Duchini, Statue of János Czetz, 2019, Lékai Bíboros Park, Budapest.
It is through this link to Argentina that Vivianne Duchini comes in. Her project for the sculpture won a competition involving the Argentinean Embassy and the mayor of Óbuda - and then she was off, flying all the way from Argentina to Hungary to execute it (in the opposite direction to János Czetz… and in a faster mode of transport). In an interview, she states that what she wanted to depict was :
“a Greek archetype of [a] hero who is an eternal figure; not a warrior, just a free, naked man, holding a plain flag, somebody who does not belong to any country. A man who has dignity, lives his faith, riding a free horse without saddle.”
That freedom is exactly what transpires from the sculpture : the freedom in the horse’s movement, arrested in bronze in mid-stride, and the freedom of the human figure, confidently riding it bareback. Rather than a military hero, he truly appears as a horse rider - a free man on a free horse. In fact, one could even wonder if it is not the horse the main subject of the sculpture.
So within all the external constraints of the project - creating a commemorative statue of a historical figure in a public space - Duchini has still evidently exercised her artistic freedom, creating her own historical discourse on János Czetz, and materialising her own creative vision, drawing on her expertise in animal sculptures. There are the specifications of the project and there is the freedom of the artist. It is evocative, in a way, of Paul Dardé’s approach with the war memorial in Lodève. Working within the conventions of a war memorial, he expressed a personal artistic vision and historical discourse, focusing not on the heroism of war, but rather on the grieving and suffering of a community. Thus, these two sculptures initially intended to glorify military endeavours actually speak to vastly different topics - thanks to the work of the artist.
***
The following day involved less traipsing around the suburbs, since I met the artist Róbert Lak in the city, at the ISBN Books + Gallery, where his show Found Nature opened on 27th September. He too was creating within external constraints, namely spatial ones : working generally as a painter, this is his first site-specific installation of the kind. Last week, I wrote about Elda Piščanec wondering whether an artist must create “various works that transcend the ideas and products of other artists”. Found Nature involved, in contrast, descending a few steps - a few short steps which sufficed to immerse one in a new and special place. And a few more, on the black rocks strewn across the floor - they crunched under one’s feet. The walls shimmered with a soft, undulating light, like water dancing all around one. And then, carefully placed on brick pillars, were beautiful pieces of wood, collected by Róbert Lak over the course of several years during walks in the forest - found nature. They danced too, in a way, through the changing light illuminating various nooks and crannies, and through the striking shadows they projected on the walls.
Róbert Lak, Found Nature, 2022, ISBN Books+Gallery, Budapest. Photo credit : Zoltán Lak
The rocks crunching, our voices mingling, and then the music also - which actually was what brought us together. He had invited his musician friend Marcell Roncsák to create the musical accompaniment to the installation - the same Marcell I had met in Ljubljana, and now I was there in Budapest. I know what his music reminded me of (it has just come back to me) : Eric Serra’s theme music for the Grand Bleu. At least, it had the same aquatic feel - I’m sure you know what I mean, but how would one define it exactly ? It’s music one could swim in.
A few days later, I visited Róbert Lak’s other show at the Red Door gallery, where a series of his paintings is exhibited. They are inspired by the same pieces of wood, and deftly mingle the abstract and figurative potentialities which the dead wood offers - the twists and curves, the boils, the crevices, the sinewy branches are open to endless interpretations. They are, in the eyes of the artist, a canvas of freedom.
With Found Nature, it was nature which seemed to have set the rules. Róbert Lak was bound by what the forest had to offer in terms of dead wood. And yet - just like with Vera Molnár algorithmic art - the artist ultimately decides, keeping what they deem worthy and casting away the rest. Within the constraints, there is freedom - there is chance and there is choice.
Róbert Lak, Found in nature Nr. 5, oil on canvas, 200 x 155 cm, 2022, The Red Door Budapest.
Photo credit : Róbert Lak
So come to think of it, I should rephrase how I presented the installation : Róbert Lak wasn’t so much working with the constraint of space, but rather its liberty. That, perhaps, is the sign of a successful installation : one which doesn’t feel cramped or teleported into a place, but one which organically occupies the space. Space which offers freedom to the artist, who creates an installation which is meant to be there.
***
In the same way, I have set rules for myself during this trip. But the question is, what will happen and what can I do within these rules ? Quite a lot, it appears. Case in point, I am currently in Eger, in the North of Hungary, and as this letter will be sent out, I hope to be enjoying a relaxing afternoon at the Turkish Bath. The Peripatetic Museum frames the way I travel and meet people, it enables many encounters and discussions - but ultimately all choices are mine. I have the freedom of an Interrail pass and free will. After Budapest, there are many openings for the project’s next destination - several of which lead me back to Western Europe. But I have decided to Go East - I will follow in János Czetz’s footsteps, and just like Vivianne Duchini, I will follow them in the opposite direction. He was born in Transylvania (in Ghidfalău), and that is where I am heading next.
Artists :
Vera Molnár
https://vintage.hu/artists/contemporary/vera-molnar/molnar-vera
Kamilla Szíj
https://vintage.hu/hu/muveszek/kortars/szij-kamilla/szij-kamilla
Vivianne Duchini
https://www.instagram.com/vduchini_animalbronzes/?hl=en
Róbert Lak
https://www.instagram.com/robertlak.studio/?hl=en
Sources :
Beáta Hock, “Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary”, Critique d’art, 2019.
https://journals.openedition.org/critiquedart/29995?lang=en#text
Júliusz Huth, “Beyond the 3 Ts: Promote, Tolerate, Ban – Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary”, Art Margins Online, 2021.
https://artmargins.com/beyond-the-3-ts-promote-tolerate-ban-art-and-culture-in-cold-war-hungary/
Maïa Kantor, translated from French by Simon Pleasance, “Vera Molnár”, in Dictionnaire universel des créatrices, 2013.
https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/vera-molnar/
Franciska Kis-Marton, “Vivianne Duchini – An Adventurous Sculptor from Argentina”, az ember, 2019.
http://azember.hu/vivianne-duchini-an-adventurous-sculptor-from-argentina
Stefano Mudu, “Vera Molnár”, 2022.
https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2022/milk-dreams/vera-moln%C3%A1r
Barbara Nierhoff, “Vera Molnár and the computer”, 2018.
https://vintage.hu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Molnar.pdf
Alastair Sooke, “Was modern art a weapon of the CIA?”, BBC, 2016.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia
Wow so many informations ! Thanks a lot for this step back on technic in arts, a term which is mostly associated to utility nowadays