Page 19 - Studio International - March 1974

NO ISMS IN HUNGARY

There is no better way to introduce young
contemporary Hungarian artists than to quote
the revealing and relevant theory of the
PSEUDO concept of Gyula Pauer.
In this manifesto, composed in 1970, Pauer
wrote that 'PSEUDO . . . is one of the
conspicuous qualities of sculpture, therefore a
new aspect of sculpting as such. The visual
realization of a PSEUDO sculpture is quite
different from its actual shape. Such a sculpture
does not reveal anything about sculpting, it
relates to the position of sculpting.' Further on
Pauer describes the historical antecedents and
preconditions of the PSEUDO concept.
One such is the concept of minimal plastic art
with its puritan, clear shapes; the other is the
illusionism of Op Art. This is how one
achieves a PSEUDO: 'We fake the surface of
another sculpture to appear in front of the
puritan shapes of a minimal sculpture . . .
which is done by the way of projecting the
image of a more complicated model onto the
surface of a simple geometrical sculpture.
We use a photographic process which results in
the appearance of a sculpted shape on the
surface of another piece of sculpture. The
PSEUDO sculpture therefore evokes something
real and something ostensible, material and
insubstantial in the same object, at the same
time. One can perceive the concrete shapes,
but their realization is constantly disturbed by
the illusionist image. Eventually PSEUDO
contains three sculptural themes: first, the
existence of a sculpted shape; second, the lack
of a sculpted shape; and third, the PSEUDO
attitude, the manipulatedness of the object.'
Pauer's manifesto describes the positive and
negative aspects of this illusory existence.
To quote from the definition of the negative
aspects: 'A PSEUDO sculpture shows itself as
manipulated plastic art and therefore justifies its
manipulated existence. PSEUDO exposes
itself as a false image or at least as a complex
object that is also there to deceive.'
This gives clear proof of the philosophical
disposition of some young Hungarian artists,
which means that their attitude motivates even
the seemingly clear esoteric ideas of form, even
those products that appear to be the
manifestations of 'pure art'. Pauer is a typical had anything to inherit, they had to make Gyula Pauer
example. One thing is evident : he took two their discoveries themselves. The search for Pseudo sculpture
trends that rely on physical experience, intellectual ancestors, for related sporadically intercepted this line. Inspired
Minimal Art and Op Art, and used them to contemporaries and the urge to define their thoughts but not oeuvres, as there was always
shape a plastically immanent, yet position necessitated and emphasized the too little time on hand. The academic ideals
ideologically defined art form. conscious and speculative elements in their which dominated the last century hindered
For a more detailed picture one must give a thinking. the attempts of the Hungarian plein-air
short account of the formal and intellectual During the mid-1950s artists attempted to movement from finding their rightful position.
precedents of new Hungarian art. These were break out from the vicious circle of so called Only a small class of intellectuals reacted to the
anything but ready-made. One can `socialist realism'. Their difficulties were avant-garde experiments of the 1910s ; and
distinguish between probably three not multiplied by the fact that 'modern Hungarian though some artists of the avant-garde
chronologically but intellectually definable art' as an organic continuum never quite movement were given openings during the
generations, which left significant marks on existed, it was characterized by a long line of bourgeois and proletarian revolutions of
contemporary Hungarian art. None of these catastrophes and failures. Inspired ideas only 1918-19, they were soon suppressed by counter-
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