On Folk Art

Nowadays, when we talk about art, we primarily think of ’high art’ and famous artists formally trained in the arts, active in the given area, making works and earning a living from art. Sculptors, painters, goldsmiths, poets, writers, actors, directors, singers, musicians and architects, however, make up only a negligible percentage of the population and the number of people purchasing works of art and regularly attending exhibitions, concerts and theatre performances is also relatively small. Hence, artistic creation and the appreciation of the arts involves the minority, and is one of the many ways of spending free time and spending the money left over after paying for the basics. The concept of folk art along with the explanation of its still much-debated essence was formulated based on ever-extensive studies in disciplines aimed at exploring the level of human culture: that of various peoples now and in past periods of history, such as anthropology, ethnology, ethnography and the psychology of behavioural research. Let me sum up its most important characteristics.

From the formation of the first communities, mankind has been striving to satisfy their basic needs of sustenance. Any society that cannot satisfy these needs, becomes dysfunctional. One such basic need is the provision of food made from what is found in the given society’s environment. It still cannot be fully established how much protein, vitamins or trace elements food should contain exactly but the lack of one or the other can eventually result in a community perishing. In places where there was no shortage of these, the common practice and traditions related to it ensured the population’s survival. Recent research includes not only material needs, i.e. food, clothing and dwelling, among the basic needs of sustenance but also the formation and proper functioning of interpersonal relationships. Art is the foundation, means and condition of social connections. Obviously, what we are talking about here is the positive connection we call love, the deficiency of which can endanger even the survival of a society. Love is not only an emotion but also a command. It does not exist and cannot fulfil itself unless it is demonstrated. Let me refer at this point to Mária Kopp and Árpád Skrabski’s work titled A magyar lelkiállapot01[The Hungarian State of Mind], in which the authors prove that the decrease in our nation’s population can be traced back to the deficiencies of human relationships, which are the cause of growing loneliness, suicide, emigration, the high number of divorces, indulging in pleasures, the use of drugs, the murder of embryos by abortion and the one-child policy adopted by many families – a tragic consequence of the urbarial patent passed in the 18th century – but it also became the main reason for tragedies such as the Battle of Mohi, the Battle of Mohács, the Treaty of Trianon and our 20th-century vulnerability as a nation.02

Folk art formed part of the folk tradition of the peasantry, which constituted the majority of the Hungarian nation up until the 20th century. It was the foundation of human relationships and their proper functioning in the peasant society. Relationships and love have a hierarchy, which can change in an individual’s life as time passes. Relationships can exist between mother and child, brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, the family and the relatives, and can be love relationships between peers as well as relationships within a village community, or ethnographic, cultural, linguistic, dialectic, national, countrywide and religious relations. The first and foremost among these is that between a mother and a child. The essence and art of such love cannot be inherited: it, like our mother tongue, must be learned by the mother and her child, back in childhood, with the support of the other afore-listed relationships. It is no coincidence that one of the first European collections of children’s games and poetry on the art of the mother-child relationship was the volume by Áron Kiss, a Hungarian, published in 1891.03 In the book’s foreword the author stated that with his collection he wishes to help those whose community had lost this tradition. I do not regard it as a coincidence either that the first such volume was followed by several others in Hungary. Out of these let me highlight the volume by Klára Lábadiné Kedves, titled Virágnevetőcske [Little Flower Smile],04 which contains the description of more than six hundred works of art representing the mother-child relationship, from lullabies to making dolls. (The greater the danger, the closer the help to avert that danger.)

The art of communicating love starts with mimicking. As she is caressing her new-born, the mother is trying to mimic the baby’s facial movements, its indescribable sounds, coloured with its tiny tongue inadvertently left hanging out of its mouth, in order to encourage the child to mimic her. These infant sounds are probably completely independent from the language the child will later learn, and it might even be the same all over the world. I personally experienced this when I was in a Moldavian Chango family and the baby was woken by the raucous noises of the midnight revellers. The mother, slightly bent over her little one, stuck her tongue out slightly, just as she had seen the baby do, and began humming something like this, repeating it melodiously: alululej, alubej. Only later did I come across the English word: lullaby. Studying the folk poetry material dealing with Hungarian children’s poems, I found numerous nonsense words, which are no longer in use: ám, tám, tesz, etyem, petyem, csiszi, csoszi, ecki, pecki, tengerecki etc. I heard from people who visited state children’s homes how surprised they were to see that the children there were not smiling. They were not able to learn it from their mothers, who would have been holding them, swaying them and stroking them. Even now establishing contact with strangers begins with a smile inviting to be reciprocated, mimicking, without words. Then it continues, with facial expressions, movements, dance, rhythms, melodies and poems being shown, sung and recited together with children. This is already art: the joy of cooperation through which a connection is established.

In traditional peasant societies the making and use of folk art was a ’self-sufficient’ genre: there were no artists who were specialised in it, made a living from it and became famous, like there are now in high art. In the peasant lifestyle the ’practice’ and use of the arts were closely tied to the activities carried out by the members of the given society. For example, up until the 20th century, in Hungary, like in other countries, the clothes and the household linen the families needed were made at a certain time of the year by the members of the community grouped according to age, gender and marital status, who gathered in smaller communities on the evenings of certain days and using hand spindles and spinning-wheels spun the hemp, flax and woollen yarns for weaving and making clothes. This kind of work was boring by itself but – again, on specific days and at specific times – the girls who met in the spinning houses were visited by lads looking for a partner or those having chosen theirs came to see them. The community thus gathered together passed the time with singing, playing and dancing. The young people learnt the folk songs and dances about finding love from the older ones on these occasions. They heard texts here which they expected to quieten their passions and express their intentions through declaring their innermost and most complex feelings. It was in similar work done together that women mastered the embroidery techniques and motifs, enabling them to find versions closest to them. Similarly, activities like carving, wicker weaving and cabinet-making as well as listening to stories and legends together or sharing customs in the evenings, after finishing work in the field, were also linked to other productive labour carried out by the community. Customs and occasional roles were also connected to jointly done work and community gatherings on religious and family celebrations throughout the year. The changes in the importance of relationships were expressed in folk tradition through the arts. For example, the relationship between a mother and her child has to change when the child grows up and finds a partner. A mother-child relationship preventing this change can spoil the entire lives of the young people and the selfish parent alike. In folk poetry such a tragedy is expressed in the so-called grieving poems (called ballads in collections of folk poems). This was sung by the daughter abandoned by her love but also by the mother regretting her irreparable behaviour. My research can confirm the truth of this: when I was recording the folk poems, I asked people who they heard such poems from, why, to whom and when they sang it and how it was connected to their lives.

Hungarian folk poetry, which is among the richest in the world, also throws light on the role patriotic feelings can play. Compared with Serbian and Albanian poetry, which abound in poems about the great heroes of the nation, both from the distant and more recent past, Hungarians have surprisingly few heroic verses, which would be important in strengthening national solidarity. I first read about this fact in writings by László Németh. It came as a surprise since I knew that peasants had sung heroic songs even in King Matthias’ time. In Hungary the genre that has the greatest wealth is the poetry of betyárs (‘social bandits’), i.e. stories of lonely, poor men who rose up against the oppressors and often died a tragic death. This also shows that all the losses suffered by Hungarians throughout history – including the decrease of the nation in numbers – can be traced back to the fact that by proclaiming the opinion laid down in Werbőczy’s Tripartitum and taught in history books the narrow, all-powerful groups at the helm of the country have been excluding the peasantry from the nation for more than five hundred years now, denying its Hungarian origins and degrading its unique, floodplain farming based on cooperation with the natural environment, which was praised abroad, and which had been fully eliminated by the end of the 18th century as a result of Maria Theresa’s urbarial patent, mentioned earlier.05

Communities must be built where the joy of poetry and handicrafts can be presented and taught so that people can become familiar with the entirety of their folk traditions and folk poetry, so that these treasures can be incorporated into public education and the language, melodies, singing, dances and value-creating handicrafts can be revived and thus the Hungarian society’s state of mind, by now deprived of human relationships, can be healed. The most important mission and meaning of this exhibition too is to introduce workshops as well as the essence and processes of artistic creation to the general public. The neglected and barely known scientific foundation of folk art has its own literature now and there are schools where folk tradition and folk art are taught and practiced: songs, dances, folk customs and handicrafts are mastered and presented. I cannot list all these educational institutions here since their complete list has not yet been compiled, while they seek to teach about folk art and revive it in very diverse ways. However, I do know that a teaching material illustrated with melodies and photographs has been developed for several classes of the curriculum, aimed at teaching children about the folk art traditions of a village. And there is also an analytical study proving that the projection and drawing of decorative arts induce a significant, curative effect on the psychological condition of handicapped children. This also confirms that the exhibition at the Műcsarnok and the accompanying events strive to satisfy the most important needs of Hungarian society.

Bertalan Andrásfalvy

ethnographer

Footnotes:

01 Végeken Alapítvány [On the Frontiers Foundation], Budapest, 1992

02 See also: Bertalan Andrásfalvy: A magyarságkép torzulásai a világban és bennünk [Distortions in the Image of Hungarians in the World and in Ourselves]. Szent György Kiadó, Budapest, 2008

03 Magyar gyermekjáték gyűjtemény [Collection of Hungarian Children’s Games], Budapest, 1891

04 Horvátországi Magyarok Demokratikus Közössége [Democratic Community of Hungarians in Croatia], Bellye, 2014

05 Bertalan Andrásfalvy: A Duna mente népének ártéri gazdálkodása [The Floodplain Farming of the People by the Danube]. Ekvilibrium Kft., Budapest, 2007