Roll Away the Stone

“Hungarian folk poetry is like a mountain stream with a big stone having rolled into its riverbed, forcing it to continue its path by going around it, swelling into a lake and seemingly not even flowing. To roll away that stone from the riverbed so that nothing would obstruct the stream’s free flow and growing is the main task ahead for our public education as well as scientific and art policy.”

Zoltán Kodály

Back in the days when the idea of founding the Hungarian Academy of Arts (HAA) emerged during extended conversations between Imre Makovecz and his circle of friends, the concepts of such an institution were very much the same – and of this we can be certain – as the thought conveyed by the above quote from Zoltán Kodály. We owe gratitude and thanks to him for this. It is also with a thankful heart that we remember György Fekete, the late president of the HAA, who launched the National Salon series in the Kunsthalle Budapest, among his other important initiatives, so that now we can engage in a joint dialogue with artists and visitors every five years about the contemporary manifestations of folk art, its place in the Hungarian art scene and its prospects. Despite being steeped in an extremely dynamic, colourful and high-standard professionalism, folk art is not yet clearly defined among contemporary creative processes. Moreover, it is our experience that trends seen by professional circles as self-explanatory and natural are barely present in Hungarian contemporary art, even though Bartók and Kodály’s life’s work and writings draw attention to the fact that every manifestation of folk art is on a par with those in any other branch of art. Our object-making folk art produces soul-shapes in exactly the same way as our dances, music and tales.

Indeed, for the time being the high professional standard represented by folk art is only seen by a certain part of society – although undoubtedly increasing in its number and level of dedication – with its members participating in the various communal events of contemporary folk art either as part of their way of life or as a form of entertainment.

Needless to say, the values of folk art are obvious to musicians and dancers who regularly attend communal folk-dance events, young people who grow up with children’s folk craft workshops and adults who are engaged in handicraft programmes. These values constitute our vernacular culture, the most important foundation of our national identity. Still, today a large part of our society does not have this knowledge, which they could pass on. The weakened identity of Hungarian society stems from the fact that children do not at all or hardly ever experience their own vernacular culture. They speak their mother tongue but – simultaneously with learning their language – they should also be introduced to the Hungarian vernacular of music and dance as well as to the joy of doing handicrafts as well as the beauty and profound symbolism of the Hungarian treasure of motifs, our customs, festivities and religious beliefs. This is why the primary goal of the National Salon of Folk Art, organised in the Kunsthalle Budapest every five years, is not to parade the prominent figures and masterpieces of object-creating folk art but to provide food for thought, inspiration and incentive. Such communal knowledge should not just belong to a select few but to us all. We need to seize the opportunity to express ourselves through the most natural language: to speak, sing, dance, create and think in our vernacular.

In the communal creative process there are obviously people who are able to show the afore-mentioned soul-shapes through objects, music and dance at the highest standard. They are our role models and emblematic figures who can ‘speak’ our vernacular more beautifully, richly and eloquently.

At this exhibition we want to engage in a conversation with and through them, hoping to think together with people of different age groups, families and communities. We want to show that not only old masters preserve their knowledge of this vernacular – and in an ideal situation pass it on – but young people can also fulfil their ambitions through it, by completely adapting it to today’s pace of life. By doing only this, however, we can only converse with those who are, at least to some extent, part of a community that already speaks this vernacular culture. But we want to accomplish more: with the participation of contemporary artists, including fine artists, applied artists, photographers and filmmakers, we would like to open wide the gate of our national self-identity, which – like the doors of churches – should have never been closed…

At the moment of founding the Hungarian Academy of Arts Imre Makovecz, György Fekete and the academics of the HAA committed themselves to the following truth: it is the arts that will always, in every situation of life, provide points of orientation for all of us. Seen in the long term, it gives us certainty and a sense of confidence that the sustaining power of a nation is inherent in its art acting as a yeast in organising communities, which ultimately boils down to a mutual respect and love of each other. It is this love and sense of belonging together that we experience daily in civic organisations such as the Associations of Hungarian Folk Artists as well as in knowledge-transfer workshops like the Nádudvar School of Folk Arts and the Folk Music School of Óbuda. It is perhaps this approach we stand for that we had the honour of being invited by the artistic director of the Kunsthalle, György Szegő, to formulate the basic concept of SoulShapes, the exhibition of this year’s National Salon of Folk Art.

The artists of this exhibition are outstanding not only thanks to their personalities and works but they are also role models and emblematic figures. They symbolise and represent individual crafts, communities, creative processes and ideas. As much as the technical possibilities allow it, we want to render perceptible the completeness of folk art, our vernacular culture, to every visitor. For this reason music is played in all of the exhibition halls, in the environment of the objects, films and photographs. We hope that those who see this exhibition can feel part of a communal creative process, if only in a small way. We would like to convey to every visitor that this exhibition is not simply accompanied by effects and various events that help them better understand the displayed works but also by the many shapes of the Hungarian soul, which strengthen our sense of belonging together. Without this vernacular culture cannot exist as it can only and exclusively come alive through the experience of community.

The message conveyed by SoulShapes is clear. The four curators – chief curator Mihály Vetró, and co-curators Gabriella Igyártó, István Kolozsvári and myself, Béla Szerényi – invite and welcome everybody to join the kaláka and work together. Taking the advice of our master, Zoltán Kodály, let us roll the stone that blocks the way of the fresh and vigorous mountain stream of our folk art.

Béla Szerényi

curator of the exhibition