192Os, the Golden Era of Hungary and the child-centered art education .... Major state and private commissions went to Austrian and Prussian masters: even the.
EPISODES FROM THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN ART EDUCATION FROM AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE Andrea Kárpáti and Emil Gaul Eötvös Loránd University and Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design Budapest, Hungary H., Hoffa, Wilson, B., (eds. 1985): The History of Art Education. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Abstract In the course of its history of more than 100 years, Hungarian art education has developed under the influence of international trends within the constraints of the socio-economic situation of the country. As an introduction to present-day developments this paper will outline four major historical phases: the end-of-the century Central European art scene and the birth of national art education opposing but relying on Austrian and Prussian patterns; the 192Os, the Golden Era of Hungary and the child-centered art education movement with American and British influences; the 195Os, when communist ideals and Soviet models defined art and education and the 1970s, when Hungary started its reintegration process in the European social and artistic community. From this time on, ideological disputes slowly gave way to empirical research in visual skills development and the American input provided the basis for further discussions. The second major topic of this paper is to analyze the relationships between official educational ideas and norms expressed in central educational policy documents and the educational reality of art education. The shift from a central curriculum towards national guidelines and attainment targets that facilitated the birth of alternative models of art and design education is the most important factor in contemporary Hungarian art education. Curricular models of the last hundred years will be outlined along with the analysis of the four major periods in the history of the discipline.
Introduction The history of Hungarian art education seems to be a history of changing role models dictated both by the needs of society and international trends of the profession. At first, educators justified their subject in practical terms and themselves as exquisite draughtsmen. Then they aimed at using the visual language as a means of scientific discovery. Later they discovered the expressive potentials of education through art and initiated the Hungarian Child Study Movement. World wars inspired nationalist art and education; thus political content became dominant from the 1920s until the 1940s. In the first years of communist rule, art teachers tried to regain their integrity and concentrate on the rigorous teaching of visual language but in the 1950s art education had to serve political purposes again: it became the agent of communist ideologies. As the influence of party leadership lessened in all spheres of culture, Hungarian artists found their way back to the European art scene. Art teachers chose a different path towards depolitization: they rediscovered their academic roots and created one of the most strenuous systems of teaching children to draw and paint according to the naturalist tradition. In the 1970s, artists discovered the classroom: many of the most progressive painters and sculptors started art circles, joined the staff of schools, established gallery workshops and gave the much-needed modern impetus to the
2 profession. Designers, photographers and filmmakers followed their lead in the 1980s creating two new approaches to teaching art: environmental culture and visual communication. Both trends originate from centers for teacher training and retraining; thus their effect is spreading with an accelerated pace. Before describing four of these phases in greater detail, we give an overview of the scene summarizing major characteristics of Hungarian art education as reflected in paradigms and course syllabuses in the two basic areas of visual skills development: creation and perception. Periods are defined according to major central curricula that sometimes followed more than one paradigm or model in their teaching contents and methods. As a result, dominant ideologies sometimes evolved parallel or returned to dominate the scene after decades of seeming absence. PARADIGM 1 ) technocratic
TIME 1777 - 1879
CREATION technical drawing
PERCEPTION plans,designs,ornaments
2 )a scientific 2)b artistic
1879-194O 1871-...
geometric drawing contemporary art styles and genres
3) expressive
19O5-14
expressive painting, drawing, sculpture
4) nationalist
1925-45
5 ) communist
1949-55
nature study history of "realist" propaganda materials styles, Soviet art
6) naturalist
1956-77
drawing from nature history of Hungarian abstraction sequences and world art until the based on naturalistic 192Os, realist condrawings temporary art,architecture,design
7 ) communication
1978 -
studies in different visual languages modern media crafts and design
structures,signs,charts fine arts with a moral message, visual problems manifest in masterpieces
comparative analysis thematic selection of world art history folk art pattern design, Hungarian art (also native handicrafts of lost in World War I territories)
short history of world art architecture and design media aesthetics environmental aesthetics
These paradigms will be analyzed in detail in a later paper by the same authors ( 1) Presently, we intend to describe four key periods that reflect social, economic as well 1
) A description of the paradigms as reflected in education in fine arts: Kárpáti, Andrea, Gaul, Emil ( 1994):Umwelterziehung in Ungarn: eine Geschichte der kunsterzieherischen Paradigmen und Rollenmodelle. In: Hrsg. Kerstin Dörhöfer: Umweltkultur, Umweltästhetik und Umwelterziehung in den neunzigen Jahren . Hochschule der Künste Berlin, 1994
3 as international influences and help integrate Hungarian art education into the global picture of our profession: 1 ) The birth of national art and education at the end of the last century 2) The Hungarian Child Study Movement in the 192Os, 3 ) Communist art education based on Soviet models in the 195Os, 4 ) The reintegration of Hungarian art education into the European socioeconomic, artistic and educational community . 1 ) The rebirth of national art in Hungary and the birth of art education The story of educating through visual arts in Hungary starts very similarly to those all around the world: developing national industry needs people able to read plans and execute decorative patterns; thus drawing as a practical skill useful for a variety of trades is introduced in education. In the first systematic legal code that describes the structure and contents of Hungarian education, Ratio Educationis issued in 1777 by Maria Theresa, Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, drawing is mentioned as one of the compulsory subjects to be taught at all levels of education. Subordinated to geometry, this subject was meant to prepare craftsmen for drawing plans and designing decorative patterns. It took almost a century until the new school discipline had all the facilities needed for normal educational existence: curricula, textbooks and teacher training institutions. ( 2) Similarly to Benjamin Franklin who declared that his country needed qualified men of various trades and not Raffaellos, this document considered draughtsmanship as a skill necessary for the practice of various industrial professions and inspired curricula that were strictly utilitarian in nature. ( 3) From 1778, a chain of drawing schools ( "scolae graphidis") were established for those who wanted to polish their skills in visual rendering. In the first decades of the 19th century, Hungary, which had been a leading economic and cultural power in Central Kárpáti, Andrea ( in preparation): Paradigms in Hungarian Art and Design Education. Paper to be submitted for the III. Pennsylvania Conference on the History of Art Education, Pennsylvania State University, 1995 h2) The first general school curriculum for "drawing" was issued in 1783, the first textbook for youth, however, was published only on 18O4. The first drawing teachers were professional draughtsmen employed part-time by schools, followed by architects, engineers and craftsmen in need of an additional income. Artist teachers made only causal appearances in educational institutions until the establishment of the first Hungarian centre for art teacher training to be discussed later in this paper. 3
) In 18O6, however, the second Austro-Hungarian educational law (Ratio Educationis II.) abolished this subject in secondary grammar schools - the institutions preparing for higher clerical positions where the subject reappeared only at the end of the century. It is important to note that the abolishment of "drawing" as a school discipline did not mean that secondary school students had no access to the visual arts. They still had to study a discipline called "History of Art" that focused on major periods in world art history. The division of creative and perceptive/critical training as represented in two separate subjects in secondary education until 1968 (!!!) was one of the issues that raised endless - and apparently useless - professional discussions for decades. It was evident for educational policy makers that secondary grammar school students who were supposed to become intellectuals had to study masterpieces of art for erudition and polishment of taste - but they found artists were unable to teach this subject appropriately so assigned it to history and religion teachers. The creation of art, however, was not found so important for the education of the future gentleman so it was duly abandoned for many decades.
4 Europe during the Renaissance, but had since lost its splendor, was striving for the recreation of a national art in a land which had been dominated for about 15O years by the Turks and was then ruled by the Austrian Habsburg dynasty. Until the last decades of the 19th century, art education was offered at a primary level only - there was no national academy of fine arts and the modest private drawing schools that educated those who excelled in drawing prepared their students only for a proper artistic training abroad at the academies or art schools of Vienna, Paris and, above all, Munich. Being a Hungarian artist in Hungary meant a very modest life full of struggle for recognition and perhaps employment as a primary school art teacher ( although draughtsmen were preferred as the curriculum was by no means artistic). Major state and private commissions went to Austrian and Prussian masters: even the Hungarian noble gentry whose members established several patriotic institutions (among them, the National Museum and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) would not consider a native painter for a portrait or a fresco. The anti-Habsburg revolution of 1848-49, however, marked the beginnings of a new era: a generation of internationally recognized, award-winning Hungarian artists returned home from the academies and wanted to establish an art life similar to those they experienced abroad. In art education, two models could be observed parallel: the "scientific" curriculum for general education with art as a mediator of scholarly and/or utilitarian principles (geometry, technology, architecture, ornament design) and the training of professional artists, art-loving and practicing dilettanti or connoisseurs that was meant to include more aesthetic elements and not restrict itself to drawing as a craft. The key educationalist of the age was Gusztáv Kelety, artist, art critic and the first director of the Art Teacher Training College in Budapest. Kelety was a second-rate Romantic painter, a critic with rigid and old-fashioned ideals ( 4) and a devoted educator. (He embodies a type very frequently met with on the art education scene of Hungary all through the ages.) In his major work, Art Education Abroad and At Home, he gives an account of international trends in art education as he observed it during his study trips in Germany, England, France and Belgium. ( 5) His major impression was that that the boundaries between art and industry should be abolished, the academic training based on exercises in depicting old ladies with time-worn faces (the idiom he uses is the German expression for senseless academic studies: "Runzeltante -Malerei") should be replaced by the aquisition of elements of design based on the ideas of Gottfried Semper who wanted to educate for "national good taste" ( Volksgeschmack ). ( 6) Kelety visited Semper's School of Applied Arts at the 4
) For Kelety, the ideal styles were Romanticism and Realism - both loaded with emotional and spiritual/ideological contents, both utilising dramatic visual effects and both well-respected and taught at the leading academies of the time where he, too, received his education:Vienna and Munich. He sharply criticised Szinyei-Merse, an outstanding early Impressionist and forced many talented young Modernist painters to withdraw from art or seek recognition abroad. His collected essays on art appeared in 191O: "Mûvészeti dolgozatok" (Treatises on Art), Budapest:Singer and Wolfner Publishers. 5
) Kelety, Gusztáv (187O): A képzômûvészeti oktatás külföldön és hazánkban. (Art Education Abroad and At Home) Budapest: Révay Publishers.
6
) Semper, Gotfried: Der Stil in den technischen Künste. (Style in Technical Arts).
5 South Kensington Museum in London and was there when the Museum für Kunst und Industry (Museum of Arts and Industry) in Vienna opened its Applied Arts School in 1867. Kelety and the Ministry of Education official responsible for art education at the turn of the century in Hungary, Lajos Hegedûs, were both fascinated by the PreRaffaelite movement that emphasized the ancient unity of art and crafts, public service and artistic creation. The result of their efforts, the Royal Hungarian Model Drawing School, established in 1871, was meant to create a unity of artistic and industrial training and also produce knowledgeable teachers for public education. Although a wide range of outstanding Hungarian artists were active at that time, ( 7) it was Hermann Grimm, Professor of Art History in Berlin, who was asked to compile the first teaching program. The major issue for discussion was his "revolutionary" idea that Gypsum models of Greek and Roman art should be copied after drawing human models not before as they used to be. Decorative drawing tasks were incorporated into the program but the necessity for a special school of applied arts soon resulted in the establishment of the Royal School of Applied Arts in 188O, giving birth to the second major institution to define the fate of art teaching in this country. Throughout most of the history of Hungarian art education, artists and designers competed for dominance of the school art scene.( 8) They manifested themselves as rival role models - the fine artist and the designer, the creator of "non-utilitarian" beauty and the shaper of everyday environmental culture. ( 9) At the beginning of the history of public education in the visual arts, both trends were there although the dominance of the fine arts approach and the decisive influence of the Academy of Fine arts is indisputable. Design and handicraft education were in an initial phase of development and were totally separated from fine arts. However, as Hungarian technology/handicraft education started out as a type of the Swedish “slöjd”, a flexible and artistic method based on folk traditions so dear to the soul of
7
) To mention only a few: Dusseldorf and Paris Salon gold medalists Mihály Munkácsy and László Paál, both Realists; Viktor Madarász, pictor laureate of several European prizes for his Romantic historical paintings and acclaimed by his compatriots as a bold opponent of the Habsburg regime; Gyula Benczúr, a master of tasteful Academic historicism; Simon Hollósy, the first painter to devote his life work to the depiction of Hungarian country life or Miklós Izsó, Romantic sculptor . Later, most of them became professors of this academy or the one following its lead, the Royal Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. It is hard to understand why they were not commissioned to compile the first curriculum for the first Hungarian institution at the highest level - perhaps because of the traditional disbelief in the excellence of native art...
8
). The successor ofthe Royal Model Drawing School, the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts was established only in 19O7. It dominated the scene of art education for more than sixty years being responsible until the late 197Os for both teacher training and curriculum development . With the establishment of the National Institute for Education whose task was in-service training and curriculum design, the Fine Arts Academy ceased to be the omnipotent power behind all activities in art education. It tried to incorporate designer training several times but failed and the two institutions were bitter rivals almost until our times. The successor of the Royal School of Applied Arts, the Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design ceased to train art teachers in the 196Os but reopened its program in 1984 and soon became the country's leading centre for training, re-training and research in fine arts and design.) 9
) The two camps finally suggested a pluralistic conception of art instruction. It was fully realised only in the National Core Curriculum of 1994, where three separate subjects replace the school discipline "drawing": "environmental culture", "visual communication" and "visual arts education".
6 the Hungarian fine artist as well, it was possible to harmonize goals and practices of fine and applied arts education (drawing" and "handicraft" as school disciplines) in many progressive periods of the history of visual arts teaching and learning in this country and finally establish an interrelated structure requiring cooperation of art and technology education in the new National Core Curriculum of 1994. 2) The Hungarian Child Study Movement in the Art Education of the 192Os László Nagy, the most important Hungarian educational reformer of the first decades of the 20th century, was devoted to the ideas of John Dewey and Ellen Key and decided to reform Hungarian education according to their principles. He was not trained in art but trained himself in the study of children's visual language. He wrote the first comprehensive book on child art in Hungarian in 1905 ( 10) in which he introduced this concept into Hungarian educational literature. Before, spontaneous creations of children were not studied or even collected as they were considered imperfect representational or decorative efforts. In fact, the word "creation" was never used in professional literature: desirable art-related activities involved depiction, copying, transformation, coloring, enlarging or reducing. Another "revolutionary" concept of Nagy was to introduce the idea of developmental stages in drawing: he described what the child was able to do on her own and outlined how far education could and should lead her. Authors whose views are quoted in the book include Lewinstein, Kerschensteiner and, above all, representatives of the Child Study Movement. Under the inspiration of Dewey, László Nagy initiated the establishment of Child Study Departments at teacher training institutions where psychologists, doctors and educators would give a complex model of the child's body and soul. ( 11) From 1902 - 1905 he conducted extensive research on verbal and graphic development of children and produced a fascinating collection of twin studies in art: scribbles and drawings of twins collected from the first year of life till age 6. This collection is unique because all the young creators had to say about their works was recorded at the back of the drawings by the children's parents and nannies; thus interpretation of communicative aspects, i.e. identification of characters and their moods, signs and symbols could be much more accurate. ( 12) In 1907, he organized the first national child art exhibition called "The Visual Talent of the Child" with the utterly new assumption that works by children are worthy the same attention as those of adult artists. Parts of the exhibition gave evidence of good 10
) Nagy, László ( 19O5 ) : Fejezetek a gyermekrajzok lélektanából. Singer és Wolfner, Budapest.
11
) In his times, there was no psychology taught at colleges and theory of education and didactics were disciplines isolated from areas of biological study of children.) The idea of the "complex" department for teacher training is revieved in our time and efforts are made to realise it at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. 12
) Towards an Iconography of Children's Motifs, Signs and Symbols. The Messages of a 75-Year-Old Visual Diary In: Eds. Harlan HOFFA, Brent WILSON: The History of Art Education. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 1985, 185-191. old.
7 teaching and suggested that modern art education should focus on developing skills of flexible visual expression and not the acquisition of a set of representational rules. This exhibition was organized at about the same time as Franz Czizek's famous child art show in Vienna that marked a new era in art education: the appearance of the child-centered approach. László Nagy got to know Czizek's work at the time of the opening of the first Vienna exhibition and noticed similarities in their thinking. (On the child art theory of László Nagy and the effects of the Child Study Movement on Hungarian art education cf. Kárpáti and Gaul, to appear). László Nagy, a recognized educational researcher and at the same time a leading policy maker - a very rare combination - was able to put his research into practice during the work on the curriculum for elementary schools.( 13) As stated before, the curriculum that this document was to replace emphasized the geometrical aspects of drawing education and had clearly practical aims: the education of the craftsman. The new curriculum, on the contrary, intended to include modeling in clay and nature studies - two new areas that brought the work of the child closer to that of the artist. The development of taste was another goal that became increasingly important in the era of diverse styles and trends. At the beginning of our century, in the first age in art history when no dominant and long-lasting art style could be observed, the issue of good and bad taste was a matter of dispute and a major concern for art educators. Child art exhibitions, peculiarly, helped the acceptance of modern art trends and contributed to the understanding of pictorial creation to a great extent. 3 ) Communist art education based on Soviet models in the 195Os " A Congress of Historic Importance" - János Almási's leading article in the June 1961 edition of the professional journal "Rajztanítás" ( "The Teaching of Drawing" ) celebrated the end of an era that the history books call "the epoch of personality cult". From roughly 1950 until 1961, the period of the XXII. Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, education in general and art education, often termed as one of the most important agents of political indoctrination, experienced a period of total control: to quote the title of another article form the same professional journal: "Our Art Education Serves Ideological Education." ( 14) This "position paper" sharply criticizes the educational system of "the past" (in general), where ideologies and tastes of "the rich" were forced on masses of "the poor." Before World War II, articles on foreign methods of art teaching were only mildly critical - they mostly outlined those aspects that were worth considering for adaptation. In the 1950s , however, most articles that mentioned names of "Western" educational practices were highly critical, even ironic and ridiculing at times and emphasized only negative features of methods and publications from abroad. The most important foreign model was, of course, the Soviet Union. We made a content analysis of all the issues of "Rajztanítás" from its first issue till the late 1980s and found that, in the decade of the personality cult,
13
) Nagy, László (1921): Didaktika gyermekfejlôdési alapon. (Didactics Based on the Development of the Child). Budapest Included in this work is a curriculum sketch for the 8-year Hungarian primary school that offers different methods and contents for different developmental stages of child art. 14
) Antal Juhász (1959): Rajztanításunk a világnézeti nevelés szolgálatában. (Our Art Education Serves Ideological Education) Rajztanítás. 1959/3. pp. 20-24.
8 practically all articles (94 %) contained at least a mention of either Soviet art or education. Art education had to serve, once again, primarily practical functions: it had to prepare for " the successful realization of communism" (later, more modestly: of socialism) . At this time, the central Soviet art education curriculum included the teaching of realistic representation of everyday household and school utensils and social events as seen on reproductions of the so-called „social realist” paintings (in order to be able to "create and understand beauty"). Political events such as Liberation Day or May 1 demonstartions were also obligatory in order to „strengthen the sdpirit of unity with the Party”. Social realism is a much - discussed term in art criticism applied for works done in the Soviet Union in the period between 1921 and the 1960s. (In 1921, at the annual congress of the Communist Party, non-representational and even non-realistic figurative art was condemned and, as a consequence, leading artists like Malevic, Mayakovsky or Chagall banned from public exhibition and forced to exile. In art criticism classes, works done later than 1900 - the „ism”s, like expressionism or cubism- were totally eliminated and only a few „state artists” were allowed to appear in school textbooks. This situation remained basically the same till the late sixties even in Hungary where censorship was the mildest from among the socalled „communist camp”. A complete iconography of themes, images and forms of composition was soon developed at the Fine Art Academies of Moscow and Leningrad (today’s Petersburg) and spread to Eastern and Central Europe in the 1950s. This iconography imitated mostly the stylistic features of Classicism, favorite art style of dictatorships. In 1994, we started collecting videotaped interviews for our Child Art Archive at the Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design with retired art educators, most of them in their eighties.When asked about their experiences with „social realist” art as taught at school, we found that art educators who were trained at the rather traditional Budapest Academy of Fine Arts could quite easily relate to the new „style”. They received a thorough training in Classicist representational art, did a lot of copying work and thus found the stylistic requirements of „social realism” not totally alien to their own aesthetic ideals. Themes, of course, were found ridiculous by most of them - idyllic or heroic interpretations of the life of factory workers could not be taken seriously - but they could identify with the requirements for realism in style and thought that topics are inferior to the main aim of artistic creation: representation of visual qualities of reality. Another important goal of the curriculum of the 1950s was the teaching of Monge axonometry (it was intended to enable future workers and engineers to read and write plans), lettering and the production of state signs and symbols (for "wall newspapers" - boards with political slogans, articles from the party papers and self-made caricatures of those who failed to cope - and for demonstration posters and decorative inscriptions). These topics prevailed for decades and were popular till the late seventies for a peculiar reason: they satisfied the need of the art educator for „teaching something serious”, showing that there are complicated techniques to be mastered and skills useful for a future job in industry (an area of economy much preferred and developed in the fifties in our traditionally agrarian state.) Students, however, did not appreciate the skills they could acquire through axonometry drawings or genre paintings. The discipline lost its traditional popularity
9 as transmitter of „high culture” that middle class families considered traditionally as an important quality of the erudite person. Memories of those who were at school in the fifties and sixties had an extremely harmful influence on the future of the discipline. When asking for financial means and increased teaching time to reform the discipline in the 1970s, art educators at many national educational conferences and discussion forums had to encounter decision makers who had the worst possible memories of their own art education. As a consequence, state support for art education decreased considerably. 4 ) The reintegration of Hungarian art education into the European socioeconomic, artistic and educational community in the 197Os The Hungarian sixties marked not just an easing of communist dictatorship but also the renaissance of modern art in this country. The Spring Salon of 1957 was organized a few month after the oppression of the autumn revolution of 1956 and the realization that political management had to find less dogmatic ways of governance also in the realm of culture. It offered, however, relatively little novelties. There were several artists who were allowed to exhibit again but their mild, Post-Impressionistic works forcasted by no means the "sudden" appearance of the Hungarian Avant-garde manifest at the Studio of Young Artists Exhibition of 1966, the year of the first Hungarian happening, the year when " flat exhibitions " were started for a few hundred friends of friends : a form that was to communicate up-to-date styles and trends for the coming decades. The first public debate on the value of new art styles was launched in the literary journal " Új Írás " ( New Writing ) in 1961 with an article that gave a positive assessment of abstraction and surrealism. The views expressed in the article were severely criticized in the next issue in the name of "socialist realism" - a concept that was supposed to cover more than a set of stylistic features: it was a system of ideological values and a rigid iconography at the same time. The writings by the critics of the Avant-garde showed that Abstraction and Surrealism were still identified as chief enemies of the official cultural policy: " At the same time, the fact that the article which started the argument, ... could appear at all, is evidence of relative liberalization. ... Just as they fight new information, but do not jail people in whose homes "illegal" debates on art are held, nor the managers of clubs or houses of culture who - though cautiously - agree to organize briefly open exhibitions. "Official " and " modern " art confront each - other, and they continue to do so until the end of the decade, or even later. (...) All this allows young people to appear towards the middle 196Os, to obtain information, and sometimes really to create surprises. There was good reason too why younger people were able to assert new strategies. It would indeed have been difficult to attack a Surnaturalism or Pop Art for being non-figurative " ( 15 ) 15
) Beke, L. ( 1991 ). The Hidden Dimensions of the Hungarian Art of the 196Os. In: " Hatvanas évek". ( The Sixties. ) Exhibition catalogue. Hungarian national Gallery: Budapest. 313-317. Quotation: p. 313.
10
It is quite peculiar to realize now, that at the eve of the 1960s, Western art was engaged with , among other trends, the informel, while Hungarian bureaucrats still attacked Abstraction and Surrealism - two major styles that, in unique, intermingled ways, still dominated the art scene of the Hungarian Avant-garde of the 1960s. Its antecedent were the Constructivists and the lyrical Ecole de Paris artists - two seemingly contradictory traditions . Avant-Gardism, - as its major theoretician, László Beke remarks in his study quoted above, was rather an attitude than a style - it was mainly a moral category. As the official cultural policy favored " vision painting " (a kind of Post-Impressionism), a clear reaction of its opponents was a total turning back on any form of naturalism. It is not easy to summarize major art styles of the Hungarian sixties and seventies. One of the major trends was lyrical abstraction - a style with an unbroken tradition in the 2Oth century in this country. The artists' village of Szentendre, near Budapest, served as a melting pot for trends from throughout the whole region: it gave a home to " urban " and "narodnik" Russian-like constructivism and French-like surrealism mingled with Serb and Hungarian folk art, Hebrew and Christian religious imagery and Transylvanianism as well. Hungarian sculpture, on the other hand, was rather traditional in nature. Modernist innovations did not come from within the craft but from the outside: from painters experimenting with plastic, from folk craftsmen or even from a self-taught industrial worker. He made the first mobiles - brilliant experiments in balance situations and the connections between forms of mechanical movement, mixed with playfulness - in the early 1970s. Most of the prominent figures of the generation of modern sculptors were self-taught and as a result, no uniform style was created. Major trends were organic and cubist in form or represented the realization of a central concept: " The most progressive conceptual and plastic experiment of the period is Gyula Pauer's " Pseudo". ... he produced a hard-rubber sculpture of static effect which, however, moved unexpectedly at the pressing of a button, and finally, he came upon the principle of the adequate representation of "appearances are deceptive", that is the "pseudo". The pseudo, in its elementary condition is a flat surface that looks plastic. Pauer achieved this effect by applying refined aerograph solution to different situations, thus formulating the metaphor of modern sculpture. " ( 16 ) The " Pseudo " may well be used as the artistic metaphor of the age preceding the transition of the political system in Hungary. Political authorities exercising the ruling power over culture and education have established three categories: works could be either supported, tolerated or rejected. In public, however, these categories were of course not declared and their contents were never openly explained. Still, everybody new they existed (they even had a nickname : the three "T"-s, as all three categories begin with the letter "t" in our language ) but no one could foretell for certain "how far one could go" to fall within the first two categories. It was all " Pseudo " - seemingly free, basically over regulated - depending on your position as an artist or critic. 16
) Beke,L. op. cit., p. 318.
11
By the early 1980s, central censorship for visual arts was as good as nonexistent. With the easing of travel restrictions in the 1970s, ( 17) young artists soon became aware of styles and trends of Western art. By the early 1980s, Hungarian visual arts fully integrated into the world of art and became inseparable - and, more often than not, became unrecognizable as of their country of origin, cosmopolitan representatives of artistic excellence. In terms of styles, almost everything could go: more and more works belonged to the "tolerated" category, and, surprisingly for the artists themselves, leading figures of the Avant-Garde were elevated to the position of national classic and were invited to exhibit in major art halls - although neither their style nor their attitudes towards communism changed a bit. By the late 1980s, the two major institutions of art teacher training were directed by progressive artists who, a decade before, could not aspire to more than the leadership of an art circle in a hidden house of culture or a museum accessible to the kids of a handful intellectuals. Outstanding painters of European acclaim, Imre Bak at the Hungarian Academy of Crafts and Design and Árpád Szabados at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts could now train dozens of artist - teachers each year according to aesthetic and moral ideals that were not long ago considered dangerous even for the casual visitor to an art exhibition. The same changes of official attitudes were observable, with some time lapses, in the countryside: the Master of Arts School, the post-graduate training institution for artists, designers and art teachers of the Janus Pannonius University of Pécs elected a prominent Avant-Garde painter as its director: Ilona Keserû. László Beke, the critic who devoted decades of his career to the study of progressive contemporary art - and, as a consequence, was banned from all organs of publication, was appointed head of the Department of Modern Art at the Hungarian National Gallery in the early 1980s and won the competition for the centrally issued art history textbook of the Ministry of Education in 1984. ( 18) The Hungarian Avant-Garde that started out in the 1960s changed not only the tastes and attitudes of their contemporary viewers and critics but also played a dominant role in re-shaping the forms and contents of art education in our country. With their constant exposure to contemporary Western art, they soon offered an alternative to conservative art teaching. They introduced contemporary genres of fine and applied arts and the media in both school and out-of-school art education and managed to escape uncriticised. They were, above all, artists: they represented not only a new mentality and methodology but also a new role model for the Hungarian art teacher. 17
) From the late sixties, group tourism was allowed to Western countries once every three years. From 1976, however, individual tourism became possible. A very small amount of hard currency and tickets for train or plane could be purchased once every three years to be utilised for a tourist trip of maximum 3O days. There were special passports for eastern European and for Western countries - the latter were validated for the individual trips only and could not be used otherwise. In 1988, the introduction of the "world passport " - valid for five years to all countries with necessary visas - marked the end of 4O years of travel restrictions. As currency exchange possibilities are constantly being improved since then, travelling to the West from Hungary is at present a financial question " only."
18
) Beke, L. ( 1986 ). Mûalkotások elemzése. ( Analysis of Works of Art ). Tankönyvkiadó: Budapest. Textbook for secondary grammar school art education, grades I - III, age groups 15 - 17.
12
13 REFERENCES Kárpáti, Andrea (1985): Towards an Iconography of Children's Motifs, Signs and Symbols. The Messages of a 75-Year-Old Visual Diary. In: Harlan Hoffa, Brent Wilson Eds. : The History Of Art Education. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 1985, 185-191. pp. Kárpáti, Andrea (1987): Based on the Disciplines. Research and Practice in Contemporary Hungarian Art Education. Canadian Review of Aesthetic Education, 15/1, 35-40. Kárpáti, Andrea (1990): A Mensagem do Passado. In: Ana Mae Barbosa - Heloisa Margarido Sales, Eds.: O Ensino da Arte e Sua História. Universidade de Sao Paulo. 81-95. Kárpáti, Andrea and Gaul, Emil (1990): Art and Technology in Hungarian Art Education: Conflicts and Compromises. Leonardo Magazine, Vol. 23, No. 2. 189-196. Kárpáti, Andrea (1995) : From Post-Communism to Pre-Capitalism - Hungary's Dilemmas of Changing Paradigms for Art and Education. A keynote address of the INSEA World Congress. In: Ed. Monique Briére: Proceedings of the INSEA World Congress, Montreal. 87-95. Kárpáti, Andrea (1995b): Arts Education In Post-Communist Hungary: Policies, Curicula and Integration. Arts Education Policy Review. Vol. 97, No. 1, September/October 1995, pp. 11-17 Kárpáti, Andrea and Gaul, Emil (1994): Umweltgestaltung in Kunsteriehung und Werkunterricht in Ungarn. In: Hrsg. Kerstin Dörhöfer: Wohnkultur und Plattenbau. Beispiele aus Berlin und Budapest. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin. 139-154 Kárpáti, Andrea (1995) Hungarian Examinations in Fine Arts - The Academic Tradition. Journal of Art and Design Education, Vol. 14, No. 3, October 1995, 277288. Kárpáti, Andrea and Gaul, Emil (to appear/a): Episodes From The Social History Of Hungarian Art Education From an International Perspective . Submitted for consideration to the Proceedings of the Penn State History of Art Education Symposium,October 1995. State College: The Pennsylvania State University. to appear Kárpáti, Andrea and Gaul, Emil ( to appear/b): The Hungarian Child Study Movement And Its Effects On Art Education. In: Hernandez, Fernando, Freedman, Karin (Eds): The Aquisition of Culture: Art Education in International Contexts. New York: SUNY Press.
14 EPISODES FROM THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN ART EDUCATION FROM AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE Andrea Kárpáti and Emil Gaul LIST OF SLIDES
1) László Nagy: Study of twin girls - from a collection of drawings of girl twins from 1906-09. First scribbles of Panni ( Annie) and Marika (Mary), aged 3, done in 1906. The drawings are saved along with descriptions of the nanny of the girls containing the remarks of the young creators. 2) Maria W. Lampl, painter in 1995. She was the winner of the biggest Hungarian child art competition organized by László Nagy in 1921. Born in 1911, she was considered a child prodigy in art equal to the musical genius Yehudi Menuhin, her contemporary. 3) Maria W. Lampl: Drawings from 1913-15, ages 2-4. Her father, an engineer, supplied her with drawing paper and saved most of her work in albums that we recently found in the archives of the Educational Library and Museum in Budapest. 4) Maria W. Lampl: Decorative drawings from 1916-8, ages 5-8. As a young child, she was a „patterner” . While speaking about her drawings today, she emphasizes her wish „to create order” on the paper. Decorative design exercises in her primary school furnished folk motives for her compositions. 5) Maria W. Lampl: „Flower people”. Drawings from 1921 - 26, ages 11-15. At school, she had to do endless nature studies. To amuse herself, she invented a world populated by flowers and drew their portraits. Still a „patterner”, she did not do any narratives - was interested in neat representation much more than dramatic action. 6) Maria W. Lampl: Angels. 1927, age 16. In adolescence, her style changed abruptly. As she recollects today, she became „tired of minute details and orderly motives” and wanted to draw „in order to get rid of superfluous energy”. Her themes, however, are still inspired by her education: here, by the study of Baroque art. 7) Maria W. Lampl: The first light after the Darkness of Egypt. 1930, age 19. She got married - to a businessman - and entered the Academy of Art as one of the very few female students. She was still considered an outstanding talent. Her compositional skills evoked the admiration of peers who actually copied several of her historical genre paintings. 8) Maria W. Lampl: Nude study, 1930, age 25. At the Academy, she developed a lyrical, Impressionistic style that is still her own. She never became a famous artist - in fact, she considers her First Prize at age 10 in 1921 at „The Talented Child” competition as her biggest accomplishment in life.
15 9) „Nationalist paradigm” - 1926-45. Folk art pattern: design for an embroidery. Girl, age 9. 10) „Nationalist paradigm” - 1926-45. Poster for the Dutch Insurance Company. Girl, age 10 11) „Nationalist paradigm” - 1926-45. Poster: Let’s Drink More Milk!” Girl, aged 10 12) „Nationalist paradigm” - 1926-45. Pans. Girl, age unknown. A topic preferred up till the 1970s. 13) Communist paradigm, 1946-55. Green peppers. Girl, age 10. A topic preferred up till the 1970s. 14) Naturalist paradigm, 1956 - 1977: Color study project. Works by students of the upper grades of elementary school, aged 13-14. 1973 15) Naturalist paradigm, 1956 - 1977: Color study project and poster on flowers. Works by students of the upper grades of elementary school, aged 11-12. 1975 16) Entrance examination drawing for the Academy of Crafts and Design: Studies of nude models. Boy, age 18 17) Entrance examination drawing for the Academy of Art: Portrait of a woman. Girl, age 18 18) Entrance examination drawing for the Academy of Crafts and Design: Color studies. Boy, age 21
