OPEN-AIR ART IN HUNGARY I.

Below is an account of two sculpture placements. Each of the compositions had a street lamp pillar built into it, and both of them were unveiled in 1986; neither can be found in its original location now. The erection of a memorial to Béla Kun was the last large-scale attempt of the Communist party state to install an open-air work, whereas György Galántai’s action was the first non-official erection of an open-air statue that was realised in Kádár-era Hungary. The events that surrounded Galántai’s work shows the ordeal of a marginal piece conceived on the borderline of “banned” and “tolerated” art. The story of Imre Varga’s Béla Kun monument takes us into the innermost circles of Communist power. The situation of the two artists and their artistic attitudes are light years apart, but the issue – the socially determined nature of the symbolic use of public spaces – and some of the secondary participants in the two stories are the same. Our documentary compilation allows an insight into the everyday reality of communal art, shedding light on some aspects of the period as well as on the uncertain status of open-air artworks.

THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF
GYÖRGY GALÁNTAI’S SCULPTURE TITLED FIRE SCULPTURE

(1985–1991)

The bureaucratic system of socialism watched over the process of artworks being placed in public spaces through special regulations and offices set up for this purpose. The authorisation procedure acted as a political filter and also limited artistic freedom. Artist György Galántai made an attempt at ‘testing’ this system by trying to expand the boundaries of publicity when he erected his Fire Sculpture in front of his studio at 3 Kavics Street in Budapest on 12 July 1985 without prior authorisation. The unprecedented action triggered a bureaucratic tug of war that lasted for years and carried on after the changes of 1989. During this time, charged with an arts offence, Galántai^[1] strove to show his willingness to cooperate with the competent authorities in order to prevent the removal of his sculpture. The arts organisations (Association of Hungarian Fine and Applied Artists, Fine and Applied Arts Lectorate, Art Fund of the Hungarian People’s Republic) sided with Galántai, showing their sympathy and support^[2], but the authorities were relentless.

Galántai (as can be expected of a conceptualist artist) actually implemented a process-work, or “bureaucratic performance”, focusing not on the installation and protection of his open-air work – referred to in the official documents of the case as a pillar-like artefact – but rather the modus operandi of bureaucracy itself.

ARTS OFFENCE

Probably acting on a complaint received, a police officer held an on-site inspection in front of Galántai’s studio on 14 August 1985 and imposed a fine of 300 forints for the offence of “unlawful usage of a public space (placement of an artwork)”.

Galántai paid the penalty by postal order. In order to save his sculpture, he decided to rent the location occupied by his “for the purpose of storing building materials” and thus circumvent the hopeless maze of authorisation of his artwork. After it transpired that the “building material” trick did not work, he changed his tactic.

OPEN-AIR SCULPTURE = ARTWORK STORED IN THE STREET

The council granted Galántai permission to occupy the requested public space and specified a fee of 20 forints per month for the usage of the area. The artist paid the sum by postal order. After the permission expired, he submitted another application and was again granted permission.

OCCUPATION OF PUBLIC SPACE

The council approved the new request and granted Galántai permission to occupy the requested public space, specifying a fee of 20 forints per month for the usage of the area. The artist paid the amount at the Public Area Usage Branch of the Metropolitan Information Technology and Fee Collection Company.

The unveiling ceremony of the Fire Sculpture took place on 10 October 1986 at a happening of an evening event organised in Kavics Street by the International Philosophicality Artaheadschool and the Substitute Thirsters within the framework of the Fluxus festival titled Invisible Art: the participants lit a fire inside the statue – to the alarm of the residents of the vicinity – and sang the Appeal [considered as a second national anthem of Hungary]. ^[3]

STILL OCCUPYING

“IT IS RUSTY BECAUSE IT EMBODIES AN ETERNAL PROBLEM”

CERTIFICATION AS A SCULPTURE

Excerpt from the minutes recorded on 7 August 1987 by the on-site jury of the Fine and Applied Arts Lectorate:

László Beke (art historian): Unpretentious artwork creating a playful effect. The placement is appropriate. I recommend approval of permanent placement.

András Baranyai (fine artist): I agree with László Beke.

Ágnes Bakonyvári (Budapest Municipal Council): We take notice of the situation. Placement approved based on what has been said and based on the expert statement.

Ágnes Szöllőssy (Budapest Gallery): We take notice of the permanent placement and request the Institute to provide us with the placement permission customary in such cases.

The Hungarian Institute of Culture granted permission for the placement of the statue since it had already declared it an open-air sculpture^[6] and informed the district council about this; however, the council sent another letter of warning to the artist.

APPEAL

The Art Fund, which represented Galántai, submitted a request to the secretary of the Budapest Municipal Council’s Executive Committee for the revision of this decision, which was rejected in its decision no. 2042/1988.

OPEN-AIR SCULPTURE = PERMANENT STORAGE OF ARTWORK IN A PUBLIC SPACE

The council granted the permission and specified a monthly fee of 25 forints to be paid by György Galántai for the use of the area in question.

The council extended the permission yet again.

In response to the new application, the council extended the usage of the public space until 31 December 1990 for the “purpose of storing a sculpture”.

AD ACTA

No more notes of reminder arrived after the municipal elections. It appeared that the sculpture would finally be left in peace. But then, a photograph of the work was published in the 2 February 1991 issue of the political daily Esti Hírlap [Evening Gazette] with the following caption:

“Footsteps in the air, or more exactly in the lamp-standard. The artwork can be viewed in Kavics Street in the 2nd district in Buda. It is not known who made the shoe-soles marching into the sky. An artist or a shoemaker?! Or perhaps an artist inclined to be a shoemaker?”

In response, Galántai made a Mail Art postcard in 100 copies using the newspaper article and added the following message:

Having become exhausted by the ordeal that started in 1985 and the lack of understanding surrounding his sculpture, Galántai dismantled the artwork in July 1993 and moved in to the garden of his house in Kapolcs. Works by György Galántai can be found in the Hungarian National Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, the Modern Hungarian Gallery in Pécs, the King Saint Stephen Museum in Székesfehérvár, the Gallery in Paks, the sculpture park in Dunaújváros, museums in the USA and Germany, private collections and other places. He has no open-air works in Budapest.^[8]

He still owns his studio in Kavics Street but mainly uses it to store his old works. He practically gave up sculpture and devotes all his time to the Artpool Archives and the worldwide web. “It is a free space, where I feel at home.”

1. [1] - Section 160 of Act XI of 1969, still in effect, stipulates that an arts offence is committed by those who permanently install works of fine art in public spaces, on public buildings and places open to the public without holding permission prescribed by the relevant legal regulation. About the political authorisation practice of the Budapest municipality, see: Mihály Orosz: A művelődési intézmények és utcák elnevezési rendje, az emlékmű-, emléktábla-állítás eljárás szabályai [The order of naming institutions and streets and the procedural regulations on installing monuments and memorial plaques]. Budapesti Fórum [Budapest Forum], 1986/1, pp. 45-46.
2. [2] - The authorities had done enough to provide grounds for compensating the artist: the Fine and Applied Arts Lectorate played a part in the prohibition of the Balatonboglár Chapel Exhibitions, organised by Galántai; they censored his “self-paid” exhibition at the Budapest Technical University in 1973; his membership in the Art Fund was suspended in 1974; and Budapest Gallery banned his international exhibition titled Hungary Can Be Yours in 1984. Galántai’s activities were also watched by other organisations too: a file with the cover name “Painter” was kept on his continued surveillance from 1979. Galántai and his wife’s pioneering role in the underground culture of the eighties is well known: for example, they launched the first samizdat art periodical (Aktuális Levél [topical letter] / Artpool Letter, 1983–85), founded the first alternative art institution, called Artpool, etc. An initiative, which is less well-known, similarly to the sculpture action published here, was their attempt at forming the first association of underground art: in 1985 they submitted a request to the Ministry of Culture to have the “Kortárs Művészeti Egyesület” [Contemporary Art Association] registered; it was rejected.
3. [3] - The video documentation of the event: Láthatatlan művészet [Invisible Art], Artpool Archívum [Artpool Archives], cat. 103.
4. [4] - Galántai won a one-year DAAD scholarship from the Berlin Art Academy in 1985. It took three years to have a passport and visa authorised, so he and his wife were only able to travel to Berlin in November 1988. “They arrived in West Berlin worn down by the depressing exclusion and by being at the mercy of the authorities, which they had to suffer from 1984, and having lost their faith in the possibility of an intellectual life in Hungary,” they write in Galántai’s oeuvre catalogue, they themselves compiled. In: Galántai: Életmunkák [Galántai: Lifeworks] 1968–1993. Ed. György Galántai –Júlia Klaniczay. Artpool-Enciklopédia Kiadó, Bp., 1996, p. 310.
5. [5] - The hemisphere was formed by sole-shaped parts welded together. Soles are a characteristic motif in many of Galántai’s compositions and communication objects, including Hivatalos lépésmobil [Official Step Mobile] (object, 1979), Irányított lépéscsoport [Aligned Group of Steps] (object, 1983), Engedem, hogy ugráltass [Make Me Jump] (sound sculpture, 1985), Jövőbejárat [Gate to the Future] (open-air work in the Dunaújváros sculpture park, 1989). “From the first moments of his political awareness, i.e., since his college years, he had one decisive experience: the experience of totalitarianism. It was something that he would come up against time and time again: as an artist setting up an unofficial gallery, as an illegal publisher, and as the founder of a semi-legal cultural institution. It is obvious that his footprint is the symbol of the human condition; and two footprints one after the other the symbol of progress. The meaning of the motif as such might be summed up as follows: ‘I leave a footprint, therefore I am’.” - Géza Perneczky: A szobrász útja a szó-kollázsoktól az allegóriákon át a Fluxus-koncertig [The Sculptor’s Progress from World-collages through Allegories to the Fluxus Concert]. In: Galántai: Életmunkák 1968–1993. p. 15.
6. [6] - As a proof of legalising the statue, Galántai’s work was included among open-air works installed between July and September 1987 issued by the Lectorate and published in issue 1988/1 of the periodical Művészet [Art]. The list of new open-air works installed in Hungary and the new commissions (“appointments”) for such works issued by the Lectorate were regularly published in the periodical. Commissions for open-air sculptures could only be granted with the authorisation of the Lectorate.
7. [7] - Galántai was awarded the Munkácsy Prize for his life’s work by the Minister of Culture in 1989 as a sign of the change of the political system, and in 1993 he received the For Budapest Award by the Municipality of Budapest.
8. [8] - While subjecting Galántai to a bureaucratic ordeal and imposing on him the payment of a monthly rental fee of 25 forints for the temporary placement of his sculpture, made at his own cost, in a public space, the Budapest Municipal Council commissioned the following open-air works, among others, for millions of forints: István Kiss: Az 1919-es ellenforradalmi lázadás mártírjai emlékműve [Memorial to the Martyrs of the Counter Revolutionary Revolt of 1919] (1985), Imre Varga: Kun Béla-emlékmű [Monument of Béla Kun] (1986), István Kiss: Münnich Ferenc-emlékmű [Monument of Ferenc Münnich (1986), László Marton: Szakasits Árpád-emlékmű [monument of Árpád Szakasits (1988). In 1992 the General Assembly of Budapest ordered all of these sculptures to be demolished.