He had to get out

I have a to make confession. It gave me always a really hard time when someone asked me what is Hungary about. Honestly I couldn't really understand why this question comes in the first three drafts of a conversation when someone meets me first time. I still don't get it. I am much more interested in other questions and I don't believe that there is a sharp answer to that question in a world where in Budapest I don't have but one native speaker and Hungarian born neighbor.
This question made me a hard time when I was in Finland for a year. There I could feel what Finland was all about. After coming home I was pretty much crazy about this question. I thought I had to find something, something what is not the good red homegrown tomato which I love anyway. I was randomly picking music pieces, paintings, writers from the Hungarian pop culture and from the so called "grand art", but somehow I could not feel the thing what I was looking for. I use the 'thing' term on purpose, because at that time I was not sure what I was looking for. Time went by and I discussed my problem with friends with some of my teachers, with musicians and artist, and at one pont I realized, this is an unsolved question almost for all of them. What makes this question so intense that we can not relate ourselves to any other thing here in Hungary but to ourself. What makes this country bitter sweat and full of secrets and jealousy that the a talent can not flourish unless it leaves the country.
So at one day, when I was doing my daily routine thinking on big questions, I find an quote from Giacometti -  who is now my favorite artist for be observed - ; " Brassai photograph me like this. I am a wreck. The future looks rather bleak. I ask myself how long I will be able to go on molding. I find myself at an impasse. I really don't know how to get out of it. And despite, everything you see, I keep on working, keep on doing my thing." Giacometti wrote this to Brassai in 1965, who was a Hungarian photographer.
I show you here some photos made by him. The one that is mentioned in the quote I am very sorry, but I can not show, because my computer is to old, and it gave me a hard time when I tried to download. But you can look after it.
Anyway here are some photos by Brassai. Plug you ears if Brassai is your favorite artist but I wouldn't say that he is the greatest photographer. What is interesting for me, that he wanted to experience a community what he found traveling and working around the world. Brassai was born in Brasov 1899 to an Armenian mother and Hungarian father. He learned painting and sculpture at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. So the story for me begins here. I like very much when one has parents of different nationalities. It does not make one special, but it gives a cultural ravel right at the beginning to his understanding.
In 1924 Brassai moved to Paris to live, where he would stay for the rest of his life. Living among the gathering of young artist in the Montparnasse quater, he took a job as a journalist. Instead of telling his life story, I will try to tell you what is important in his works for me.

Photos by Brassai: Giacometti in his studio

The pictures he made was mostly taken about his artist friends and about the city he loved. On the pictures you can see how much this guy appreciated the community he was living in. He is a fan of Paris and all those great artist. He was paying attention to the distinguished artist to be palpable years later. What I see here - and it is very important to be noticed - is the eye what highlights and pass on all the enthusiastic observations through time and space.

Finding the moment

 

László László Révész, Josephina and her sisters, 100 x 120cm  acrilyc on canvas, 2010

I spent months working on this text. No sorry, I spent months procrastinate working on this text because it is an extremly scarry thing to do, to write about something what you know you want to write about, but you also know that you are just at the beginning of getting something known. After a while I realized that point will never exist where I know enough about the thing I want to talk about and I feel confident, but all the conclusions what I already have or expirienced already are part of a continuity. This continuity is for me the painting itself.
Few months before I visited the studio of László László Révész. He has a quite small studio, but when you step in, you can not imagine how much he has worked. Pictures are all over the space. And not just pictures but photos, video sketches and stencils for shadowplay videos, drawings and sketches for theatrical works, and notices for scripts...etc. I could spend a week easily with looking everything just once. Why it was a hard thing to write about his paintings, because I coud not decide, what I want to write about first. Do I want to consture his paintings? I do not think I am so smart and that I have so much knowledge to do that. Do I want to write about the attitude of an artist? Well, that is a kind of topic I want to write about soon, and than definitely I will show his work too. Or do I want to write about what is painting for me? Yes, here we are. I want to write about painting. As I mentioned at the beginning I do not think that I have a huge secret to unleash and blow out your minds. I do not think that I have something terrible new to say, but I have been thinking a lot about painting and art, why it is important, why the artist has to bring reasons for its existence, what is painting still capable for in this world, where everyone has a smartphone.
After all these questions, I went to look at two exhibition. One here in Budapest, and one in Vienna. Observing art of any kind, but expecially painting is about continutity. You are living in your time at place what you need to understand. You can not ignore where you have born, what that place is, what problems there are, what speciality the place has. With this comes a bigger community and that is all the painters who painted even just one picture ever. We are looking at each others work carefully, we admire each other or sometimes we hate each other but in every case we learn from each other.

 

László László Révész, Lady with melons, 100 x 140 cm,              oil on canvas, 1997

This method gives a very intimate rhythm to the community of painters. On the other heand and let's not forget about this other heand at this time, otherwise the circle is not complet. As circles are a quite nice and integrate form so I try to make one with my thoughts. The artist community is quite a nice thing in itself, but artist always make pictures to watch. There are the viewers, who stand infront of a picture and get out from his/her head and disolve into another world. So pictures lead to a fuller life because they make you feel more appart of the world and a part of other people's lifes. That is not something what you can do on your own. You need those paintings, drawings to experience that. Painters make the passage to that moment.
Every time I look at a picture of Révész I feel I can understand everything in the world or not but I do not care anymore, because I am looking at this picture. He gives you a moment what you did not know you were waiting for, but you will realize it immediately this is the one you were interested in.

Révész is now working on a theatrical work with Karkade Company in Budapest. He is the founder of the group and the writer of the plays. Their first show was CAN, where graduating class of acrobats of a hungarian high school were playing. " The project began to evolve and attained interest on various cultural platforms, that allowed it's voice to be widely heared." The project is continnuing this year. You can follow the work of the group on faceboook: www.facebook.com/karkadecompany
Beside this work Révész started to make every day blue ink sketches what I want to show you next time, because it is a beautiful artwork full of energy and humor.  

You can find more work of Révész here: www.revesz.info or https://www.facebook.com/pages/Laszlo-Laszlo-Revesz/349118008443117

 

László László Révész, Travels, 175 x 160 cm, charcoal, pencil on paper, 2009

 

 

 

 László László Révész, Face, 70 x 50 cm, mixed media on paper, 1986

Kafkadian way to get closer what you want

Latley I was seriously thinking about is there anything like preciving someone as role model. I am not sure there is, and also not sure, that one needs anything like that. Still it is strong and can be almoust not compered to enything when I find something, or someone, who makes me curious and makes me act.
In this world were everyone can have a voice, and everyone can share and like it is kind of hard to find things what are so moving, that you feel like you realy need to know about that thing. Not because originality is off the table, but the amount of pages, news and photographs what are round us every day... Well at least I - and I am in a much worse situation, because the ryhthm of my understanding can be scatter brained sometimes - would need the whole day for reading and surfing on net. There is a lot of reasons why for me it is not viable. Back to my topic, I think, that there are values what I like to seek out in people. The most beautiful thing is for me, that these values are notion so how this notions presences itself it is always different. I know now I did not said anything what was not said or writen befor. But dear Plato, who am I to say anything after you? I just can agree with you.
When I first met Pierre Földes, I was very curios of him. Sorry this sentence is not correct. A year before I actualy met Pierre I was already curios of him. Pierre Földes is a composer, orchestrator, fil maker. A friend of mine was one of his good friend, and I use to hear stories about him. This two men has studios in the same building, and they went at the time quite often to have lunch together. Like all boys - and thank goodness I use deliberately the word 'boys' for a good reason - the were talking about cameras, pictures, news, womens, films. The tone of these meetings went pretty equally, but sometimes there was sweet sourness in the air. It made me feel, that somethings is not done, something has to evolve or maybe the other way around, it has to be wrapped in. I do not know how to describe it, but it was a nice feeling, that there is something plan or wish in the air somewhere around Pierre what has to be done. He already knew what was that, I just did not know him at that time in real.
The first meeting was awfull, even though that I was waiting so much to meet him. I could not do anything else, just keep focusing on my fear, that I will use the english grammer uncorrectly infront of a person who can use it correctly. After the dinner we had, I was very angry to myself, how could I be possibly so stupid, that I missed the moment for panicing on something I realy do not care, and not focusing on something what I was waiting for.
After this lovley dinner I have met Pierre several times, and I was also the knower of the secret: Pierre wants to make an animation movie from Haruki Murakami's short stories. As I saw a few sketches by Pierre it was clear that this movie will be something different than all the animation movies what I have seen in the last few years. I do not know to much about animation, but for me somehow the way how Pierre is working with this animation, with those stories, with the work itself is more like he is making a moving sculpture with no texutre but somehow filled. ... It is a complex method, because he rediscovers all the character's identities and appearances every day, and they appear more beautiful and more real than before.
......
 
Pierre is now in Paris, working on Blind willow sleeping woman. I asked him a few random questions:
 

How has your relationship to animation changed throughout your life?

First it was what my father did. I went to a few festivals with him when I was a child. I always drew, but somehow i got into music and so drawing became just a hobby. Then, I started making live action short films and when I left New York for Budapest, I found myself lost in space. I couldn't make music, I couldn't make live action films either. So animation was the only thing I could do with no money, was animation. I'm trying to make animation that isn't cartoon, that's just basically film using a different media. 

When did you feel that you could call yourself a grown-up and could no longer ask yourself what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Well... not sure how to answer that, I never really thought about that. I just thought I was going to be some genius artist and that it was just going to happen as I grew up. That the world of adults was something amazing filled with philosophers and loads of intelligent stuff one had to be "grown up" to understand. A little later i got to understand gradually that the adults were just like the other children, except that they looked terribly old and constantly tired.  So basically I'm not yet sure what I'll do when I get to be young again.

Where is the most unexpected place you've found inspiration?

On the top of a volcano in Java in eruption at four in the morning 

What has been the biggest challenge for you to overcome?

Moving to Budapest, accepting I wont be Stravinsky's successor  

What has been your proudest accomplishment?

Managing to love and be loved a few times. 

 

Could you design a new watch what is working only when you are relaxing?

I actually did design a couple of watches,  one of them goes backwards while saying the time correctly, I guess that would be a nice way of living

How do you imagine yourself as a coffee?

Smooth, velvety, strong enough, never bitter, with a multitude of levels of taste, always evolving. keeps you awake, keeps your mind going without getting on your nerves. Always hot and neither milky nor sweet.

 

If someone gives you a box, what you can not open, what do you do with it?

I keep on working on it until I open it 

 

Sketch for Blind willow sleeping woman, from 2013.

 

Sketch for Blind willow sleeping woman, from 2013

 

Sketch for Blind willow sleeping woman, from 2013

 

 Pierre Földes

New works

Textile print sketch 2014. 

Ever since I can remember I like printed textiles. One of my favorite brand is the finish Marimekko. The brand was founded in 1951 in Helsinki. Marimekko is particularly noted for brightly colored printed fabrics and simple styles. If you don't know the brand I recommend you to look after it. I was introduced to this fabulous colors in 2004 when I was in Finland for a year. At that time I was a little bit mixed because I couldn't decide what to learn; fabric design to be a designer for Marimekko one day, or to go to art university and become a painter and learn for my whole life. Well the last one was stronger than anything, and I can not say to you, how satisfied I am with my choice. In this summer I was for a dinner by one of my friend, who has very refined taste. She collects articles and images from magazines. She showed to my one of her booklet, where I noticed a lot of pictures about the hungarian blue dye. My mother use to love blue dye. For me this hungarian textile is something what never could show its particular delicacy. The cuts, forms, and dresses hungarians are using it just simplify in a very bad way the patterns of the blue dye. After this evening at my friend, I decided to make some sketches where I mix two of my important textile muses. I am just at the beginning of the rocky road, but I want to share you some of the drawings what are already finished. If you like it you can check more pictures on instagram, and facebook: www.instagram.com/dorsanszki or www.facebook.com/dorsanszki

Dorsanszki - Fabric patter, 2014

Dorsanszki - Fabricpattern, 2014

Before everything ( scene)

Being hypnotized, 156 x 190 cm, color pencil on paper 2014

Opening in Massolitt Budapest

Meeting the Kafka experience

Meeting the Kafka experience 

2014, 225 x 156 cm, color pencil on paper

Meeting the Kafka experience nr. 02. nr. 03.