Making Art Visible Through Information, and Vice Versa
The wide range of unofficial or alternative artistic practices developed in the Eastern bloc during the Cold War can by no means be embraced as a homogeneous set. The diversified map of artistic experiments and scenes that arises from a close observation of the region contradicts, in fact, the idea of a single culture, identifiable today under general rubrics such as “Eastern European art,” or “art in Communist countries.”
Differences were marked indeed in both spatial and temporal terms. First, the states belonging to the Soviet sphere of influence were marked by historical, political, and cultural coordinates that largely bypassed the shared experience of state socialism. Those specificities were of great importance for the framing and development of unofficial art in each national context. 1 Second, if we examine the relation between alternative culture and communist authorities—in other words, the degree of repression that nonconventional artists and cultural practitioners suffered—the idea of a regular progression in time bridging, for example, the dark times of Stalinism to the height of liberalization in the 1980s, promptly proves to be inaccurate. The whole Cold War period alternates in fact between episodes of harsh repression and relaxation, with the timing and duration of such episodes differing for each national scene.
Such spatially and timely temporally based differences turn any attempt to build a general overview of unofficial cultural practices in the Eastern bloc into a delicate proposal. We can hardly compare, for example, the harsh repression suffered by artists in Czechoslovakia during the normalization period that followed 1968, with the rather liberal ambiance that the Hungarian neo-avant-garde enjoyed at that same moment; in the same way that the cultural sphere in Poland after the imposition of martial law in December 1981 has little in common with the situation of the art scene in Hungary, which somewhat took advantage of the growing inconsistency of official policy. But neither can Hungary, as we shall see, be described as a state in which unofficial culture could freely develop; it was under constant surveillance and subject to the whims of the changing cultural policy.
Besides the importance of taking the specificity of national and local contexts into account, it is imperative to replace alternative cultural practices within a broader setting, which includes the contacts and connections established across national and bloc divisions. On one hand, since the doctrine of socialist realism ceased to be imposed by communist leaderships as an aesthetic guideline in the late 1950s, the attitude of the authorities toward nonconventional artistic production increasingly relied on a series of entangled, fluctuating national, regional, and international interests. On the other hand, transnational exchanges—through networks of communication or artistic collaboration like the International Mail Art Network, for example, had a great influence on the increasing visibility of unofficial culture not only within the Eastern bloc but also far beyond the boundaries of the Iron Curtain. Keeping those aspects in mind is particularly important if we seek to challenge the perspective of a purely antagonistic East-West relationship and a hermetically closed Eastern realm. 2
Focusing most particularly on Hungary during the 1980s, this essay examines the relation between its unofficial art scene and the means through which artistic activities and the social and political circumstances of art production were reported and publicly disclosed. To do so, it relies on two cases: the exhibitions Hungary Can Be Yours (1984), organized by the artist György Galántai at Budapest’s Young Artists Club, and The Fighting City (1987), planned by the artist group Inconnu in a private apartment, also in the Hungarian capital. Both exhibitions were censored by communist authorities, and this intervention gave rise to a wide range of reactions on the part of many, including artists, intellectuals, journalists, and dissidents, from Hungary and abroad. They were reported most particularly in the Hungarian samizdat press and by several Western media organizations. 3
Questioning the role that information and mediation played in the visibility and public acknowledgment of Hungarian alternative culture over the 1980s, this essay presents the following hypothesis: The period spanning the late 1970s–1989 was marked by the implementation by Hungarian artists and cultural agents of strategies aiming at giving greater visibility to artistic practices that hadn’t enjoyed public exposure so far. This situation, I suggest, contrasted with the previous conditions of existence of unofficial art, which had mostly developed at the margins of public and institutional space (Forgács 2008). In fact, a significant part of the progressive, experimental artistic practices that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s happened in conditions of isolation and withdrawal, not only as a consequence of the state’s repressive attitude, but also as a way to avoid self-censorship, ironically designated by Miklós Haraszti (1988) as a “progressive” form of censorship, characteristic of Central European post-totalitarian regimes.
This shift toward greater visibility in the artistic and cultural sphere ran parallel to the growth of oppositional movements of political and civil nature in Central Europe. Either individually or collectively, these movements pointed to the inconsistencies of Soviet-type political and economic policies and asked communist leaders to meet their obligations toward society. The signature of the Final Act of the Helsinki Accords, in 1975, was of crucial importance for the consolidation of such movements and the implementation of new modes of resistance against state control and censorship. In particular, the agreement’s famous “Third Basket” offered them a solid argument for pressuring communist signatories to revise their government’s attitude about human rights. 4 It legitimized the public naming and shaming of those regimes that did not honor their commitment to “human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.” 5
The media played a crucial role in this process of public denunciation. On one hand, political samizdat publications in the East composed important platforms of utterance and (semi-)visibility for nonauthorized discourses and representations, pointing regularly to the surveillance and repression under which citizens from Central and Eastern Europe lived their daily lives. On the other hand, news agencies and periodicals in the West, as well as Western radios broadcasting in communist territories—like Radio Free Europe and the BBC—provided information on this situation to a broader audience.
Numerous studies have reported the use of public divulgation and denunciation by political activists and dissidents, especially from the Hungarian democratic opposition; however, the implementation of such strategies by artists—or in relation to artistic events—has rarely been addressed. 6 This is particularly surprising if we accept the fact that political and cultural realms were not really separated but rather met in what the Hungarian sociologist Elemér Hankiss designated as the “Second Society.” In fact, the actors belonging to what Hankiss described as a dimension of social existence governed by a different set of organizational principles shared the same aspirations to autonomy, freedom of opinion and expression, and political pluralism (Hankiss 1990, 87).
Resistance Through Informality: Hungary Can Be Yours
From Collaborative Publication to Exhibition
Conceived by Hungarian artist György Galántai, Hungary Can Be Yours was, initially, the theme for the fifty-first issue of Commonpress, an arts assembling magazine, with contributors from around the world, conceived by Polish artist Pawel Petasz. 7 As is customary in publications based on collaboration, the artists were invited to submit an artistic contribution of their own choosing or, in the case of issues devoted to a theme, one related to that subject matter. In this particular case, Galántai proposed the theme “Hungary Can Be Yours!/International Hungary” (Magyarország a tiéd lehet!/Nemzetközi Magyarország).
György Galántai has been an important figure in the Hungarian art scene since the early 1970s: not only as a prolific artist, but also as a tireless initiator of artistic events and collaborative projects. These include the cycle of exhibitions and performances organized in his Studio Chapel in the small locality of Balatonboglár, between 1970 and 1973, as well as various collective exhibitions of Mail Art over the 1980s. Galántai also cofounded the Artpool Archive with his wife, Júlia Klaniczay, in 1979, and both edited several cultural samizdats, providing Hungarian artists with news on cultural production and events in Eastern and Western Europe at a moment when such information was not easily available. 8 Many of these activities and projects relied on the International Mail Art Network, of which Galántai understood well the potential for artistic exchange and creation. 9
Since the 1960s, and with a particular expansion over the 1970s, creative use of mail by artists from a large range of countries and regions around the world enabled them to communicate and share artistic projects across national boundaries. If artists in the West—especially the United States and Western Europe—saw in it an opportunity to bypass the institutional grip on artistic production and set alternatives to art-market structures, the use of the postal system had a very different meaning and function for their counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe. For the latter, Mail Art offered, in fact, an opportunity to elude the system of authoritarian control and in so doing, it fulfilled the existential function of an escape valve (see Berswordt-Wallrabe et al. 1996). As Jasmina Tumbas (2012, 90) notes, “Mail art and samizdat publications expanded artists’ communication by means of metonymy, conveying corporeal sovereignty among artists across geographical boundaries.” In fact, in a context where nonconventional artistic practices remained under strict surveillance, artists recovered a feeling of artistic and social existence by projecting themselves into those pieces of paper, often the only part of themselves allowed to travel without restriction (see Röder 1996).
Sent to Galántai’s list of extensive contacts from the International Mail Art Network with a request for further dissemination, the first announcement and call for participation in Hungary Can Be Yours was a simple letter-size sheet illustrated with a portrait of György and Júlia Galántai, holding a map of Hungary. 10 In line with Mail Art’s leading principles of “no jury, no return,” the short text below the portrait stated that “every material related to Hungary [would] be reproduced,” and it recommended that the participants register their mail in order to ensure its delivery at Galántai’s personal address. Once received, contributions would be assembled by the editor—Galántai himself—and reproduced, before being distributed through the same mail network.
This initial plan changed when Antal Vásárhelyi, artistic director of Budapest’s Young Artists Club (Fiatal Művészek Klubja), offered Galántai the opportunity to exhibit the magazine contributions in his space. This proposal enabled the inclusion of tridimensional artifacts—at least for Hungarian artists, since foreign participants remained limited by the conditions and costs of the mail service—and the publication of the Commonpress issue as an exhibition catalogue. Galántai accepted, and a new call for participation was put into circulation, which fixed the opening to 27 January 1984. In total, 110 artists from both sides of the Iron Curtain mailed their contributions to the Hungary Can Be Yours magazine issue-turned-exhibition, or brought it personally to the organizer.
The Young Artists Club was a state institution, affiliated with the Hungarian Communist Youth League (KISZ). Despite its openness to cultural experiments in the 1970s–1980s, which turned it into an important place for the alternative cultural scene, it was also, however, a privileged location for the authorities to monitor this scene—the Club wasn’t immune to control procedures. A few hours before its opening, the exhibition Hungary Can Be Yours was inspected by an official committee including the artists András Baranyai and Adam Kéri (the latter himself a participant in the exhibition), who decreed its banning. Due to the Young Artists Club’s status as a professional organization, Hungary Can Be Yours remained on view for three days, as a private event to which access was reserved for the Club’s members; also, its opening took place despite the official resolution, in keeping with the requirement that only individuals holding an invitation could access the exhibition space. Of course, this last imperative was resourcefully bypassed by most of the visitors, who shared their invitation with others. After three days, the exhibited pieces were removed; since then, they have been conserved in the Artpool Archive.
An Unnoticed Event, Until Its Banning
We will now examine the media coverage of Hungary Can Be Yours, with a focus on its preparation and the moments that followed its banning.
How was the exhibition announced and presented in the media and what other means of communication were used to publicize it? What reactions did the censoring give rise to? What do the exhibition’s media coverage and the other forms through which its existence became publicly acknowledged reveal about the alternative cultural sphere and, in particular, about the ways in which information related to it was produced and circulated?
Before the news of its banning got out, the existence of Hungary Can be Yours went unnoticed in Hungarian official media, and also in Western and samizdat publications. On one hand, the silence of state-controlled media is not really a surprise; while in previous decades, the activity of artists who did not conform to official expectations was sometimes critically or ironically reported in authorized newspapers or magazines, the situation in the 1980s was different. In fact, the media at that time deliberately ignored unofficial artistic events, following the idea that “he who agrees to being controlled exists” and, conversely, that which doesn’t appear publicly doesn’t exist. 11 By minimizing the importance of alternative culture or keeping it invisible to most of the Hungarian society, János Kádár’s decaying regime could maintain the illusion of status quo, crucial for its grip on power.
As for the Hungarian “independent”—a euphemistic term for “unauthorized”—press, or samizdat, it must be pointed out that the political publications that reflected the views of the democratic opposition—among them such journals as Beszélő, Hírmondó, and Demokrata—rarely reported on visual arts events or activities, unless they were closely related with political issues and particular episodes of repression. The case of Hungary Can Be Yours was, however, not reported.
Information concerning the censored exhibition first filtered into Western media, which had received it through the intermediation of Hungarian sources. On 6 February 1984, the news agency Bibó Press reported the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours. Bibó Press was a Vienna-based agency established by the Hungarian sociologist Zoltán Zsille, who also worked as a correspondent for Radio Free Europe. Zsille had probably been informed about the censoring by a member of the democratic opposition who had attended the opening on 27 January.
The art show had two themes: “International Hungary Seen from the Outside,” which presented the works of foreign artists, and “Hungary Seen from Inside.” One example of the former was a map of Hungary wrapped like chocolate in tinfoil and entitled “Life is Sweet There.” A young Hungarian artist, however, exhibited a map of Europe with the border of Hungary lined in black, its capital, Budapest, not in its proper place but shifted far to Hungary on which the frontier was composed of nails each 20 centimeters long. A third showed Hungary wrapped and tied with a rope, entitled “Committed Literally [“roped” in Hungarian] to the Cause of Socialism.” The traditional friendship between Hungarians and Poles also provided a theme for works in the exhibition. The well-known slogan Hungarian and Poles: two good friends, who fight and drink wine together” was depicted in Polish and beneath it the words “We fight together, 1956–1981!” in Hungarian. 13
If we compare the report’s descriptions with the images of the art pieces available in the Artpool Archive, we find out, however, that some of these comments were not totally accurate. 14 For instance, one of the pieces mentioned in the report was the erroneous conflation of two distinct ones. The first artwork was a traditional geographical map of Europe, manipulated by the artist: Budapest and Hungary had been relocated in the Soviet Union, leaving a black hole in place of their real location, as if the real Hungarian territory had completely disappeared. The second artwork, probably one of the most discussed in the exhibition, showed Hungary—this time, in its correct location—emerging from a red “sea,” scattered with red nails. The author of both contributions was the Inconnu Group, a collective of artists known for its provocative and politically engaged art. The Radio Free Europe report depicted the group’s members as “young artists who are followers of so-called action art with a political content,” involved in the Mail Art Network and regularly subject to police harassment, in particular, because of their acquaintances with the democratic opposition and the samizdat Beszélő.
Inconnu’s contributions to the exhibition were undoubtedly polemical, as they directly alluded to Hungary’s situation, being literally “devoured” by the Soviet Union and submitted to its hegemonic power and authority. Given the group’s participation in Hungary Can Be Yours, the reporter concluded, “It came as no surprise that the authorities disapproved of the art show and closed it.” 15
Interestingly, the RFE report also referred to a statement previously made by Inconnu, in which the group affirmed to “consider every kind of official atrocity committed for political reasons the concrete form [sic], medium, and manifestation of political art. Political aggressiveness of this type … will be used by it as an art medium and the eventual materials, objects, and documents deriving from it, as art objects.” 16 Written in 1982, Inconnu’s “Christmas Manifesto” exalted a strategy that consisted of exposing any kind of official documents issued by the communist administration as artworks. In a context in which social and cultural life were dominated by the single-party system, argued Inconnu, bureaucracy was indeed the last field where art could really exist without retaliation. I will come back later to this strategy, when addressing the case of The Fighting City, organized by Inconnu itself.
(Extra-)Official Reactions and International Impact
If, as I previously mentioned, the communist authorities remained silent about the Hungary Can Be Yours exhibition, this indifference was, obviously, publicly staged. Extra-officially, Galántai’s movements were constantly monitored by the secret police, as some reports conserved in the State Security Archive attest. 17
A curious exception to the authorities’ apparent disregard was noted in the Radio Free Europe report. While the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours had been officially sanctioned, a well-known arts-and-culture reporter from Hungarian Television (Magyar Televízió), György Baló, visited the exhibition accompanied with his crew, who carefully recorded all the exhibited pieces. 18 Considering that the broadcast of such images in a public TV program—Baló’s cultural television-magazine Stúdió 84—was highly improbable, what was this filming made for, then? While there is no available clue to its final use, the recording could have been destined to party officials concerned about the event’s impact or, perhaps, it was simply kept in official records as proof of Galántai’s subversive activities, likely to be used at any moment for blackmailing him or justifying any kind of mistreatment (Debeusscher 2011). In either case, the TV crew’s awkward presence at the Young Artists Club confirms the close connection and collaboration between the government apparatus and the media, and the latter’s involvement in control procedures over the life of Hungarian citizens.
We have to wait until November 1986 to find another brief reference to the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours in a Helsinki Watch report about the violations of the Helsinki Agreements in Hungary. 19 Here again, the description of the event in the section “Freedom to publish” is a bit distorted, identifying, for example, the exhibition’s organizer as Tamás Molnár, a member of the Inconnu Group. This error highlights the fact that information concerning nonofficial culture in communist states hardly circulated, and when it did, it frequently happened to be twisted by the successive stages of transmission and interpretation it had gone through.
Besides the scarcity of primary sources and the difficulty foreign journalists had when trying to access them directly, another explanation for the exhibition’s lack of press coverage is György Galántai’s personal decision not to react openly against the official banning. This reluctance was influenced by his previous experience of being watched and attacked for his artistic and cultural activity in the early 1970s, causing him serious difficulties in his professional and personal life. 20
If Galántai sought to avoid repercussions on his personal life by maintaining a low profile while the communists were in power, such a decision can in no way be considered cowardly or passive; it rather reflects the thoughtful choice to keep producing and showing nonconventional art under adverse conditions, despite its prohibition or its limited access to a restricted audience. As this essay will further expose, Galántai has been committed since 1989 to building new contextual and interpretational frames for a large number of artistic productions and events from the communist period, including Hungary Can Be Yours.
Before addressing this aftermath, however, I will discuss the case of The Fighting City, an exhibition organized by the Inconnu Group. In the following sections, I will examine the strategies implemented by the members of the group to publicly denounce the machinery of state repression and alert the international community of their situation.
Against Silencing: Public Disclosure—The Fighting City
International Announcements for a Forbidden Commemoration
Inconnu was founded in the late 1970s in the city of Szolnok, southeast of Budapest. The group, whose name was, in reality, attributed only a few years later, brought together young artists with similar artistic and political interests. It became rapidly known for its provocative happenings and actions, as well as its visual production incorporating national motives and references to the history of the struggle for independence in Hungary since the nineteenth century.
After Inconnu was banned from Szolnok, some of its members moved to Budapest in the early 1980s and started to work in the capital with other artists who joined the group. If a complete list of Inconnu members cannot be reported, we can at least name its most active representatives once in Budapest: Tamás Molnár, Péter Bokros, and Róbert Pálinkás, who were joined on various occasions by Tibor Philipp and Magdolna Serfőző. Inconnu’s critical stance against Kádár’s regime was manifest not only through its artistic production but also through its relations with the Hungarian democratic opposition. As such, its members were subject to constant harassment, fines, and threats of various kinds. The group produced illustrations for Beszélő and Demokrata, two of the most important political samizdats in Hungary, and it was close to the opposition member György Krassó, veteran of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Although its members were too young to have directly experienced the uprising against the country’s Stalinist leadership, they were particularly attached to this legacy.
Inconnu, an independent art group, and Arteria, a samizdat publisher in Hungary, are sponsoring a fine arts competition to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The theme of the competition is: The Fighting City.
It specified that works of any dimension and technique were admitted, like for György Galántai’s exhibition. Artists could send their contributions to either Tamás Molnár, Péter Bokros, or Róbert Pálinkás from Inconnu, or to the samizdat editor Jenő Nagy and the art critic Sándor Szilágyi, whose postal addresses were openly displayed. According to the call, artists could sign with their real name or, in order to prevent repressive measures against them, use a working name. Also, the samizdat publisher ABC would issue an album for the occasion.
Within the general timeframe of the 1980s in Hungary, 1986 was a particularly rough year for the members of the Hungarian opposition and for any citizen involved in non-officially sanctioned activities. Several reasons explain this situation. In the first place, the year was marked by the rebound of official actions against dissidence, which had been previously impeded, or even suspended, in the wake of the CSCE Cultural Forum held in Budapest in October–November 1985. 21 This international event actually forced Hungarian authorities to moderate their attitude and show—at least on the surface—benevolence with regard to unofficial cultural and political practices in their country. This seeming liberality went to the point of letting an extra-official Alternative Cultural Forum, organized by the International Helsinki Federation and the Hungarian democratic opposition, be held. 22 Once the international conference ended, the Hungarian leadership abandoned any self-restraint and its politics of harassment and repression resumed their course.
Second, the year 1986 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the 1956 Revolution. In order to prevent the democratic opposition, as well as artists and common citizens, from commemorating the event, the Hungarian leadership hardened its position and strengthened the surveillance of any individual suspected of carrying out potentially critical activities. On 1 September 1986, the first “press law” in the history of the Hungarian People’s Republic entered into force. It stipulated the rights and duty of the press, insisting on its mission of providing “true, precise and timely information” and avoiding views that would contradict “international interests, or the rights and legitimate interest of the citizens and legal entities, or public morals” (Green 1990, 246). Following the institution of this new legal framework, various members of the opposition—many of whom participated in illegal press activities, working as either editors, contributors, or simple diffusers of anti-government viewpoints—had their houses searched during September and were heavily fined for being in possession of unauthorized press material. Among them was the editor of ABC press Jenő Nagy, who collaborated with Inconnu in the production of The Fighting City’s exhibition catalogue.
Because of the new repressive measures, which included also a more stringent monitoring of the national postal service, very few works had reached Inconnu by the end of September 1986. On 7 October, the group sent out another announcement through the Hungarian October Cultural and Information Centre, a news agency set up in London by the Hungarian dissident György Krassó, who had immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1985. 23 The announcement stated the following: “There is a reason to suppose that some of the artworks sent through the mail were never delivered by orders of the authorities.” Denouncing the threats received by Inconnu, whose members had been “told that they would be banned from Budapest if they were to go ahead with the exhibition scheduled to open in October,” it fixed a new date for receiving the contributions and specified that all the collected works would be put up for auction to benefit the SZETA (Szegényeket Támogató Alap [Fund to Support the Poor]), an illegal organization created in 1979 to fight against poverty in Hungary, the existence of which was denied by the government.
Speaking Out: Mediated and Direct Reactions to Censorship
The announcement was representative of Inconnu’s determination to speak out and make a broader audience aware of the illegitimate barriers posed against their project. To do so, it disclosed several assets. Listing the names of the artists from whom it had received a contribution, Inconnu invited those “whose name [did] not appear on the list above to make an official complaint to [the] Hungarian Embassy in her or his country.” 24 With this recommendation, Inconnu sought to strike the regime through its foreign diplomacy, a major player in Cold War’s power games. The group played then another crucial card, disclosing the names of four important personalities designated as the sponsors of The Fighting City: British journalist Timothy Garton Ash, Yugoslav writer Danilo Kiš, Hungarian writer and dissident György Konrád, and American critic and writer Susan Sontag. Inconnu assumed that the involvement of such eminent figures, who were engaged in favor of Eastern European dissidence or involved themselves in oppositional activities (as was Konrád, the only one still residing within the Eastern bloc), would help to rouse international public support and, possibly, inhibit state-sanctioned actions against The Fighting City.
The situation of the Hungarian artist is in one way less happy than that of his Czech or Polish counterpart. For his work has the backing of no organised attempt to restore the social order to which it refers, Hungary has neither a mass movement of opposition, in the manner of Solidarity, nor an institution like Charter 77, devoted to the maintenance of law and to the defence of society against the apparatus. Nor has it any strong Catholic or Evangelical ties. Art cannot be seen therefore as one part of a general effort to legalise opposition. Official propaganda notwithstanding, this makes Hungary not the most, but one of the least disposed of East European societies to reform itself from within. 26
Unlike the Czech or Polish authorities, those who hold power in Hungary do not usually imprison their fractious citizens. However, the group [Inconnu] which dared to invite their Western colleagues to join with them in remembering the humiliations of their country will be punished in a more subtle way…. Last week they were threatened with expulsion from Budapest should they try to publish photographs of the work that was sent to them. Meanwhile we should perhaps join with them in questioning the propaganda which presents the Hungarian experiment as the human face of communism. (ibid.)
The comments in this article are worth bearing in mind, since large and documented articles concerning the living and working conditions of artists under communist rule are rather unusual. Gwynne questioned directly the image of liberality and openness the Hungarian regime tried to spread abroad, allowing The Spectator’s broad readership to become aware of a situation and a context rarely tackled in Western mainstream media (see also The Economist [1986]).
Meanwhile, the opening of The Fighting City was fixed on 28 January 1987 in the apartment of Inconnu member Tibor Philipp, in Budapest. The event and its location were kept secret as long as possible, in order to avoid any interference from the authorities. Despite these measures, the police searched Philipp’s place a few hours before the opening. The officers confiscated all the art pieces, along with other samizdat publications and printing material, the presence of which exposed Philipp to legal proceedings for violation of the law and possession of illegal material.
The works presented here, declared Molnár, have a common message expressed in various forms—the commemoration of the Hungarian people and their love of freedom. Modern political inquisitors of our age do their best to fight lasting and universal ideas of mankind. In the ruthless experimental furnace of Marxist ideology people, periods, events, objects and works of art are burnt, annihilated forever.… The heresy of persecuted art lies exactly in its concrete, activating truth and radiating sovereignty. Thus it is clear why modern inquisitors have persecuted with such greatest fervour the works presented here. By their attitude they spat in the face of international cultural relationships, and of exchange and free encounters of art and ideas. (Demokrata 1987, 31/Roundtable: Digest of the Independent Hungarian Press 1987, 29–31)
Molnár touches upon the same sore point as does Gwynne’s (1986) article in The Spectator: the double standards applied by the Hungarian leadership with respect to human rights. On one hand, Kádár’s regime was bound to comply with its commitment to the Helsinki Agreements; on the other hand, it maintained the same heavy grip on anyone expressing a critical viewpoint, as the fate of The Fighting City confirmed.
Appearance Through Information Channels
We should now examine the motives behind the banning of Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City. At a time when the Hungarian leadership was striving to show a liberal face, what could justify the closing of the exhibitions and even, in the case of The Fighting City, the complete destruction of its artworks?
Two main factors probably motivated such strong reactions. First, the events’ connection to the idea and representation of a national identity (expressed in cultural, historical, and social terms) at odds with the official communist narrative.
On one hand, György Galántai’s invitation to reflect freely on the idea of “Hungary” couldn’t help produce specific associations, starting with those of Hungary as a vassal state of the Soviet Union. Even if most of the contributions didn’t disclose explicit political content, Hungary Can Be Yours undoubtedly offered a fragmented and disarticulated vision of the country, contradicting the vision of a strong and cohesive collective body promoted by the communist regime. The heterogeneous corpus of artifacts weakened this myth of unanimity, revealing its cracks. To aggravate the case, the exhibition included a high number of foreign artists, some of them referring explicitly to the authoritarian nature of the Hungarian regime. 27
On the other hand, The Fighting City commemorated the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, considered a counterrevolution and excluded from all official narratives. As such, the authorities saw the exhibition as an illegal event, displaying hostile views. Given that all the works included in The Fighting City were destroyed after their confiscation, their formal appearance and contents can be restituted only through a unique record: the photographs made to illustrate the exhibition’s catalogue. Seized by the police, they nevertheless escaped destruction and are still conserved today in the State Security Archive. 28 Through a large variety of formats and techniques—paintings, drawings, objects, photographs, and a short story, among others—artistic contributions to The Fighting City declined 1956-related motifs like tanks, soldiers, grids and barbed wire, dead bodies, the cipher ’56, the Hungarian flag, and the tricolor rosette recalling patriotic republican ideals. While Hungarian artists often insisted on the situation of confinement and captivity, foreign participants—from the United States, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Yugoslavia—generally focused on the uprising’s violent crushing by the Soviet troops. The latter’s empathetic vision, in part influenced by the event’s coverage in the Western media of the 1956 events and their aftermath, was totally unacceptable for the regime and could explain the violent response, leading to complete destruction of the artifacts.
This aspect is directly related to the second factor of repression: the organizers’ involvement in—and use of—international networks of communication and solidarity. In fact, besides the exhibitions’ highly sensitive topics, what most probably aggravated the authorities’ reaction in both cases was the involvement of non-Hungarian—and, most particularly, Western—artists, reacting on what the regime considered internal and national issues. The recent history of Hungary and its current situation were placed under a critical foreign gaze.
Be it by oneself or through the intermediation of an external agent, embodied in this case by foreign artists and intellectuals, as well as information carriers, “becoming public” implies leaving a condition of invisibility and entering a state of appearance. Coined by Hannah Arendt in her seminal essay “The Human Condition,” this expression could especially apply to the singular moment in which those unofficial activities of cultural and political nature in Hungary started to spread out in public, even discretely and through fragile means. The space of appearance, according to Arendt, is “the space where I appear to others as others appear to me, where men exist not merely like other living or inanimate things but make their appearance explicitly … to be deprived of it means to be deprived of reality, which, humanly and politically speaking, is the same as appearance” (Arendt [1958] 1998, 198–199). In a single-party reality like Kádár’s Hungary, appearance and existence (or “reality,” in Arendt’s words) turned to acquire a very close meaning; they relied on visibility, and visibility was strictly conditioned by the possibility to become public.
Regarding the case of The Fighting City, we could suggest that its protagonists had entered a state of appearance with Inconnu’s first announcements in the press. This state was confirmed when the news agencies AP, Reuter, and UPI, probably informed by György Konrád and György Krassó, reported the police intrusion at Philipp’s apartment.
On 28 January, UPI and Reuter issued two short releases entitled “Hungarian police confiscate dissident art exhibition,” which apparently shared the same source. 29 Both recalled the exhibition’s topic and commemorative purpose, mentioning the names of its renowned sponsors. According to UPI, “[D]espite the seizure, more than 70 people arrived at Philip’s apartment for the evening exhibit; many of them were members of the Hungarian ‘Democratic opposition.’” Both reports included testimonies from Robert Pálinkás and Tibor Philipp on the threats and persecutions they had faced during the whole process of organizing The Fighting City.
The news of the exhibition’s confiscation also appeared in the print press. In a short note for The Independent, journalist Edward Steen expressed his surprise at the authorities’ disproportionate reaction: “Such jumpiness is superficially a mystery,” he wrote, “given the relative official openness about the 1956 ‘counter-revolution’ and the marginal character of the opposition. But the authorities have achieved their high level of control largely through unpredictable reactions to such faint stirrings of opposition” (Steen 1987).
The regime’s relative openness prior to this incident didn’t fool anyone, as it did nothing but conceal the authorities’ high concern with the rise of critical stances against their government, as well as the opposition’s increasing visibility.
On the one hand, a new intolerance toward the opposition could be seen, for example, in the closure by the police in January 1987 of an exhibition of art about the 1956 uprising called The Fighting City…. On the other hand, this year’s spontaneous demonstrations, in Budapest on March 15 were the first in a long time not to be broken up by force. It seems that the authorities still feel the need to present an image of moderation to the West. (ibid.)
The information leak happened a few weeks after the seizure of The Fighting City. Inconnu had already started to send letters of complaint to the officials in charge of their case, with copies to the samizdat and Western press. In a letter dated 1 February 1987, the group exhorted the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party Pál Lénard to restitute the confiscated art pieces. The whole letter was published several months later by the magazine Index on Censorship (1987), with the title “No ‘Glasnost’ in Hungary.” Its tone, imperative and virulent, reflected the group’s exasperation. The intervention against The Fighting City was called an “act of folly,” which “offend[ed] and disturb[ed] public opinion everywhere in the world.” Hungary’s obligations toward human rights were implicitly evoked to put the authorities under pressure. With a harsh critique of the Stalinist spirit that still haunted art institutions, the letter compared the Hungarian communist regime to other political systems that were, supposedly, its exact ideological opposite: “Such brutal assaults on culture may be carried out by lawless national socialists, mad military dictatorship, hysterical totalitarian regimes but not by liberal institutions of a democratic constitutional state” (ibid., 6).
The letter to Lenard is only one of the many communications sent to the authorities by the group; however, it was probably the most diffused in the Western media. Although his requests remained unanswered, Tamás Molnár tirelessly sent letters to the authorities asking for the restitution of the art pieces until 1990, when a laconic answer from a state functionary finally informed him that the totality of the material subtracted on 28 January 1987 had been completely annihilated. 30
Aftermaths: Reporting on the Exhibitions After 1989
The cases of Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City illustrate the multiple forms and levels of intensity through which censorship was applied in Hungary over the Cold War’s last decade. They also exemplify strategies adopted by artists and their supporters in response to conditions of repression and imposed silence—in particular, the production of information and its public disclosure, relying on independent media from both sides of the Iron Curtain, as well as informal networks of communication and solidarity. In such a context of opacity and retention of information, independent and unofficial information carriers played a crucial role in making controversial and/or nonconventional artistic events more visible, preventing them from being definitely silenced and forgotten.
If this essay focuses mainly on the production and diffusion of information about alternative culture during the 1980s, it is legitimate to wonder how the cases of Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City resonated after the political and economic changes of 1989–1991 in the Eastern bloc, and into what historical, social, and artistic narratives were they incorporated, and who were the agents of such reports? To give a full account of this aftermath would require an entire chapter; however, we can briefly expose their central characteristics and the intentionality behind them, which differed in each case.
In the case of Hungary Can Be Yours, the system change in Hungary opened a new phase, characterized by the reorganization and release of the exhibition’s pieces and documentation, accordingly with the purpose of the Artpool Archive. 31 Along with Júlia Klaniczay, György Galántai orchestrated various reconstructions of Hungary Can Be Yours, integrating new elements of information about the event and its banning. 32 The aim of such initiatives was, first, to shed light on the motives behind official censorship and its application and, in a successive phase, to reflect on Hungary Can be Yours’s inscription into art history, both on a global scale and as an event representative of unofficial cultural practices in the former Eastern bloc. 33 They also reflected a will of self-historicization and, less overtly though, a demand for retroactive justice and recognition.
Inconnu’s position regarding The Fighting City was quite distinct and resulted in the exhibition’s loss of visibility after 1989–1990. While, as explained above, the group immediately reacted to censorship by engaging in protests, trying to make the system’s disciplinary and repressive skeleton visible with the means at its disposal—first, by exhibiting the “absence” of art pieces and substituting them with pieces of state bureaucracy and then, by making the facts public through their diffusion in the media—its members abandoned definitely the struggle for the restitution of the pieces in 1990, when it came to light that they had been destroyed. After that moment, the possibility to testify on the exhibition’s history in a postcommunist context was not contemplated by Inconnu, which progressively dissolved and ceased its activity as a group. Facing the dismantlement of the system they had fought hard against, the members pursued their artistic and professional careers individually and adopted different positions along the political spectrum, some of them forming close ties to the nationalist right-wing party Fidesz. 34
Hopefully, the cases of Hungary Can be Yours and The Fighting City addressed in this essay bring to light how the public diffusion of information could disrupt, and even possibly challenge, the politics of secrecy and invisibility imposed on alternative culture by communist regimes. The strategies put under scrutiny here largely contributed to the process of becoming visible and public—a process in which Central European cultural and political agents engaged since the late 1970s and over the entire decade of the 1980s. We could also suggest that they may have indirectly influenced subsequent attempts to provide a historical and cultural framework to experimental art, by creating greater awareness of the importance of information and its exchange and circulation in the articulation of a cultural sphere out of the official realm.
Notes
- 1.
The terms “unofficial” and “alternative” used in this essay refer to the range of cultural practices and productions spanning from those that were explicitly forbidden and subject to state censorship, to those whose existence was known and tolerated by the authorities as long as they remained marginal and didn’t express explicit anticommunist views. In the context of Hungary and György Aczél’s cultural policy determined by the famous “3T” (referring to the categories of supported, tolerated, and prohibited culture), alternative culture could be either tolerated or prohibited. See Bozóki (2015, 4), Szabó (1997), and Wessely (1993, 166–170).
- 2.
Recent studies and projects have provided significant insights into cultural exchanges within Central-Eastern Europe and within other geopolitical and cultural areas during the Cold War. Among them is Klara Kemp-Welch’s project “Networking the Bloc,” which is soon to be published as a book (2018); and the special section on artist networks in Latin America and Eastern Europe, edited by Klara Kemp-Welch and Cristina Freire, in ArtMargins 1, nos. 2–3 (June–October 2012). See also Bazin et al. (2016), Cseh and Czirak (2018, part 1), Piotrowski (2015), and Stegmann (2007).
- 3.
Part of the sources on Hungary Can Be Yours and The Fighting City cited in this essay was collected thanks to a grant received from the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP, French Ministry of Culture, 2010), which supported the first field research in the following Budapest-based archives: Open Society Archives (OSA Archivum), Artpool Art Research Centre, and the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL). I am particularly thankful to Julia Klaniczay, from Artpool, for sharing key information on both cases during my stay in Budapest and afterward. This writing is the preliminary step in doctoral research developed in the Department of Art History at the University of Barcelona, supported by a predoctoral grant (Spanish Government, Ministry of Economy, 2016–2019) associated with the Research Group “Decentralized Modernities. Art, Politics and Counterculture in the Transatlantic Axis during the Cold War” (HAR2014-53843-P and HAR2017-82755-P).
- 4.
A full version of the Helsinki Declaration is available online: accessed May 2018, http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/osce/basics/finact75.htm.
- 5.
- 6.
On the political opposition in Hungary and Central Europe, see Bozóki (1994), Falk (2002), Schöpflin (1983), and Skilling (1989).
- 7.
Commonpress was conceived and coordinated by Polish artist Pawel Petasz, who delegated the editorship to other artists involved in the International Mail Art Network. Between 1977 and 1990, more than fifty issues were published, embracing a large variety of formats and issues. In 1982, because of the imposition of martial law in Poland and the authorities’ strict control of mail service, Petasz was forced to hand over the coordination to Canadian artist Gerald X. Jupitter-Larsen.
- 8.
The first aim of the Artpool Archive was to collect and preserve artistic and cultural material of its time. Its archival fund based in Budapest is of crucial importance for researchers whose work focus on artistic production from the late 1970s to today. See Galántai and Klaniczay (2013).
- 9.
Galántai’s detailed biography is available on his personal website, accessed May 2018, http://www.galantai.hu/appendix/biography.html. On the Balatonboglár Chapel episode, see Júlia Klaniczay and Edit Sasvári (eds.), Törvénytelen avantgárd: Galántai György balatonboglári kápolnaműterme 1970–1973 [Illegal Avant-Garde: The Chapel Studio of György Galántai in Balatonboglár 1970–1973], Artpool–Balassi, 2003.
- 10.
See the page dedicated to Hungary Can Be Yours on Artpool’s website, accessed May 2018, http://www.artpool.hu/Commonpress51/defaulte.html. See also Debeusscher (2011). On the exhibition, see also Debeusscher (2011), Forgács (2016), and Fowkes and Fowkes (2017).
- 11.
György Konrád, “Foreword,” to Miklós Haraszti, The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism (New York: Basic Books, 1987), xiii, quoted by Tumbas (2012, 99).
- 12.
“Unorthodox Hungarian Art Exhibit Closed,” Radio Free Europe report, 25 February 1984. Source: Records of RFE/RL Research Institute at the Open Society Archive in Budapest. Reference: HU OSA 300-8-47, container n. 24.
- 13.
Ibid., 1.
- 14.
Most of the works can be seen on http://www.artpool.hu/Commonpress51/defaulte.html, accessed May 2018.
- 15.
“Unorthodox Hungarian Art Exhibit Closed,” 2.
- 16.
Inconnu, “Christmas Manifesto” (1982), quoted in ibid., 2. Originally published in the samizdat Inconnu. Unknown Underground Line. Actionalistic Journal/Egyes Számú Ismeretlen Földalatti Vonal. Akcionista Folyóirat, no. 2 (Szolnok: Punknown Kiadó, 1982), 72–75.
- 17.
Galántai’s code name for the authorities was “Festö” (painter) in Hungarian. A number of important documents related to this name were found in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security after 1989. On Hungary Can Be Yours, see the report by the agent “Zoltán Pécsi” on the opening of the exhibition, accessed May 2018, http://www.artpool.hu/Commonpress51/report.html.
- 18.
“Unorthodox Hungarian Art Exhibit Closed,” 1.
- 19.
Violations of the Helsinki Accords: Hungary, report for the Helsinki Review Conference in Vienna, US Helsinki Watch Committee, November 1986, 19.
- 20.
Particularly after the episode of the Balatonboglár Chapel, in 1973, György Galántai was subject to various attempts of intimidation and sanctions, and was also directly attacked in the press for his exhibition activities. See the complete events timeline: accessed May 2018, http://www.artpool.hu/boglar/1971/chrono71.html.
- 21.
Held from 15 October to 25 November 1985, the CSCE Cultural Forum was the first cultural meeting organized in a country of the Warsaw Pact after the Helsinki Agreements of 1975. It gathered delegations from all the thirty-five countries signatories of the agreements to discuss issues of cultural cooperation and exchange.
- 22.
In reaction to the official Cultural Forum and its uncritical agenda, the International Helsinki Federation and the Hungarian democratic opposition planned an Alternative Cultural Forum, involving international participants. During three days, intellectuals, artists, and activists from East and West debated on issues like writers’ integrity and the future of European culture. It is highly probable that Inconnu attended the Forum’s sessions and met some of its key participants like Susan Sontag, Danilo Kiš, and Timothy Garton Ash, who later offered their support of The Fighting City. This first contact could also explain the coverage of The Fighting City in The New York Review of Books, of which Susan Sontag was a frequent contributor.
- 23.
P. Bokros, T. Molnár, R. Pálinkás, S. Szilágyi, and J. Nagy, “Announcement,” 7 October 1986, released by the Hungarian October Information Centre, London. Source: Records of Index on Censorship, Open Society Archive, Budapest. Reference: HU OSA 301-0-3, no. 165. The same announcement was published in the New York Review of Books, 4 December 1986.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Files ÁBTL 4.1 A—2020, ÁBTL 1.11.1 45–3/10/1990 and ÁBTL 3.1.2. M-41752 in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest, are related to The Fighting City.
- 26.
Gwynne (1986), accessed through the Records of RFE/RL Research Institute at the Open Society Archive in Budapest. Reference: HU OSA 300-120-13, no. 48.
- 27.
Among the example of political allusions, “I think of the courageous Hungarian people, who have to submit to strong overlords and to defend themselves” (from Carlo Pittore, Italy); “Hungarians: STOP the fascism” (from Clemente Padín, Uruguay); or “I love the Hungarian Zoll!” (from Joachim Stange, GDR), referring to the border officials.
- 28.
- 29.
“Hungarian police confiscate dissident art exhibition,” January 28, 1987, 20:41 (Reuter) and “Hungarian police confiscate dissident art exhibition,” January 28, 1987, 23:24 (UPI); both from the Records of RFE/RL Research Institute at the Open Society Archive in Budapest, Reference: HU OSA 300-120-13, no. 50.
- 30.
ÁBTL 1.11.1 45–3/10/1990, Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, Budapest. This late outcome is particularly significant for the fact that the substitution of former communist administration with a new democratic apparatus was far from being immediate in the so-called transition period, and left numerous functionaries in their places for a longer stretch of time.
- 31.
Artistic practices excluded from the official narrative could not be known today without the commitment of individuals (artists, intellectuals, and cultural agents) who collected and archived information on them, as György and Júlia Galántai did with the Artpool Archive (later the Artpool Art Research Institute). Their continuous activity of archiving since the 1970s testifies to their remarkable engagement for the diffusion of information on experimental art within the Eastern bloc and beyond.
- 32.
The first reconstruction of Hungary Can Be Yours took place in December 1989 at the Young Artists Club, along with a roundtable discussion including some of the individuals involved in the banning in 1984 (Attila Zsigmond, director of Budapest’s Visual Arts Directorate; Tamás Törok, art historian; György Galántai himself, and, as a moderator, the journalist Péter Rosza). In 2000–2001, the exhibition was set again in Budapest (at the exhibition space Artpool P60 and the Centralis Gallery at the Open Society Archive), with an unseen section disclosing secret reports elaborated by State Security agents (see note 23). On this respect, see Tamás Szőnyei, “A szabadság rekonstrukciója” [The Reconstruction of Freedom], in Mancs (Kultúra), 25 October 2001, and Gábor Tölgyesi, “Rekonstruált országimázs” [A Reconstructed Image of the Country], in Magyar Hírlap (Tárlat), 29 October 2001. Successively, works and documents from Hungary Can Be Yours were exhibited at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London (2003) and Switch Room gallery in Belfast (2006). For a complete list of events, see ARTPOOL: The Experimental Art Archive of East-Central Europe, cited in note 10, 81.
- 33.
In particular, the exhibitions Interrupted Histories (Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana Slovenia, 2006) and Museum of Parallel Narratives (MACBA, Barcelona, 2011), both curated by Zdenka Badovinac Organized within the framework of the museums’ consortium L’Internationale, Museum of Parallel Narratives questioned “how the history of art originates,” especially in the former Eastern bloc, where no art system as such existed.
- 34.
So far the most extensive study of Inconnu’s political positioning, shifting from apolitical radicalism to nationalism and populism, has been provided by Kristóf Nagy (2016).
Archival Sources
Artpool Art Research Centre, Budapest
Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security (ÁBTL), Budapest
Open Society Archives (OSA), Central European University, Budapest