Bilder Und Gegenbilder in Ungarns Visueller Kultur (1914–1940)

The present study deals with some phenomena of the Hungarian visual culture in the period between 1914 and 1940, a time that was fraught with contradictions and tensions. The relations of the era were characterised by a particularly strong dichotomy, which drew the attention of the authors to Reinhart Koselleck’s study The historical-political semantics of asymmetric counter-concepts . Although historical terms and contemporaneous images, or more broadly verbality and visuality, do not directly correspond, a certain number of similarities can be identified in the way the groups that shaped history functioned and in the visual products they produced. Identical socio-political evaluations of the situation, the formulation of goals and positions only occur through different media (text and images), which is why we use the term ‘counter-images’ as a paraphrase of Koselleckian counter-concepts in our study. Koselleck’s views on counter-concepts and on historical time (spaces of experience and horizon of expectation) can help us to interpret the specific rhetoric of the images presented here: the self-image and the image of the enemy articulated in them, the relations to the historical past or present and the vision of the future they contain. The cultural tradition of Central and Eastern Europe has inherited from the 19th century the duty of the artist to play a social role, the responsibility to speak out. We deal with works that embrace the particular social position from which the artist speaks. Hungarian culture has, with minor interruptions, continuously operated within the framework of repress ive regimes, and as a result the state has exercised a considerable influence on cultural processes even in the period under discussion. Therefore, a number of monumental works and propaganda products commissioned and supported by the state are analysed here. These will be counterpointed by works of various genres representing the views and interests of social groups fighting for autonomy and political representation. Some of the images discussed here can also be arranged in pairs of opposites, because the artists drew from the same source to express their extremely different positions, or used the same visual sign or motif, but with the opposite intention.