dátum: 1995             fájl: en-interview                    C.8577

FROM AN INTERVIEW

March, 1995

Interviewer: István Margócsy
 

-         If you go to an artists' colony...

-         I spend a month there every year. No phone calls, no math homework, not an electric socket to repair, no guests, social life, nothing but work, forty hours a day. And my friend, Miklós Szüts next door. When I stagger over to his room, with rings round my eyes, saying 'I should have been an architect anyway, I can't do that bloody picture', he soothes me mercifully.

-         How do you choose the subject?

-         I last had to face this question eight years ago. Then I made a drawing of a photo of mine. Since then I have been drawing chairs, floors by heart. My mother is very patient with me, but she is saying I should finish doing the studio-paintings and start a different subject. The swimming instructor of Lukács Bath says the same, I don't dare meet him.

-         You are beating about the same bush for years... why?

-         I've got tangled in myself, I don't know. Possible answers:

1.     intellectual laziness (I suspect, this is the best answer)

2.     my narrow horizon

3.     it's all the same anyway

4.     because it's good

5.     I envy Morandi.

-         Your need, work and drive for self-documentation...

-         Miklós says I am work-shy. I rather think it's a game. I can launch my paper-boats, I mean my work is done and woven into culture, if I have recorded the pictures. If the titles and opus numbers are easily retrievable, the painting can be evoked by its photo. I get bored when sitting in a restaurant, rarely mix with other people, don't watch TV, don't notice spring and never go to the theatre. I love long charts, that's my fun...

-         Your diary-keeping... verbality vs. visuality...

-         I'm not a visual type of a person, sorry. I introduce myself to beautiful, even blond women for the third time. This gives me pretty much trouble. Yes, my verbality. Four thousand typewritten pages of my diary... Look, I was born melancholic. When I was a child I asked why I live. I wrote down, I drew up the same again and again. That's how I tried to interpret my world. And I always added two pounds of boasting. (Tell me, why does a 53-year-old man always boast? Self-justification? Inferiority complex?)

Yes, my diary... In my computer the correspondence file is the largest. A portion of my professional work is done by mail. One painting-day needs four days of background work, like it or not. I have no studio assistant, as Mednyánszky had.

Private correspondence: I have a friend in France, and I describe the world for her on a monthly basis. In three copies. One for her, one for the manuscript archives of the Academy... I have seven boxes there... and the third copy is at home... why? I believe in surplus. Sacred surplus. That's culture. What is it when you write dozens of letters to find a painting lost from a town hall? Public affair.

-         Why and how does the endless (recurrent) question-formulation work? Is it changing? Is it getting deeper?

-         Obviously, there is only one question. What he heck I am living for. I have been struggling with this since the age of  eight. Then I said at the end of my life I would understand. I accept God's orders (He knows that better, I just leave it to Him) in this affair, but I can't smile. Yet. Though it's the most important thing in the world. Pilinszky was over fifty, and he still said: ”We can reach serenity.” Getting deeper? Why should it get deeper? I have to work out the sense of each of my days. Anyway, I have no plans. Indiscipline, perhaps.

-         I have the same question about your painting. Why do you do serials? Do the pieces live together or separately? Do they strengthen each other?

-         I don't do serials. One piece must tell everything about the world. It is the theme that has been the same for years. But the sibling-pictures may interpret or help each other.

-         Isn't there a contradiction between making objects and not-keeping-objects?

-         Of course there is. I know. I love objects. The adjustable spanner, the multicolour map-reading, Morse-buttoned military torch. We found one in the snow two years ago, at an excursion with my son. I build, repair and transform my objects, but throw away everything that is not indispensable, including the torch. They can't save me from death. I've always given away my library. Recently I got 380,000 forints for a painting: with this I bought the complete poems of Arany and Babits, a nearly complete Oravecz, selected poems of Rakovszky, a complete Ady. I've just started reading them, I hope it's not too late. To make it clear anyway: from my studio I sell my paintings half-priced, 150,000 for a medium-sized picture.

-         The idea of the painting cut up into pieces, that can be reassembled - was it art, gesture or challenge?

-         Not a challenge. There isn't anybody to challenge. I'm not angry with the world, I have no time for that. And it's not my business. The first half of the question is based on a misunderstanding, I have never reassembled a sawn-up picture. I don't make fun of oil painting.

-         Why don't you let your work out of the country. It's printed on the back of your pictures.

-         ...except for public collections. Why? Look, there is Gellért Hill in the middle of the city, there is Váli Street, where tram 6 turns back, there is tram 2, running along the Danube, the legendary tram 18, and the late 81, that used to go to Zugliget, below Harangvölgy... There are Arany's manuscripts at the Academy. This is the place where my pictures feel good. To have them ”weighed” abroad? Why to ”weigh”? They are not briquette! They are to be used.

-         Where, how would you like to have your pictures stored?

-         No need for conditional. It's done. Some hundred people have volunteered for the job, and thirty museums. There are four ways a picture can be absorbed in culture: on the wall of a home, for a narrow audience, but thoroughly. In a museum - not necessarily exhibited, but it's the treasury of a nation. At an exhibition, highlighted for a couple of weeks, and in reproductions, that are always at hand. All of these are necessary. As far as I am concerned, I only have to set the correct proportions.

-         How does your solitude mix with those collective shows you have organized?

-         Milán Füst said, life may not have any sense, but you have to pay the butcher. My lunch, love, socks, brake-shoes and bad grades come from other people. There are friends, colleagues, there are good pictures, not only mine. A collective show is not for me but for the audience. It's easier to receive ideas from more sides, in more aspects. That's why last autumn I organized our permanent exhibition in Győr. At the beginning I asked Kata Dávid about this, whether it is ethic to separate a segment of culture this way. She said it was desirable. There is no point in making a lot of small, mediocre National Galleries all around the country.

-         Daily routine? What and why?

-         The alarm clock rings at 5:23, I say my morning prayer with the Franciscan friars. From there to Lukács Bath. At home Kata treats me with warm breakfast, she sits to the table with me. Then comes work. From 2 to 4 I sleep, in pyjamas. These days I hardly ever paint in the evenings. After 40 inspiration adjusts to part of the day and frame size. Curfew at 10:45.

On Sundays walk with the family, vacation in the summer. It has become an easier task since I've had my laptop computer.

-         Prayer - alone and in a community...?

-         Morning prayer is the first working hour of the day. It's work. I learnt a couple of years ago that anything can be a reason for a blessing: the faucet works, my family is sleeping peacefully, painting went bad yesterday. Daytime prayers are short phone-calls, just as policemen call headquarters in action, reporting, asking for commands ... or for reinforcement...