Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

In the early 1980s, the institutional system of visual arts in Hungary underwent significant changes. As the marketization of the system accelerated, the art policy of the late Kádár regime increasingly accommodated artists who followed international contemporary trends and had previously been marginalized. At the same time, the art system increasingly began to function as a field of cultural production based on symbolic capital and abstract hierarchies.¹ After 1989, the most significant symbolic capital – besides demonstrating affiliation with Western artistic trends – became a strong oppositional stance during the pre-1989 era: marked by distance from the socialist institutional system and, even more importantly, by confrontations with state authorities, including banned or censored exhibitions. As a result, art historians, curators, and artists associated with avant-garde and alternative art from the previous era became the most important gatekeepers of the post-socialist artistic field. These artists and theorists, leveraging their symbolic capital, achieved a significant shift in cultural hegemony, allowing art from the formerly restricted production field² to occupy a symbolically dominant position in major institutions.

The new artistic field was characterized by two types of conflicts. The primary conflict revolved around the control of the field itself – its institutions and the representation of art in general. This debate focused primarily on the exhibition policy of the Kunsthalle, the most important exhibition space for living artists, particularly on the Salon-style exhibitions.

The conflict began in the 1980s, when socialist cultural policy started to favor artists with connections to the West. However, it intensified after 1989, as much of the artistic community faced an escalating existential crisis. From the second half of the 1990s onwards, these debates gradually merged with conservative and liberal political discourses, which increasingly obscured the social and economic stakes of the conflict. The secondary conflicts took place within the restricted field of artistic production. On one hand, these were generational tensions, exacerbated by the institutional over-favoring of the avant-garde generation. On the other hand, they reflected deeper differences in art-related approaches and art theories, as the gatekeepers of the avant-garde were unable to identify with the new contemporary critical theories and trends.

In my PhD dissertation, I analyzed the transformation of the Hungarian art institutional system during the political-economic regime change, along with the main conflicts and debates in the field of visual art in the 1990s.³ I examined this process not only from the perspective of institutions representing avant-garde and contemporary art but also by researching the history of artistic organizations that comprised the majority of the artist community. In this study, I present the transformation of the art institutional system in Hungary during the regime change, focusing on the primary line of conflict in the post-1989 artistic field, i.e., the tension between fine and contemporary art traditions and models.⁴ In the first part of the study, I describe the operation of the visual arts institutional system under existing socialism and the process of stealth marketization in the 1980s.⁵ In the second part, I outline the history of the largest artists’ organizations from the previous era which survived the regime change and the economic difficulties faced by the artists they represented. Finally, I describe the conflicts between the Kunsthalle, which represented the new elite of the field alongside with avant-garde and contemporary art, and the Association of Hungarian Fine and Applied Artists, which stood for the declining middle class within the artist community. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate that the conflicts within the field were not merely aesthetic disagreements, but must be understood in light of the economic and political contexts at play. I conclude by pointing out that the story of the regime change was one of winners and losers, and that a more nuanced art historical analysis of the 1990s cannot be limited to canonized art. Instead, it must also consider the internal struggles within the artistic field, along with the goals, interests, and opportunities of artists and cultural producers occupying different positions within it.

The Production and Distribution System of Visual Art in Late Socialist Hungary

The October 1979 issue of the journal Művészet (Art) was a thematic issue that presented the operational mechanisms of the exhibition system in the visual arts.⁶

The diagram primarily represents the career opportunities available to artists, while also providing a detailed depiction of the functioning of the institutional system of the visual art at the time. As the diagram shows, state socialist cultural policy divided the artistic community into two groups: professionals and amateurs. Artists under the age of thirty-five could initially become members of the Fiatal Képzőművészek Stúdiója (Young Artists’ Studio). Graduation from the academies of fine or applied arts meant automatic membership in the Art Fund of the Hungarian People’s Republic. From there, artists could apply for admission to the Association of Fine and Applied Artists, which represented the official elite of the artistic community. By comparison, amateur artists could join the Népművelési Intézet (Institute of Civic Cultivation), which allowed them to exhibit in cultural centers and in the so-called “small galleries.”⁷ The dashed line between amateurs and professionals indicates that the system, in some cases, allowed artists without a degree to apply for membership in the Studio and in the Fund, thus enabling some to become part of the professional art community. Therefore, only professional artists could exhibit in the most esteemed exhibition spaces. Among these, the largest and most prestigious was the Műcsarnok (Budapest Kunsthalle), which, along with several other galleries in Budapest, was part of the Kiállítási Intézmények (Exhibition Institutions).⁸ On the right side of the diagram, two other crucial institutions are visible: the Képzőművészeti és Iparművészeti Lektorátus (Lectorate of Fine and Applied Arts), which was mainly responsible for the authorization and censorship of exhibitions and public artworks, and the Ministry of Culture. The latter, depicted as the only circular institution in the diagram – as the straight and dashed lines emanating from it indicate – actually oversaw all the other institutions.

By the end of the 1970s, the official art institutional system had integrated a large portion of the artistic community. By this time, artists working in abstract and surrealist styles, once regarded with hostility, had also been members of the Association for over a decade. While conceptual, environmental and performative art still could not be displayed within the professional exhibition system, this began to change by the end of the 1970s. In 1979, preparations were already underway for the Tendenciák (Tendencies), exhibition series, organized by the Association. This series, whih featured art of the 1970s – mainly modern, avant-garde or neo-avantgarde⁹ – also included a separate show dedicated to conceptual art.¹⁰

Financial support for the production and distribution of fine art, as well as for securing artists’ income, was provided mainly by the Fund. In addition to public commissions and occasional state purchases, visual artists’ main source of income was the Képcsarnok Vállalat (Art Retail Company), which accepted artworks on a monthly basis. The state purchases and the Art Retail Company were owned and operated by the Fund, as were three other companies: Iparművészeti Vállalat (Applied Arts Company), Képzőművészeti Kivitelező Vállalat (Fine Arts Production Company) and the Képzőművészeti Kiadó Vállalat (Fine Arts Publishing Company). The Fund also held a state monopoly granting it the exclusive right to produce and distribute postcards in the country, which accounted for more than a third of the Fund’s total income.¹¹ These revenues were used to cover pensions, allowances, advances, insurance of the artists, as well as the costs of the Exhibition Institutions, the Lectorate, and the Association. They also covered the costs of Hungary’s participation in the Venice Biennale and scholarships for younger artists. The Fund had substantial assets, financial reserves, and owned a number of properties. In addition to galleries belonging to the Art Retail Company and to other enterprises, it owned a number of other high-value exhibition spaces, as well as storage facilities, studios, studio apartments, and artists’ houses. Furthermore, until the 1980s, the law on the two-thousandths contribution to art funding was in force. This meant that two-thousandths – or up to half a percent – of the value of public construction projects had to be spent on artworks. However, these amounts were not managed by the Fund but by the Lectorate. Like other systems that existed under state socialism, this scheme was a combination of overproduction and redistribution, and while involving varying degrees of political censorship, it also provided social security for artists.

By the end of the 1970s, the problem of overproduction provoked numerous critiques. These were still Marxist-based critiques, which blamed the system for its non-communist functioning. At a 1979 conference organized by the Association, Gábor Attalai¹² stressed that real socialist industrial design and industrial art did not function according to social needs but rather according to the principle of production and consumption characteristic of capitalist societies, resulting in large-scale accumulation and surplus.¹³ As a solution, Attalai proposed strengthening the crafts and small-scale production apparatuses. László Menyhárt, one of the editors of the journal Művészet, in his article entitled “Who Supports Whom, How and What at Last?” stated that the system preserved and operated a capitalist bourgeois artistic model and had become extremely bureaucratic.¹⁴ As a solution, he proposed the authorization of free artists’ cooperatives that had been abolished after the 1956 revolution. In his article “Painting, Art Trade, Patronage”, the publicist and lawyer István Kerékgyártó sharply criticized the operation of the Art Retail Company and state purchases.¹⁵ In addition to raising the problem of quality, he also drew attention to the huge stock of unsellable artworks and to what he called the “hidden patronage” problem. By the latter, he meant that many artists were, in fact, working not for the public but for the warehouses, with the management of the Art Retail Company enabling this practice. Finally, Kerékgyártó encouraged purchases from previously banned or marginalized avant-garde artists at both the Art Retail Company and the public sales.

As a result of the global economic crisis of the late 1970s, Hungary fell into a deepening economic downturn and was forced to borrow large amounts of foreign currency. The country’s increasing dependence on the capitalist economy triggered processes of market liberalization, which led to growing decentralization and marketization of the art institutional system. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Art Retail Company underwent a revision: it no longer purchased all works accepted by the juries, but only those deemed sellable. In 1982, the Fund created its fifth company, the General Art Company, which offered artworks, design objects, and home furnishings mainly to foreign customers. In 1985, the Qualitas Gallery opened in Budapest, offering works of art at much higher prices than those available in the Art Retail Company – prohibitively high compared to average salaries.¹⁶

At the same time, political authorities and the Party gradually withdrew from direct control over cultural life and the arts.¹⁷ As a result, in the second half of the decade, the artistic system increasingly operated as a relatively autonomous artistic field. The main symbol of this shift was the Exhibition Institutions, which, as early as 1984, gained the right to organize their own exhibitions without the permission of the Lectorate. The institution started to provide more and more space for artists representing current Western artistic trends, while the Fund and major museums started to buy works from previously marginalized artists. The gradual withdrawal of cultural policy from the control of art and the relative expansion of Western-connected art sparked heated debates even before 1989, but they intensified when the restructuring of the institutional system escalated to another level.¹⁸

Despite the reforms, the economic crisis deepened. In 1983, the Fund –until then an official social organization – was given the status of a ”budgetary body”. In practice, this meant, paradoxically, that the Fund lost its relative independence in the period of so-called stealth marketization. Its revenues were limited to the sums approved by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Finance. As György Horváth puts it in his book about the history of the Fund, after numerous investigations, deductions, and reallocations, the two ministries “bled” the Fund and its significant reserves were totally exhausted.¹⁹ In addition, in 1987, the spontaneous privatization process began, during which a significant part of state assets was sold at a low price to party-state elites or foreign investors. This process also affected the system of production and distribution of visual art, as many of the Fund’s estates and movable properties were privatized after 1987. Finally, by the end of the decade, the Fund went bankrupt. In 1988, a year before the regime change, it was only able to pay social benefits and pension supplements to its members by taking state loans.

The Successor Organizations of the Art Fund 

From 1988 to the end of 1989, negotiations took place between representatives of the Fund and the Ministry of Culture in an effort to save the Fund and its remaining assets. Against the will of the artists, the ministry reorganized the assets into a government foundation, which remained state property. After a lengthy legal procedure, the Art Fund was officially dissolved in 1992.²⁰ Two institutions were established to replace it: the Magyar Alkotóművészek Országos Egyesülete – MAOE (National Association of Hungarian Artists, hereinafter: MAOE) for the former members of the Fund, and the Magyar Alkotóművészeti Alapítvány (Hungarian Creative Arts Foundation, hereinafter: Foundation) to manage the assets and support the MAOE.²¹ In 1992 the Fund had 6,000 members, who, after the restructuring, automatically become members of MAOE.²² However, there is currently no data available on how many of them remained active members. MAOE represented a very broad cross-section of the artistic community, but primarily advocated for those artists whose livelihoods had previously depended on Art Retail Company submissions or on the Fund’s companies, or who had created in studios or lived in studio apartments specifically allocated by the Fund. Although some of the assets disappeared during the period of spontaneous privatization, the Foundation still inherited part of the Fund’s assets. These consisted primarily of real estate and financial assets, i.e. shares and securities. The state’s intention was for the Foundation to use these assets to pay the pension supplements and other compulsory benefits for MAOE members. However, most of the properties – such as the artist houses – did not generate revenue but required considerable maintenance expenditures, and many of the properties, such as the Art Retail Company, were operating at a loss. In sum, the combination of the Foundation and MAOE resembled many of the formerly state-owned enterprises: half-closed, semi-privatized, with a large number of underpaid or dismissed workers.

In its early years, the Foundation suffered a significant overall loss of assets. This was due to the economic crisis, the deficit-ridden nature of the inherited assets, and various other external factors.²³ By 1995, the Foundation was involved in nearly ninety cases in different courts. These included lawsuits inherited from the Art Fund, cases related to artists’ and workers’ advances, housing loans, real estate disputes, and other small- and large-scale asset-related legal proceedings, including instances of economic fraud. The most notorious of these were the asset cases involving Tamás Schmidt and György Zemplényi, as well as the cases connected to the activities of Tamás Kóka.²⁴ While the Zemplényi case was a proven criminal offense, the Kóka case was an excellent example of the managerial capitalism of the 1990s described by Iványi Szelényi: “Technocracy enjoys post-communism like a fish enjoys water – this society is theirs: it is manager capitalism. Although the politocracy played a key role in determining the direction and dynamics of socio-economic change, it still feels uncertain, even uncomfortable, in its new position.”²⁵

The Schmidt and Zemplényi case received extensive coverage in daily newspapers, tabloids, sports press, and on television. György Zemplényi, the former president of one of the Fund’s subsidiaries, was a professional fraudster who had emigrated to the West in the early 1980s, but came back to Hungary at the end of the decade to take advantage of the opportunities offered by spontaneous privatization. At the beginning of the 1990s, he borrowed hundreds of millions of forints from various private and legal entities, including the Fund. Zemplényi later became president of the Hungarian Swimming Federation, and in 1992, in the middle of the Barcelona Olympic Games, he defected with the borrowed and stolen money. Tamás Schmidt, the former economic director of the Fund, had granted Zemplényi a large loan in 1992. In 1998, Zemplényi was arrested in Sweden, and later both he and Schmidt were convicted of fraud and embezzlement in Budapest.²⁶

In 1993, Tamás Kóka, as head of an asset management company, managed to convince the Foundation’s board that an efficient financial institution could be built from the inherited real estate assets. After taking over asset management, Kóka and his team started liquidating what they considered unviable subsidiaries, which resulted in significant layoffs. However, it soon became clear that Kóka and his associates had drawn enormous salaries, allowances, and substantial loans from the Foundation. Under pressure from MAOE, the board suspended Kóka’s employment. Nevertheless, upon leaving the Foundation, he received a great amount of severance pay.²⁷ Dénes Gábor, Deputy State Secretary for Economic Affair and government-delegated board member, did not support the plan. Later, he commented: “The asset manager presented his ideas excellently with his pleasant and charming manner. I felt like I was hearing nothing. He quoted buzzwords from academic literature, illustrated with excellent projections and flashy diagrams. His enthusiasm and ambition also made him seem sympathetic.”²⁸

In the second half of the 1990s, there were ongoing conflicts between the Foundation and MAOE. The new board of the Foundation, appointed by the government, did not include any artists and saw the solution in selling off some of the Foundation’s property. In contrast, MAOE wanted the state to relinquish control of the Foundation’s assets and transfer them to the artist members. In addition, a sharp conflict arose over the wages of the Foundation’s staff.²⁹ While in the early 1990s more than 50% of MAOE members earned below the official minimum subsistence level, the leadership’s salaries were notably high.³⁰ In this debate, Gábor Székely, the economist and president of the Foundation, provided another striking example of Szelényi’s theory of managerial capitalism when stating: “Even if we can’t pay the artists anything, we still have to pay the staff of the Foundation.”³¹ In the following years, MAOE continued its efforts to end state control over the assets, but succeeded only in securing government responsibility for financing pension supplements. Following the change of government in 1998, the conflict between MAOE and the Foundation largely subsided, partly because the new conservative government favored greater financial support for MAOE. However, it still did not support the transfer of the Foundation’s assets to MAOE.³²

The Association of Hungarian Fine and Applied Artists

The General Assembly of the Association of Hungarian Fine and Applied Artists,³³ held in September 1989, adopted a new constitution. As a result, the Metropolitan Court declared the Association a social organization.³⁴ Thus, the Association survived the regime change, although it had lost its financial basis, namely the Fund. Although social organizational status came with some state support, it was insufficient even to cover basic operations. But financial difficulties were only one of the challenges facing the Association. Another was that of self-legitimacy. The organization was founded in 1945 to “create and propagate socialist realist art”³⁵ and represented the official elite of the state socialist artistic community. While the reference to socialist realist art was, of course, removed from the organization’s statutes, this did not solve the deeper issue: by then, the artistic elite had changed. In 1989, the Association had 1,422 members. Some were affiliated with the avant-garde or the political opposition, but they were clearly in the minority. Most were not particularly interested in the organization’s affairs.³⁶ The overwhelming majority were artists who lacked symbolic capital, were disconnected from international contemporary art trends, did not belong to avant-garde or oppositionist circles, and whose livelihood largely depended on an artistic system that was now on the brink of collapse.

In its early years – much like MAOE – the Association of Fine and Applied Artists represented a relatively broad spectrum of the artistic community in terms of party preferences and political ideologies, striving to remain above political battles and maintain a centrist position. In 1990, the Association elected Lajos Németh, an art historian with a considerable standing in both official and underground circles, as its president. Although Németh accepted the nomination, in 1991 he spoke with striking candor about the Association’s legitimacy problems. According to him, although the Association increasingly came into conflict with the official authorities after 1956, and although in the 1960s it began to include avant-garde artists among its members, it was unable to establish any meaningful connection with underground groups. This left the Association stranded in a “no man’s land” between serving official politics and representing “real art”. In the meantime, the balance of power had shifted:

Those who were banned, or at least fell into the “tolerated” category in the infamous “three T’s” system of domestic cultural policy³⁷ became favorites in the West. As a result, the value system of domestic artistic life became more and more confused. The Association was not prepared to take a stand on this issue, let alone because the majority of its members did not even understand the new endeavors, or opposed them.³⁸

Németh argued that the organization had to face the fact that it was increasingly unable to legitimize itself and had ceased to be the “unifier” of the Hungarian visual and applied arts community. Because of this, he maintained, the only viable solution was to transform the Association into a federation of member organizations.

The majority of the Association’s members did not share Németh’s views or support his proposals. After his unexpected death, the 1992 General Assembly elected Pál Gerzson as president of the organization. Gerzson was a typical representative of the majority of the Association members – artists who had lost influential positions after 1989. He had worked as a painting teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest from the 1970s and served as head of the painting department from 1987 to 1990, a position he was forced to leave as a result of the 1990 “student revolution.”³⁹ His name had also appeared in Tamás Kerékgyártó’s 1979 article criticizing the functioning of the Art Retail Company. Gerzson did not support Németh’s vision and continued to define the Association as the single elite organization representing leading Hungarian artists.

Between 1992 and 1995, the fault line between supporters and opponents of Németh’s vision deepened significantly. Within the Association, critics who had previously supported avant-garde tendencies had already formed a separate group, the Kállay Ernő Circle, in 1989. However, after 1992, numerous smaller associations also emerged. In 1995, the leaders of thirteen such organizations submitted a statement of intent and a proposal to the Association’s leading body, advocating for its restructuring. When this proposal was rejected by the General Assembly, the Magyar Képzőművészeti és Iparművészeti Társaságok Szövetsége (Federation of Hungarian Fine and Applied Arts Societies) – a conglomeration of seventeen smaller Societies – began operating independently.⁴⁰ By the end of the decade, the two federations had become essentially hostile towards one another.⁴¹

By 1995, the Association and the majority of its artists had reached a nadir – both economically and in terms of self-legitimization. Due to austerity measures and the economic crisis, ministry subsidies were reduced and delayed, leaving the organization unable to pay even the rent for its central office and its phone bills. As a result, it essentially ceased operations in the second half of the year. It was also after 1995 that references to the dire financial situation of artists began to appear more prominently in the Association’s rhetoric. Although many members had likely faced significant financial difficulties as early as the regime change, these issues were, at most, discussed during general assemblies and rarely communicated in the press or the Associations’ journal – Hírlevél (Newsletter). However, after 1995, such references became increasingly frequent. In the first issue of the Newsletter published in 1996, Péter Lelkes, the vice president of the Association, wrote: “The burden of everyday survival weighs heavily on all of us, representing a dramatic struggle for each of us individually. Tensions arise even among us when some face less severe financial difficulties while others experience extreme hardships.”⁴² The fact that the Federation largely represented the losers of the regime change was most clearly articulated by József Péri and László Sós in their text published in the second issue of the Newsletter in 1998: “What did the regime change bring? Instead of creative work, it imposed idleness; handouts thrown as alms, income replacement subsidies, social allowances, and the vegetating of our creative years.”⁴³

Following the split in 1995, the Association was regarded even less as the elite organization of Hungarian fine and applied artists than it had been at the time of the publication of Lajos Németh’s proposal. By then, the new reputational elite and the gatekeepers of the artistic field – former avant-garde artists and art historians who had shown any level of engagement with the Association after 1989 – had completely distanced themselves from the organization. Some joined one of the Associations of the new Federation of Hungarian Fine and Applied Arts Societies, but most chose individual paths and hoped for institutional rehabilitation and the spread of a Western-style commercial gallery system. In contrast, Gerzson and other members of the Assocaition promoted the narrative that it was the rightful successor to the Országos Magyar Képzőművészeti Társulat (National Hungarian Artists’ Association), founded in 1861, making it Hungary’s oldest visual arts organization. According to them, the original Társulat had been closed by the communist regime in 1948 and replaced by the Association of Fine and Applied Artists.⁴⁴ However, this claim does not hold up historically. While it is true that the communist authorities abolished several artists’ organizations in 1948, the National Hungarian Artists’ Association had, in fact, been dissolved earlier.⁴⁵ Nevertheless, after 1995, this origin story became so widespread in the Association’s rhetoric that its ties to the socialist era were entirely overshadowed. This narrative also served another important purpose: in the state socialist period, the Association had the opportunity to organize salon-style exhibitions at the highly prestigious Budapest Kunsthalle. However, after 1990, both the Association and the artists it represented were excluded from the venue. Since the Kunsthalle had originally been founded by the National Hungarian Artists’ Association in the 19th century, the Association could now, at least theoretically, lay claim to the right to once again hold exhibitions in the building.

The Conflicts Between the Association and the Kunsthalle

The debates between the Association and the Kunsthalle largely mirrored the broader conflicts between contemporary and fine art traditions and models that, according to Octavian Esanu, characterized much of the post-socialist region during the 1990s.⁴⁶ On one hand, this represented an aesthetic confrontation. Existing socialism had preserved a conservative artistic model, which focused on talent and craftsmanship, while contemporary art emphasized invention, as well as avant-garde and conceptual traditions. On the other hand, it reflected an institutional difference. Although the visual arts system before 1989 operated within a non-democratic political structure, the artists’ organizations were, in theory, set up as autonomous and democratic. Artists had the right to vote, to elect their leaders, to participate in juries, and the system of art distribution in general was also largely managed by the artist communities themselves. Although it was called democratic, the new contemporary curator-manager model was based on abstract hierarchies, reputations, symbolic capitals, and generally aligned with the cultural policies of late capitalism.

In this process, Esanu attached great importance to the spread of the Soros Centers for Contemporary Arts (SCCA), which, after 1989, found themselves in opposition to the local artist unions/associations.⁴⁷ The SCCA and the Kunsthalle were closely connected, as the former had already begun operating in the Kunsthalle in 1985. The SCCA (then called the Documentation Center) primarily focused on gathering modern and postmodern artists who could be integrated into the Western art world.⁴⁸ At the same time, the official salon-type exhibitions traditionally organized by the Association were gradually replaced by curator-led shows. After the regime change, the institution began organizing exhibitions for previously marginalized and/or avant-garde artists – primarily from 1995, when the leadership of the institution was taken over by László Beke, one of the most prominent art historians and curators of the avant-garde in the previous era, and who, after 1989, become one of the most important gatekeepers of the artistic field. In addition to the so called “rehabilitation exhibitions,” the new director gave significant space to exhibitions representing art from the region, as well as to intermedia and net art exhibitions, frequently realized with the support of the SCCA.

The Association, which represented the fine art tradition and model, had already criticized the operation of the Kunsthalle before 1989, and after the regime change, repeatedly requested the organization of salon-type exhibitions. In 1991, the Association was granted the opportunity to organize a salon exhibition in the building, but the show received overwhelmingly negative criticism.⁴⁹ After 1991, it seemed that salon-type exhibitions were off the agenda and that contemporary art could finally gain a hegemonic position in the main institutions. However, from the middle of the decade, the debates around the Kunsthalle and the salon took on a political dimension. That year, the country celebrated the 1100th anniversary of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin. One hundred years earlier, in 1896, this celebration had been a grand festivity for Hungary. Many of Budapest’s landmark buildings were constructed for that occasion, among others, the current building of the Kunsthalle, which also opened at that time. Although celebrations were held across the country, the commemorative year became politicized. Right-wing intellectuals and politicians – including members of FIDESZ, which was in opposition at the time⁵⁰ – fiercely criticized the ruling liberal-socialist coalition, arguing that it failed to honor the year appropriately.⁵¹

In February 1996, Gerzson wrote a letter to Beke, informing him that the Association had attracted significant sponsorship to organize a national salon exhibition in the building to celebrate the anniversary. The concept was rejected by Beke, but after the Association made its correspondence with the director public, the issue of the “National Salon” become a political scandal and part of the culture war discourse. Most conservative newspapers promoted a very simplified narrative, claiming that the Kunsthalle represents only a small group of Hungarian artists among a disproportionately large number of foreign artists. Moreover, some conservative and far-right affiliated artists and journalists specifically identified Beke and the Kunsthalle with the liberal political faction.⁵² In 1997, Bálint Magyar, the minister of culture of the socialist-liberal coalition, convinced László Beke to accept holding the exhibition in the building.⁵³ The exhibition, entitled Hungarian Salon, finally took place in 1997, but the management of the Kunsthalle stated in a press release that the institution was not the organizer of the show, but merely providing the space for it.⁵⁴

In addition to the salon-debate, many discussions took place about the rehabilitation exhibitions of the avant-garde, and the political engagement of avant-garde art in the pre-1989 system. In the heat of the debates, some artists and theorists exaggerated their pre-1989 grievances and their actual role in the regime change, or concealed the fact that they were, to a greater or lesser extent, an integral part of the pre-1989 system. Those who did not have such capital often did the opposite: they tried to relativize the earlier oppression of avant-garde artists and their relationship to political opposition groups. One of the most noticeable examples of this was the report titled “Ostracized Artists – Let the Kunsthalle Finally Become the Stronghold of Hungarian Artists,” published by the right-wing affiliated Magyar Demokrata (Hungarian Democrat).⁵⁵ The report drew a parallel between the Kunsthalle under Beke’s leadership and state-socialist censorship. Furthermore, the article not only questioned the marginalization of avant-garde artists in the former era, but also depicted them as collaborators.⁵⁶

At the end of the 1990s, the strong institutional preference for avant-garde art and the Kunsthalle’s rehabilitation-type exhibitions faced criticism even within the subfield of contemporary artists and theorists. Edit András, one of the leading promoters of feminist and gender theories in Hungary, never explicitly criticized Beke’s Kunsthalle. However, she frequently condemned the persistence of modernism in Hungarian art, arguing that it failed to provide space for younger artists following gender or feminist tendencies. This criticism was also relevant to the Kunsthalle’s exhibition policy.⁵⁷ While avant-garde exhibitions remained a focal point at the Kunsthalle under Beke’s directorship, the institution’s programming did not prominently feature art dealing with the body, gender, feminism, postcolonial theory, or other new critical theories and tendencies.⁵⁸ In 1998, a long-running artistic debate took place regarding the presumed over-favoring of the avant-garde, initiated by a young art historian, János Sturcz, in his article “Message to the Masters.”⁵⁹Later, Péter György, a key gatekeeper of contemporary art, stated that the Kunsthalle had become “the rehabilitation office of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde.”⁶⁰

Even though the Hungarian Salon went ahead, the conflicts around the Kunsthalle did not come to an end. The debate reached its zenith during the 1998 election campaign and strengthened the ultraconservative wing of the Association. Gerzson resigned and Iván Szkok was elected as president. Szkok was a conservative artist, both aesthetically and politically. Before 1989, he was a member of the Association but did not hold a strong position within it. Although he had a solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle in the 1970s, he was often a target of art critics.⁶¹ Despite this, he became a well-known figure during the salon debates in the 1990s. Just before the 1998 parliamentary elections, in a newspaper close to the conservative faction, Szkok claimed that when he raised the problem of the Kunsthalle and the salon during an open discussion with the socialist prime minister Gyula Horn, the prime minister told him that “he should not be so Hungarian.”⁶² Although the discussion was not recorded, the statement become popular in the right-wing media during the campaign. In 1999, Szkok burned paintings in front of the Kunsthalle as a protest against Beke’s exhibition policy and accused the director of mismanagement.⁶³ Paradoxically, Szkok’s election weakened rather than strengthened the Association’s position. He had a poor reputation even among conservative artists, and as a result of his election, some members left the organization. In fact, while the right-wing press referred to the Association as the largest and most important visual arts organization, only 200 members attended the board meeting where Szkok was elected.⁶⁴

In 1998, FIDESZ – Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége (Hungarian Civic Alliance), led by Viktor Orbán, won the parliamentary elections and formed a new government with two other conservative parties. Despite media pressure, the new minister of culture did not remove László Beke, but appointed a new director only after his mandate ended. Under the leadership of Júlia Fabényi, on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Hungary, the Kunsthalle organized several National Exhibitions in 2000 and 2001. The organization of these events was not handled by the Association, but by MAOE and the Federation of Hungarian Fine and Applied Arts Societies. The new director was not a supporter of salon exhibitions either. Just like Beke, Fabényi promoted curatorial exhibitions and did not seek to establish connections with the Association. Meanwhile, the Association took steps towards consolidation by replacing Szkok and creating a new interdisciplinary section for contemporary artists. Despite this, and throughout the 2000s, the organization was unable to establish a decisive position within the institutional system of visual arts. At the same time, the issue of salon-type exhibitions at the Kunsthalle largely disappeared from the agenda. The topic resurfaced only after 2010, following the reelection of the FIDESZ, when the new cultural policy implemented significant changes in the contemporary art institutional system.⁶⁵

Conclusions

Art history written after 1989 in Hungary – much like in other parts of Eastern or Central and Eastern Europe – has predominantly focused on avant-garde or contemporary art, along with its networks, institutional structures, and exhibition histories. This narrative typically portrays the regime change as a moment of triumph, marking the rehabilitation of the avant-garde and the institutional takeover of contemporary art. However, such accounts overlook the history of the broader artistic field. In reality, while the transition did elevate the restricted field of artistic production, it also precipitated the collapse and privatization of the redistributive art system of state socialism, leaving many artists and cultural producers facing decline and unemployment. Thus, a comprehensive analysis of the art history of the transition must take into consideration that the regime change was not merely a story of winners, but of both winners and losers.

The fine and applied artists, along with other cultural workers represented by the National Association of Hungarian Artists (MAOE), faced economic challenges similar to those encountered by the working class in general. Many of them lost both their jobs and their market, and found themselves in a serious existential crisis. The artists primarily linked with the Association of Hungarian Fine and Applied Artists⁶⁶ represented the declining middle class of the artistic community. The majority of these artists – despite being closer to the expectations of the general public than those active in the restricted field – had no real market demand, either before or after the political transition. Their livelihood primarily depended on symbolic capital, which they lost after 1989. By contrast, the Kunsthalle came to represent the new elite of the field: artists with strong symbolic capital. These artists were not interested in maintaining the Associations, but rather in the spread of privately-owned art galleries, rehabilitation exhibitions, and successful integration into the Western art world. The conflicts surrounding the Foundation were largely economic in nature, in contrast to the symbolic battles between the leadership of the Association and the Kunsthalle – which, of course, also had economic stakes: while the debates were primarily about representation, they were driven by the need for symbolic capital, which could later be transformed into economic capital.⁶⁷

In post-socialist Hungary, the cultural cleavage line became the primary cleavage line⁶⁸ of political battles, accompanied by intense political polarization.⁶⁹ This significantly heightened the intensity of the conflicts within the field of cultural production. In the first years after the regime change, the primary cleavage line in the field of visual art was not a cultural one. However, the spread of the nationalist and market-liberal ideologies – along with increasing polarization in the political sphere and the rise of culture war discourse – gradually exerted a stronger influence on the field. Moreover, these conflicts were not only influenced but also manipulated and oversimplified by both politics and the media. As a result of these processes, the debate around the Kunsthalle and the salon increasingly took on the dynamics of political struggle: the actors in the restricted field of artistic production increasingly accepted the rhetoric of the market-liberal elites, while the Association – once established to create and propagate socialist realist art – gradually drifted towards a national-conservative protectionist policy.

 

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Júliusz Huth