Contemporary Art
and the Market

 

Hungarian artists and galleries abroad

Imre Bak and Ákos Birkás are two painters who stood for two possible modes of co-operation with professional Western galleries in the seventies. They came in contact with private galleries, especially in the German-speaking countries. (Bak at the time painted geometric abstracts, based on the Hungarian avant-garde tradition and influenced by American hard edge and minimalism. Birkás was just begin-ning his expressive portrait series--which would return in the nineties in his Head series and hyperrealist pictures.) The network of their contacts and their careers developed exclusively along personal lines, and was seriously jeopardised by Hungary's political isolation. Bak, for instance, refused an offer by the Galerie Müller in Stuttgart in 1968 since they required him to leave the country.
Birkás chose a different strategy. He moved to Cologne and then to Vienna, while maintaining links with Hungary. He worked with several galleries at the same time, among them the Vienna and Budapest-based Knoll Galéria, which provides him with the chance of constant presence on the Hungarian scene. They both think good private galleries are very much needed, but find the Hungarian system poorly developed. Birkás thinks the insularity of the market makes its operation along the Western model problematic. The restrictions are not the results of legal regulations but of the peculiarities of the market's structure and the approach of those present in it. It is difficult to sell works by foreign contemporaries in Budapest because they are little known here. And since they cost more than the market is used to, galleries seldom have them on offer-which does not make them any better known.
The efficient operation of the art market demands that galleries be able to represent their artists in other countries too. This involves, beside inter-gallery relations and exchanges, presence at what are probably the most important events for the art market, international art fairs. They provide many collectors, critics and gallery directors with a comprehensive overview of current conditions. Being there is the key to being known and to acquiring prestige, both for galleries and artists. Hungarian galleries rarely appear in these fairs, which in itself suggests a sluggish or underdeveloped market. The immediate reasons are financial. Most galleries cannot afford to be present at international fairs, which time and again leads those concerned to consider applying for state subsidies. Gallery owners may think the state should support them in their attempts to introduce Hungarian artists to the world, but they also fear becoming dependant on politics.

The 1980s: From galleries in
apartments to a street of galleries

In the international scene, the 1980s were a truly prosperous period, fuelled by economic expansion and the success of new expressionist trends in painting. The art trade in Europe and America experienced a vigorous demand, especially for paintings. Private galleries proliferated and became stronger, and a network came into being which has changed little ever since, albeit its hubs shift from time to time.
No similar process took place in Hungary. International developments nevertheless had an influence in that private galleries started to appear--something that the regime didn't actively discourage. The desire for a Western-type network of galleries emerged in the early eighties. A legally and structurally feasible solution was the co-operation of Creative Communities, which had their own established system of agents through which to trade. Another model was brokerage, when agencies organised exhibitions in private apartments. Such an agency was Zsuzsa Simon's, which set up the Rabinec Joint Studio in Károly Kelemen's flat in 1982, in what is now Falk Miksa Street. Several artists, like Ákos Birkás, Zsigmond Károlyi, Károly Kelemen, Lóránt Méhes and János Vető, were involved. The gallery was supposed to maintain itself from sales, and promote the artists both in Hungary and abroad. The gallery was also meant to be an intellectual workshop but eventually wound itself up in the spring of 1983, shortly after it was renamed Rabinext.
At the end of the eighties, as soon as the legal framework made it possible, individuals started opening galleries. There were two distinct waves. In the first, between 1989 and 1993, a number of galleries mushroomed, most of which-despite interesting plans-disappeared within a few years, lacking sufficient capital or a sound strategy. The gallery owners and the artists they promoted mostly came from the middle and older generations.
In the second wave, which started in 1998 and is still shaping the market, several important galleries appeared within a short time, and with them a new generation of gallery entrepreneurs and artists. It became a general practice to undertake the introduction of absolute beginners to the scene. As a result, or in a similar vein, older gallery owners also started to sell younger artists.
Hans Knoll came to the Budapest market from Vienna as a seasoned gallery proprietor, at about the same time Lajos Golovics, who edited the short-lived art trade journal, Belvedere, started organising contemporary exhibitions in his flat with a view to selling the works. Knoll Gallery was established in the second half of the eighties, in the wake of artistic and social events on the outskirts of Vienna. Its Budapest counterpart was opened in 1989, with what can be considered a symbolic pan-European action, an exhibition of Joseph Kosuth's works. The gallery employs a multiple strategy, it develops, as it were, in concentric circles. The innermost circle is constituted by artists with close and varied ties with the gallery. In the next are those young artists whom Knoll thinks talented and important. He provides them with one or two exhibitions, which are not necessarily followed by close and lasting co-operation. The outer circle is the gallery's international non-profit profile. The latter is primarily financed by Austrian and Hungarian state subsidies.
Hans Knoll in a deliberate move placed himself on the line dividing East and West. His intention was to establish links between contemporary art in Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. The strategy seems to have worked: the Knoll Gallery may well be the only organisation which successfully presents its Hungarian artists to the international scene.
The Knoll Gallery has retained its advantage, foreign capital and a continuous presence on the international market, over Hungarian galleries ever since. Its owner successfully rode the wave of interest in the art of the post-communist countries which surged in the years following the political changes. The gallery, still in an apartment on Liszt Ferenc Square, never suffered from the disadvantages of the home market, since it was anchored on foreign soil.
Basing itself on Hungarian capital, the Várfok 14 Műhelygaléria, which opened in December 1990, faced a bigger challenge. The owner and manager Károly Szalóky, whose background is in the non-profit cultural sphere, was uncertain whether the gallery (in a converted coal cellar) could be used as a profit-oriented enterprise. But once state subsidies became harder to obtain, economic reality pushed the gallery towards trade, though this hardly altered the artistic profile. Szalóky has been closely co-operating with a number of artists from the start: István Bodóczky, András Böröcz, El Kazovszkij, Pál Gerber, János Szirtes, Imre Bukta and László Szotyori. The need for fresh faces of course also arose: new names include Katalin Káldi, András Király and László Győrffy.
Despite an unfriendly market, the gallery grew slowly but surely in the nineties. In 1997 Szalóky opened the Spiritusz Galéria, then XO Galéria, both in the same street as the first. He wants to establish a street of contemporary galleries much like Falk Miksa Street, with its galleries specialising in Hungarian old masters and the classical avant-garde. It seems that some time will elapse before, if ever, Várfok Street and its environs become anything like the centres of the contemporary art trade in New York, Berlin or Cologne.
Várfok Galéria has not been able to establish trustworthy relations with the art trade abroad. Though it is the Hungarian gallery that has appeared most often at important art fairs, it is still a new and unknown participant on the international scene. Lack of capital and low revenues from a restricted home market have prevented permanent links with the international market. The only foreign gallery Várfok has longstanding relations with is the Hilger Gallery in Vienna. Chances have somewhat improved since 1998, and Várfok has been able to appear abroad on several occasions, as in the Hungarian Institutes of Paris and New York, and in art fairs such as the Paris FIAC, the Madrid ARCO and in Zurich.
Sámuel Havadtöy, who lived in the United States, opened his Galeria 56 in the "antiques zone" of Falk Miksa Street, in 1992. He wished to facilitate communication between the Hungarian and the international scene by involving European and American artists. Its initially intense activity has fallen off and, though officially still open, it rarely puts on exhibitions.
Dovin Galéria was started in 1993 by Katalin Délceg, in the heart of downtown Budapest in a fashionable street called Haris Close, above a real estate agency. Délceg and her husband, Attila Pogány, both of whom had worked in the state-run art trade, decided on a special strategy to enhance their market position. A complex of enterprises (book publishing, real estate, architectural and interior design and art trade) opened markets for each other. The supplementary activities which the art trade had to rely on in the beginning were eventually dispensed with and the gallery is now self-sustaining.
At the beginning Délceg cooperated with four artists-El Kazovszkij, Kálmán Pollacsek, Márton Barabás, Károly Kelemen-who were joined in 1994 by Tamás Szikora, Péter Gémes, István Mazzag and Gyula Konkoly. A new venue (in Galamb Street) was started in 1996, and a number of young artists became associated with it (the painters Levente Baranyai, Mária Chilf, Katalin Haász, László Révész and the sculptor György Jovánovics). The gallery exhibits its artists every second year and publishes catalogues and albums.
Katalin Délceg had learned how to run a private gallery from Claude Bernard, in whose Paris gallery she spent some months before setting up shop in Budapest. The strategy she wished to employ involved presenting noted foreign artists to the Hungarian scene once a year; however financial considerations allowed only a Luciano Castelli exhibition in 1994 and an Ernesto Tatafiore in 1999. Though Dovin was successfully present for two consecutive years at the Madrid ARCO, the gallery has been unable to extend its influence beyond Budapest.
Éri Galéria, the gallery which has made most changes of location in Budapest, also opened in 1993. It differs from those we have mentioned through having a distinct field of specialisation: it deals exclusively in Hungarian Constructivist and Geometric Abstract artists. Gyöngyi Éri, the proprietor, seeks out living artists and wishes to popularise unknown 20th-century oeuvres. Asso-ciated contemporaries include Dóra Maurer, Tibor Gáyor, Imre Bak, István Haraszty, as well as members of the young-er generation such as György Varga and András Wolsky. Despite the disadvantage of having to change location several times during the ten years under consideration here, Éri Galéria has survived and its established "family" of artists has little changed.
Not all enterprises have been that fortunate, not even those setting out with a promising programme. The Roczkov Galéria (1990-1995) was established by the three Roczkov sisters, Hermina, Radmila and Angéla. It tried to push the Serbian artist Milorad Kristi in Budapest. Later a few more artists-among them the painters András Wahorn and Tamás Kopasz, and the sculptor Attila Mata-became associated with it. The gallery originally intended to reach new markets through Yugoslavia, but the Balkan wars frustrated such plans. The venue, home to unusual openings and performances, was on Andrássy Road. Since the leading artist, Kristi turned towards cartoon animation, The Roczkov Galéria in 1995 transformed itself into Roczkov Stúdió, a creative workshop dealing in multimedia projects and contemporary art CD-ROMs.
The second wave of new galleries started in 1998, when a number of important galleries appeared in Budapest. Typically, they are run by a younger generation of proprietors, often in association with artists of the same age group. These new enterprises include The Deák Erika Galéria and Vintage Galéria; the Illárium Galéria, though established in 1996, should also be mentioned as their forerunner.
Founder and director Gábor Kozák started the Illárium Galéria (1996-2001) in his mother's pottery studio on Köztársaság Square to provide young artists with the opportunity to exhibit and sell. He was among the first to present recent Art School graduates, including Attila Szűcs, János Kósa, Ágnes Szépfalvi, Dénes Wächter, József Baksai and Kriszta Nagy. After what was a promising start in artistic terms, financial difficulties forced the gallery to close after five years.
The art historian Erika Deák returned to Budapest from New York in 1997, and started her first apartment gallery that same year. It moved to its present location on Jókai Square in 1998, and seeks to represent those young artists whose painting and photo-graphy make use of the effects and experience of the technical media of the nineties. Works in various technical media are shown, but it seems there is little demand in Hungary for video- or computer-based works.
Vintage Galéria is owned and directed by Attila Pőcze. It specialises in photography, valuable 20th-century oeuvres as well as young contemporaries and contemporary graphic arts using, or inspired by, photography. The photo collages of Endre Bálint, Júlia Vajda and József Jakovits were presented in a series, and the best photographers of the young generation are regularly exhibited. Associated artists include Ágnes Eperjesi, Tibor Gyenis, Dezső Szabó and Gábor Gerhes. Photographers linked to the gallery are Lajos Csontó, András Bozsó and Antal Yokesz.
The galleries in this second wave seem to make a more deliberate effort to define their own distinct character. Another promising aspect is that Budapest private galleries display an openness towards what have been underrepresented forms (photography and other bolder media) despite the obvious lack of an established attitude on the part of collectors and the fact that painting still provides a more reliable source of income...

...Meanwhile the exhibition and reception of contemporary art have changed, and a new well-to-do generation has appeared which is ready to buy this art. A.P.A. and MEO in this sense fill an existing need.
The American John Warren Gotsch, who has settled in Budapest, started his A.P.A. (Ateliers Pro Art) programme by providing studios for artists. Seven artists can spend a year in the modern studios built in what was a paper mill and a laundry. Real ateliers, they offer a perfect work environment and a chance for the artists to keep all their works in one place, showing them to gal-lery owners, curators and buyers. In time the artists will be selected on a competition basis. They will be able to exhibit their new works in the A.P.A. gallery, complete with a catalogue. What is now merely a generous move is hoped, in the long run, to initiate profitable relations between patron, artists and collectors, from which the non-profit sector would also benefit eventually.
MEO is something of a Central European equivalent of the cultural reanimation of the dockyards of London, Lisbon or Hamburg. The architect István Bényei brought new life to the scheduled buildings of an old tannery, the contribution of factory owner Márton Winkler, to make a suitable home for the collection of its founder, Lajos Kováts. The interior, which includes a café, a book and gift shop, the planned exhibitions and the PR work may allow the gallery access to a wider public than is usual for contemporary art. MEO in this respect opens a new dimension for the art market in the country.
The core of the exhibited material is Kováts's collection of hundreds of contemporary pieces, which are accompanied by temporary exhibitions and auctions. The exhibitions reflect the personal preferences of the curator, Barnabás Bencsik, and of Kováts himself, and offer something for the lovers of traditional, as well as of modern, techniques. The core includes mostly works that are well-known from important exhibitions; it is the intention with which they are presented here that is new. The classics of the middle generation, for whom an upswing in the market offers increasing chances, are presented here in the company of those younger artists who are constantly featured at international exhibitions and biennials, and who seem to move in a different context of audiences, expectations and curatorial concepts. Consequently what is seen here is the problematic gap (a heritage of the past) between the opportunities and options of two generations. MEO seems to have decided to bridge this gap and present instead the two sides in an interplay, in the context of a venue which could be in any modern city.
As may be obvious even from this brief overview, it is not the lack of good art or artists, nor the amateurism of gallery entrepreneurs that makes the art trade in Hungary still look somewhat different from that in the West. Even there, only those professional galleries which have access to the international market-and the means of access is capital-do well. Though the isolation of Hungarian art life, in sociological and artistic terms, has not ended yet, there are nevertheless a number of private initiatives which can adapt the ways of Western art trade to local conditions.