Hungary is searching for a star

Romania has Mircea Cantor and Dan Perjovschi, Bulgaria Netko Solakov, while Albania boasts a trio of big names: Anri Sala, Adrian Paci and Sislej Xhafa. High up to the north east of the old Iron Curtain the Lithuanians have Deimantas Narkevicius, while Polish flags are raised with Pawel Althamer and Zofia Kulik, the Czechs have Katerina Šeda, the Slovak’s Roman Ondak, and Croatia is represented by Mladen Stilinović and Sanja Iveković. Slovenia is a special case, as 90% of their artists are world famous. But what’s up with Hungary, where is the Hungarian art star shining in the cosmos of the international art scene?

The fact that no obvious candidate springs to mind is somewhat of a paradox, since Budapest does not lack international connections in the art field. Hungarian artists have many opportunities to travel through exchanges and residencies and just by staying put are able to take part in a whole range of high level art events organised here. Back in the early 1990s, it was in Budapest that the Soros Centre for Contemporary Art was launched, making the city the headquarters of the influential Soros art empire with branches in 17 post-communist countries. Budapest was in the international spotlight again in 1999, when the Ludwig Museum played host to two major exhibitions of East European art, Aspects/Positions and After the Wall, but neither proved to be the launch pad for the meteoric rise of a Hungarian art star.

Some have come close to breaking through to the stratosphere of art celebrity. It might have happened to the Újlak Group, who were invited to take part in the exhibition Beyond Belief in Chicago in 1995, but instead of capitalising on their collective success, ended up disbanding to pursue individual careers. János Sugár still walks tall as the only Hungarian artist ever to be invited to participate in Documenta, the famous five-yearly survey of contemporary art held in Kassel, but that was way back in 1992. There are though rumours that the next Documenta in 2012 will include at least one Hungarian, and two more have been invited to participate in this year’s Istanbul Biennial, so prospects for a breakthrough are better now than ever.

There’s something of a tradition of complaining about the lack of international recognition for Hungarian art, with artists, curators and critics handing out the blame. Art historians have a tendency to be less than generous in their support of contemporary art, talking dismissively about artworks being ‘just a first attempt’ or ‘not quite up to standard.’ When Csaba Nemes’s REMAKE films about the 1956 riots in Budapest had all the potential to make it to the international level, the powers that be got cold feet and stopped the work leaving Hungary, while the critics sagely commented that foreign audiences probably wouldn’t have understood the work anyway.

The inclination towards sirva vigadó (being happily miserable) has been challenged by a range of energetic initiatives to make possible the discovery of a Hungarian art star or two. The Ludwig Museum concentrates on flying in foreign curators for studio visits, in the hope that they’ll pick up a star. The Műcsarnok puts its faith in art fairs and forging connections with the commercial art world, while Tranzit, the Erste Bank art programme, sees the answer in education, bringing the best-known international art theorists to Budapest through the Free School project. These curatorial stimulus packages will without a doubt have an effect, but the question remains whether the art world itself is ready to embrace the star system. Or will it still prefer to remain wonderfully resistant to global pressures and preserve the local attitude in which everyone is a star?