Imagination/Idea
The emergence of conceptual art at the transition from the 1960s to the 1970s can be interpreted as a generational conflict between the old and new generations of artists in the Hungarian art scene. The latter searched for different ways of creating an autonomous artistic realm in which to present alternative modes of visual expression, language, and philosophy outside the institutional and discursive framework of the mainstream positions. In this context, László Beke—at the time an ambitious young art historian who was later on to become a renowned expert on Hungarian and Eastern European art—initiated
a project that effectively produced the first important overview of conceptual art in Hungary. Beke, having begun establishing friendships and dialogues with young artists in 1969, put out a call entitled “Imagination/Idea” in the summer of 1971. In reaching out to 28 artists, he aimed to provide an overview of the situatedness of contemporary art tendencies at that time as well as to overcome the limits on opportunities to exhibit and publish. Conceptually and as a kind of provocation, he requested reflections on his call’s theme that associated the proposed artworks with imagination. Apart from this aim, he also hoped that he could establish an archive for contemporary documentation including unrealized ideas, concepts, and plans that went beyond the classical notion of visual arts. By the end of that year, Beke had received paper-based materials from 31 artists that he then made accessible to 80 people at his apartment over the next few months but concealed from a broader audience for four decades. Assuming the form of a private exhibition and an artwork unto itself, this collection included sheets containing proposals by the younger generation of artists as well as by some older representatives of the avant-garde. The responses to his call range from formal-visual interpretations to new theories of painting (Ferenc Lantos, Ferenc Ficzek, János Fajó, Endre Tót) to visual, semiotic, and performative concepts (László Lakner, László Méhes, Géza Perneczky, Tamás Szentjóby, Péter Türk) and ideas for theoretical interventions aimed at evoking reconsideration of natural and urban envrionments (Gábor Attalai, Imre Bak, Gyula Gulyás, Tamás Hencze, György Kemény, Ilona Keserü, Dezső Korniss, Sándor Pinczehelyi). A highly esteemed project by Gyula Pauer then mirrored Beke’s provocation with another provocation, sending out a subsequent call to a partially overlapping group of artists that asked them to fill out a museum card as the sole document proving the existence of an art object. Pauer’s project, which ended up becoming part of Imagination/Idea, confronted the immaterial and unregistered practice of the neo-avantgarde with the classic methodology of museum bureaucracy. Together with these 16 additional contributions, the “Imagination/Idea” project opened up unprecedented discourses about the status of the arts, the local relevance of conceptual art of “Western” origin, and the institutional possibilities of the neo-avantgarde while presenting an alternative form of exhibition that was to serve other projects as a point of reference for many decades to come. E.Kü.
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