Party like its 200X at Brody House

As 2011 draws to an end, it’s hard to resist pondering the highs and lows of the last year and wondering what the future holds in store for the local art scene. Politics and economics loom large, with nothing certain or sacred anymore in the life of art institutions, but beneath the surface of the battle for survival, the rumble of new creative energy can be felt. It’s a well-worn cliché that art flourishes in a crisis and any shake up of the system also provides opportunities for new ideas, people and spaces to rise to the occasion.

Budget cuts for the arts have led to the cancellation of exhibitions, with the high profile Műcsarnok empty for weeks on end, as the new directorate searches for a sustainable way to fill its high maintenance halls with crowd-pleasing art. Attempts to rise above the bleak financial situation facing the institution, which also runs the exhibition programme at the Ernst Museum, include plans for a Hungarian edition of the international art magazine Flash Art to be launched early next year and the organisation of the first ever Budapest Biennial of contemporary art, pencilled in for 2014.

Amongst the major institutions, the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art has succeeded so far in navigating the treacherous seas of slashed budgets and political interference in the arts to maintain an impressive exhibition programme. This month they have a newly produced exhibition on each of their three floors, from the discovery of East European Photorealism to an ambitious installation of utopian architecture, via the work of contemporary painter who is quite famous in New York, but relatively unknown in her native Hungary. The formula of presenting Hungarian artists that made it abroad but need reintroducing at home has actually been a recurring theme at the Ludwig Museum in recent years.

The biggest and most talked about shock for the art world this autumn has been the government’s unilateral decision to merge the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery as part of a grand plan to create a new cultural quarter on 1956 Square on the edge of Városliget in 2017. The fear in museological circles is that during the interim the exhibition programme of these two major museums is likely to suffer, as resources are redirected towards an as yet ill-defined building project. The big shock of next year may well turn out to be the demise of the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts as we know it. The institution faces an uncertain future in the hands of new management that, it is rumoured, will seek to focus on contemporary Hungarian dance and scale back on the visual arts.

With state funding for arts institutions shrinking, there are signs that private ventures may be ready to take up the slack. 2011 has also been a year in which Budapest has seen a surge in independent initiatives, such as the Blood Mountain Foundation (www.bloodmountain.org), which from an elegant villa in Buda have sought to bring a fresh approach to the art scene, through international residencies and projects. Director Jade Niklai’s plans for 2012 include a residency by the Otolith Group exploring the mythology of water in a landlocked country and research on the missing tradition of performance art in Hungary.

Down in Pest from a townhouse opposite the National Museum, Peter Grundberg of Brody House (www.brodyhouse.com) supports a cohort of mostly foreign artists with studio space and recently took part in both the Art Market fair and Art Moments urban festival. Young artists and curators, faced with the running down of the non-profit scene, have also been motivated to establish their own low-rent independent spaces, including the innovative Demo Gallery, whose critical programme has attracted both local and international attention.   

For Hungarian artists, 2012 might yet be the long-awaited breakthrough year on the international scene. Hot on the heels of Dora Maurer, Tamás Kaszás and Anikó Loránd’s successful participation at this year’s Istanbul Biennial, two more Hungarian artists are tipped to be taking part in the even more prestigious contemporary art survey Documenta, held in the German city of Kassel every five years. Although the list of participating artists has not yet been official announced, István Csákány - who recreated a tinkerer’s workshop in wood for the Ludwig Museum in 2010 and Attila Csörgő - whose mathematical machines build on avant-garde traditions of kinetic art, are rumoured to have been chosen, doubling at a stroke the head count of Hungarian participants in Documenta since its founding in 1955.