The habit of using art to dictate a political message has a long and colourful history in Eastern Europe. Back in the Stalinist 1950s, artists were given a list of approved themes for state-run exhibitions, from Life is Good on the Collective Farm to portraits of socialist heroes from the national past. Echoes of such practices can be felt in the decision to commission Ft20 million worth of new paintings from contemporary artists dealing with approved topics from the last 150 years of Hungarian history as illustrations for the controversial new Hungarian constitution or Basic Law, which has been criticised at home and abroad for undemocratic measures that seem blatantly designed to concentrate power in the hands of the current Fidesz government. This eyebrow-raising series of official paintings are now on show in the Hungarian National Gallery, alongside a more grandiose exhibition of Old Masters designed to celebrate the heroic ups and downs of Hungarian history. 

An unapologetic excursion into the sacred heart of national mythology, the exhibition concept of the Heroes, Kings and Saints is based on rearranging the history of Hungarian art along the patriotic lines of the national anthem or Himnusz and its alternative version the Szózat or Summons. The main exhibition space is divided into two sections, one of which focuses on what the press release calls the ‘positive events’ of Hungarian history, as suggested by an uplifting verse from the Szózat: ‘Mind, might, and so holy a will’. The opposite wing of the gallery is given over to paintings that dwell on moments of national tragedy that are paired with another lyric from the same anthem: ‘This is the ground on which so many times your fathers' blood flowed.’

Historical works

The ‘positive events’ of Hungarian history turn out to be mostly located in the reform period of the 19th century, when the nation was at the height of its power. This section is dominated by grand portraits of Habsburg-era politicians of the likes of István Széchenyi, along with Miklós Barabás’s more sociological depiction of the laying of the foundation stone of the Chain Bridge. There’s real drama in the tragedy section, with the portrayal of the Turkish wars dominated by bloody scenes of heroic resistance. The sense of tragedy and self-sacrifice can be most strongly felt in the ‘Women of Eger’, which celebrates the daring womenfolk of the besieged city, who in 1552 took to the ramparts in a doomed attempt to halt the Ottoman advance.

The pinnacle of historicist pathos in the exhibition is to be found in a room freshly painted in royal blue that provides a sacral setting for Mihály Munkácsy’s enormous painting of the ‘Honfoglalás’ or Hungarian conquest, celebrating the arrival on horseback of Hungarian settlers to the Carpathian Basin. The section entitled ‘By You was won a beautiful homeland’ also hosts several other grandiose depictions of the founding Magyar myths, including the ‘Christening of Vajk’ by Bertalan Székely, which shows the pagan leader’s baptism as King István at the dawn of the second millennium, as well as Mór Than‘s painting of the ill-fated ‘Wedding Feast’ of Attila the Hun, who according to legend died the same night of a nose bleed.

A separate documentary part of the exhibition features a priceless collection of archival rarities, from the original handwritten versions of the ‘Himnusz’ and the ‘Szózat’, to a copy of the Hungarian Constitution of 1949 signed by Stalinist dictator Mátyás Rákosi. Also on display are three copies of the illustrated edition of the new Basic Law for visitors to respectfully leaf through. Deliberately designed to be too big for a standard bookshelf, but ideal for presentation tables in government offices, copies of the first edition are also on sale in the museum shop for an introductory price of Ft10,000 or Ft15,000 for a deluxe numbered version.

Newly commissioned works

Alongside Heroes, Kings and Saints, the Hungarian National Gallery is also showing the series of paintings commissioned by the government to bring the illustrated edition of the Basic Law up to date. Revealingly, there’s no mention of this bonus show on the English version of the National Gallery website, while even Hungarian visitors to the site are only provided with a terse list of authors and titles, with no description or online images. Over the preceding months, the Hungarian press has in fact had a field day making fun of these peculiar art pieces, from photoshopping Chewbacca from Star Wars into ‘A New Constitution is Born’ to spotting the young Orbán discreetly pictured at the ‘Reburial of Imre Nagy’in 1989, despite promises that the Prime Minister would not feature in this official series. At a time when the nation’s museums are enduring drastic cuts in funding and mandatory redundancies, the government’s decision to spend millions of forints of public money on the Basic Law paintings has shocked the art world.

The paintings that make up the Basic Law collection are an odd bunch of figurative works that range from the expressive and realistic to the downright mystical. The officially selected topics that are closest to the present day, including the period of Stalinist dictatorship, the 1956 Revolution, the Kádár years and the reburial of Imre Nagy in 1989 – along with the highly subjective choice of themes from recent years, such as the riots of October 2006, the Red Mud disaster of 2010, and the Birth of the New Constitution in 2011 – have given rise to some quite peculiar artistic solutions. ‘Horseback Attack’ depicts in naive or pseudo-gothic style a riot policeman on a white horse stabbing a saint-like figure on the streets of Budapest, in a subversive reformulation of the tale of Saint George and the Dragon. In another work, János Kádár is pictured in a comical Pravda (not Prada) paper hat, playing chess in the middle of a dark wood populated with nuclear weapons, presumably representing the bad old times of goulash communism.

Unsurprisingly, the furore around the new Constitution has given rise to strong reactions on the part of contemporary artists. As featured in the November issue of Time Out Budapest, László Rajk’s project ‘Missing Paragraph’ used the technique of brass rubbing to highlight the parts of the previous Hungarian constitution that have been omitted from the Basic Law, giving rise to domestic and international concerns about the state of democracy in Hungary. The veteran dissident’s modern-day protest exhibition is currently on view in Berlin at the Academy of Fine Arts. Approaching the issue from a post-conceptual angle, Tibor Horváth’s current show in ACB Galéria uses sketches and visual puns to cleverly subvert ubiquitous nationalist imagery, while also including a extended sound installation entitled ‘Basic Law’, in which the audience is treated to an audio version of the new constitution. (See story p56).

The illustrations for the new constitution have elicited both witty and critical responses from eight contemporary artists invited by the online news portal index.hu to create their own versions based on the original state-supplied themes. Paris-based Hungarian artist Marcell Eszterházy came up with a particularly inventive solution to the task of visually representing the 1956 Revolution. His concept involved creating a photographic series of 56 non-identical Hungarian scones or pogacsa, on the grounds that today ‘1956 is handled much like our pogácsa – there is no unified picture, as everyone has their own version.’ His comment is a reminder that contemporary art is much more at home raising questions and complicating our understanding of reality than illustrating a single, authorised interpretation of recent history.

Critics of this new breed of official art, and the disputed constitutional changes it seeks to glorify, have concluded that what we are confronted with today is a ‘neo-feudal’ vision of reality imbued with an outdated nationalist rhetoric that is authoritarian, paternalistic and unashamedly parochial. Lacking from both the illustrations of the Basic Law and the exhibition of ‘Heroes, Kings and Saints’ is recognition of the rich diversity of contemporary Hungary against the backdrop of a complex patchwork of overlapping histories in Central Europe. 

Contemporary Painters on Hungarian History and Heroes, Kings and Saints: Images and Documents from the History of Hungary are on view at the Hungarian National Gallery until August 26 2012..