Missing Pieces Part I: Csontváry & The Lonely Cedar

Csontvary, The Lonely Cedar, 1907, © Csontvary Foundation, oil on canvas, photograph from the Csontvary Museum, Pecs (ibid. for all details of the painting below)

February 2018

“The Lonely Cedar” is the name of the most famous painting by Csontváry, Hungary’s greatest painter, the Magyars’ very own Van Gogh. Born in 1853, he died in 1919, alone, in obscurity, poverty and madness, never having sold a single painting in his lifetime, but having already foreseen his posthumous fame he’d designed his very own museum. His self-belief was nothing short of a miracle of the human spirit.

In Budapest in 2015, I had the great joy of seeing a major survey of this lone giant’s work, an artist who was never affiliated with any of the artistic movements of his day, but who borrowed and learned from them all. The strongest impressions that remain with me are: luminosity and colour, scale and ambition. Csontváry - literally meaning of the bone castle - was a name taken on by the artist in 1900. It is a name as mysterious as the man himself surely was. A mystical name, a name that, among other things, alludes to the transcendental nature of his work, to bones that will outlast mortal flesh, bones strong enough to build castles, and museums.

“The Lonely Cedar” depicts a Cedar of Lebanon atop a hill, overlooking a valley that stretches to the horizon. The painting is cropped in such a way that this single, and singular tree fills the canvas from top to bottom. Firstly, one of the branches is formed from a bird’s head. This bird, or goose, is turned away from us and gazes out serenely over the valley. On its head, sits a dark crown, a cosmic ear listening to the music of the universe, listening to the whispered instructions of the master.

In the middle of the tree a mysterious white tail curls itself around the trunk. Just above it on the left is an odd pecker-like protrusion. Erect and motionless, its sharp beak pierces back through the trunk of the tree. And above the pecker a strange sickle-like instrument. Higher still, above the goose’s cosmic ear, a metal nail juts out. Is it a reference to the crucifixion, or to humanity’s industry? And what of the roots of tree?

They seem mammalian, almost marsupial. I see kangaroo legs and feet, with a long, strong tail that extends back across the earth. There is a purple, tit-like hill on the left, and a large, pale mound on the right which looks like a cross-section of a giant bone. As for the clouds, that crescent flame is pointing to something, but what?

And, the lowest branch on the tree, overlooking the valley, does it not look penile? Thick and round as an erect penis that is just post-coital, just beginning to droop. Or perhaps it is pointing to the earth to which we will all return one day.

Do you think I go too far? Not I. Csontváry’s work continues to inspire psychoanalysts, mystics and art historians all vying to de-code his arcane symbolism. Zooming out and back, what’s striking about the tree is its feminine grace, its undulating branches, the vibrancy and vitality of the colours, the astonishing depth of the vanishing point.

So what conclusions can we reach? And do we need conclusions? That the Cedar of Lebanon will outlive this day and a thousand years hence? That the artist has tried to contain all of life in this painting? The trees, the hills, air, light, and is that water in the distance?, the birds, the mammals, the mothers, the fathers, work, rest, time and the mystery of human life. Every element in this painting seems to exist in order to create harmony, to help us gaze upon the eternal without fear.

“The Lonely Cedar” is Csontváry’s most famous painting in Hungary. Where else? He is virtually unknown outside of the country. Firstly because of its great beauty, secondly because of its national symbolism. Hungary sits squarely in middle Europe, between east and west, between the Balkans and Mitteleuropa. A nation whose language remains a linguistic mystery. Here’s what Arthur Koestler had to say about his compatriots: "Hungarians are the only people in Europe without racial or linguistic relatives… therefore they are the loneliest on this continent. This perhaps explains the peculiar intensity of their existence… hopeless solitude feeds their creativity." He might have been speaking about the great master himself, Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka.

The Missing Pieces to which I refer in my blog title are the pieces missing in our understanding of Csontváry’s work. There is so little we can know about what the artist intended as the only information we have about his work are from his memoirs, written late in his life, when his mind was already burdened by severe mental illness. However the other Missing Pieces to which I am referring are literally missing Csontváry canvases. At the Budapest exhibition in 2015, an entire room was devoted to these ghostly images. Some were framed black and white facsimiles, but for many others only the size and date of their production are known. In all it is believed that roughly one third of Csontváry’s work is still missing. Of these many were looted first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets. The 2015 catalogue lists 29 missing pieces.

There is another chapter in the life of Csontváry that I would like to share with you. It will be the subject of my March Blog, Missing Pieces Part II. Thank you for reading.◊