GK2: Creative Fury
György Kovásznai, still from the music video Waiting Is Cool, 1969, © Estate of Gyorgy Kovasznai, mixed media
June 2019
When György Kovásznai was kicked out of the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest in 1957 he hoped to be able to make a living from his writing, but that avenue was closed to him too. Not a single one of his manuscripts was ever published in his lifetime and never reached an audience beyond the small, semi-legal gatherings of the underground circles he belonged to. In spite of never publishing his work word got ‘round that GK could write well, and it would be writing that would lead GK into the next great leap in his life.
In 1948 all film-making in Hungary had been nationalised by the Communist Party. What little animation was being made was mostly technologically poor and under-funded. Few people worked in animation and the films that had been made up until then were mostly either for propaganda purposes or short cartoons for children, but all that was about to change. In 1957 Pannónia Film Stúdió, Hungary’s first animation studio, was opened. It was a new incarnation of the defunct Szinkron Film Production Company. While political pressures would still dictate the subject matter of much of the early animation films, state funding meant that even a relatively small country like Hungary was able not only to maintain an animation studio of its own, but to eventually produce world class work. Being a relatively new genre, animation was considered less representative of the national cultural agenda and so in some ways it was less heavily censored. Its director, György Matolcsy, was a highly educated, sophisticated man who would remain head of the studio for 40 years, winning international acclaim for its films and also being instrumental in preserving GK’s work for posterity.
In 1961 GK was asked to write a screenplay for a friend. In 1962 this short animated film called “Whatever You Wish” was made and directed by József Nepp. This was followed by another screenplay for the 1963 cartoon by Tibor Csermák, “The Joy of Song”. It did not take long for the restless artist to discover the latent potential of the genre. From late 1962, he began planning a film with his friend and fellow artist Dezső Korniss. Between 1963 and 1969, GK and Korniss would make half a dozen ground-breaking short animation films together. These films would take the young genre from a utilitarian, technical medium into an art form of its very own. GK would go on to work in animation for 20 years, making dozens of short films, a feature film and a six-part television series. It was through the medium of animation that he would most fully realise his artistic visions. It was a space in which his paintings, drawings and writing would come together in stunning ways. So, without further ado I will present a smattering of GK’s animated films. I have selected these films for purely subjective reasons, simply because they are the ones that jumped out hardest at me. Lastly, just a quick note to say that in my September and December posts I will continue to write about GK’s animated films. GK 3 will focus on what I call his Budapest films, and GK 4 will be about his series on fashion. All of his animated films, without exception, are masterclasses in originality that burn with creative fury*.
“Monologue” (1963)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5eQRDCv1vA&feature=youtu.be
GK’s first animated film was a collaboration with Dezső Korniss. GK wrote, designed and directed the film, and the graphic design was by Korniss. They used a combination of collage, still photography, stop-motion animation of objects, drawings and paintings, and live action. This created a highly idiosyncratic, surrealist aesthetic that was utterly unprecedented in Hungary at the time. The combination of abstract and figurative visuals with live action would characterise many of his subsequent films. The other element of “Monologue” that GK would continue to develop throughout his career is the pairing of documentary elements with fiction.
“Monologue” has a strong narrative that weaves history, sociology, cultural norms, gender roles and psychology to describe the disastrous trans-generational fallout from WWI/II, which is rather prescient of GK given all of the current studies in epigenetics. It is narrated by a woman in her 20s (roughly the same age as GK was at the time) as she traces her memories back to her childhood, questioning both the actions of her grandparents who grew up before WWI, and those of her parents who grew up between the two wars. The monologue veers between pathos and satire.
“My grandmother was sealed off from life by stained glass windows,
and she mused over the play of colour reflections inside her aquarium.
My grandfather made a regular movement at regular intervals
for a long series of decades.” **
The narrative is heightened by the striking visuals that are both abstract and symbolic. The most stunning of these is what the filmmakers do with the moustache. In the pre-WWI era the moustache represented not only fashion, but manliness, patriarchy, authority and seduction. And no one, but no one in all of Austria-Hungary had a bigger and sillier moustache than the boss of the empire himself Franz Joseph I (1830-1916). The moustache is represented in all its bushy, absurd manifestations as paper cut-outs that bend and stretch like giant callipers. To the frantic accompaniment of military drums the narrator tells us:
“…the moustache came, saw and conquered.”
After all of the senseless tragedy of two world wars, of an entire generation of widows, of the unrelenting rise of pharmaceuticals and urban pleasures to numb the catastrophic losses, the narrator finds herself haunted by the image of her grandmother who she eventually vanquishes with the words:
“I am a child of the age that defies blind destiny,
Though dim memories still haunt me at times, no, but no!
One day they will vanish like superstitions.”
The biggest problem “Monologue” had to face with the censors (each and every one of GK’s films had trouble with the censors), was the subjective, first person singular narration which ran counter to the prevailing ideology of the day. It was screened for a single week at the Corvin Cinema and not in its own right either, but just as an opener for the feature film showing at the time. No other screenings of the film were allowed. Nevertheless it was a strong start for GK. It brought the house down and established GK’s reputation as a man with a vision, but a troublemaker too. “Monologue” immediately put the fledgling studio on the wrong footing with the authorities. It also put GK at odds with his colleagues who resented him for what they saw as preferential treatment, for although his career would continue to be plagued by censorship, GK was still allowed to make the work he wanted because he was supported by powerful figures in the art world. The Party looked the other way while simultaneously killing off any opportunities for his work to reach a wider audience. Undaunted GK just kept on making work that could not be ignored. One of his colleagues described him this way: “The director was an autonomous and idiosyncratic character. Somebody either worked humbly under him or was discontented beside him.” Another put it like this: “The hardest battles had to be waged for the film projects of a lanky, awkward young man. His name was György Kovásznai… He always, tenaciously, did the impossible.”
“Mirror Images” (1964)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4czxndP_-w&feature=youtu.be
A dog and a cat enter a museum. They are drawn in loose-wristed, confident lines. These creatures, upright and fashionable, amble through the labyrinthine halls of high art. An arrow leads them on and they follow to the strains of Handel’s “Water Music”. Hand-in-hand they swing their arms like a skipping rope between them. When they finally arrive to the modern art gallery it is filled with paintings of dogs and cats oddly identical to themselves. The music changes to finger-snapping jazz as the paintings flash across the screen, no two alike. The images move in time to the music, not the other way around. It is a technique that GK uses over and over again in his films because for him music was never just background, it was always an integral part of his art. He collaborated widely and regularly with many of the best musicians of the day including Gábor Presser, the Omega and Express bands, János Baksa-Soós and KEX, and Géza Berki, who wrote the music for “Mirror Images”. At one point the heads of the dog and cat morph into a man and a woman, lest we forget who this film is aimed at. Dear reader, it is aimed at us. We who go in search of ourselves in museums, we who so love to see ourselves reflected back at us from the high, white gallery walls. Through the non-threatening personas of the canine and feline GK draws a neat little narcissistic triangle between the viewer, the museum and modern art. Then, as if to reinforce this beautiful echo chamber - which rings all the more true today with our chat rooms and niche interest groups filled to infinity with mutually reinforcing likes - the pair walk out into a city that might be Paris or Budapest or Prague, cross a bridge and look down into the river. And what do they see? Their very own reflections. They hurry down to the embankment to see themselves up close. The film ends with the words “Vége”, The End, in gorgeous, oozing impasto, an homage to the glory of oil paint.
In 1965 “Mirror Images” won 2nd Prize at the Miskolc Film Festival (a city in the northeast of Hungary), while another one of his films, “Metamorphoses”, won 1st Prize. At a screening of “Mirror Images” in October 1965 at the News Reel Cinema, GK exhibited the drawings and paintings made for the film. It was described by a critic as an attempt: “…to accentuate the close relationship between cartoons and fine art.” Note the use of the word “cartoons”.
“Tales from the World of Art” (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaxDCRxRILU&feature=youtu.be
This film is told in three parts, each one satirising another genre of art (film, theatre and classical music) and their audiences. According to György Matolcsy, the director of Pannónia Film Stúdió where GK made his films for two decades, “Tales from the World of Art” is “…most of all a reaction to all that indifference that his earlier films were battling with.” This was unfortunately all too true, because in spite of his sporadic successes, his work remained largely unseen. Each tale has its own unique aesthetic and the music is once again composed by Géza Berki. While all of these tales satirise different aspects of the arts (thrill-seeking in the cinema, melodrama in the theatre, the pretension of the concert hall), GK seems above all to be taking aim at us, again. We the audience, with our superficiality, our superciliousness and ignorance.
“Tale 1: Thriller”, satirises the cinema with its ridiculous promises of excitement and adventure. Two mates bump into eachother on the street and decide to go see a film together, a thriller, in which the audience get action galore spat out at them from the screen. Tale 1 is mostly made of drawings and paintings of downtown Budapest but also incorporates still photography. By using the contemporary slang of the day and shopfronts with realistic signage GK manages to evoke 1960s Budapest. However here, as elsewhere, he was more interested in finding the universal human pulse rather than creating a narrow portrait of the city at a particular point in time. That he manages to be both universal and personal is a testament both to his eye for detail and his refusal to be artistically constrained. This is a key hallmark of his films, and one of the reasons why they continue to be relevant today. The unique fusion of verisimilitude and fiction at the start of Tale 1 – and in “Monologue” - was another hallmark of his films.
“Tale 2: The Old Trumpet Player Took Cyanide/The Modern Play from Abroad”, is the most overtly satirical of the tales, using gallows humour (literally) in spades. It is a mini-spoof of Eugene O’Neill’s play “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, starting with the mouthful of a title and the morphine-addicted mother. The figures are all cardboard cut-outs, their lives are hollow and they epitomise the kind of Western nihilism that was continuously derided by the regime. A voice-over explains the action in a deadpan voice. The rest of the family are just as much fun as Mama. Daddy swings from the chandelier with a noose around his neck, Granny is an alcoholic and little Mary is a murderer. Enter the prodigal son from Paris, a manically cackling artiste. He declares:
“I hear… the trumpet of optimism. New life!
I hear it. I’ve still got the energy to start again!”
Then little sister Mary shoots him dead. The Tale ends with the cardboard velvet curtain shakily descending, canned applause and the narrator rapturously declaring,
“What depth! How modern! An unforgettable theatrical experience!
Dear Audience, a roaring success!”
“Tale 3: The World Famous Pianist” is the most visually stunning, particularly the pianist as he sweats his way through Beethoven’s “Appassionata”, which literally pulls him apart with emotional intensity. At the end of the tale, a supercilious couple who we’ve seen entering the concert hall at the start discuss the performance:
“I don’t get it. What do they see in this pianist?” says the husband.
“Me neither,” drawls his wife.
Which makes me think of one of my favourite jokes…
“Maxim and Vadim, two avant-garde pianists sit in a crowded Parisian café.
Maxim says to Vadim, ‘You know vot, I think I’m going to go over to the piano and take a shit on the keys.’
Vadim says to Maxim, ‘For this lot? Vot for? They wouldn’t understand anyway.’”
“From Dawn to Dusk/Something Different” (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSFC_aoMSXc&feature=youtu.be
In this film GK’s unusual marrying of documentary and fiction is strongly woven throughout. Using live action, still photography, photo montage and graphic design, the film presents a day in the life of a single, working mother. We see how she struggles with society’s reaction to her divorce and how she tries to overcome her loneliness. Both her apartment and her workplace are snapshots of a bygone era. Her home is filled with a mixture of folk art and old pre-war furniture. Her workplace with rotary phones, typewriters and ashtrays. And yet she is a thoroughly modern, instantly recognisable figure. All of which makes the opening of this film and the choice of narrator all the harder to understand. As opposed to allowing this independent woman to tell her own story, the film opens rather pointlessly with a bespectacled man sitting behind an opulent desk, smoking and telling her story. Did GK wish to highlight the male chauvinism of the era by having a male narrator? Or was he unwittingly a product of his own chauvinistic times? Nevertheless the ending of the film is truly moving as we travel deep inside the protagonist’s heart and her innermost dream is revealed to us. She is like the princess trapped in the swan’s body, a clue that GK gives us from early on in the film, as Tchaikovsky’s “Dances of the Swans” ushers in the story, and closes it too. However it is the leering foghorn at the end of the film that has the final say. She can dream all she wants, but she’s not going anywhere. She is a citizen of a dictatorship that controls the movements of its people.
This film was made with Dezső Korniss and György Dobrai, with whom GK collaborated on the script and direction. Sadly it had even less of an audience than his other films and was never reviewed.
“It’s Cool to Wait” (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKlXGPoWfpE&feature=youtu.be
This was the first ever animated music video made in Hungary. “It’s Cool to Wait” was a particularly upbeat film. It takes its cue from the toe-tapping, psychedelic pop music written by Gábor Presser and performed by the Omega and Express bands. The exuberance of the music and the palpable affection of the figures in the stop-motion drawings and paintings belies the more sombre metaphor of the film which is hinted at in the title. Namely that they were forced to live in a repressive society behind sealed borders, waiting, always waiting for changes that never came. But, if they must wait, they intend to enjoy themselves! The end of the film was conceived and drawn by József Gémes, so a stylistic shift is visible. It’s a reminder that once the party’s over it’s back to waiting, but it does so with humour and affection.
“Wavelengths” (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTrb_LMTHKs&feature=youtu.be
I absolutely love this film! It is a tour de force of madness, psychedelia, poetry and painting. The concept of the film is described at the start:
“We spin the radio dial and from out of the ether the most diverse sound impressions come gushing in upon us. These randomly selected impulses are fragments yet they resonate within us. The heartbeat of the modern human world with the visual tools of the painter… The creators of this film follow the wavelengths.”
The images in “Wavelengths” respond to the multitude of sounds spilling out of the radio as if they were dancers moving in time to different beats. A pop song is followed by the jumpy voice of a football commentator, then some improvised jazz and a weather report, a line from “Hamlet” (GK’s 1967 adaptation is a 12 minute masterpiece of concision), a little classical music, news headlines in various languages, a little “Gloomy Sunday”, a little “Don Giovanni” et cetera et cetera. The selection is urbane and eclectic, moving easily between pop and high culture. The images leap from the abstract to the figurative, to the bridges and cafés of Budapest, where line drawings interact with gorgeous, tactile impasto paintings. At one point there is an excerpt of a poem by Árpád Tóth (1886-1928) called “Soul to Soul” from 1923. Here is the first stanza from a translation by George Szirtes:
“I stand beside the window late at night,
And through the vast, incalculably far
Distances of space, my eyes receive
The signals of a gently pulsing star.”
Once again the shared human condition soars over and above time and place, transcending borders, ideologies and oppression through wavelengths of poetry, music and painting, always painting. ◊
*All films © Estate of György Kovásznai.
Creative Fury, the title of this post, is taken from the name of a group show that was held in London in November 2016,
which featured the work of Kovásznai alongside the great William Kentridge, and four other artists.
Kentridge on GK’s films:
“…what felt very familiar was kind of the impetus and essentialness and the emergency of making… a collegial fury of creation…”
For more information on GK’s posthumous debut in London see: artsy.net and “György Kovásznai: A Cold War Artist”.
**All quotes are taken from Brigitta Iványi-Bitter’s definitive catalogue raisonne on Kovásznai entitled
“Kovásznai” (Vince Books, Hungary, 2010).
All translations by Andrea Ágnes Szekeres unless otherwise indicated.