Excerpt from the series Belső Tárlat (Inner Exhibition)
This book belongs to György Fekete because it celebrates life, loves life, respects life, believes in the meaningfulness of life, trusts in faith, serves as a hymn to the nation, and reflects the wise serenity of humanity.
This book is a birthday greeting.
György Fekete himself selected this special bouquet for us as a birthday gift, accompanying his generous and comprehensive retrospective exhibition at the Vigadó Gallery in Budapest.
György Fekete is a truly rich man: he has drawn abundantly from his wide-ranging knowledge, his versatility across genres, the flood of opinions from both his friends and foes, as well as from his design and public life achievements. His unique strategic talent has been multiplied over time by the strength of his perseverance. Many of his writings contain guiding principles that can become pillars for others, provided they measure themselves against his own standard: “Do not merely be different, or new, but be better!”
His biography, far from complete, already reveals an impressive record of physical and intellectual achievement, and grants us a glimpse into his workshop with a broad horizon. His extraordinary activity in the public sphere has further highlighted his exceptional personality. Yet in this volume we encounter, in distilled form, the György Fekete who is at once respectful and commanding of respect, approachable and reserved, passionate and modest, theoretical and maximally constructive.
As a designer, he is meticulous down to the finest details, timelessly modern, and rational. His friendships are genuine and true. In his peace-loving and persuasive nature, the lyrical poet and the gentle satirist coexist harmoniously. György Fekete loves to love, he protects and teaches, he believes in the eternal validity of the sources of national culture and value, and acts in their service. With faith, he permeates the faithless; in his generosity, he dissolves pain. His enemies are swallowed by oblivion, while his loved ones and friends are daily renewed by his constructive personality. As one of his admirers put it, “In his undeniable stature as a great figure, he somehow unites the dazzling speed, flexibility, and refined perceptiveness of the cheetah with the surveying flight and solitary goal-seeking of the hawk. A being of such a nature lives in a freedom almost impossible to contain.”
In his volume published in the Belső Tárlat (Inner Exhibition) series, György Fekete selected about sixty of his essays, speeches, and a few polemic essays, along with tributes he wrote to people he respected. These include memorial pieces, such as those about the interior designer and teacher Gyula Kaesz, the opening address of an exhibition by his ceramicist friend Imre Schrammel, as well as an interview with him, and the text for the opening of an exhibition of the painter and graphic artist Béla Kondor. The book also contains two of his highly significant parliamentary speeches, along with his piece A sort of letter on the Underworld of Politics. His work A konok (The Stubborn One) he himself considered a monologue, in which he gave voice to his professional indignation and unwavering perseverance. He also expressed strong criticism regarding education, most notably in his philippic Letter to the General Faculty Meeting of the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts. This collection also includes an interview with his later wife, the actress Sylvia Sunyovszky.
Fekete’s theoretical inclination is highlighted in such writings as In Praise of Words, Companions in Creation, and Art and Calvinism. In this context, particular emphasis is given to the many interviews reprinted from his other conversation volumes. Among these, outstanding examples are his laudation for President Ferenc Mádl on the occasion of his Hungarian Heritage Award, and the foreword by the art historian and academic Dr. Katalin Dávid for the book The Thousand Faces of the Holy Crown, co-authored with Sylvia Sunyovszky.
“As you see, here is one among us who is a standard. Someone more cultivated, wiser and simpler, truer and more useful, more active and effective, younger, more lovable and more faithful than many of us.” – with these words he expressed his respectful opinion of Professor István Nemeskürthy, the historian, writer, and public figure known and beloved throughout the country simply as “Tanár Úr,” in his laudation written for the Loyalty Award.
György Fekete is a man of communities, a shaper of contemporary history, and a far-sighted continuer of tradition.
*
The thoughts we formulated ten years ago – both Fekete’s and my own – remain entirely valid today: their meaning, message, and authenticity are unchanged. What has changed are the developments in Fekete’s work and life.
His career as a designer-artist – summarized for the first and so far only time in the volume of his collected works published on his seventieth birthday in 2002 – can still be traced through the data included in that book. From 1990 onward, as he assumed leadership positions in Hungarian public life, he gradually gave up his multifaceted work as an interior designer. The reason was that he had officially become the overseer of his former clients. Nevertheless, he continued to base his activities on the moral principles already familiar to us from his earlier writings.
For Fekete György, too, the thought once expressed by the art historian and Reformed theologian Dr. Lajos Fülep about himself holds true: “I believe that God has some intention with me.”
The politician
In the first freely elected civilian government after the 1989/90 regime change, he was invited to serve as Deputy State Secretary for Culture in the Ministry of Education and Culture, where he worked with two successive ministers (the ethnographer and academic Bertalan Andrásfalvy, and the international lawyer and academic Ferenc Mádl). At the same time, he was elected a Member of Parliament, where he served as a member of the Cultural Committee, later becoming the first president of the National Cultural Fund of Hungary, which he and his colleagues established. His political activity absorbed all his time.
It is well known that – guided by his sense of justice, rooted also in his Christian faith – his official decisions often affected individuals and institutions hidden in obscurity, the correctness of which was later confirmed by facts. Even though his opponents knew he was right, the atmosphere remained full of tension. The entrenched power of decades-old habits, attempts to dismantle a decayed and corrupt system, and the exposure of interwoven interests severely damaged many people’s stakes. He reached into hornets’ nests with the courage of medieval knights, but also with the trust of an honest man in the power of communal morality. In his famous essay The Stubborn One, he wrote:
“I am compelled to look into the mirror of my own thoughts, because I work with design. With architectural and interior design, which involves shaping the living conditions and living spaces of others. And indeed, I draw much of the foundation for this from the experiences of my own life, since I am the subject who has been in many different situations, and I know how I behave in them.”
It was not naivety, but rather his generously presumed faith in the reciprocity of honest trust that led to his disappointments. He responded to these in clear, stern, and yet forgiving words, in a speech at the 1998 congress entitled Political Testament. A passage reads: “Shun, therefore, betrayal, and only turn your back on traitors with caution. Even now they carry knives. They are the grandmasters of smiling transformations, who break everything whole, and abandon their victims when they must flee the scene. Yet still, keep your eyes on the latter; call them home if the recognition of guilt should glimmer in their eyes. Everywhere, seek companions for the journey. The loneliness of a Christian is not natural, and surely the Lord Himself does not rejoice in it. Do not merely be different, or new, but be better.”
The Writer, the Ponderer, the Friend
The political reconfiguration of 1994, following the civic governments, interrupted his career for quite some time, but it broke neither his personality nor his creative spirit. Despite every public and private burden – the many disappointments caused by the political shift, and the death of his wife – György Fekete, with admirable discipline, diligence, and undiminished passion, was able to rebuild himself, redefine his immediate goals, and pursue them with methodical, tireless persistence.
“One must come to know the human being, learn what is humane, and from the two deduce what can be turned into truly human: this is the task. After a certain time, it will not suffice to bathe in idyllic idealism. It does not take much more time, and we may penetrate the unknown corners of the expanding universe – into the millennium of gardens, engines, modern cities, computers, trajectories – shaping everything everywhere for everyone into what is purposeful, true, and beautiful. In this work I have but one desire: that my tiny life be enough to reveal, to experience, to convey at least one new meaningful fact in which the humanity of our immensely respected material world and my innermost self are realized indivisibly. I want to remain in synchrony with time.” – he wrote as early as 1969, and from then on, this lofty emotional and intellectual aspiration continued to drive him.
“György Fekete knew how to take risks for the principles of quality of life. And from these principles of quality life, a better quality of life, with practical benefits, came to many people in the country. The cause of cultural heritage, the documentation of Holy Crown folklore connected to the Millennium, the founding [at that time only the establishment – D.H.] of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, the vibrant operation of the Hungarian Heritage Foundation, […] the expansion of interior architecture into higher, university-level education, all bore the marks of his quality-driven risks.” – thus wrote Tamás Deme, both as teacher and as friend, summing up one facet of Fekete’s unceasing activity. Around this time, Fekete also let loose his loving, witty, and ironic talent for verse. For instance, Press Career, written in 1997, or the short poem Debate, composed in 2000:
Press Career
In the school of journalism, after the exam
he learns to write from newspapers,
and out pours the little lamb’s lamb-lament.
Debate
From facts, how terrible,
we cannot reach reality
– so Rilke declared,
For beyond the facts, my friend,
there is no other reality –
Pilinszky replied –
than God.
At the turn of the millennium, he started to systematically collect images of thousands of objects bearing depictions of the Hungarian Holy Crown and then edited them into a representative volume together with his second wife, Sylvia Sunyovszky. The popularity of the volume was proven by the high circulation of the edition.
For Fekete, community, a family or friendship background, and being with trustworthy people have always been important. His very wide circle of acquaintances was not the only source of intellectual support. It was during this period that he wrote several volumes of his dialogues with friends. The friends, colleagues and intellectual associates were mostly men and women of different ages and professions who also knew each other. In the opening lines of the first volume, Ezredvégi tűnődések - Beszélgetések barátaimmal (Reflections at the turn of the Millennium – Dialogues with my friends), he takes the reader to poetic heights: "[...] I have dreams, beautiful and hopeful, for them the desire for eternity grows fiercer [...] I have friends instead of secrets, I wonder together with them, its them to whom I turn with my questions." These conversations were as much about the counterpart as about the author asking the questions, not only because they were almost invariably people with something to say. They are now well-known and respected figures, as are, sadly, an increasing number of those who have passed away. It is for this reason that every aspect of this intellectual exchange is to be appreciated.
In the second volume, Emberközelben (Human vicinity), the author’s selection criteria shifted somewhat: “More and more I experience […] that beneath the ever more bombastic and aggressive surface of the world, hidden, meditative, shining forth almost in secret, there exists another plane of life – and I belong more to that one […].”
The list of interviewees broadened further, in parallel with Fekete’s growing social and official connections. With his godson, the Reformed pastor Károly Fekete Jr., he raised his dialogues to concrete heights of faith – though always suffused with the affection of the questioner. In the introduction to The Third Bell, another volume of this series, he wrote: “[…] now let the bell toll for the good, for the better ones, for those who gifted us with their destiny – in a time when the more we speak of love, the more it seems to dwindle […].” Once again, artists converse about their innermost thoughts, drawing the reader into an atmosphere of trust created by the interviewer. In another study, this one on music, he articulated with inspiration the very conviction that guided him – and that in this case invited others as well:
“I believe that the infinity of creation is realized by God endowing man with the capacity to continue creating. This gives meaning to the knowledge gained through learning and confers responsibility for the unfolding of the talent we are given. And talent itself is infinitely diverse.” (Társak a teremtésben [Companions in Creation], 1998)
The designer and interior designer
It is no coincidence that we now return to György Fekete’s fundamental profession, his vocation. In his album of collected works – as in an earlier volume compiled by the architect Péter Gáborjáni Szabó from his rich design output – relatively little could be presented, partly due to the ephemeral nature of the projects. Nevertheless, Fekete’s design style emerges clearly: he primarily employed constructions based on light wood materials. His interiors from his most active design period bear the traits of the Scandinavian style, which strongly influenced Hungarian designers at the time. This meant furnishings and forms that could be produced most rationally, transported easily, and adapted flexibly to a given space. Later, with an expanding range of materials, he embraced bent and rounded forms, combinations of metal and glass, which brought out a playful lightness in his work. He always made spaces welcoming with subdued colours and well-proportioned lighting. His exhibition space compositions were defined by functional requirements, but since he often worked on international projects, he needed designs that could be assembled easily. In museums, for many years his installations were characterized by humility toward the exhibited material – restraint born of respect.
In the years following his political “exile,” he also rediscovered himself on other planes: the ambition of the interior architect within his creative personality did not fade but revived in a unique form. During this period, he delved again into reinterpreting the fundamental relations of his profession. He received habilitation at the University of Sopron – where he also taught – and, with painstaking diligence, collected his past experiences as a designer and lecturer, along with the illustrative material he had used. Then in 2008, he “unexpectedly” surprised everyone with the publication of his book Tárgyak természetrajza – Tapasztalásaim (The Natural History of Objects – A Book of My Experiences), offering an engaging perspective.
Such a book can only be written by someone with both a wide overview of the many components of design and their practical applications, and a spirit receptive to artistic inspiration, able to translate experiences drawn from natural beauty for the “creative human,” delicately re-scoring the great composition of the Masterwork into human dimensions. Sometimes he writes theoretical reflections, sometimes historical meditations; though rich in knowledge, their accessible presentation emphasizes interconnections.
The book itself is the conceptual plan of an artist striving for broad perspective. Its topics, with their unusual questions, cast new light on the meaning of concepts such as kitsch, souvenir, collecting, design, and more. On broad, overarching themes, he offers wide-ranging cultural insight. Through his analyses, he guides the reader toward further groups of concepts to be clarified. What should we understand by craftsmanship and folk art? What are artistic industrial products and applied arts? What is the sacred object, the toy, restoration, and many other things constantly in use in the complex world of design, all of which require clear interpretation? On these, the author writes with joy – by his own account – trusting in the possibility of continuation.
We can say that with this book György Fekete, the interior architect, returned to the world of objects and to design itself. With his characteristic cheerful lightness – the same spirit with which he once designed unique interiors, graceful ornaments, sleek furniture, or exhibitions – he imperceptibly draws the viewer, the user, in this case the reader, into a world that is carefully, precisely formulated, clearly comprehensible, and genuinely liveable.
The book’s foreword was written by his artist friend, the ceramicist Imre Schrammel. Sparing no words for theoretical experts, he expressed himself as a creator who also shapes works out of clay: “Economists, sociologists, philosophers, aestheticians, and cultural researchers have analysed the world of objects many times and in great detail – always within the boundaries of their professional interests. Yet few have attempted to cross these boundaries or the limits of familiar stylistic periods. It cannot be considered mere coincidence, then, that at last a distinguished Hungarian interior architect undertook this bold step.” The author himself, while attaching vast literary and scholarly material to some of his topics, puts it more gently: “This book is a kindly offered aid for the understanding and shaping of the human environment, not a strict professional manual […], a collection of answers to questions that arose during my travels, my design practice, my considerations of cultural policy, and which my university students posed to me over more than fifty years.”
Those fifty years encompassed many unique undertakings that can only truly be evaluated through serious study. Still, two deserve to be singled out. The first is the circle of artist-friends established in 1968 by the interior architect Gábor Mezei under the name Prizma 13 (Prism 13). They defined themselves as an exhibition group but did not engage in collective design. Instead, they presented their unique craft and applied art works at exhibitions throughout Hungary and later abroad. Prism 13 was not a creative collective but an exhibition association – and in this sense, a pioneering one.
The second is the ambitious exhibition series held at the Budapest Kunsthalle, which aimed to shake the entire applied arts profession out of a certain apathy. The exhibitions titled Tervezés–értékteremtés (Design–Value Creation) would not have come into being without Fekete’s energetic professional organization, undertaken to demonstrate the outstanding, internationally comparable value of contemporary applied artists.
He also never abandoned his patronage of his own profession, interior architecture, nor the organization of documentation projects of individual artists – naturally always as team efforts. At the Artists’ Colony of Zsennye he was an active participant in the professional conferences held in this field.
The Creator of Intellectual Workshops and the Hungarian Academy of Arts
György Fekete continued the rediscovery of national values together with his friends Imre Makovecz and Balázs Farkas, who in 1995 launched the joint social initiative Hungarian Heritage.
He took over the editorship of the professional journal Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian Applied Arts), which had been launched in 1992 with a unique concept, after Hedvig Dvorszky resigned from her position as editor-in-chief.
He began official negotiations concerning the future of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, which over the years had been shaped into a distinct intellectual community drawing from many branches of Hungarian culture. He undertook this task not only at the request of the founders and out of respect for the then president, architect Imre Makovecz, but also as a kind of mission in a time of global crisis of values.
He was always convinced of the outstanding worth of Hungary’s diverse culture, even in international comparison. Through his books, he kept alive both his own and others’ intellectual and spiritual freshness, as well as a sense of shared responsibility, without ever losing sight of his long-term goal: the appreciation of Hungarian culture and the establishment of its rightful place.
Ultimately, as already mentioned, the first freely elected civilian government after the 1989–90 regime change was unable to carry out its plans – neither within the system itself, nor in the economy, nor in many areas of cultural life. The transformations begun were left unfinished, immature processes were halted, and with the political reversal the deep intellectual differences – crystallized along divergent interests – became unmistakably clear.
As an interior architect, as the organizer of major international and Hungarian exhibitions that expressed the nation’s image, and as the leader of professional organizations, György Fekete naturally gained ever broader oversight of the creative arts in their widest sense. As an interior architect, he was committed to countless collective efforts for the advancement of Hungarian applied arts. Among the applied artists – who themselves encompassed many disciplines – he constructively undertook the heroic struggles that came with this work. In all his activities, he soon distinguished himself with his practical organizing ability and perseverance, bringing to success those collective artistic enterprises for which artists consistently showed willingness, but for which effective strategies were increasingly developed together with him.
He considered unworthy not only the narrow-minded and often stingily measured standards of recognition, but also the continual, deliberate dismantling of the institutions serving creators and their interests under the communist regime after World War II.
As a designer, teacher, professional evaluator, and cultural policymaker, he experienced firsthand the destructive processes and their toxic effects on the entirety of intellectual life. What he sought was to revive the roots of human creativity, above all by creating the possibility of worthy frameworks for artistic work.
The recognition of the Hungarian Academy of Arts as a public body, achieved through lengthy and diplomatic negotiations, was officially celebrated on November 5, 2011. For György Fekete – a man who consistently fought for the intellectual and material recognition of the community – this marked, together with the team he always gathered around himself, one of the noblest achievements of his public career.
As a creative artist, on his eightieth birthday in September 2012, he again surprised the public: he “relearned” the long-forgotten applied art technique of wood mosaic, even though earlier works among his artistically ambitious compositions (objects made of felt and other materials) already included mosaic images. In recent years, using the most special, exotic, and high-quality types of wood – which he carved himself into tiny cubes – he composed new works that expressed his now fully formed worldview: reflections on life, nature, emotions, faith, and the beauties of both the macro- and the microworld. The exhibition Aranykor (Golden Age) found its worthy place at the Museum of Applied Arts and was also preserved for posterity in his own self-published, representative album.
It is nearly impossible to summarize the life’s work of György Fekete by analysing individual objects, because he is not defined solely by these creations, but by being a living creator within a living community – a man who, though granted only one life, was in many ways the presence of several lives – living an active, fully realized “life” in his own right.
His teacher friend, Tamás Deme, wrote in a way characteristic of a man: “In György Fekete there is both the wisdom of a mature man and the wonder of a Renaissance youth discovering the world […] emotion, reason, and action are united in him […] and he who can give mercy instead of needless sacrifices is surely beloved by God.” At the Institute of Applied Arts of the University of Sopron, he worked together with several fellow teachers of applied arts to pass on their knowledge to the new generation at the highest possible level. Based on these experiences, the industrial designer Péter Lelkes published in 2004 a large-scale interview volume titled ArtDesign. György Fekete, who always primarily considered himself an applied arts designer, devoted his entire professional and public life to securing recognition for contemporary creators. From this volume we can quote him: “The significance of autarky lies in this: while the Western world, following the pace of natural development, pursued professionalism and specialization – with its technical level and formal changes exploding one after another – our world had to sweat everything out of itself. Thus, the situation was not answered with apathy, but with domestic solutions to the questions of survival, and it was able to show distinctive characters even for the wealthier world. Among its technical and artistic achievements there were genuine surprises – from the Heller–Forgó cooling tower to the Rubik’s Cube. This positive autarky was itself a creative hope. Hope that one day we too might catch up with the speed of the world. What this meant in practice, for example in my own design practice, I could illustrate by the organization of foreign exhibitions. In a German, English, or French metropolis, when I travelled with a delegation to set up the Hungarian pavilion, we always worked with half the number of labourers as other nations. But they were true handymen, whose inventiveness and expertise were up to date in every situation. The results showed no difference. This, however, often brought me trouble with the trade union inspectors of the host countries, who could not comprehend how someone could be equally at home in locksmith’s work, carpentry, or wallpapering. Naturally, this applied to the designers as well.
How was this possible? Because the college teachers were excellent practicing designers, they secured access to knowledge even by secretly taking banned foreign books out of libraries, and for five years we practically lived in the studio from morning till night, producing a workload that today’s design students would find almost unbelievable. We collected structural elements ourselves, visited factories, built our models, attended optional sketching sessions, and loved art history. The embarrassingly narrow range of materials, the shortcomings of tools, the absence of catalogues were somehow compensated by our love of work. And when the borders slowly opened, we did not go west for holidays, but visited international exhibitions, held huge debates and briefings afterwards, and at the meetings of the professional sections of the association, half or two-thirds of the profession would sit there monthly. At the same time, since there were only state design offices, everyone had a secure desk for a few years next to an experienced designer. As a professor of interior architecture, I know today’s situation well. It would be historically inaccurate to compare it directly to earlier times, and I do not do so. But I do emphasize that within the school walls, I still place great importance on the positive autarky mentioned. For this is one of the keys to developing creative ability: to learn and to do everything the hand is capable of, to become familiar with every tool that surpasses the hand’s abilities, to think about all possible variations so that we may have a chance to find the most suitable solution for a given need. To test the idea with models and case studies, and to respect the environment into which we implant our own thoughts. Indeed, I feel that in using technology as a tool, at no level of development should we ever lose sight of thought itself, for that alone is eternal. This could even be taken as a kind of ars poetica.” (Péter Lelkes: ArtDesign, 2004)
The full study, as well as the interview with György Fekete in ArtDesign, offers the most comprehensive evaluation of his career and is available in the library of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.
[2012]