At the beginning of his career, Gábor Attalai was drawn to textile and painting, yet by his own admission he could not establish a truly profound connection with painting at that time: “...it did not provide a basic situation through which I could directly experience life” [1] – he remarked in an interview. As János Sugár observed in a commemorative radio programme, Attalai’s relationship to materiality was fundamentally shaped by the fact that he was trained as an applied artist. He attended the Iparművészeti Főiskola (College of Applied Arts), and although he attempted very early on to step beyond the narrower scope of applied art, he did not take part in the notable Iparterv exhibition of 1968 – the first major group exhibition of Hungarian neo-avant-garde art – because he was occupied with organising the Fal- és Tértextil Biennále (lit. Wall and Spatial Textile Biennale).
Until the end of the 1960s he produced felt sculptures, developing innovative solutions in Hungarian spatial textile by revitalising techniques found in folk art. The suspended felt and strap constructions created in later years not only blurred the boundary between conceptual object and painting, but also emerged within the privileged field of cultural policy in which censorship operated with considerably less vigilance [in the state-socialist cultural system of the Kádár era]. Within the medium of textile, one could realise things that were not possible in painting – hence the 1960s and 1970s marked the period of modernisation and emancipation in textile art.
The forms he exhibited reflect a sustained exploration of the nature of materials, the re-evaluation of ancient felt-making, and an almost scientific approach to its properties. Among the many varieties of textile structures, felt resembles no other. It is a warm-to-the-touch, homogeneous planar surface for which the most natural tool is the scissors. Investigating the inherent qualities of felt, Attalai created “cut-outs” that most closely recall Japanese paper-cutting constructions.
Attalai regarded painting as an inherent “corollary” of his applied-art practice. While painting – as he himself noted – he felt a heightened sense of independence, and for him pictorial thinking signified a closer relationship with cognition. He believed that colour played a greater role than form, since throughout art history form had been much more thoroughly “cultivated” than colour. He regarded colour as no less a bearer of content than form.
By the mid to late 1960s artists began stepping beyond fixed categories and predetermined interpretations of the artwork. The characteristics of Pop started to appear, and a new understanding of geometry emerged – one no longer associated exclusively with Constructivism or classical geometry. With Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965), Conceptual Art was born, and Attalai’s oeuvre came into its own within this “borderline condition” of art: a tendency that rejected tradition, embraced freedom and experimentation, and foregrounded the conceptual dimension of artistic practice. He himself wrote: “In contemporary art there are numerous phenomena that the public, most critics and many artists consider borderline cases. These borderline situations do not simply derive from the expansion of the means available to visual art, with artistic practice partly distancing itself from traditional modes of expression; they also stem from the fact that qualities and activities previously alien to art have claimed their place within its sphere. […] The affirmation of new tools and media plays an important role in this: our thinking and our need to communicate have accelerated, and we wish to convey significantly more messages to others than before. All this requires faster and more direct means of expression, and these, as it happens, are readily available” [2].
Attalai was strongly influenced by the post-industrial views of the American sociologist Daniel Bell, particularly his writings on the explosion of information.
Attalai worked across numerous genres, and even for him it was not always clear whether a given piece belonged to the category of performance, action, or concept. By his own account, he often simply had an idea he wished to express, and that impulse motivated the work. An example is Levegő nélkül (No Air! 1971), an action documented in a photographic sequence showing a mouth sealed with adhesive tape, which is gradually torn open. In the series Az ember, aki nem kaphat és nem adhat információt (When a man cannot get and cannot give information), the figure’s various sense organs and fingers are likewise taped over. “How should we understand these works: as performances, as actions whose documentation happens to be photography, as conceptual pieces, or perhaps as autonomous photographic works?” – Attalai asks.
According to art historian Beáta Hock [3], however, “Gábor Attalai is not, strictly speaking, a performance artist, nor even an action artist, although he carried out numerous actions, primarily photo-actions – that is, actions without an audience, documented by camera. These actions can be identified as conceptual works, or as one-person Fluxus events, and at times as body art akin to performance.” [4] Several of his works were conceived in this latter spirit – e.g. Szemölcs leborotválása (lit. Shaving Off a Wart), Testnyomatok (lit. Body Imprints), Betömött orrlyukak, egy hónap (lit. Stuffed Nostrils, One Month), Szolidaritási akció zsákvarrótűvel és kockakővel (lit. Solidarity Action with a Sack Needle and a Cobblestone), Élő kultúra (lit. Living Culture), etc. Yet Attalai’s self-actions lacked the presence or participation of an audience, which makes his practice more appropriately situated within the category of Conceptual Art.
In the “risk-investigation” Shaving Off a Wart, Attalai used a razor to remove a wart from the centre of his chest. The question posed by this body-action was whether danger has a role in art – whether there exists a “risk factor.” This was followed by the “scratching impressions.” Whenever he felt an itch, he placed carbon paper and a sheet of paper against the spot and scratched, then recorded the body part and the exact duration of the scratching. “The question was: what kind of graphic traces would emerge from this? Can I scratch with the carbon paper there in exactly the same way I would at any other time, ensuring that no deliberate graphic marks are introduced?” – he remarks in the same interview.
In the Minimal installation Keretéből kimosott festmény (Painting Washed Out of Its Frame, 1970), we see a picture frame suspended from a terrace shower, with water running through it. The work invites multiple interpretations, yet the empty frame hanging in mid-air suggests a veiled critique of the system reminiscent of Negatív csillag (Negative Star).
A similar logic operates in the 1973 piece Hugyecz Ferenc, termelőszövetkezeti agronómus portréja (távolságra és azonosságra) (Portrait of Ferenc Hugyecz, collective farm agronomist [for distance and for identity]). The photo-installation presents a man’s portrait across multiple film frames, whose image becomes increasingly blurred as the enlargements progress, until it finally dissolves into complete unrecognisability. The sequential, side-by-side arrangement evokes Pop Art on the level of composition, while the fading portrait – in contrast to Hyperrealism’s emphasis on precise detail – points to the insignificance and gradual effacement of the individual.
In Stuffed Nostrils, One Month, the concept was similar to that of No Air!. Using wax obtained from a make-up artist, Attalai sealed his nostrils for a month, testing the limits of his own endurance. The action was inspired by the self-destructive practices of Rudolf Schwarzkogler, a member of Wiener Aktionismus (Viennese Actionism), of whom Attalai learned through Hungarian art historian and curator László Beke. During the Solidarity Actions, prompted by harrowing photographs of the then-ongoing Vietnam War, he inserted a sack needle between his eyelid and cheek and kept it there for an hour, seeking to express empathy and solidarity with the suffering population of Vietnam.
Attalai’s well-known land-art action Negative Star stands as one of the emblematic works of the 1970s, revealing the fluid boundaries between Minimal Art, Conceptualism, and Land Art. In the winter of 1971, on the banks of the Danube, Attalai cleared snow to form a large star-shaped outline, which later melted, signalling the transitory nature of the prevailing (state-socialist) system.
The action Élő kultúra (lit. Living Culture) was more conceptual in nature and did not revolve around physical danger. For one of his design commissions, Attalai received an award “For Socialist Culture” from a state enterprise; he used the medal’s stamp-like emblem to imprint his arm and bandaged it so that the stamp would leave a negative mark on his skin, similar in appearance to the star in Negative Star.
Art critic Gyula Rózsa referred to Attalai’s works as “felt sculptures,” exhibited in 1972 at the Kulturális Kapcsolatok Intézete (Institute for Cultural Relations). “Attalai’s felts are practical, decorative and effective in their specific aim; they are complete, for they unite a largesse attuned to the spirit of the time with professional rigour and integrity, created by someone who knows the possibilities of material, colour and the third dimension to excellent effect.” [5]
Certain conceptual themes preoccupied him for years, such as his various time-works and the “red-y mades” – the most diverse objects, and at times body parts, covered in monochrome red paint. These pieces represent extensions of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades. “[…] I might say that in the spirit of a philosophical fantasia I too could almost have repainted the world into red-y mades, yet megalomania never came to mind in connection with them. It was the other implications of the red-y mades that interested me – whether the Duchampian adventure of perception through the readymade could still be lived on, given that half a century’s worth of artistic generations had existed, worked, and become what they were through it: widely known and widely esteemed. Through Duchamp I came to understand something from which countless unknown consequences might emerge. His works are peculiarly enigmatic. He transformed design objects into new phenomena through the act of choosing them. Duchamp was the first to manifest philosophy in the medium of sculpture. This was unprecedented in history, and no wonder his act inspired so many directions and individuals – including myself.” [6]
Under the title Transfer paintings, he cut into pieces paintings that he had made according to a principle of temporal and spatial separation, keeping one fragment for himself and affixing the others in various foreign locations – in London, in Amsterdam on the wall of the Stedelijk Museum, or on a bridge over the Seine in Paris – photographing them in situ. In this way he transported and relocated the painting. Whenever he travelled abroad, he always carried such transfers with him.
Very little remains of Gábor Attalai’s later years. The available literature only occasionally mentions isolated aspects of his activity after the 1990s; taken together, these give the impression that he may have withdrawn from artistic practice. What is certain is that, in the post-regime-change era (after the 1989–90 transition from state socialism in Hungary), the significance of conceptualism was reinterpreted: the primacy of thought was increasingly overtaken by an emphasis on process and the need for action.
[2015]
[1] Vitális művészet – a művészet vitalitása (lit. Vital Art – the Vitality of Art). Interview with Gábor Attalai, Művészet, 1981/10.
[2] Gábor Attalai: Határesetek a képzőművészetben (lit. Borderline Cases in the Visual Arts), Mozgó Világ, 1981/10.
[3] Interview conducted by Beáta Hock during her research on Hungarian performance art.
[4] http://www.balkon.hu/balkon_2001_06/attalai_text.htm
[5] Gyula Rózsa: Kompozíció ’72 (lit. Composition ’72), Népszabadság, 2 June 1972.
[6] Mintha egy bestiárium képei közelednének – Attalai Gáborral beszélget Kelecsényi László Sámuel (lit. As If the Images of a Bestiary Were Approaching – László Sámuel Kelecsényi in Conversation with Gábor Attalai), Balkon, 1994/5.