János Sturcz art historian, university professor was born on 10 May 1958 in Budapest. He was one of the most versatile, hard-working, broad-minded and internationally minded individuals in the field, who did not join sectarian camps and consistently sought to retain his intellectual sovereignty. In terms of his conception of art, his master Lajos Németh's approach to integrating new disciplines (art sociology, cultural anthropology, etc.) into art history and Lajos Fülep's theory of art, grounded in a vast philosophical erudition, were understandably influential in the early days. He wrote his thesis on the latter's early philosophy of art in 1982, at the Department of Art History and History of the ELTE BTK. Fülep's formulation, according to which every phenomenon in art is shaped according to its essence and is given its place and weight, still applies to his thinking, which has changed considerably in the meantime. In his theoretical-critical practice, Sturcz remains faithful to the thesis of Fülep's theory that the measure of the aesthetic value of a work of art is the importance and significance of its content, that is, the measure is the "significance, the richness, the ramifications, the revelation of the whole of reality, of its totality, of what we call life, spirit, soul."[1]
Between 1982-89, Sturcz's main teaching and research interests at the Department of Art History of the ELTE were the Hungarian and universal philosophy of art at the turn of the century and the history of contemporary art. In the course of his parallel study of Hungarian and universal art, the Fülepian teachings again came to the fore, so Sturcz did not commit himself to any of the extreme ideological trends, despite his considerable knowledge of the theoretical teachings of the latest art philosophical currents. He attempted to be contemporary by reflecting the contemporary with traditional values, concluding that Hungarian art must be judged not only by 'internal' but also by 'external' values, but that there can be no modern Hungarian art history without negating national, local and regional features. Everything must be seen in its full context. Sturcz has not committed himself to trends, styles or genres, but to artists and works, regardless of where they belong or to which cultural sphere, since his point of reference is universality, made up of regional values.
In 1988, he completed his postgraduate studies at New York University under the supervision of Professor Robert Rosenblum on a Soros Fellowship. He had the opportunity to learn first-hand about leading contemporary American art and its theory. After returning home, he worked at Corvina Publishing and later at the Museum of Applied Arts, focusing on the work of Géza Maróti. His return coincided roughly with the paradigm shift in Hungarian art, but Sturcz could not really identify with the archaizing, eclectic, historical-quotation-laden conception of art of the new pictorialism, or transavant-garde, or the domestic professional mechanism that animated it. During this time, Sturcz was working with László feLugossy, the Block Group, the Xertox Group, the Vető-Zuzu duo, János Szirtes, Lenké Szilágyi and the Hejettes Szomlyazók.
In 1994, under the direction of Katalin Keserü, he organised a highly acclaimed exhibition entitled Naturally, which analysed the direct use of nature in contemporary Central and Eastern European art, at the Ernst Museum. It was the first exhibition in Hungary not to update classical land art, but to raise the idea of nature art, which has since become popular. In the same year, he returned to New York on a Fulbright Scholarship. He published the results of his work there in a series of essays analysing the latest trends in contemporary American art in the journal New Art, 1995-96. It was through him that the Hungarian public first became familiar with many of the characteristics of contemporary art in the USA.
Since September 1994, he has been teaching the history of 20th century and contemporary art as an associate professor and later as a professor at the Department of Art History of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Since then, he has focused primarily on the work of the younger generation of artists, preparing, selecting, arranging, opening, writing catalogues, reviews and analyses of more than 150 exhibitions of their work, both at home and abroad, and compiling an impressive list of publications. His opening texts are detailed, comprehensive and unparalleled basic studies of their kind.
Between 1997-99, she worked with Edit András, Gábor Andrási and Hedvig Turai on a research project funded by the Open Society on contemporary Hungarian women's art. In 1998, her controversial article on the anomalies, structural and political problems of Hungarian art life caused a storm. In 1999, she published her first selection of essays in a volume entitled Janus Halfway, which included essays on the philosophy of art, the latest developments in American and Hungarian contemporary art, and the youngest artists. The New York essays at the heart of the volume experientially capture the unique intellectual atmosphere of one of the world's leading art centres, and then go on to examine in detail the approaches to major works of Hungarian art by his own generation and those of the mid-1990s. For Sturcz, one or two of the doctrines of the Fülep have already been shaken in this volume. "The admirably closed Fülepian edifice in my mind began to be undermined by personal encounters with Hungarian neo-avant-garde art and artists, and one after another its pillars, such as the autonomous work, transcendent art or the ideals of the artist-vates, were blown up, the identification of the concept of the universal with the European", Sturcz emphasises[2], as if to justify his gradual departure from one of his first teachers, to whose oeuvre he pays tribute in three studies, which are also the introductory essays of the volume.
The same year, he was National Commissioner and curator of the Venice Biennale. His exhibition on a particular group of "sensual conceptuality" has received considerable international and national attention. In 2001 he gave lectures on Hungarian post-conceptual art at Konstfack in Stockholm and the Statens Kunstakademie in Oslo. In 2002, he co-curated the exhibition The Independent Life of Colour, an international monochrome painting exhibition at the Kunsthalle. In 2003, he defended his PhD thesis summa cum laude, the chapter of which, analysing the changing meanings of the artist's body, was published in 2005, entitled The Dismantling of the Heroic Ego [3].
His second book of studies explores the categories of body art in its broadest sense (happening, flux-event, action, body art, performance, photo-performance, etc.) in a way that brings the Hungarian practice of the postmodern era into line with the more familiar international patterns. It mainly examines the production of the late 1990s, with loose references to the predecessors of the 1960s and 1970s. "In these works, instead of the earlier heroic, narcissistic, avant-garde artist-ego, a more honest, playful, malleable artist-ego emerged, linked to a new [...] understanding of the body of the artist," he writes, suggesting that the newer interpretation of the body in art is less reflective of ideological content than we are used to from earlier activist practice. Sturcz unanimously explains the late rise of atypical manifestations of more distinctive stylistic currents within body art and poetics, such as those related to gender and racial identity, intimate personhood, as the end of the prohibitive measures and rejectionist art politics of the political system of the past. The author emphatically stresses that in the freer social framework after the regime change, the most essential self-defining expressions were mainly validated on a generational level. He points out that the new approach to body art in the 1990s became the foundation for a lighter, more playful approach, as a result of which artistic production lost its formerly typical Eastern European character, its mythical background of rebellion and resistance. In the chapter on the beginnings of body art in Hungary, Sturcz counts the beginnings of Hungarian postmodern body art from Tibor Hajas, calling its rebellious attitude theological. Typologically, he presents the following categories, drawing subtle nuances between related endeavours: painterly and gesticulating bodies (Károly Halász, Jenő Lévay), ritual and rebellious bodies (Jenő Detvay, Zsuzsi Ujj), the body as a carrier of identity (István Halas, Lenke Szilágyi), the personal body (Gábor Gerhes, Lajos Csontó, Katalin Haász), the body playing a role (Kriszta Nagy, Hajnal Németh, Róza El Hassan), the missing and fragmented body (Mária Berhidi, Gyöngyi Gallusz), the body augmented by prosthesis (Tibor Gyenis).
János Sturcz's research did not stop there: in 2004 he gave a series of lectures on Central and Eastern European and Balkan art at the Kunstakademin and Kunsthogskolan in Oslo. In 2005, he was the Hungarian National Commissioner and curator of the New Delhi Triennale. In 2005, he gave a lecture on the reflection of globalisation in Central and Eastern European art at the New York School of Visual Arts conference. Member of the International Jury of the Essl Prize 2005-2006. Since 2005 Head of the Department of Art History at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Between 2005-2008 member of the Board of Trustees of the Gyula Derkovits Fine Art Scholarship, between 2004-2011 member of the jury of the Public Collection Purchase of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
His international activities continued to be very active in the period that followed.In 2006-2007, he co-curated the exhibition European Attitude (Shanghai, Doland Museum of Modern Art) and wrote the catalogue text. In 2015, he gave a lecture at the conference "Photography and Poltitical Bodies" (The Artist's Body as a Metaphor in a Claustrophobic Society), organized by the Central European House of Photography, Bratislava, and the French Institute, in the framework of the Month of Photography.
In 2007, he was the curator of the retrospective exhibition of Imre Bukta and author of the catalogue text (MODEM, Debrecen). In 2008, he participated in the professional preparation of the retrospective exhibition of Gyula Konkoly (Művészet Malom, Szentendre), and in 2008 he gave a lecture on Bukta and contemporary Hungarian art at the presentation of the monograph on Imre Bukta at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zagreb. Habilitation at the University of Pécs in 2011. His growing interest in sacral themes is shown by the fact that in 2011 he was curator of the exhibition "My God. Christian Perspective in Contemporary Hungarian Art (Debrecen, MODEM), and in 2013 she curated and wrote the catalogue text for the exhibition The Light of the Soul, presented at the Hungarian Academy in Rome in the framework of the Hungarian Cultural Year in Italy.
He has been a Corresponding Member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts since 2014, and in 2014-15 he was the President of the Visual Board of Trustees of the National Cultural Fund.In 2015 and 2016 he was a member of the jury of the Hungarian exhibition at the Venice International Biennale of Fine Arts. Author of twelve books, book catalogues, monographs and more than 150 studies, catalogues and reviews. He has written texts for monographs by István Lisztes, Géza Maróti, Gábor Lajta, Ilona Lovas and Márton Takáts, among others.
[2017]
[1] Endre Nagy: Fülep Lajos Kunstetfilosophfiája (1923-1944), Z-füzetek/15., Bp., 1991
[2] János Sturcz: Janus halfway. Új Művészet Kiadó, Bp., 1999
[3] János Sturcz: Dismantling the heroic ego. Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Bp., 2005