MAKÁR ALAJOS

Alajos Makár once reported on the societal landscape of afterwar Romania, that it had a formative role in his development: he became a creator of artworks under the influence of such society. Though, this idea is not just informed by the impact of post-World-War-II socialist world order on social mobility. Makár also means here that becoming an artist is conditioned by the topics she/he can develop, and, equally, by the quality of inspirational artifacts she/he has been permitted to have access to. For example, Makár’s own art could not have been possible without the crucial experience of how the old world encountered the new.

The main topic of this show is yielded by Makár’s painting, which – as pictorial ouvres in general – is defined by the use of various sources: artistic vision; the experience of the surrouding world – n.b.: against its societal backgroud; era-specific visual and material culture; needs and pretentions of social actors; social and intellectual history; and, last but not least, the level of technical development. Makár earned his reputation as a postwar Transilvanian painter by documenting the traditional life or the village Sic (Hungarian: Szék, in Cluj County, RO). To repharse this in terms coined by art history: he was a contemporary colorist seized by the meaning and force of traditions, steeped in a strong preference for metaphysical contemplation.

Still, as it has been frequently emphasized, to consider him the annalist-draughtsman of the village Sic means travelling down the easier way. The one, which is more complicated but, also, more appealing runs through the different contracts he overtook in his active life, and which, afterall, made him an artist. These assignments are not necessarily obvious pictorial tasks: as a young man, Makár developed a considerable interest in religious art; he was curious about all techniques of artistic printmaking; used photography as a natural and resolute aid to fine arts. As an interesting parallel to his job as a window-dresser, he discovered practice and theory of stage design, which forwarded his sensitivity for the metaphysics of a framed world. It could be of even greater significance that he was constantly reflecting on the inspirative changes in an old, traditional world, and, then, tried to grasp the beauty and particularity comprised in these very changes: how the new world altered, even disfigured our ordinary relation to earth and water, and, respectively, how it provided a completely novel environment for human labour. Makár was also a self-reflecting artist: he visually commented on his works and on their reception. Pushing these topics aside would be a pure impoverishment of his delicately rich ouvre.Our assessment of Makár’s art will be also a lot more charitable, if we take stock of his multifaceted professional backgroud, and of his roots in different soils of knowledge. To be charitable is no order issued by general curatorial ethics, it is simply assured by the assessment of this multifaceted ouvre, and of the several skills acquired by the artist himself. Makár is a 20th century Transylvanian, Hungarian painter of Romania, social annalist, self-reflecting craftsman. This is immediately more information than it meets the eye at first sight. 

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Cecília Hausmann – Deodáth Zuh