If I ask you to think of a famous nude painting, you will more than likely imagine a painting of a woman who is nude or nearly nude. Maybe Sandro Botticelli’s masterful “The Birth of Venus”, a full-figured body by Rubens or even Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” come to mind. This makes sense because throughout the history of art the female body has been portrayed more often than the male body in the nude format. The latest exhibition at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, however, is focusing on the exact opposite, the male nude.

Before Playboy or nude photographs, there existed many titillating images of women barely dressed or completely undressed and these hung in the homes of the wealthiest patrons in plain view. These were acceptable for display in their salons and studies because of their mythological or religious subject matter. Mythological figures include Danae who is showered with gold coins or Venus who is often depicted brushing her hair or looking in the mirror. Religious figures include Bathsheba bathing or Susanna being spied upon by the elders. These women are depicted in a voyeuristic way, as they seem unaware of being watched. The female nude later became a subject matter in its own right that artists tried faithfully to capture on canvas and in stone or bronze. These works usually have what is termed a “male gaze”.

In classical antiquity the male body was a subject matter that was thoroughly explored. Later, however, the male body was mostly out of sight, usually hidden in full clothing or even armor, with the exception of a few mythological images or Christian martyrs.

This fascinating exhibition is going to explore the reasons for this change, including how the role of men adapted and other sociological reasons, by examining the works of art that depict the male body. It will look at how male artists depict their own bodies and what this reflects. And it will examine how women artists depict the male nude (the “female gaze”), something which has only been possible in more recent times since women artists were often barred from access to nude models in the past.

Beginning about 1900 in turn-of-the-century Vienna, the exhibition then continues through the 20^th and 21^st centuries examining the way the artists own identities and their relationship to the model changed. Eventually, the male nude also gains footing as an erotic image and one that can be viewed with a “gaze of desire”.

Works by artists such as Egon Schiele, Lovis Corinth, Erich Heckel, Robert Mapplethorpe, Oskar Kokoschka, Louise Bourgeois, Eduard Munch, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and Gilbert & George will be included in the exhibition.

“The Naked Man” exhibition is possible in cooperation with the LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, who hosted an exhibition prior to this one. The Ludwig Museum of Budapest’s exhibition will incorporate more works by Central and Eastern European artists. It can be seen until June 30.

The Ludwig Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am until 6 pm. It is located at Komor Marcell u. 1 and can be reached by metro and bus (see the website for more details).

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As if a punishment, the Budapest skyline changed dramatically after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The reason is that all the statues that were once scattered throughout the city to commemorate the era of triumphant communism suddenly disappeared and were taken to the outskirts of Budapest, to Memento Park to be precise. Since there wasn’t a plan for getting rid of them or wiping out the history of the Hungarians in this manner, these giant statues were relegated to occupy the place that the citizens of Budapest determined. Memento Park is located in an area where there is nothing beyond it.

In 1993, Lenin, Stalin, Marx, Engels and company were given a new home. That was the year the park opened. The statues, which reflect several episodes of the history of yesteryear’s communism, are of breathtakingly impressive size. Here, size does matter. It´s like riding in a time machine and going back several decades, like walking among dead giants. In some cases, the views give enough respect and make you want to put your head down instead of lifting it up to see all those statues up close. It is very striking, once there, to see where each statue was once located in the city of Budapest before being punished to spend eternity in Memento Park. It is now a museum.

There is a statue in particular whose story is priceless: It is a work in which Stalin’s gigantic boots appear first and above them only a life-size sculpture. This attention-grabbing statue is this way due to the revolt against communism in 1956, when the Hungarians were angry with the regime and decided to cut off Stalin’s feet and then did so at the knees. All that was left were the pedestal and boots. Later another sculpture, one that was different, smaller and therefore less monumental, was created on top of the original feet of the statue of Stalin. In 2006 it rose again but was a less offensive figure to the Hungarians.

The faces of the works you will find in Memento Park are fine, with very pronounced features and particularly tense muscles. The appearance reminds one of the Soviet propaganda posters that were deployed during the Cold War with the ideals of the good communist. And it´s funny because if you take a good look you will also find several sculptures that recall the Spanish Communists in the Civil War of 1936. The park was designed by a famous modern architect named Akos Eleöd.

Useful Information: The park opens at 10 am and closes when the sun goes down. Admission for adults is 1,500 forint (about 5 euros), but with the “Budapest Card” you can get a discount of 40%. And how do you get there? You can take the tram to Kelenföldi Pályaudvar (lines 19 and 49). From there, a good means of transportation is the bus. In the bus shelters 7 and 8 you’ll find the lines 710, 720, 721 and 722 with a final destination of Memento Park, and the ride is less than 10 minutes. Another way to get there is to take a direct bus, which costs 4,500 forint (about 15 euros) to the park from the stop of the metro lines 1, 2 and 3 at Deák tér. Going by car is ideal if you have one, since the area is pretty far removed from civilization. Visiting the park will probably take up an entire day or afternoon. But it’s worth it.

DianaRPretel

What are you waiting for? apartments in Budapest and come get to know the Communist history that´s preserved at Memento Park.

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The Modern Hungarian paintings of Lajos Tihanyi reached its highest point at the beginnings of the early twentieth century, although he became deaf at the age of eleven years due to meningitis and barely had in the traditional sense a normal education .

Composed of bright colors, the works he did in Hungary, were mainly landscapes, nudes, portraits and still lifes, using visual lessons of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso. After the Soviet Republic of 1919, he left the country and spent some time in Vienna and Berlin before settling in Paris. Contemporary writers, artists and politicians who he came to know during his emigration were subjected to a series of graphic works. Meanwhile, his paintings moved further away from the principles of realistic painting and his images show an enhancement in structure, representations and misrepresentations of his intense palette of expressionism.

Although in 1933, when he joined the group of abstract creation in Paris, he was far ahead in works done in this style, his untimely death in June 1938 prevented the full deployment of this period. Thanks to photographer friends, Brassaï ,André Kertész, and the painter Jacques de la Frégonniere, most of his works have survived and were returned to Hungary in 1970.

The last exhibition of his work was held in 1973 in the Hungarian National Gallery. This new exhibition has selected works from museums and private collections as well as foreign and Hungarian ones, promising a rediscovery of one of the best Hungarian painters.
Tihanyi was a painter and graphic artist who achieved international success as a Hungarian working abroad. He was part of the influential avant-garde group called The Eight, founded in 1909 in Budapest. After the fall of the Democratic Republic of Hungary in 1919, Tihanyi left the country. He connected with many writers and artists in Berlin such as the Hungarian Gyorgy Bölöni and later photographer George Brassai. In 1924 he moved to Paris where he stayed and became part of Hungarian art circles. His works are exhibited in the Hungarian National Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among others.

Lajos Tihanyi was born in Budapest in 1885. He studied drawing at the School of Industrial Art and design, but Hungary did not have an academy of art. Márk Femés Vedres and Vilmos Beck

Tihanyi began working in Budapest, where Post-Impressionists helped introduce concepts and techniques of Cubism and Expressionism in art circles. At the age of 24 years was part of The Eight, The Eight was formed by painters Róbert Berény, Dezső Czigány, Béla Czóbel, Károly Kernstok, Ödön Marffy, Dezső Orbán and Bertalan Pór. The sculptors and Vilmos Femés Márk Vedres Beck were also associated with them.

He painted portraits of many of his friends, as Bölöni (1912), Jacques de la Fregonnière (1928). He became a world-renowned artist, with much of his best work in museums outside Hungary. Visit the official website of the exhibition in http://kogart.hu/kogart/en/nextexhibition_content.jsp?id=75

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Set in the former headquarters of the secret police of both the Nazi regime and the Communists during the Soviet occupation, is Budapest�s �House of Terror Museum�. Located at 60 Andrássy Avenue the building is hard to miss with the word �Terror� written in large letters in a black passepartout at the top of the building.

Hungary allied themselves with Hitler to save their Jewish population, but soon after was overtaken by the Nazi-affiliated Arrow Cross in the dying days of World War II. Arrow Cross members killed Jews in the streets and shot them into the freezing Danube River that runs through Budapest. Hundreds however, where executed in the basement of 60 Andrássy Avenue. When the communists took over Hungary, this building was again used as headquarters of their secret police (the ÁVO) and used to terrorize, detain, torture and execute individuals suspected of being an enemy of the state.

The museum tells the story of the the double-occupation of the Germans and the Soviets over five harrowing decades and the suffering, atrocities and deprivation that affected so many. Whilst makes for a grim way to spend a morning or afternoon is definitely worth the visit on your trip to Budapest.

As soon as you enter the muesum atrium, which rises three floors up, you are faced with a Soviet tank which appears menacing and overbearing in an enclosed space. The the surrounding walls are covered in black and white portraits of each of the victims who died in this building during the 50 years of the two occupations.
Each room has a theme, starting with the period prior to the first occupation when things were normal followed by the two separate occupation periods, detailing the crimes and atrocities that went on, not only at  60 Andrássy Avenue  but across the entire country. The rooms use audio visual displays, excerpts from television broadcasts, radio shows, photos, propaganda posters and interviews from individuals and families who survived. With one in three families effected over the 50 years there are an insurmountable number of stories to be told and this museum does them justice.

Whilst most of the exhibit information is in Hungarian, most of the movies have English subtitles and each room has a information sheet in English that you can take and read as you walk around. The last section of the museum begins as you enter a elevator to the ex-prison basement. The elevator is programmed to descend slowly as video plays showing a guard explaining the execution process. During the 1950s the basement of this building was a witness to the horrendous torture of prisoners. Today the cells have been left as they were at the end of the soviet occupation are  chilling reminder of what happened there.

The final rooms could not be more opposite, one shows the festive atmosphere and the excitement surrounding the days in 1991 when the Soviets departed. The final room that you leave through however has a more somber atmosphere. The walls of room are lined with the names and photos of the “victimizers”, local communist members and supporters of the Arrow Cross and ÁVO, many of whom are still living, and who were never brought to justice.The House of Terror Museum is essential for anyone with an interest in the history of not only Hungary�s struggle for freedom but the whole of  Eastern Europe.

For more information http://www.terrorhaza.hu/en/index_2.html The museum is located at 60 Andrássy Avenue, 1062 Budapest. Full price adult admission is 2000 HUF.

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With the 20th Anniversary of the first permanent exhibition, the Ludwig Museum presents until the 23rd of October �Site Inspection – The Museum on the Museum�. The exhibition focuses on the present discussion on the museum and its meaning on art, the artists and the public.

This exhibition is commissioned by Katalin Székely and, together with the museum�s curatorial team, she looks to expose the great changes that the museum space has gone through down the years and the critique that part of the artists have made in all this art process in the 20th and 21st century.

This ambivalent relationship of the artist with the institution has been regular and permanent in the world of art. A contradictory relationship where the artist requires: it, but at the same time directs his most intense critiques to the social representation space that museums are today: a space of power, a fundamental step in the market and a status mark and work value.

The exhibition puts special emphasis on the avant-gardist call of the 70s, both in the local and international space. This special outlook to avant-gardism is because in some shape or form, its institutional review can be considered a precursor of contemporary thinking spaces on the museum.

But we can�t forget previous processes on this critique, like the ones lived by the artists of the so-called avant-garde. Such is the case of Marcel Duchamp, who was one of the first to pose the paradoxes of work and its context, the relation between the artist and the museum and the one between the artist and the spectator.

For the conceptual artists of the 60s and 70s, this becomes crucial. The work loses or gains meaning according to its context and, for this reason, the museums transform into immobile and rigid spaces where the shapes and established spaces for each exhibition become disconnected from its process and from the relation with the spectator. For the avant-garde, the museum is part of the social gearing and, in the same way, ideology, representation of the shapes of social relation and the market in which they�re inserted. For that, its critique and investigation is directed to the social space as a whole.

This interesting and complex situation is well reflected in a series of films and videos that are presented in the film space in the exhibition, with works by artists such as Costa Gavras, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock and Aleksandr Sokurov among others.

The artists that begun the institutional critic through their work or in their investigation projects during the 60s and 70s, they consciously made works that weren�t marketable and salable, many times, with the idea of carrying out a short or invaluable project for the logic of the market.

That way we can appreciate in this exhibition works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Andrea Fraser, Halász Károly, NETRAF, Dalibor Martines, Alan Sekula, Hans Haacke or Azorro Group among others.

For more information: http://ludwigmuseum.hu/site.php?inc=kiallitas&kiallitasId=782&menuId=43

Nancy Guzman

If your destination option this summer has been to walk along the shores of the Danube and having a relaxing time in apartments in Budapest you can�t not visit the impressive Ludwig Museum and walk through this exhibition that gathers great 20th century contemporary artists.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest will display until the 12^th of September an exhibition called The Eight, which includes works by the Group of Eight, whose works represent the best of the Hungarian art inspired by the French modernist currents from the last century. People will have the opportunity to appreciate newly discovered and restored works by some of the artists of this important group.

The story of the meeting of these eight artists dates back to 1909, when they met in the first avant-garde art exhibition in Budapest, in which the audience discovered this talented group of young artists who introduced Cubism and Expressionism, while breaking the classicism of the Hungarian painting.

The Group of Eight was formed by Róbert Berény, Béla Czóbel, Ödön Márffy, Dezső Orbán, Bertalan Pór, Dezső Czigány, Lajos Tihanyi and Károly Kernstok. They were inspired by Henri Matisse and Paul Cezane, considered the fathers of Fauvism, because of their chromatic exaltation based on the color theory that established the primary, secondary and complementary colors.

The impact caused by the Group of Eight in the Hungarian culture was crucial for the development of the modern arts and intellectual vanguard. In their three exhibitions, they gathered artists from various disciplines and intellectual trends among which were the composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, the poet Endre Ady and the philosopher György Lukács.

Róbert Berény was well known for his portrait of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, which was painted in 1913. As well as all members of the Group of Eight, Berény performed several activities in music and literature that were never known. After the fall of the republic in 1919, he immigrated to Berlin, along with many other artists and writers from Hungary. In 1926 he returned to Hungary and won the Szinnyei award in 1936. During World War II, his workshop was destroyed and many of his works were lost forever.

Czóbel Béla was a member of the Group of Eight who was considered as a regarded member of the exclusive Ecole de Paris, a group of the greatest painters of the twentieth century.

Dezső Czigány of gypsy origin studied painting in Paris and dedicated himself to painting portraits and dead nature. His suicide after killing his family condemned his work to ostracism, and that is why it is hard to find his works and references.

Lajos Tihanyi was a painter, illustrator and autodidact lithographer, because he never was able to study due to his condition as deaf-muted person. He was Cubism, although he changed his current through the years.

All painters of the Group of Eight performed wonderful works and were enormously prolific. Many of their works were destroyed during the Second World War.

For more information http://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/web/guest/articleview?mi_layout_id=29.30&mi_article_id=877

Nancy Guzman

An interesting entertainment proposal for this summer. Rent apartments in Budapest and come to discover the paintings of the Group of Eight and its influence in the Hungarian art.

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Translated by: Hans
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Budapest is the ideal place to reflect on the role of art and politics, and the Ludwig Museum, in its permanent collection exhibition, showcases the  intersection of contemporary art and politics.

The exhibition reflects on the social and political utopias, mines cultural memory and explores the limits of creativity in public spaces, and above all, the complex role that the artist plays in society.

These reflections are especially fraught with complex questions in the former eastern bloc, as any history of art will be wrapped up with questions of censorship, propaganda and authorship.  The different conceptual bases for art due to the repressive political climate mean that certain “apolitical” forms, such as abstract art, took on a political cast during the Cold War. In this case, abstraction became a negation of the systematic ideals of Eastern Europe and a form of rebellious expression.

The exhibition rescues many works which had been obscured by political pressures to shed new light on them for visitors. This wonderful show collects work from about fifty artists both from Hungary and various corners of the Eastern and Western European world.

Among the new acquisitions at the Ludwig, you will find work by Kaszás Tamás and István Csákány.

International artists featured include we can find the radical ideas of the Czech audiovisual  artist Faroki Harun, or a work of the Barcelona artist Antoni Muntadas, entitled “Media Monuments Budapest”  or omnipresent irony in the work the Croatian artist Mladen Stilonovic.

The Ludwig Museum specializes in contemporary art after the collectors Irene and Peter Ludwig, who made a donation of 70 works. It is the only museum of its kind in Hungary and is located in the magnificent Palace of Arts t on the Danube. Its design and size are optimal for a lovely and educational trip through contemporary Eastern European art.

The show located on the third floor of the building and will remain open until February 27^th of next year and can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 8 pm.

Walk around Budapest and attend this exhibition that traverses the metamorphosis of culture and memory to better understand the city, its history and especially major changes in the last 30 years.

Nancy Guzman

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Translated by: salome antigone
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