(view from the hotel room - staying at the InterContinental. On the Palace, Buda side, across from the Danube...which of course is not "blue"...although it could have been red at this time...not a very nice allusion on my part - to the "red sludge" crisis that has afflicted the country!)
Managed to take a few hours to reacquaint myself with this city, and had a whole Saturday to do so as well – staying “behind” to take advantage of a major economy in the airfare (a few thousand dollars!) if one stays over until Sunday…
Several exhibitions. First at the Museum of Fine Arts www.mfab.hu, a monumental construction, a hundred years old, flanking the Place of Heroes.
Nuda Veritas. Gustav Klimt and the Origins of the Vienna Secession 1895–1905, primarily sketches and drawings done in preparation of major pieces – such as the Beethoven frieze – depicting an extraordinarily productive period – no less than 23 exhibitions within that decade – that signified in good part the birth of Modern Art. A few paintings, such as this celebrated one, Nuda Veritas, by Klimt (but no portrait of Miss Bloch-Bauer that sits pretty, at $135Million, in the the Neue Galerie Museum in New-York!)
Then Fernando Botero’s paintings, quite a collection – some 60 pieces and a video on Botero at work - paintings and a few sculptures of his characteristically rotund and voluptuous personages – I probably for the first time noted in particular the luminosity of the work by this prolific contemporary Columbian-born artist.
And finally, still at the Fine Arts Museum, some 100 photos by the Hungarian-born photographer Lucien Hervé, who lived mostly in Paris – hence the French name – focusing particularly on architectural pieces, notably Le Corbusier’s, but also other of more human interest, such as souvenirs of a visit in India (below).
Visited as well temporary exhibitions at the Hungary National Gallery (www.mng.hu/en): Munkácsy: The Christ Trilogy, includes probably this Hungarian painter’s best known work – “Christ before Ponce Pilate” first shown in Paris in 1880 (thanks to celebrated French art-dealer Charles Sedelmeyer; painting is now owned by a Canadian of American-Hungarian descent I read somewhere!) – huge scale paintings of the Christ’s passion, including one scene of the crucifixion on the Golgotha.
Art and Nation: Image and Self-Image, a testament to the efforts of the Hungarians to “level up” to the rest of Europe, by establishing a relationship between art and the concept of the nation from the end of the 18th century to the First World War…laudable effort!
Perhaps, most enigmatic is Ropsodies Hongroises. Félicien Rops Master of Belgian Symbolism, the work of this 19th century Belgian artist, quite taken by his (short) travel in Hungary, and probably best remembered for his very explicit and exquisite erotic sketches and paintings, the expression of his challenging the bourgeois society of the day. Safely tuck away on the last floor of the Gallery, away from the Christ Trilogy! Below, “La tentation de Saint-Antoine”
(Robs was a friend of Baudelaire, and hang around with other artists of “ill-repute” – no wonders!)
A quick visit at the Hungary National Museum (www.hnm.hu) to see the work of the local photographer Karoly Hemzo, “Hemző City”, showing Budapest and the life of ordinary people over the last 60 years or so and sporting events (a great snapshot of Emil Zatopek, the great Czech long-distance runner, a household name for those interested in Track & Fields competition at the Olympics!)
Below: view of the "Chain Bridge" from inside the Tunnel in Buda
