Artistic Observations

Visual Arts

Impressions of a plaster city
Budapest is a city built quickly, during a few spectacular years of wealth, ca 1880 to 1900. Hungarian architects of this period, forced to put up spectacular buildings overnight, became masters of stucco and plaster work, which covered homey brick bases. Buildings were never plain during this period, but always featured some kind of interesting decoration. Colourful ceramics were also used, especially under the direction of the Secessionist architect Odon Lechner (1845-1914), and while these have often retained their original splendour, most of the other architectural elements of the city have suffered years of neglect. WWII did not destroy the city as badly as one would think. It is only after the second world war, when Hungary became a communist state, that the city's architecture suffered. The violent peoples' revolution of 1956 caused much damage, including bullet holes that can sometimes be spotted still dotting facades. In the 50's and 60's, many of the previous century's large, beautiful buildings were divided up into horrible apartment units. As the need for practical housing grew, communist apartment blocks went up, devoid of any decoration or elements considered unnecessary. The 19th-century buildings fell into neglect and accumulated dirt. The plaster started to fall off, revealing brick skeletons, but there was no money nor desire, it seems, to fix them. After 1989 some restoration programs have taken place, but the city is still a fascinating mix of styles and contrasts.

Architecture: some Secessionist facades and other periods
My favourite period by far is the Austro-Hungarian answer to Art Nouveau, called Secession (also visible in Vienna). This style, whose major proponent was Odon Lechner, was (in Budapest) conceived of as being typically Hungarian, truly eastern, deriving from folk designs but incorporating eastern influences (possibly due to the long Turkish occupation of the country). As a result I photographed a lot of examples of this style. But interesting also is the assortment of "historicist" styles, glances back to all periods of western art history, with imitations of gothic, baroque and classical art often mixed together anachronistically.

A corner of the Mucsarnok museum	Secessionism on vaci utca
Neo-Baroque on castle hill		A contrast: the benefits of restoration	Transitional modernism geometric facade

The seedy side: Ugly Budapest
It seems important to point out some examples of the more regular buildings or more normal looking streets -- it is easy for a tourist to photograph 19th century buildings because this is what we are likely to find beautiful. But it is also historically interesting to document 1970's apartment buildings and other, even earlier communist elements. Most of the latter have been removed from the city, as if removing communist sculpture (to a purpose-designed park in the suburbs) was enough to remove years of opression from peoples' memories and years of accumulated dirt from the city's buildings.

A very normal street	Typical communist block housing, with a squarish tram and advertising for expensive things.

Matayas Church
This church is one of my favourite places in Budapest. The 13th century origins of this Gothic church may be found in a stone or two, but, after a series of occupations and other functions, the original structure of the building is all but obscure. In the late 19th century it was "restored" by the architect Frigyes Schulek, who finished it in 1896. Every surface in the interior of the church is entirely covered in colourful painted patterns by the artist Bertalan Szekely. The result is what I would call "Disneyland Gothic": the patterns are supposedly of Gothic inspiration but also work in folk tradition, floral motifs and numerous disctinctly Art Nouveau elements. The church now houses the crown of St. Stephen, the country's oldest treasure and also the most valuable. It is excellently presented in a dedicated room in the triforium (upstairs level), where there are explanatory signs in numerous languages. There is a small entry fee to the building (600 ft) which is well worth it for the excellent lighting and full access it provides.

General view	Detail of window and decoration, inside right of facade	The crossing vaults	A northern-style late 16th century carved altarpiece
A chapel crossing vault			An art nouveau motif
stained glass	Disneyland stairwell		The oldest thing in the city: St. Stephen's Byzantine crown

The Decorative Arts Museum (Iparmuveszeti Museum)
The fabulous building built in 1872 by Odon Lechner, the prime architect of Budapest's Secession movement, houses an impressive permanent collection of decorative arts modelled on that of London's V+A. Unfortunately, for reasons completely obscure to the general public and even to museum staff, none of this collection is actually on display (and attempts to consult items in storage for study purposes are not well met). It is likely due to lack of funds. Temporary exhibitions are shown in some of the exhibition spaces. We saw an show on Zsolnay ceramics, decorative works produced from the late nineteenth century onwards in the southern Hungarian town of Pecs. While the company produced tea ware, vases and stuff, their work was considered particularly apt for architectural decoration, because of a special heat and cold resistant glaze. The decorative arts museum itself is ornamented with these ceramics, and there is a section of the exhibition dedicated to this, with some of the original plans exposed.
The building is an exciting example of decorative art in itself. A brick and stucco facade are topped by a green roof punctuated with domes. The domes have yellow pinnacles that stick out and give the impression that the building is constantly in movement, like it is dancing a jig. White floral plaques articulate the faux-stone architecture. The main door is located within a grand antichamber, where the movement calms down but you are affronted with a riot of colour and pattern. Brick and stone hold up a flower chaped ceramic ceiling of yellow and white, with a beautiful floral pattern. You are led up the staircase by a wacky yellow ceramic glazed handrail. Just inside the door, you look up into an irregular opening, three stories high, to a tiffany-type stained glass of most unusual shape, that plays with convex and concave curves. Beyond this darker section of the entrance hall, however, you are struck by the contrast of the light-filled white interior to the green and white exterior. The main exhibition spaces all look onto a central opening that is topped with a wrought iron and glass ceiling reminiscent of 19th century Paris. The white stucco interior was likely designed to provide a light and neutral backdrop to the museum's colourful collection.

Exterior from left corner	Above the main entrance	Entrance antichamber	Zsolnay ceiling in entrance antichamber
The entrance hall opening	The central hall	Some Zsolnay vases
	Tiles from the building itself in the exhibition	The entrance hall skylight

The main market (and other purveyors of fine foods)
The market is the place where all tourists should go to purchase salami to take home (within the EU of course!). Otherwise you can pack your suitcase full of paprika. The floors are remarkably clean and the market does not smell bad as one might expect (like the San Lorenzo market in Florence, for example). The upstairs has prepared food and tourist items galore.

The outside of the main market	A meat vendor	Paprika and garlic, what else?	Another meat vendor.
salami	salami man	A paprika store	An olive and nut vending machine?!

Music and Theatre

The Music Academy (Zeneakademia)
We were privileged to go see the renowned Hungarian Chopinist Tamas Vasary at a "New Years" concert on January 2, 2005. This was held at the fabulous Music Academy, a prime example of Secessionist architecture decorated with Zsolnay ceramics and Hungarian Pre-Raphaelite fresco painting. My photos do not do it justice as I did not feel it appropriate to use flash (although others did). The sumptuous entry halls on both levels, painted by the greatest exponents of the Pre-Raphaellite movement in Hungary, are only an appetizer to the grand concert space, dominated by the largest pipe organ that I have ever seen. The ceiling is covered in a golden overlay-leaf pattern, punctuated by neo-classical stucco reliefs.
The concert itself was an unfortunate hybrid of solo piano and solo ballet. While Vasary was predicitably solid in his performance, we were "graced" by the dance of an ungraceful ballerina, which resulted in point-shoe clunks at inopportune musical moments. Nonetheless, the dance could be avoided by gazing up at the fantastic ceiling.

Fresco in the upper lobby	The concert ticket	the concert flyer	Concert hall with organ
	detail of the main hall	Detail in upper lobby

Az Operahaz Fantomja
How many people do you know who can say that they spend New Years Eve seeing "The Phantom of the Opera" in Hungarian?! From our third-row seats we had a perfect view of the actors. Although we couldn't understand a word, the singing, dancing and sets were fabulous, and the Hungarian language is sufficiently soft and pleasant to not be distracting. The theatre itself was built in the 60's though, and was not nearly as cool as the music academy, but then again it is better not to be distracted by architecture when you go see a play.