Krisztina Üveges | Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (English)
Channel: CEAD / Central European Art Database
Date: 2016-06-15

http://www.cead.space | Playing with the Fire – State security and serigraphy | My topic is the activity of the Hungarian state security police in the art scene, focused on the surveillance of the artists working in the field of serigraphy.
Behind the Iron Curtain, the equipment for graphical reproduction were controlled, in order to avoid printing politically sensitive materials in a greater volume. The research, in preparation of the exhibition entitled The History of Makó Graphic Artists‘ Colony, 1977–1990 revealed that the artistic and political samizdat have significant personal and methodological context, although those were created by different purposes.
In Hungary, printmaking with photo-based procedures, as silkscreen and offset were not available for artistic purposes, such machines could been only used illegally by the artists. Due to that censorship could hardly cope with the conceptual and aesthetic problems, certain artists were treated as possible threat against the state. The situation was complicated by the fact that artists had personal connections with the political opposing, also with foreign artist, gallerists, so it was easy to declare the artistic pursuits as actions to overthrow the socialist political system.
As I searched through the Historical Archive of the Hungarian State Security, the question raised: How could we use and accept these documents as sources for the history of art. Using the above mentioned exhibition as a case study, I investigate the divert possibilities of using the state security documents, to have a better understanding on the cultural and political background of the art of the seventies.