Folk Art and Folk Artists in Hungary [antikvár]

I 1 ivl'.i'V'. V-,-'. ^ i. , ' II 1. "r INTRODUCTION For many centuries Hungarian peasants have fashioned and embellished their objects of everyday use, their work implements, and often their clothes, with great artistry. The Hungarian folk art of today, or more accurately the contemporary applied art of the Hungarian peasantry, is rooted in the rich decorative traditions of the past centuries. It can be clearly established from the material handed down by tradition and from the written records, that this simplified collective art had, in the course of the centuries, several revivals, when it found the strength to create new styles. After each revival it faded only to become reanimated again at each successive renaissance with a much broader social range through the intermediary of classical traditions. Dealing with the part played by traditions, C. P. Saintyves, one of the great experts in French folklore, wrote in his Manuel de folklore, published in 1933: "Folklore is a study of traditions, and for this reason its first task is to collect and classify the facts that make up tradition; after this it must explain their nature or traditional essence Folk tradition cannot be compared to buried treasure: it is a now of all kinds of richness, an infinite succession of thousands of human inventions enjoyed by the peoples of civilized nations. Traditions, like the stars, perform the miracle of perpetual motion." "Let us take good care," wrote Gyula Juhász, one of the most important Hungarian poets of the early twentieth century, "that the people who sing, the people who create myths, the women who draw pictures and the men who carve wood and bone do not become extinct, for their extinction would mean the end of mankind. Let us preserve, collect and disseminate their works; let us learn from them; let their art which is as permanent as nature and as continuous as history become a part of our own living soul."