Kovásznai [antikvár]

PAUL WELLS PREFACE •PERCEPTION IN TERMS OF MOVEMENT': KOVÁSZNAI - AN ANIMATED SOUL You never know when history will insist upon its recovery; when the past will reassert itself and suddeiUy draw attention to something orüy some had valued, only some thought was lost, only some knew of in the first place. When Hungarian art historian, Gergely Barki noticed Róbert Berény's exquisite 'Sleeping Lady with Black Vase', an art deco portrait of Eta, his second vrife, in the background of one of the sets hi the part-animated HoUywood feature, Stuart Little (Dir: Rob Minkoff, USA, 1999), he igrüted interest in the popular press worldwide. Berény was a polymath across the arts and sciences; a contemporary of Henri Matisse; a friend and portraitist of Béla Bartók; a lover of Marlene Dietrich; a post-First World War émigré; a doyen of Budapest arts culhire. Like many artists, though, his works left Hungary with Jewish owners fleeing incipient racism and persecution, and entered a cultural diaspora, and he himself saw little financial, social or even proper artistic recognition. Few outside of Hungary, or the narrow interests of art historians, have heard of him, yet his work is extraordinary. His story in many respects is not unfamiliar. Animation scholars may well have been watching Stuart Little for different reasons - the impressive computer animation, for example, or the representation of a mouse, another in the long procession since Mickey, and the rise of the Disney studio in the 1930s. In recent years, though, the animation scholar, if not preoccupied with theoretical nuances or geru-e analysis, is looking to excavate, to recover, to celebrate animators and artists long Ú1 need of recognition and promotion. Radomir Pavicevic's single-minded attention to the work of Croatian Oscar winner, Dusan Vukotic; Ondiej Beránek's documentary study and curatorial work on Czech director, Karel Zeman; Tjitte De Vries & Ati Mul's exhaustive research on British stop-motion pioneer, Arthur Melbotnne Cooper; Birgit Beumers' important hitervention on Russian choreographer and animator, Alexander Shiryaev; and the National Media Museum's work in association with the Animation Academy, Loughborough University, making documentaries about TVC's John Coates, producer Claire Jennings, animation director Geoff Dunbar, puppet-making studio, Mackinnon & Saunders, and former ASIFA president, producer and director, Hungarian, John Halas - of whom, more later.' Brigitta Iványi-Bitter's work on György Kovásznál is another necessary step in the recovery of absent but significant artists in the animation and broader arts field. Passionate and hugely invested, the discussion uses, reproduces and interrogates important elements of Kovásznai's ouvre, analysing his largely tm-exhibited paintings, unpublished essays and creative works, and his little seen animated films. The Animation commurüty owes her and her research colleagues a huge debt of gratitude in that reassessing and drawing attention to Kovásznai's work also opens a window on so many other contexts - pre- and post-Stalinist arts culture in Hungary; animation and its currencies across Europe from the 1950s onwards; the role and function of the animator-artist in the arts and society in general; the vital investment of scholars and practitioners as researchers and historians in preserving and conserving 'lost worlds'. Bizarrely, the social and cultural status of animation particularly has stayed persistently low even as its works have unpacked across multimedia platforms and become the quintessential aspect of moving image culture in the contemporary era; an art then, constantly hiding in plain sight. Iványi-Bittei's efforts, though, insist that Kovásznai is the latest significant artist through whom philosophic, aestheHc and cultural principles can be read via the prism of animated film, and equally, his paintings and writings. György Kovásznai was clearly a gifted animator-artist; his paintings like his films imbued with mutability, motion and liminal images. Animation merely facilitated and extended the mobility of his figures and