The nuptials of Eros and Thanatos
Not many people know the name of figurative artist Csaba Fazakas in Hungary yet, but those who have seen his newest pictures in Galéria IX hardly understand where he has been hiding so far. The wall is lined with black and white paintings oozing with dramatic power. Last time I felt similarly overwhelmed was when I saw the visions of Goya, Picasso and Saura, not of course the film director, but his brother Antonio.
The ancient commandment of “hit or run“ clutches my stomach. In this special room of mirrors, instead of the artificial beauty of fashion magazines and advertisements we face some ancient, gut truth: we see the grand Venuses of Willendorf, musculous corpuses [?], frightening shadowy creatures are swarming all around. Instead of the excessively ornamented, plasticized postmodern reality of the trinity of Eros, Phallos, and Thanatos works as some profane prayer. The figures unfolding from the dark seem increasingly realistic: they eat lustfully, make love in hot excitement, and crave, and eventually get bored and go to rest. Arousing desires, embraces, simultaneous existences, moon-faced creatures … and finally the certainty of loneliness. Fallen angels devour Christ` body, along with the promise of redemption. They no longer fly with their sooty wings, and they no longer compete with Icarus. They`ve gotten stuck down here among us.
- but if angels turn into humans, what shall us humans turn into? Of course, we are also, in theory, granted the alternative of rising or falling. We either work our way steadily toward Light or we sink into horrible Nothingness. And although there is hope for escape, fear and anxiety of subsistence increasingly overpower us apostate modern men. As slaves of Mammon we lose the very last pecks of our dignity. Our existence is marked down by everyday lies instead of being uplifted by myths. Living minute-by-minute, heading for our annihilation, it looks as though we are forgetting that both passion and suffering may be born out of the nuptials of Eros and Thanatos.
Splotches dark as night, vibrations, soft-and-gentle grayness, and lustrous whiteness … the paint drying on its downward course alongside the tenseness of scratched-back lines as of nerve fibres … hard and soft, dark and light, rigid, and flexible almost dance, almost shriek. Ecstasy taming into silence, the desire for life and death, light and darkness alternate in the pictures of Csaba Fazakas. Only a par excellence graphic artist can give up the magic power of colours in order to focus our diffused attention to the essence of things. Harmony is lost forever (?), the thousand year old esthetics of Chinese calligraphy is superseded by the agitated world of Pollock and graffiti.
Sitting at the table of a smoky underworld café Picasso, Miro, Klee and Dubuffet squint their eyes in complicity as if saying: Look! This Csaba kid is not at all so bad! That of course qualifies as a serious praise by the inventors of “peripheral art“ as it was them after all, who revolutionised 20th century figurative art expropriating and integrating into grand art African masks, children`s drawings, naïve artists, and the mentally ill. Shoulder to shoulder with their innovative fellow artists they have created adequate, new esthetics to a radically changed world. Similarly to generations of artists of the early 20th century and the post-WW2 period, artists of the turn of the millennium must also face up to a major challenge. Inflation, recession, segregation, discrimination, all amidst growing violence. We have reason to be truly proud; we have created a brave new world. The global economic crisis and climate change cast their threatening shadow over the life of modern man. The predictable consequences of our egocentrism will alert us to what is at stake, hopefully before it is too late. Science and art may – in a best case scenario – become each other`s allies. While the young generation is still going the way of experimentation benefiting from an ever widening range of opportunities, and brand new technological miracles, the more mature artist embraces the role of the vates.
Csaba Fazakas, born in Transylvania, schooled in Bucharest, Budapest, Vienna, and Pécs is – despite his classic education – a subscriber of more expressive trends, and a staunch admirer [believer in?] of art brut. Even this “raw, untamed, hiding art“ transubstantiates at the touch of his brush. Relying on his psychological and therapeutic studies, and of course his own memories and experience he reports – with unmitigated sincerity, but top standard artistic tools – events of one of the most exciting stages: the inner universe of man. The only remaining question is if we are willing to follow him, and lock eyes with – ourselves.
Judit Sárosdy
art historian
Not many people know the name of figurative artist Csaba Fazakas in Hungary yet, but those who have seen his newest pictures in Galéria IX hardly understand where he has been hiding so far. The wall is lined with black and white paintings oozing with dramatic power. Last time I felt similarly overwhelmed was when I saw the visions of Goya, Picasso and Saura, not of course the film director, but his brother Antonio.
The ancient commandment of “hit or run“ clutches my stomach. In this special room of mirrors, instead of the artificial beauty of fashion magazines and advertisements we face some ancient, gut truth: we see the grand Venuses of Willendorf, musculous corpuses [?], frightening shadowy creatures are swarming all around. Instead of the excessively ornamented, plasticized postmodern reality of the trinity of Eros, Phallos, and Thanatos works as some profane prayer. The figures unfolding from the dark seem increasingly realistic: they eat lustfully, make love in hot excitement, and crave, and eventually get bored and go to rest. Arousing desires, embraces, simultaneous existences, moon-faced creatures … and finally the certainty of loneliness. Fallen angels devour Christ` body, along with the promise of redemption. They no longer fly with their sooty wings, and they no longer compete with Icarus. They`ve gotten stuck down here among us.
- but if angels turn into humans, what shall us humans turn into? Of course, we are also, in theory, granted the alternative of rising or falling. We either work our way steadily toward Light or we sink into horrible Nothingness. And although there is hope for escape, fear and anxiety of subsistence increasingly overpower us apostate modern men. As slaves of Mammon we lose the very last pecks of our dignity. Our existence is marked down by everyday lies instead of being uplifted by myths. Living minute-by-minute, heading for our annihilation, it looks as though we are forgetting that both passion and suffering may be born out of the nuptials of Eros and Thanatos.
Splotches dark as night, vibrations, soft-and-gentle grayness, and lustrous whiteness … the paint drying on its downward course alongside the tenseness of scratched-back lines as of nerve fibres … hard and soft, dark and light, rigid, and flexible almost dance, almost shriek. Ecstasy taming into silence, the desire for life and death, light and darkness alternate in the pictures of Csaba Fazakas. Only a par excellence graphic artist can give up the magic power of colours in order to focus our diffused attention to the essence of things. Harmony is lost forever (?), the thousand year old esthetics of Chinese calligraphy is superseded by the agitated world of Pollock and graffiti.
Sitting at the table of a smoky underworld café Picasso, Miro, Klee and Dubuffet squint their eyes in complicity as if saying: Look! This Csaba kid is not at all so bad! That of course qualifies as a serious praise by the inventors of “peripheral art“ as it was them after all, who revolutionised 20th century figurative art expropriating and integrating into grand art African masks, children`s drawings, naïve artists, and the mentally ill. Shoulder to shoulder with their innovative fellow artists they have created adequate, new esthetics to a radically changed world. Similarly to generations of artists of the early 20th century and the post-WW2 period, artists of the turn of the millennium must also face up to a major challenge. Inflation, recession, segregation, discrimination, all amidst growing violence. We have reason to be truly proud; we have created a brave new world. The global economic crisis and climate change cast their threatening shadow over the life of modern man. The predictable consequences of our egocentrism will alert us to what is at stake, hopefully before it is too late. Science and art may – in a best case scenario – become each other`s allies. While the young generation is still going the way of experimentation benefiting from an ever widening range of opportunities, and brand new technological miracles, the more mature artist embraces the role of the vates.
Csaba Fazakas, born in Transylvania, schooled in Bucharest, Budapest, Vienna, and Pécs is – despite his classic education – a subscriber of more expressive trends, and a staunch admirer [believer in?] of art brut. Even this “raw, untamed, hiding art“ transubstantiates at the touch of his brush. Relying on his psychological and therapeutic studies, and of course his own memories and experience he reports – with unmitigated sincerity, but top standard artistic tools – events of one of the most exciting stages: the inner universe of man. The only remaining question is if we are willing to follow him, and lock eyes with – ourselves.
Judit Sárosdy
art historian
