Content over form

IN 1948, a Communist Party official from Veszprém strutted into Siófok and scolded its assembled residents, "You are still on the wrong way toward progress, because here in Siófok, the most important people are the priest, the pharmacist, and the landlord, Imre Varga who was a member of the Hungarian Air Force."


IN 1948, a Communist Party official from Veszprém strutted into Siófok and scolded its assembled residents, "You are still on the wrong way toward progress, because here in Siófok, the most important people are the priest, the pharmacist, and the landlord, Imre Varga who was a member of the Hungarian Air Force."


Varga (pictured) heard this diatribe and decided it represented very legible handwriting on the wall. He caught the next train to Budapest. He narrated that event with gusto and then threw back his head in an explosive burst of laughter. He clearly now enjoys having been controversial.


But there were periods of his life when he avoided controversy as best he could. His very background - aristocrat and Second World War officer-pilot in the Hungarian Air Force - was a source of controversy under Communism.


Today, he looks every inch a peer of the realm, equally at home in a baronial estate or at the controls of a Messerschmitt, making reconnaissance flights over Russia.


He is more than six feet tall, slim and erect. He has what can best be described as chiseled features, a receding hairline of white hair, a mixed black and white moustache, prominent nearly-black eyebrows that cantilever prominently out of his brow, and ears that lie close to his head. During my visit with him, he wore a black crew-neck shirt with an abstractly patterned silk scarf and a gray jacket.


Varga's work is found all over Budapest and other parts of Hungary as well as in the Varga gallery in Óbuda. He has created sculptures of great Hungarians and great moments in the country's history. Much of what he sculpts is put into a wider context, including unusual details.


Whereas other sculptors show the fine shape of Béla Bartók's head, Varga's statue of the composer has him wearing a hat during a leisurely walk. Lucy Mallows once wrote in this newspaper, "Varga's style is often depicted by bronze men with long, sensitive faces, standing in long coats looking pensive: Imre Madách, Mihály Károlyi, Attila József, Ferenc Liszt.


"Then there is the spiky style seen in his depiction of wobbly chairs and pointed tree branches. The shiny metal cloak of Saint István covered in knobbly warts is another feature, and all are portrayed with great subtlety, sensitivity and a reticence, quite contrary to his outspoken personality."


Varga, born in 1923 to an aristocratic family, brushes off efforts to learn about his childhood, especially that period when - at 14 - he went to Paris where he attended an art exhibit and managed to sell some of his own paintings and drawings. He studied aerodynamic engineering at the Technical University and joined a flying club.


During the Second World War he became a pilot in the Hungarian Air Force, first as a flight instructor, then as one of about 10 fliers making reconnaissance flights in a Messerschmitt 210 over Russia. After his discharge, he found all his clothes had been stolen and he was forced to wear his officer's uniform.


Russians - occupying Hungary - arrested him and accused him of being a soldier. "But they let me go," he said.


His background as an officer and aristocrat got him into constant trouble. He was able to get a job only in a factory making components for Russian automobiles.


One day, walking along a street, he met his friend Pál Pátzay. When Varga told him where he was working, Pátzay insisted he attend the Budapest Fine Arts Academy where Pátzay was a professor.


Varga was outspoken enough on two occasions to be dismissed from the school, but Pátzay was able to get him reinstated. Varga graduated in 1956 in time for that year's revolution. He avoided direct participation, yet was charged and given a kind of probationary sentence of five years - requiring silence and no sculpting! He was not permitted to devote himself to sculpture until the 1960s.


Although Varga's hundreds of sculptures speak powerfully to most viewers, he has attracted some scorn. The primary complaint against him is that he has committed the mortal sin of accessibility. For example, art critic Géza Boros describes Varga as too "figurative".


Another writer believes he lacks "essence and intellect?. He's facile at the cost of content, and is satisfied with making an easy conquest of his audience? Every piece of art? [should have] a mystery at its heart. Varga's works have no mystery. What you see is what you get."


Which makes Varga's work sound like something in Madame Toussaud's waxwork museum. Yet, couldn't the same - "what you see is what you get" - be said about Mihály Munkácsy's Christ Before Pilate in the Debrecen museum? Certainly no mystery there.


Criticism of art because of its accessibility is a modern phenomenon. It is doubtful that it would have been voiced about Rembrandt or even the Impressionists. Not much mystery about Monet's work.


However, he has many admirers, one of whom is Nigel Thorpe, businessman and former UK ambassador to Hungary. Thorpe made an effort to create a memorial to honor the work of István Széchényi and Adam Clarke with a sculpture by Varga, but was never able to raise the necessary funds.


"Not all of Varga's work is representational," Thorpe said. "In fact, the model of what he was going to do for us [in the memorial sculpture] was abstract - the essence of it is a hand grasping the air, supported by a mass of steel work. It was an idea Varga conceived when the Communists kept him from working."


More than that, added Thorpe, "There is nothing wrong with representational art. One should have an open mind; each piece should be judged on its merits.


He has made some very, very powerful pieces. The Potato Pickers, for example is striking in its symbolism."


Varga seems oblivious to such debates. When I asked him what themes interest him, he said, "Everything interests me. Everything in connection with human life. It means that the so-called abstract is just the same as figurative works. But I have to communicate with people and this is my purpose, my personal purpose. I should like to have dialogues with people. I ask for answers. I put a question in a statue, for instance, and then watch how people react. And I get the answers and I can maybe answer the answers.


That means I am in a colloquium with people around me. In my opinion, this is the solution." Many of his themes are very powerful- Prometheus, the fire stealer, made of chromium steel tubes; the Partisan, a figure apparently on the run from an oppressor; and headless soldiers with medals driven into their chests by nails.


Varga came to grips with abstract-versus representational many years ago. "In my youth," he said, "I had to decide which way I have to go. At that time, the most famous sculptors were Henry Moore and [Auguste-Rene] Rodin on one side." On the other side were abstractionists. He decided to sculpt "like Rodin, very lifelike, very much alive, living."


He brushes away questions about the media in which he works - clay, plaster of paris (to create molds for brass statues), and metal welding, since he is more concerned with content than form. ("Media is totally unimportant. Do I ask whether you use pen, pencil or typewriter?")


Now 80, he apparently has no plans to retire. In fact, he currently has three commissions for sculptures. He spends Saturday mornings 10 to 12 at the gallery in Óbuda (District III, Laktanya utca 7) and - since he speaks English and other languages - is graciously accessible to visitors.




20.05.2004