COURAGE

povezovanje zbirk

The agent who went by the cover name “Tamás Fehér” submitted a report about his meetings and talks with István Malgot, during which he attempted to learn about Malgot’s political views. He wrote about Malgot’s ’minimal and maximal political program in 1976. According to Malgot’s maximal program, ideally technocrat scientists, artists, and officials would govern the socialist state. The role of the family would decrease, and instead of families, communes would be created based on love and work. The commune would be a form of existence not only for the free artist but also for the other workers, and it would constitute a reform to tradition practices of child rearing. The minimal program involved the group’s activity, which consisted not only of artistic work but also of a struggle against manipulation and for democracy. The political police judged István Malgot’s political views as antisocial.

János Gémes (“Dixi”), the poet. Here he is in live speech, constantly provoking situations around him, like it is depicted in the photo, on the terrace of the Kárpátia restaurant, most probably in 1969. Dixi was a well-known, ubiquitous persona of the Budapest nightlife for decades.

He delivered endless monologues, orated in an associative manner, creating connections between the beginning and the end of a sentence with word play, twirling a few times the texture. He was a baffling personality, often grandiose, many times provocative, sometimes aggressive. He saw through people and never cared about the consequences.

The author of the photo is unknown. It is probably cut out from a larger photograph, as the edge is jagged. The most interesting feature of the photograph is that someone pegged out the eye of the protagonist with a needle. According to Zuzu this gesture is feminine.

Gábor Bódy introduced Dixi to Zuzu in 1971. At that time Dixi lived temporarily across the street from Zuzu at a guy’s apartment who was in the business of tailoring blue jeans—a hot, rare commodity at that time. He was a habitué at the Kárpátia, and people favored his company. He usually sat on the terrace, close to the entrance, from where it was possible to look into the restaurant as well as onto the street. He was older than them (they were still in high school, Bódy a university student).

Many students, artists, writers, poets, and musicians were hanging out at Kárpátia in those times, practically forming a regular audience. Zuzu, together with his friend Gomba (Erzsébet Gombás, one of the main characters of the film The Third by Gábor Bódy), went there often after school. This photo has preserved the familiar setting.

The triptych M.K. Čiurlioniui (M.K. Čiurlionis [1875-1911] was a famous Lithuanian artist and composer) was created in December 1962, at exactly the same time that the leader of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev criticised the Second Exhibition of Modern Art in the Manezh Gallery in Moscow. Following this ideological campaign, the artist Antanas Gudaitis (1904-1989) was criticised in Soviet Lithuania. He was blamed for deviating from Socialist Realism. While no actual works by the painter were mentioned during this ideological campaign, Gudaitis himself believed that it was because of his triptych (see Lubytė, E. 1997, Tylusis modernizmas Lietuvoje [Quiet Modernism in Lithuania], Vilnius, p. 88). 

Antoine and Désiré can be considered a concept album. Released in 1978, it was Cseh’s second album. The protagonists mentioned in the title appear on the sleeve, thanks to the photo series by János Vető. They are impersonated by two people who were well known in underground circles of the time: Dixi, the poet and Zuzu, the painter. Two (fictional) biographies are also included.

As the author of the lyrics, Géza Bereményi, notes in his account, Dixi and Zuzu only lent their faces to the cover photos. The biographies reveal two typical life stories from the 1970s, one person who earns reasonably well and another who is less successful in career, nonetheless they remain friends, in spite of their different fates. According to the authorial account, they were inspired by archetype of the white and the red clown, so all the songs on the album can be considered parts of a series of clown pranks. The red clown is Désiré: the saunterer, an awkward kid; the white is Antoine: the successful adult.