Pottery, Politics and Identity: Three Hungarian Ceramicists and the Central European Diaspora

作为一种媒介，陶瓷一直是匈牙利设计的核心。这个项目的主要目标有两个：首先，在两次世界大战期间匈牙利设计、艺术和建筑的更广泛背景下概述陶瓷，强调妇女作为制造者和设计师的贡献；其次，通过追踪三位女性个人的不同职业和声誉轨迹，揭示中欧动荡的政治对这一代设计师的影响。这项研究的核心三位杰出的女性，伊娃·泽泽尔(生于1906年)，马尔吉特·科瓦奇(1902-1977)和莉莉·马库斯(1900-1962)，都在两次世界大战期间接受过陶艺培训，后来在国际上获得了显赫的地位。她们的职业道路表明，在一个政治、经济和种族不确定的时期，女性设计师面临着复杂的机会和限制。蔡塞尔现年100岁，仍然为耐克和古驰等公司设计服装，并被描述为“绝对是二十世纪最伟大的设计师之一”(克里斯托弗·威尔克，维多利亚与阿尔伯特博物馆)。20世纪20年代，她在布达佩斯和德国之间工作，1932年移居苏联。1936年，她被囚禁在那里，最终得以前往美国，在那里，她的事业在1946年纽约现代艺术博物馆的一次展览后开始起步。莉莉·马库斯也是在布达佩斯接受培训的，上世纪30年代，她在米兰、布鲁塞尔、巴黎、柏林和纽约举办的国际展览上赢得了赞誉--她的建筑陶瓷和较小的独立物品。然而，在布达佩斯日益增长的反犹太主义氛围的压迫下，她于1939年与家人离开匈牙利，来到英国定居(拒绝了埃利埃尔·萨里宁的邀请，与他在底特律的克兰布鲁克学院一起学习)。1939年在华沙举办的一场大型回顾展遭到破坏后，她的作品几乎没有幸存下来，此后她在英国的艺术实践也遇到了困难。本研究的第三位设计师Margit Kovács曾在布达佩斯、维也纳、慕尼黑学习过，并曾短暂地在哥本哈根和巴黎学习过，他在20世纪30年代与马库斯一起成功举办了展览。她是二战后留在匈牙利的三人中唯一的一个，在那里，她的陶器受到了共产主义当局的青睐，被认为是典型的匈牙利人，并在国内外展出。作为匈牙利多个奖项的获得者，她在1953年至1971年间举办了多个个展。1973年，她的作品博物馆在Szentendre开放，这是匈牙利第一个专门展示女性艺术家的博物馆，在那里它仍然是一个受欢迎的旅游景点。如此不同的成就和结果不仅反映了设计师个人的审美选择，也反映了塑造当今设计价值观的更大力量。从这个意义上说，该项目不仅包括三项专题研究，而且还包括一系列测试案例，这些案例将证明在个人无法控制的更大的国际背景下，实际问题和理论问题之间的不同相互作用。显而易见的是，这些女性的历史，以及她们后来的关键命运，并不是一成不变的成功或失败的历史，而是所有中欧设计师不得不在不同的环境下做出不同反应的历史。这项研究还将探讨设计价值在“国际主义”时代的国际化程度，以及工作方法和审美形式在匈牙利和它们工作的国家之间的适应性。希望在英美和匈牙利期刊上发表学术文章，并辅之以在线获取以前未发表的图像和文本，将为扩大艺术史学术领域做出重大贡献，这一领域正开始重新融入更广泛的欧洲和国际框架内，如匈牙利。

As a medium ceramics have been central to perceptions of Hungarian design. The broad aims of this project are twofold: firstly, to provide an overview of ceramics in the wider context of Hungarian design, art and architecture of the interwar period, with an emphasis on women's contribution as makers and designers; secondly, through tracking the very different trajectories of three individual women's careers and reputations, to shed light on the impact that the turbulent politics of Central Europe had on designers of this generation.The three remarkable women at the core of this study, Eva Zeisel (b.1906), Margit Kovács (1902-77) and Lili Markus (1900-62), all trained as ceramicists in interwar Hungary and went on to achieve international prominence. Their career paths reveal the mixed opportunities and restrictions faced by women designers in a period of political, economic and ethnic uncertainty. Zeisel, now 100, still designs for firms like Nike and Gucci and has been described as 'absolutely one of the greats of the twentieth-century' (Christopher Wilk, V&A Museum). In the 1920s she worked between Budapest and Germany before moving to the Soviet Union in 1932. Imprisoned there in 1936, she was eventually able to make her way to the USA, where her career took off following a 1946 exhibition at MoMA, New York. Also trained in Budapest, Lili Markus was winning acclaim by the 1930s at international exhibitions staged in Milan, Brussels, Paris, Berlin and New York - both for her architectural ceramics and smaller freestanding objects. Oppressed by the increasingly anti-semitic climate of Budapest, however, she left Hungary with her family in 1939 to settle in Britain (turning down an invitation from Eliel Saarinen to join him at the Cranbrook Academy in Detroit). Little of her work survived the destruction of a major 1939 retrospective exhibition staged in Warsaw, and she had difficulty sustaining her artistic practice thereafter in Britain. The third designer featured in this study, Margit Kovács, having studied in Budapest, Vienna, Munich, and briefly in Copenhagen and Paris, exhibited successfully alongside Markus in the 1930s. She was the only one of the three to remain in Hungary after World War 2, where her ceramics found favour with the communist authorities as 'characteristically Hungarian', and were showcased at home and abroad. As the recipient of numerous Hungarian awards, there were solo exhibitions of her work in between 1953 and 1971. Then in 1973 a museum of her work, the first dedicated to a female artist in Hungary, opened in Szentendre, where it remains a popular tourist attraction. Such different achievements and outcomes reflect not only the aesthetic choices of individual designers, but also the larger forces that shaped the design values of the day. In that sense, this project does not merely consist of three monographic studies, but a series of test cases that will demonstrate the diverse interaction of practical and theoretical issues in a larger international context that has been subject to forces beyond the control of the individual. As will be obvious, the history of these women, and their later critical fortunes, is not one of uniform success or failure, but of differing responses to circumstances that all designers from Central Europe had to operate within. This study will also explore the extent to which design values were international in an age of 'Internationalism', and the adaptability of working methods and aesthetic forms between Hungary and the countries in which they worked.It is hoped that the publication of scholarly articles in both Anglo-American and Hungarian journals, complemented by online access to previously unpublished images and texts will make a significant contribution to an expanding area of art historical scholarship that is beginning to reintegrate countries like Hungary within a broader European and international framework.