Squaring the circle of tradition in contemporary art

Abstract

Gombrich established the paradigmatical discussion of tradition and innovation in art in his presentation of the relationship between Renaissance, on the one hand, and the ancient and gothic art on the other hand. Unlike the Renaissance, contemporary art is not able to innovatively feed upon the living artistic tradition. On the one hand, the rapid appearance and disappearance of the post-impressionism “isms” did not allow for the consolidation of a stable and transferable tradition. On the other hand, the requirement of originality in modernist art makes it difficult to connect to any tradition. If it wishes to engage in dialogue with the tradition, contemporary art has to turn toward folk tradition and folk art that is characteristic of the world’s nations. It may do so in one of two ways: either with the intention of preservation or with the intention of an ironic comment. The paper will discuss artists and artworks from Romanian and Hungarian contemporary art spaces, exemplifying this dual attitude. The approach to folk tradition, if the ethos of contemporary art directs it, cannot consist merely of its reinforcement through repetition but has to be in any case an innovative procedure. Innovative artworks that relate with veneration or ironically to folk tradition can preserve a tradition that is otherwise eroded by time and its cultural proximity to kitsch.