The Necessity of Writing Local Art History in the Global Context

Abstract

In the midst of an increasingly global culture it is necessary to construct a local narrative because nobody else but local scholars will construct it. If, for example, the history of Hungarian Modernism is described in the terms of the West European artistic currents only, as a journey from realism to impressionism and post-impressionism to art nouveau to symbolism to expressionism, cubism, constructivism and so forth, as we have been doing it for decades, some of the most significant Hungarian artists are remaining unacknowledged. There is hardly any international category for Egry, Vajda, Farkas, Kondor or Veszelszky, to mention but a few names; but even those Hungarian artists who more or less fit into the above stylistic brackets are getting a simplified reading and understanding. It is the collective task of local art historians to construct their distinctive narrative.