D O C U M E N T - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

D O C U M E N T

hIdden green by MIkLÓs erdÉLy

esZter bartholy

Erdély spread hay over approximately four-fi fths of the 12 × 5 m fl oor of
the Budaörs Cultural Center. He left the remaining one-fi fth near the
entrance uncovered. The door, illuminated by a spotlight, was painted
black along with the adjacent area in order to prevent refl ections of the
spotlight. The space was dominated by a homogeneous green light.

About two meters from the door, at the edge of the hay, a small

desk and a chair stood concealed by a low folding screen. Visitors
could sit down, refl ect on the exhibition, writing in green pencil on
white paper by the green light of a small desk lamp. On further explo-
ration, one would also discover a broom and an empty white circle in
the hay.

All of this, and especially the green light, was meant to place the
visitor into a state of reverie, which was also fostered by the elongated
shape of the objects: the corn broom leaning against the wall had a spe-
cially lengthened handle, and the comblike object in the middle of the
room was taller than a person, bei 2.20 M. This object consisted of a
wood pulp board, 1.5 × 1.5 m in size, resting on about 50 wooden slats
that were 10 mm wide and deep. The board nailed to the slats was
wrapped in tracing paper and also stuffed with paper, which created the
effect of a fl oating, puffy cloud supported by the slats.

The full width of the back wall of the room opposite the entrance

was covered with corrugated cardboard, which was placed at a slight

102

https://doi.org/10.1162/artm_a_00317

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angle to the wall, like an awning, and did not reach all the way down to
the hay-covered floor. Some hay was piled up on top, evoking [the mood]
of a feeding station in the woods and allowing one to crouch under-
unter. Crouching under the awning and looking up, one would see a
clean green line of felt illuminated by white light, like a horizon line
running along the edge of the corrugated cardboard meeting the wall.
The thin green felt strip with the white light had a sobering effect: Es
indicated an opening, a window from this bubble of reverie. The green
of the strip was an objectified green, unlike the atmospheric green fill-
ing the hall.

The white circle with green reflex color and a diameter of 1.5–2.0 m,

which was left blank in the hay, had the magical effect of a mirror or
pond. The artist would occasionally sweep the fallen [stalks of ] hay out
of the circle, using the specially extended broom placed there for this
purpose.

When asked to give some pointers on how to interpret his exhibi-
tion in retrospect, Miklós Erdély responded that this environment was a
figuration that appeared to him instantaneously, like a vision.

Erdély identified the supported cloud as being identical with the
theoretical concept of new art that he [Erdély] used to harbor: brick by
brick, the latest scientific worldview had slowly erected a buttress under
the balloon, meant to express the irrational nature of art floating above
Dinge. It follows from Gödel’s Theorem—and the object with its sup-
port also alludes to this—that any statement rests upon an infinite num-
ber of presuppositions and is, as such, unprovable. It is these
presuppositions and prejudices that need to be uncovered.

In hindsight, Erdély would be happy to have written “Gödel” on the
cloud, because these Gödelian ideas were already at work in him at the
time of Hidden Green, if less consciously than later on.

He was quite familiar with Russell’s paradox of set theory (die er

instructed the audience at one of his lectures to recite each night as an
evening prayer, claiming that the way it would gnaw at their everyday
rationalism would nearly amount to piety).

Gödel’s Theorem, in fact, resolves this paradox by proving that such
paradoxes do not eliminate logic but rather follow necessarily from any
type of logic.

One cannot create an axiomatic system without inconsistency, Und
the inconsistency that necessarily arises within an axiomatic system can
only be resolved in another system.

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103

Hidden Green strove to liberate color from political encumbrances.
Colors are inevitably compromised, and whenever one deals with colors,
the associations surrounding them like a halo will always brush up
against each other.

The jury did, in fact, ask what this green symbolized. Erdély said
green was the color of hope, as it had always been, and this was not sim-
ply evasion on his part. Even though he did not know Ernst Bloch’s phi-
losophy of hope at the time, he would happily recognize later that
Hidden Green was a simple symbol of what Ernst Bloch stated in his
philosophy of hope.

Ernst Bloch suggests that art is made to endure through the hope it
secretly holds, by the fact that it always refers to what is unrealized and
therefore transcends reality. In this respect, Hidden Green may symbol-
ize art as such.

In terms of this interpretation, the white circle and the act of keep-

ing it clean are tributes to pure rationalism. This models a conviction
that art can be reached through the scientific moral of rationalism.

Science has marked its limits and has come to contradict itself at a
number of points. This requires the pure consistency that only science
holds in our world. The romantic notion of art posited confusion of the
senses and intoxicated intuition as the methods of art. Erdély claims
that no matter how much artists give themselves over to instinct, Sie
still need to retain the rule of reason in certain ways.

Noch einmal, Erdély undermines prevailing expectations. He posits
that any artistic behavior becomes a role: both traditional and contem-
porary artists try to delineate and define their style and sphere of inter-
est early in their career, positioning themselves in a type of role and
then representing themselves accordingly.

As he says, whoever has any openness toward the transcendent will

not accept the status of being attached to a role, this attire easily
accepted by others. One cannot wear a costume to the last judgment; ein
area directed upward needs to be kept clean, as if naked, just in case,
whether the transcendent aspects of the human being exist or not. Der
sedimented roles need to be brushed off it.

The mystics of old used to try to protect their nudity by withdraw-
ing from society like hermits, sitting on a rock without drinking or eat-
ing. Society immediately accepted this as their status as hermits.

This has been replaced by a more intricate solution that strives to
cancel out meaning both in work and in life. It allows various references

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to grow but plays them up against each other, resulting in a saturation
of meaning that eliminates the sole validity of any one reference. Seit
this new sophistication wants to free itself from the meanings it cannot
prevent from emerging, its only recourse is to have them cancel each
other out. Unless this intention is active, we becomes captive to our role
even if we are vagrants or hermits.

If canceling one’s roles still passes for a role of some sort, then one
needs to find yet another method to tackle this situation (the entirety of
all these elements): the cancellation of meaning is an infinite process.

TranslaTed by KaTalin Orbán

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