Exhibition catalogue
Hungarian Art and Business, Budapest, September 25 – November 18, 2024
Inebriation in Art
“Water is the primeval element. First, water changes into wine; second, wine changes into blood. Water is matter, wine is soul, blood is spirit.”
(Béla Hamvas, translated by Gábor Csepregi)
Inebriation is a celebration of the body, when the conscious mind goes into standby mode, giving way to dizzying self-indulgence. Alcohol is one of those means that help dissolve one’s inhibitions, release one’s passions, temporarily suspend the everyday mode of operation. It has been a subject of art since man first experienced the intoxication caused by fermented fruit.
This exhibition offers an insight into how the theme of alcohol consumption has appeared in the pictorial tradition of Europe. The spectrum of images is broad, with the paraphernalia and practices of drinking appearing mostly in still lifes and genre scenes. The attitude of the depictions is now mythically exalted, now business-like or critical. The selection highlights four visual approaches: mythic, documentary, propagandistic, and critical. The first gives a taste of the tradition of antique and Renaissance mythological scenes, the second is a presentation of the scenes and physical traits of drinking, the third gives examples of the persuasive power of images (pro or con), while the fourth explores the social problem of alcohol addiction.
Divine Inebriation
“Friends, on this day of all our blessings,
Let us forget the fuss we’ve had!
Let’s drink the foamy wine for the Muses,
Beauties, and Bacchus our old lad!”
(Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin)
In ancient Eastern cultures, alcohol was considered a “magic potion” that helped mortals approach the gods. One of the archetypical depictions of alcohol intoxication in European art is linked to the figure of Dionysus-Bacchus. In ancient mythology, he was the personification of the earth’s generative power and people’s instinctive life in nature, the inventor of vine planting and wine-making, and the propagator of the “divine juice,” who could draw wine from rocks with his magic wand. He is usually depicted at a feast, wearing a wreath of vine leaves on his head and holding a staff covered with ivy (thyrsus). His companions are mythical hybrid creatures, satyrs and fauns, whose animalistic parts are expressions of natural instincts. One of them, the big-bellied drunkard Silenus, is mythically credited with having tutored Dionysus. Two must-haves at the rowdy and boisterous Dionysian feasts or Bacchanalias were the nymphs (maenads, thyads, or bacchants) inebriated with wine and dancing ecstatically and the putti representing the liberated childlike self. The basic types of the pictorial representation of mythical wine festivals emerged in antique and Renaissance art; the subject has survived in modern art as an expression of sensual liberation and the joie de vivre.
Staging Inebriation
“Just drink, my friend, just drink, I say!
The Earth itself must pass away,
Must like a bubble effervesce
And burst to empty nothingness!”
(Mihály Vörösmarty, translated by Watson Kirkconnell)
Alcohol dissolves social barriers, so its consumption is often a communal act linked to the social scene. Scenes of drinking venues (pubs, taverns) present since the late Middle Ages were a favourite subject of genre painting; by the 17th century, the paintings of inns had become a distinct type in the Netherlands. The democratic spaces of pubs and cafés are meeting places for different social layers, while the depiction of life there can be humorous, entertaining, as well as moralizing. Péter Ujházi’s and Imre Bukta’s pictures are present-day representations of this characteristic milieu. The practice of drinking at private venues, linked to family events, appears in Kristóf Balogh’s painting, which evokes the perspective of private photographs. István Nyári’s painting, in turn, depicts the lethargic stupor of solitary drinking enclosed by the four walls of the home with meticulous photorealism. Csaba Rékassy’s magical realism features alcohol as a means of liberating the imagination; his distillery is populated by surrealistic creatures of delirium-induced visions. In the works of János Lóránt and József Gaál, the grotesque physical signs and symptoms of an altered mental status take shape.
The Carousing Hungarians
“And you, gypsy, bow your strings, I’ll pay for it;
Pluck them and do make my heart, too, break for it.
Let it snap with joy or break with gruesome pain…
All the good Hungarians carouse in vain!”
(Sándor Petőfi)
In the 19th century, public opinion considered carousing to be a fundamental trait of the Hungarian character. Jácint Rónay’s Characteristic (Jellemisme, 1847) emphasized the Hungarians’ fiery temperament, tendency to party, and devotion to wine. Rural genre painting of the period often chose the drunken peasant for its subject, as an expression of national strengths. In these tavern scenes, alcohol intoxication was conceived without any critical comment as a fundamental feature of the national character. The passionate Hungarian Volksgeist was believed to be embodied in the revellers inebriated by spirits, singing songs, and dancing rowdily. In János Jankó’s painting of Mihály Csokonai Vitéz reciting his poem “Love Song to the Foal-Hide Flask,” all this is combined with the drinking songs of folklore-inspired poetry. As Mihály Munkácsy’s series of drawings shows, wine drinking (as opposed to Austrian beer drinking) was explicitly associated with the Hungarian national character. József Szolnoki’s installation in the opposite room reflects on the different drinking habits of the two nations, commemorating the informal ban on clinking beer glasses, effective for 150 years from the defeat of Hungary’s War of Independence in 1849.
Alcohol as a Social Issue
“Alcohol heals our life, this giant ulcerous wound.”
(Dezső Kosztolányi)
The depiction of alcohol consumption in modern times has followed two divergent paths. Both have used the tools of visual propaganda, though for opposing purposes. One type (e.g. commercial posters advertising alcohol) propagates consumption in the hope of commercial gain. Works of the other type, in contrast, attempt to discourage one from drinking. They have emerged in parallel with modern social movements that have become increasingly vocal about the destructive medical and socio-economic effects of excessive alcohol consumption. An early example of this was William Hogarth’s pair of images depicting Gin Lane and Beer Street. Some of the 20th-century teetotaller posters were explicitly designed to shock the viewer. The persuasive power of the poster has been used by students at the Metropolitan University, who submitted artworks to HAB’s creative competition to support the Dry November campaign.
Although alcohol has long been applied as a surrogate to enhance artistic inspiration and creativity, it rarely appears in overtly visual form in 20th-century Hungarian art. Through the works of Béla Kondor, András Baranyay, and Gábor Pásztor, we have also selected artists whose everyday lives were particularly affected by alcohol. The final section of the exhibition features contemporary works on the trauma of alcohol addiction in the family and on the institutional treatment of the disease, respectively.