Vol. XXXIII · 2002 · pp. 149-162 (14)
The Modernist as Primitive:The Cultural Role of Endre Ady in Fin-de-Siècle Hungary
Mary Gluck
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Abstract
Is there a specifically East Central European form of modernism? How can we conceptualize it as cultural and aesthetic practice? What are the historic contexts that have defined artistic innovation in this part of Europe? Interest in these kinds of questions has been growing in the past decade, no doubt triggered by the discovery of the Russian avant-garde during the 1980s. Steven Mansbach's synthetic overview Modern Art in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890–1939 is, perhaps, the most ambitious expression of this new self-consciousness about East European modernism. Yet, the attempts by art historians to conceptualize the unity and distinctness of East European modernism have proven to be less than successful.