Ödön Lechner (1845–1914), one of the greatest representatives of Hungarian architecture, and certainly its most original, deserves a more prominent position in the international canon of extraordinary talents from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This year, we commemorate the Centennial of his death, which even UNESCO honours on its list of international anniversaries. The Museum of Applied Arts and the Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences have jointly organised an international, bilingual (English–Hungarian) conference and large exhibition for this occasion. The conference is an official event of the Festival of Hungarian Science in 2014. The two events will present Lechner’s highly important and original -but internationally little known - work to a Hungarian as well as an international audience. The rationale of the sections and the abstracts can be downloaded from here.
For the anniversary, the photographer of the Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Péter Hámori, has made a set of photographs of Ödön Lechner’s works. (Photographs of the Museum of Applied Arts, Kecskemét City Hall and the hotel at Szekszárd are by József Sisa). For a selection of these pictures click here. Photographs can be used under the Attribution licence of Creative Commons.
Programme
19 November 2014 (Wednesday), 17.00.
Welcome speech of the organisers
Opening lecture of the conference: Katalin Keserü (Department of Art History, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) The œuvre of Ödön Lechner and the Lechner researches
20 November 2014 (Thursday)
9.00 Keynote speaker: Stefan Muthesius (University of East Anglia, Norwich) Authenticity: A concept for the late nineteenth-century century European applied arts museum
Applied Arts – Museums of Applied Arts, chair: József Sisa
9.30 Matthias Boeckl (University of Applied Arts, Vienna) Crafts reform, Ringstraße, early modernism in Vienna
10.00 Roland Prügel (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg) Spreading good taste by displaying objects. The “Bayerisches Gewerbemuseum” in Nuremberg and the applied arts movement (1869–1896)
10.30-11.00 Coffee break
11.00 Piotr Kopszak (National Museum in Warsaw) - Andrzej Szczerski (Jagiellonian University in Kraków) Designing modernity - The Museum of Technology and Industry in Kraków
11.30 Michaela Marek (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) The Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts): Everyday aesthetics and economic promotion between common welfare and social segregation
Architecture, architecture as art, engineering architecture, chair: András Hadik
12.00 Barry Bergdoll (Columbia University, New York) Fames of color: the emergence of the polychromatic city in Third Republic Paris
12.30 József Sisa (Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest) The role of the Berlin Bauakademie on the training of Ödön Lechner and other Hungarian architects, and the opportunities and limitations of historicism
13.00-14.00 Lunch break
14.00 József Rozsnyai (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest) The neo-Baroque, as predecessor to the Secession, in the œuvres of turn-of-the-century Hungarian architects
14.30 Gyula Dávid Innovation or experiment? The public lobby of the Hungarian Royal Post Office Savings Bank
Industry, Applied Arts, Museums in Hungary, chair: Ilona Sármány-Parsons
15.00 Magdolna Lichner (Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest) Words, objects and strategies. The beginnings of the collection of applied arts in the Monarchy
15.30 Jenő Murádin The Museum of Industry in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) and its collections
16.00 Miklós Székely (Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest) From oriental inspirations to eastern markets. On an aspect of the collections in Hungarian museums of industry
16.30-17.00 Coffee break
Orientalism and ornament, chair: Katalin Keserü
17.00 Gábor Klaniczay (Central European University, Budapest) The consciousness of eastern origins in nineteenth-century Hungary
17.30 Ádám Bollók (Institute of Archaeology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest) Under the spell of national ornamentation. Turn-of-the-century debates on the origins of decorative art from the time of the Hungarian Conquest
21 November 2014 (Friday)
9.00 Keynote speaker: Ilona Sármány-Parsons (Central European University, Budapest) The genesis of Lechner’s style in an international context
Orientalism and ornament, chair: Katalin Keserü
9.30 Jeremy Howard (University of St Andrews) Orientalist presence and absence in architecture around 1900
10.00 Szántó Iván (Department of Iranian Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) The Islamic collection of the Museum of Applied Arts at the end of the nineteenth century, and the “Damascene Room”
10.30 Magdalena Długosz (Maria Curie Skłodowska University, Lublin) Sarmatism in Polish applied arts and architecture at the turn of the nineteenth century
11.00-11.30 Coffee break
11.30 Éva Csenkey The trend-setting cooperation between Ödön Lechner and the Zsolnay factory
12.00 Ibolya Gerelyes (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest) Miklós Zsolnay’s collection in the context of other European collections of Ottoman wall tiles
12.30 Júlia Katona (Museum of Fine Arts - Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest) Eastern architecture and decorative art in architecture training and drawing instruction
13.00-14.00 Lunch break
Ödön Lechner – ‘Father figure’ of the modern Hungarian architecture. Followers, criticism and reception of Lechner in the first half of the 20th century, chair: Tamás Csáki
14.00 Béla Kerékgyártó (Budapest University of Technology and Economics) Otto Wagner and Ödön Lechner: similarities and differences
14.30 Herman van Bergeijk (Delft University of Technology) Soul, mind and the ratio. Dutch architecture around 1900
15.00 Ladislav Zikmund-Lender (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague) Jan Kotěra between the evolution and revolution of the modernist idea
15.30 Róka Enikő (Museum of Fine Arts - Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest) Excerpts from the reception to Lechner’s works
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break
16.30 Réka Várallyay “We joined forces so that Lechner’s teachings might triumph…”
17.00 Hadik András Lechner and Medgyaszay
17.30 Anthony Gall (Szent István University, Budapest) Towards a “National Art” – an individual style or a collective effort?
