#Bartók

When

8. October, 2016 – 5. February, 2017

Timed for the current Bartók Memorial Year, this international exhibition looks at the composer’s legacy through the means of contemporary art.

Béla Bartók’s work offers countless points of contact for reflections and interpretations in visual and sound art. In addition to considering the musical legacy, the exhibiting artists seek to establish vantage points for the examination of the oeuvre through a scrutiny of cultural anthropological and media-historical evidence, as well as of personal material related to the composer. They also attempt to assess Bartók’s influence on his own age and our times.

Bartók’s work as a composer is a part of general learning and cultural knowledge, his activity as a scholar, theorist and collector of music enriches universal culture. For decades, works of art that reflect on Bartók have attested to his cultural historical significance and embeddedness in society.

This exhibition explores, and subjects to further interpretation, the image of Bartók as a persistent cultural topos that has been transmitted through the ages. Besides neo-avant-garde classics, most of the exhibits are newly made works, whose creators, over thirty in all, occupied conceptual positions between visual art, science and music. In terms of genre and technique, most of the exhibits are mixed (hybrid) works, and the exhibition as a whole is marked by the prominent presence of new artistic media.