MAGICAL SQUERES

At the request of my friend, the scholar and visual artist Rinus Rolofs, I will attempt to explain the meaning of the magical squares visible in my pictures. Of course, they were all inspired by Albrecht Dürer: the famous Melencolia. In 2014, when Dürer’s engraving turned 500 years old, I drew the accompanying Melencolia commemorative paper. Dürer inscribed the year of creation in the bottom two squares: 15-14; I inscribed my own year in the same place: 20-14. In his work, the sum of the squares’ columns, rows, and diagonals is 34.  I won’t go into why it’s specifically 34 here, because I’ve written about it in detail in my book Selected Conjectures (Válogatott sejtések). For me, this number is 212, which I like because it’s a palindrome. 

With my etching The Drawer, I also wanted to evoke the 4×4 magic square of the *Melencholia* engraving. Here, the sum of the rows and columns is exactly twice 34, that is 68. Dürer inscribed the year of creation in the bottom two squares: 1514; in my work, 2022 appears in the same place. That is when this work was created. 

The magic squares in the 3D image depicting a rhinoceros and an elephant (In memoriam Valentim Fernandes) are a bit more complicated, because here the sum of the columns, rows, and diagonals of one magic square is 1515 (the year Dürer created the Rhinoceros), while in the other, this number is 2026: that is when I created this painting, so it is a recent work.

LOOK AT IT CAREFULLY!

A hypothesis from the book entitled: The Ambassador and the Pharaoh. The famous anamorphosis of the Ambassadors (that is the distorted skull) was later painted into the picture, and probably not Holbein’s work. 

The floor of Westminster and floor of the Ambassadors are similar to each other, but they are not exactly the same. The main difference is the hexagram in the middle of Holbein’s picture. It's hard to imagine that Holbein precisely constructed the perspective view of a hexagram, and then he covered almost the full image with the distorted skull. Nota bene: he did not paint such kind of anamorphosis, not earlier, not later.

HAPPY SKULL-DAY!

THE AMBASSADOR AND THE PHARAOH

An excerpt from the book was translated and published in the Hungarian Review (Volume III., No.3.). Since the book did not only consist of prose text, but also verses, the translation by Péter Balikó Lengyel was a great challenge. Here is the first poem translated to English - and the original one in Hungarian.

Whether into hell or heaven,
as ambassador
now enter —
like a hasty harbinger,
whose only mission is to bow,
forgetting all the massacre.
And, as he, just act in stead
of him who sent you as your master,
then retrace your steps — the faster
the better.
Be thou of the world or faith,
never scrutinize thy fate,
or the message it may harbor.
One day, as you muse before
a painting so peculiar
that it makes you merrier,
your gaze will fix a sight unseen —
an object that has never been,
yet is there inevitably
as your death or destiny:
a vanitas, or vanity.

*
Pokolra juss, vagy juss mennybe,
akár csak egy követ menj be:
szóvivő,
mint akinek nincs is dolga
más, mint szépen meghajolva,
s ahogy ő,
úgy járni el ura helyett,
s már feledni is a helyet
íziben.
Légy világfi, vagy légy tudós,
ne firtasd, hogy mit rejt a sors,
s mit üzen.
S egyszer majd, merengve éppen,
szemed egy különös képen
ráhibáz
valami sohase látott
furcsa tárgyra, ami bár ott
van, de még sincs: mint egy fátum
úgy jelen meg. Vanitatum
vanitas.

WHO PAINTED THAT SKULL?

Was the anamorphosis part of  the original picture by Hans Holbein, or it is a later addition by a different hand. To go over again  what we know about the painting and to understand why someone might have added this strange distorted skull to the picture, please come to the Műcsarnok on Wednesday evening. All the rest are here and here.

THE AMBASSADOR AND THE PHARAOH

István Orosz: The Ambassador and the Pharaoh (A követ és a fáraó). Published in Hungary by Typotex Ltd., 2011.
This book was written about, or rather on the pretext of two pictures. One of them was painted by Holbein, but somebody, sometime forged his name under the other one. Once in the past they were hanging in the same hall, in the customer’s castle, who was Jean de Dienteville, a French ambassador from the 16th century. Now, they are separated by an ocean.
Scholarly analysis, attempts on interpretation, literary fiction and a contemporary artist’s written and drawn notes – these constitute this book. The author, István Orosz just like Holbein, often worked on assignment. He tried several times the special portrayal techniques of paintings and the optical illusion called anamorphosis, and perhaps it is not of minor importance that he had the opportunity of living in a totalitarian dictatorship similar to that which had surrounded the German painter and the French ambassador in the royal court of Henry VIII.
The reader should select according to his/her pleasure from among the several and sometimes conflicting threads, select or reject explanations, we could add in good style, indeed as the most important criterion of the anamorphosis is that appropiate viewpoint and a redeeming visual angle must be found out by the viewer.
Here are some sentences from the beginning and some from the end of the book:

So here I am in the National Gallery, in Room 4, looking at the great painting and of course that shapeless form at the bottom of the picture from all directions. I am trying to find the right perspective, the angle and distance that together present the most precise view of the skull. Besides studying it from up and right, as the guidebooks recommend, I crouch to look at it from left and from below, I am checking to see – just like I did with the reproduction at home - whether I can see the skull from that direction as well. Which is the right one? Could it be a third perspective? The guards have become used to me, thay have probably noticed that I come back every day or every other day; they completely ignore me. Now I find it easy to see the skull hidden in anamorphosis, what is more, I see it even when I am not looking at the painting from the side. It becomes independent, hurries to the front like the motto at the beginning of a book. The motto in books is a quotation referring to the spirit and worldview of the book, maybe in this case, it should also be used like a key. The anamorphosis might be an instruction for looking at the entire painting: it should be viewed differently, nothing is what it seems to be. We have the code. All secrets are here to see, so if we fail to notice them, we are to blame. While I am looking for the right angle of view and comparing the different perspectives, I naturally have to pay attention to myself, in other words, I am concentrating on where I am in relation to the painting, on how the picture reacts to my different gestures and changes of place. If I was looking for what made The Ambassadors so radically different from other paintings of the era and what precisely differentiates it so fundamentally from the other works in Holbein's oeuvre, I would have to point precisely to the strange effect by which the picture itself talks to the viewer. Before and for a long time after this painting, the usual way of looking at pictures was that the viewer stood in front of it and started thinking about it. Subconsciously and sometimes even consciously, of course, artists aimed at achieving some change in the viewer by their work of art, they wanted to make the viewer think abut themselves, not only about the picture. Of course, this change is hardly visible for the outside viewer and he has no tangible tools for this examination. However, when the visitor stopping in front of the Ambassadors or - to put it more precisely – stepping into their aura is looking for the right position, the ideal viewpoint and is forced to define the ever-changing relation system of the painting and himself moment by moment, is nevertheless doing something that we may rightly call self-examination.
*
I am trying to make a drawing of the two men. The boys. They are young enough to be
my sons. And I could be their fifth great-great grandson. I put the reproduction on the table, lean it against the lamp and make a sketch of the picture with a pencil. Then I use ink, a biro, a crayon, a thin brush and a pen dipped in ink. I close the book and try to remember their faces, their gesture. I know their names and profession, I know what they were interested in and what they did not care for, I know their biographies, families, passions and faults. I hear them say dispassionate things with a narcistic slowness, enjoying conversing in French. They use the most feminine language in a manly way. They address each other in the polite form. They discuss a chess riddle. One of them is exchanging letters with Rilke, the other one rides to Auxerre to see the new Hungarian player at the preparation match against Troyes (he is one of the sponsors of the team). They are haughty, meditating, clever, enthusistic, failed, dreaming, brooding, vain, sensual, stoical, boasting, lonely snobs. They are easy to love. We are looking at each other five hundred years later. I am looking in their eyes, trying to catch their look. I hardly know anything about them and I cannot figure out what they are thinking of. I am not comforted by the fact that at least they know my thoughts. They might not care much anyway. I draw them again, from closer and closer, this time from memory. Oh my God, their eyes are the same eyes that were trying to catch Holbein's sight.
And this is more than enough.

MORE SKULLS

Some more skulls - continuation of the one year old note. (Illustrations for The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant.)

ILUSIONARIO

The Virtual Museum of Optical Illusions (established by Juan Luis Roldán) shows a lot of my works. The current on-line exhibition of the museum is about the "Skull Optical Illusions". The metamorphic skull has always been one of the most popular optical illusions. From the 19th century, artists and designers have been using this kind of image in postcards, comics, posters, advertisements or covers. Among more than fifty examples you can see the works of Charles Allan Gilbert, Bernhard Gutmann, Salvador Dalí, Octavio Ocampo, István Orosz and Norbert Jung. The exhibition is opened for visitors from August 2009 till July 2010. The show is on-line, but the catalogue is real. (The enclosed illustrations - and about hundred more etchings were made ... and will be made... for the new Hungarian/German edition of the book by Sebastian Brant: The Ship of Fools. You can see more illustrations here, or in the Hungarian Utisz blog.)

















*
And two more death's heads.
After the launch of his last book "Make your own 3D Illusions" featuring one of my anamorphosis illustration, Gianni A. Sarcone published a new book on vintage and antique illusions in which he presented two of my skulls from the Narrenschyff. Title of the book: Curiopticals. (Carlton Books)