Líviusz Gyulai

Líviusz Gyulai studied at Hungarian High School of Art between 1956 and 1962 as a pupil of artists Sándor Ék, Géza Fónyi and János Kmetty. For his activity he won Munkácsy Prize in 1973 and the title "Meritable Artist" in 1989; he became an ordinary member of Hungarian Academy of Art in 1995, and was distinguished with Kossuth Prize in 2004. The books decorated with his illustrations comprise the poems by Csokonai and the Hungarian editions of Carmina Burana, Cervantes, Villon and E.T.A. Hoffman. He has participated in several international exhibitions of graphic and typographic art, and many of his works belong to important public collections in Hungary and abroad.

What do you work at presently?

I have attempted a major enterprise. I began to care for animation film as early as the nineteenseventies; now I have chosen a short story by our great writer, Gyula Krúdy, The Diary of Captain De Ronch. Why? Because it is a very characteristic writing of Krúdy for me. It is about two men, an older and a younger one, both chasing women. The two men are in fact the old and the young Krúdy, respectively, but I, in a slightly arbitrary way, knead them together. I plan to try to present Krúdy's world with a very assuming scenery in the background. I ask two and a half years of myself and of the people around me to complete this task. I think it is worth that much time.

What attracts a graphic artist in animation?

The greatest attraction is that the figure you imagine starts to move. Let it be a line or a play of lines, it's wizardly when it comes to life. Moreover, you have some literary conception and some ambition. You can put a lot of your faculties to work which otherwise would be lost. The best ones always arrive from art, and I noticed at film festivals that great artist try their hand in animation. They don't feel it degrading to do so.

A lot of volumes attest that you are fascinated by illustrating books. Where do you see the difference between illustration and other domains of graphic art?

A major difference is that you must be versatile in a number of various styles if you want to faithfully render the given work. And you must work on a schedule, which is normally pressing, as the graphic artist is always the last one at the making of a book. It's no disadvantage if you get a thorough knowledge of the style of certain periods. I work with the ambition that the illustration should be valid as an independent piece of graphics as well. As a reader I now that it's the cover that allures the buyer to enter the bookshop. Good illustrations can sell many books, moreover we shape the artistic taste of the readers by them.

Do you mean that you make iconographic studies before executing your illustrations for the given book?

I am especially fond of the artistic aspects of the middle ages. That world can be approached from different directions, and I do it in a conservative way, with my own means. Last year in Rome I saw an exhibition of Salvador Dali's illustrations to Villon and Rabelais. I found it exciting how Dali approached great medieval masters with his own surrealistic way of looking at things. He simply made copies of contemporary illustrations and added his new elements to them. Most of those pieces were lithographic. By using this background he could successfully interpret Rabelais in a modern spirit. It was reassuring to see how many ways led to that pictorial universe. As for me, I found it appropriate to work with a technique used already in the middle age.
When Villon's poems appeared in Hungarian in a new translation with slang elements, I was fascinated by them. It must have been exciting for the translator to revive the poet in a modern way. I immediately made a drawing to it for my own delight. And see, the next day I got a call from the publishing house Magvető to ask if I felt like illustrating Villon's poems; so I could show them a specimen right away. Chance is important in art as well as in many other fields.

One can notice that you choose meticulous techniques even for illustrations. Do you like exacting graphic methods?

As a student - before finishing my studies - I began to do lithography. Then we disposed of very poor tools and equipment. I am glad to see that nowadays the graphic department is among the best equipped ones in the University. Lithography is a beautiful technique, and it makes me glad that it has its renascence these days. It is a fantastic feeling to draw upon that special stone. When, in Egypt, I visited the pyramids, I revived the strange experience that I drew stones on stone. It is in lithography that you get the finest colours and the minutest hues, to which the art of Toulouse-Lautrec is the best example. No reproduction is capable to render the fine hues of his posters.
There's another technique that has always given me much pleasure, and it's lino-cut. It is almost a sculptor's work as you relieve the lines and ennoble the material. Lino-cut used to be a despised genre, so I tried to smuggle the technique of woodcut into it with the intention of rendering it more respected.
Your illustrations could be often labelled as "Adults only". A volume of rather spicy French medieval fabliaus and poems called The Ass' Testament appeared with your lino-cuts faithful to the epoch. Do you maintain that eroticism is important in art?
I am sure that, like humour, eroticism is indispensable in literature as well as in art. I am very fond of gross medieval erotic literature as it reflects vitality. In Hrabal and in Czech films I appreciate a more refined eroticism, which plays an important part in our life. It would be prudery to deny this.

What ideas govern you when you make illustrations for children?

To draw for children is the most rewarding thing. Here aesthetic reproduction has a special importance. I am convinced that children are born with good taste, which will be marred later by us, adults. Children know all about art, as they tell their opinions about the world around them mainly in pictures - instead of speech -, with a superb faculty of using colours and composition. I can hardly ascribe it to anything but the bad influence of the adult world that later they lose that innate good taste.

Has the place and importance of graphic art changed lately, and how? What kind of possibilities do new techniques offer to artists?

I must say, with much regret, that alongside all the good things that have flooded us from the West we have given too much place to violence and bad taste. Cultural rubbish has overwhelmed our world of pictures, first of all animation. It seems, however, that the worst of it is over, our book publishing shows doubtless signs of recovery. With animation films it goes slower. It will be a task for the next generation to fight bad influence and to give real values in its stead.
How do you explain that violence has become prevalent in animation films made for children?
It is due chiefly to the influence of feature films. Violence is the main theme of daily news; criminality has appealed to fantasy in all ages, yet never so overwhelmingly as today. All these have pervaded feature films, and have left their residue in animation. There is a conscious endeavour to show what is repelling and disgusting, and it is more dangerous in pictures than in writing, since man is a visual being. The saddest thing is that children are nailed down in front of the TV screen. Instead of experiencing real excitement they are imprisoned in a virtual world, which is exceedingly harmful. It becomes a dependence for them to live in a constant tension, which robs them of thinking thoroughly, of observing the world, of the faculties to analyse and to tell right from wrong. Human relations, so vital for life, fall into the background, and give place to a collective loneliness in front of the TV sets. It is a characteristic phenomenon that computer technique helps some who have absolutely no talent or study for drawing to make book covers or animation films. We must be anxious for our traditional animation films. Our only state studio for drawing, Pannonia, is bankrupt. Many talented young people will be bound to hire themselves instead of realising their artistic visions.

Your works radiate humour and a knowledge of the world. This could be best shown by the figure of the old Casanova that, some years ago, was seen around the town on giant posters. Have you got the same amused view of the world that your pictures suggest?

I have never felt sour about life. I can tell of my friends as well that they are jolly good fellows. We lived our youth in a difficult period of history, and we had to turn the most serious things into jokes to make our lives easier and happier.

Who do you look upon as your model or master in the world of art?

Thousands and thousands of outstanding artists have been busy in our craft since the time of cave paintings in Lascaux, so we have plenty of models to choose from. My generation had a great luck with Béla Kondor, having a living classic among us, a good colleague and a good friend.
As for me, I love the middle ages, as I love the pictures of Holbein, Rembrandt and Goya, and I discovered for myself the drawings of ancient Greek vases as well. It was a superb experience when I first saw Sumerian cylindrical seals in the British Museum. Such experiences are a lifelong ammunition for creative people. When I feel dejected I go to a museum, look at a couple of fine pictures, and can continue my work.

On 15th March this year you were decorated with Kossuth Prize for your outstanding artistic activity. How did you feel when you received it?

I felt and feel it a great honour. We graphic artists are not overindulged by public attention, we have always been looked upon as a lower class in the realm of painting, so I'd like to see my prize as a token of recognition for my craft. We had a number of contemporaries that would have equally merited this honour, but the candles of their lives burnt out too soon. Béla Kondor, for instance, got Kossuth prize only posthumously, though he was a living classic and was praised by Camus, among others.
It means a lot what sort of fellow artists you have. I was lucky, for luck, too, is necessary in art. Our forerunners - Kondor and the generations before him - have trodden the path for us. We did not have to waste time and energy in breaking new ways, we could pay our full attention to evolving our individual talents. Still I suppose and hope that we, too, have left some marks and stakes for our followers which will help them the same way as we were helped by our forerunners.
The artist was interviewed by
Károly Bartos.