Istvan Orosz and the Illusion

of the Visual Enigma

Micky Piller, Curator, Escher in the Palace, The Hague

When does fantasy become reality? This might well be the central question in the work of Hungarian artist Istvan Orosz. Directly followed by: when is an illusion so real that our acceptance of what we see is immediate? Orosz’s work is based on a combination of a somewhat bizarre fantasy and visual illusion. Yet in the end, everything in this slightly dislocated world comes out right …'c9

Orosz grew up under the Communist regime in Hungary. After the 1956 uprising, a subculture able – albeit to a limited extent - to create its own images came gradually into being. Officially everyone was equal, but underground a thousand flowers slowly began to bloom. The population of the former East Bloc lived in a permanent state of polarity. In daily life everyone was dependent on the Party. Decisions were taken by official bodies and people simply had to live with the consequences. The centrally planned economy embraced everything from the planting of cucumbers to the production of brown shoes. If you fancied a tomato, or wanted to wear brown shoes, you were dependent on your own initiative, on coincidence, luck or cunning, qualities that were immensely useful on the omnipresent black market.

It is perhaps this double morality – living according to official decree and at the same time living in the way you as an individual choose – that is an important source of inspiration for Orosz ’s ambiguous imagery. After all, his daily life was played out on at least two different levels, but he does not deny his artistic sources. The first of these was Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the sixteenth-century Italian painter who depicted bowls of vegetables and fruit or piles of books in such a way that they became striking portraits of people. His second source was anamorphosis, a mathematically constructed image which when viewed with the naked eye is unreadable. But when it is reflected through an optical aid, often cylindrical in form, the image becomes visible in the curve of the cylinder. And the third source of inspiration for Orosz is of course the work of Maurits Cornelis Escher, in whose ‘palace in The Hague’ the exhibition OROSZ WITH ESCHER is currently on show.

Istvan Orosz was born in 1951. He often uses the pseudonym No-one (  in Greek) once bestowed on him by his friend Andras Tö'9arö'9ak. “No-one” was Odysseus’ answer to Cyclops when he asked him his name. Having been blinded by Odysseus, the monster was asked who had wounded him. He answered “No-one”. Confusion reigned and once again Odysseus could make his escape. The hidden meaning of this ancient tale is very close to the visual pitfalls Orosz creates for us. For example, thinking that you are looking at a ruin in “Columns” (1984), a somewhat melancholy print with classical-type columns bearing transverse beams, you are puzzled by what is foreground and what is background. You wonder if the right-hand column in the foreground is weight-bearing or is it simply made of air …'c9. or are there in fact two columns? Orosz’s highly detailed style merely increases the uncertainty.

Similarly reminiscent of Escher is the image showing the corner of a typical nineteenth-century town house (houses that can be seen in Paris, London, Berlin and still today dominate much of Budapest). Orosz produced various versions of the corner with two windows, sometimes with a balcony in front. The simplest version consists of a brick construction with two open windows. Everything seems normal right down to the window ledge and corresponding row of projecting bricks. Just two window ledges on either side of the corner, at least that is what it appears to be if you ignore the bottom half of the picture. The windows open outwards. The confusion arises once you cover the top half of the print, and suddenly see two windows opening inwards with drawings lying on the ledge! It is a dizzying reversal caused by a rapid change in perspective. From the top of the picture to roughly half-way down the brick forms a sharp exterior angle, but suddenly the same pattern becomes an interior angle through the projecting ledge. In addition to the minor geometric shift that takes place, the way the light falls is crucial to the effect. In the upper half, the light falls obliquely on the left-hand wall from above. In the lower half, it falls on the right-hand side under the window ledge, and again obliquely. In this changeover, the projecting edge at the level of the ledges is of crucial importance. In effect it defines the angle: if you look above it, you see an exterior angle, if you look below you see an interior angle. That is how a visual illusion works; the edge along which it runs is narrow, and seemingly unimportant.

Escher and Orosz share another preference with great visual potential: the use of mirrors. Escher’s world-famous “Hand with Reflecting Sphere” (1935) was in fact his entire world in a nutshell. You see Escher, the interior of his studio in Rome, the table at which he worked next to the window, an easy chair and even the pictures on the wall. But the strangest thing is the hand holding this world. It can only be Escher’s own hand – resulting in a kind of fusion of the inner and outer worlds.

Orosz made a playful reference to this work in his anamorphosis “The Well, hommage à'88 M.C. Escher” (1998), in which the portrait of Escher can only be conjured up by putting the gleaming cylinder on the top of the well. If this is not done, the portrait section appears to show an obscure area around the well between an open gate on the left and a broken mirror on the right. The mirror reflects the view through the gate: the Italian town of Atrani, just south of Naples, a motif used by Escher on a number of occasions. Orosz got the idea from Hans de Rijk, also known as Bruno Ernst, a friend and confidant of Escher. In a letter to Orosz he said that he had explained his idea of the gate and the mirror to Escher, who was enthusiastic but no longer had the strength to work on the idea. Orosz combined the theme of an invisible image made visible in a mirror with his own predilection for anamorphosis. In this way he could smuggle Escher ‘live’, as it were, into the work.

But it is not only Escher’s fondness for mirrors that we rediscover in Orosz’s work. One of the most famous mirrors in art history is the small, convex mirror painted by Jan van Eyck in 1434 in the background of the Arnolfini double portrait.  The painter wrote ‘Johannes de Eyck fuit hic’ (Johannes van Eyck was here) above this mirror on the wall. The mirror shows not only the bridal couple from the back, but between them the painter and another witness to their wedding.

The groom, Giovanni Arnolfini, also features in the work that Orosz called “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic” (1998/99). This depicts a room with a number of mirrors and an open doorway. The viewer looks down on to the scene, as if at an open dolls’ house. We cannot look through the actual doorway, but the mirror reveals a figure standing there: Giovanni  Arnolfini and behind him the famous convex mirror from the double portrait. Other elements from that painting depicted in the room are the dog, symbol of fidelity in marriage, and the shoes of the bride, Giovanna Cenami, lying on the other side of the door.

Over the years, Orosz created a series of works clearly showing the influence of Arcimboldi. He made landscapes with hid den portraits of Dü'9frer and Franz Liszt. Sometimes he employed a double image composed of the head of William Shakespeare and his circular Globe Theatre in London. The eye has to become accustomed to these prints, as it jumps back and forth  between the one subject and the other. In “Dü'9frer in the Forest” (1988) an artist is sketching with his right hand on a sheet of paper. But what exactly is he sketching? The forest, or the head of Albrecht Dü'9frer, the German Renaissance artist, that emerges from the trees? Do we see the same thing or is it a product of his imagination or are we, by coincidence, seeing his fantasy?

And this question brings us back to the beginning of this story. This is the core of Istvan.

Victoria and Albert Museum, 1999

Medeia, 1998

Verdi: Troubadur, 1995

Theater Festival of Rhizome, 1994

Karamazow Brothers, 1992

Comrades It Is Over, 1989

West Side Story, 1996

Horror Vacui, 2006

Anamorphose with Column, 1994, etching and chrome-plated brass cylinder

Exhibition of Young Hungarian & East German Artists, 1988

Window with Ivy, 1993, etching

Myth I. (the Oak), 1999, etching

Streetcar Named Desire, 1997, offset

The Island, 1993, etching