What is the Art World’s Responsibility in Europe’s Culture Wars?
One afternoon in April, I visited the apartment of György Lukács in Budapest, where the Hungarian-Jewish philosopher lived from 1945 until his death in 1971. The Marxist theorist’s rooms, which look over the Danube and the city’s Liberty Bridge, now serve as the Lukács Archívum, preserving his books, manuscripts and correspondence for posterity. Or at least they did, until a few days before my arrival. ‘I have something to show you,’ a glum-looking archive researcher said, greeting me at the door with cigarettes, before gesturing at walls of empty shelving. Employees from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences had confiscated Lukács’s papers. They claimed that the manuscripts were being taken for digitization and storage. But, following the removal of Lukács’s statue from a park last year, it is hard not to read darker intentions. Was the disruption of the archive a direct order or the product of the academy’s obsequiousness to the Hungarian government? ‘This is the ersatz version of how to liquidate the archive,’ the librarian told me.
When historians come to examine the current malaise of far-right populisms, what will they make of Europe’s culture wars? In recent months, a blockbuster Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery was denounced as ‘promoting communism’ by Árpád Szakács in Magyar Idok, a right-wing newspaper loyal to the ruling Fidesz party. An article by Zsófia N. Horváth in the same publication also denounced the Hungarian State Opera’s production of Billy Elliot for spreading ‘rampant gay propaganda’, which resulted in the show’s early closure.