A special theme of our series of exhibitions examining public spaces of the modern age in Budapest (in Hungary), is studio architecture. According to our present experience, the studio is one of the most closed of living spaces, although it is precisely in contemporary art that we can observe the need for a context or for an audience, when the artist opens up the process of creation with the work or installation to be exhibited; indeed, in some cases it is the studio itself that is exhibited as a work of art. But when studios became a task for planners and a theme for architecture, in the second half of the 19th century, the creative work of visual art taking place in studios could count on public interest: one of the favoured subject of newspapers was the studio represented by texts, pictures and caricatures, and following a few scattered precedents in literature, art novels dealt with it too (King Midas by Zoltán Ambrus). In other words, therefore: the ars poetica and work of an artist are recognizeable from the studio (its architectual design, its life, its furnishings and works of art) and vice versa: it is possible to reveal the role of art played in the society of the age, by the characteristics of the studios. During the course of the 20th century, the studio went through many different changes, from this viewpoint: in the early part of the century, city councils prided themselves on the studios they were building, later, the official politics of culture in different eras made public what went on in the studios of favoured or commissioned artists, and it also subsidized the building of these studios, while other studios became centres of intellectual life or places where artists socialized. Thus, these spaces of the public and the private sphere, became legendary and were recorded in the visual arts, sometimes also in attendant arts. Of course, we must not forget that essentially, a studio has several functions: creative work, the showing of the work, sometimes the introduction of students to creative work, all take place there. Studio, exhibition space or showroom and school public and private space at one and the same time.
One of the central themes of contemporary museology, is the exploration of the social contexts of art. In neighbouring countries, consistent with this viewpoint, an exhibition on studio architecture was organised, in Wiesbaden (1989) and an exhibition on studio interiors in Vienna (1990). In Hungary, research on studios came out of an interest in art history (the exhibition of the Hungarian National Gallery and the Budapest Historical Museum in 1965 on the artists colony in Százados út) and it was continued by thorough research and writing on the history of architecture; but there were also studies from a local history standpoint, about the long life of particular studios, (Ilona M. Szücs: A studio building in Józsefváros, published by the Budapest Society for Urban Protection).
Our exhibition summarizes the results of the research, expanding on it with research we undertook for this purpose in 2000. The aim of the exhibition and the catalogue is to show the records that remain of studio architecture and the changes in the private and public role of the studio. In accordance with the golden age of the genre, we put the emphasis on the turn of the century, but we also present a few precedents, and we are following the history of the genre to the present day, albeit not in its entirety.
Similarly, in keeping with the incidence of the genre, we consider first and formost the Budapest studios in the exhibition, but in the catalogue, for several reasons, we cannot leave out the provincial studios: partly because of their significance mentioned above, and partly since in the 20th century, significant oeuvres invariably originated in the provinces, in the now legendary studios.