Budapest - Friday, May 23, 1980
My rendezvous with Galántai was for nine-thirty this morning at 112 Népköztársaság útja, which is an interminable avenue that leads up to the large Square of the Hungarian Heroes. I was going to the Fiatal Művészek Klubja - the club of the young communists' art movement, and to get there I had to pass through a walled garden. It's in a villa that used to be a consolate, and it's remained just the same, both inside and outside. My stickers are up in all of the most strategic places. Even Julia's automobile is adorned with a few of them. This club is a place in which art exhibitions and conferences are held, and there's also a reading room with a library; there's a bar and restaurant and a couple of wash rooms downstairs in a kind of cellar. To get into the club you have to give the cashier a document that shows that you belong to it, and they give it back to you when you leave. As soon as I was inside, I ran into my large poster. Galántai, for the last two months, has been working on this exhibition and setting it up with a great deal of enthusiasm. He has cut the pages out of all of my catalogs and put together a collection of all of the other printed material that I've done in these past few years: postcards, stamps, and so forth. He's also showing all of the materials that I've sent to him through the mails: round-trips, colored photos used as letters with the words in a comic-strip balloon, dedicated posters, and the like. He has organized all of this material on a series of unframed panels, 70 by 100 cms., and under glass. It was nice to have a look at all of this printed material displayed like that, and I realized that I have dO!1e a great many different things. It's obsessive and it must be disconcerting for people who aren't already familiar with it. Galántai is also showing the works of various Hungarian artists who have made homages in the last few years to my process of self- historicization. Sugar Janos cut up three of my stickers and recomposed their letters into the phrase «I don't know what to think of this man». Szlankó László wants to celebrate my arrival in Budapest by planting a tree in a public park: «This will be the Cavellini tree». He's going to carve my name on the tree and all of this will be photographed. The idea is that the tree will grow and that my name will undergo a series of modifications year by year and photographs will be made of that too. Tóth Gábor has made a work around the phrase «I don't intend to make art because I'm afraid that you 'll like it». The postal service in Hungary often seems to have political suspicions and my things sometimes come through the censor's office with the contents of the envelopes cut up into little pieces. This led one of the artists to decide to do the same thing and he cut up some of the printed material I had sent him and recomposed it into a work of art. But while Galántai was taking care of hanging my things on the wall, he also gave me the idea that there was still a possibility that my show wouldn't be authorized and that the censors might still call it off at the very last minute. It would be enough for someone to consider it a little too avant-garde or too much of a disturbance of the tranquil ways of traditionally making art. «The censors concerned with cultural policy are all very ignorant and uninformed», was Galántai's comment. But all the same, he still wants to open a Cavellini Study Center in Hungary. He asked me if I liked the idea and if I would give my approval. A great many Hungarian artists have already made use of my printed materials to make works in praise of self- historicization. György Kemeny gave me a record with my life history recorded on it, and he also dedicated it to me. Every now and then he'd ask Julia, my precious interpreter, to pass on his feelings about my work. He says that I'm a kind of liberator for art in Hungary, and that he considers me the most important artist in the whole world today. He said, «Today is an historical day for Hungary». Galántai is very much respected among the artists, especially the younger artists, and yet, all the same, he comes in for a lot of criticism. But they can't really do anything to him since he's a member of the Artists' Association and thus has official recognition. But when he organized a show of sculptures at the French Cultural Center, they arranged things so that the six hundred invitations weren't delivered on time. For this show of mine, he has had a step-ladder made, it's wood and it has three steps on one side and three on the other, and it's entirely covered over with my stickers and placed in the middle of the doorway so that the visitors have to walk over it to get in. The huge poster made from the postage stamp with my portrait by Andy Warhol was hanging in the entrance and the visitors were all asked to sign it. At the bottom on it, on the right, I wrote out the phrases Benvenuto alla mia esposizione and Üdvözöllek a kiállításomon, which mean «welcome to my show». At lunch time, Galántai was still very busy and decided not to come out to eat with us so I went to a traditional little restaurant in the heart of the city with Julia. Budapest is a very beautiful city and still has all the fascination of its past. It has two and a half million inhabitants, everything belongs to the state, there's a problem with corruption, the cost of living is constantly on the rise, culture is a poor country cousin, the people who ought to be responsible for cultural affairs are all incompetent and entirely at the service of the politicians. Julia also told me that the Hungarians are traditionally very proud, very chauvinistic, and fully convinced that they too could impose their art upon the entire world if they had the wealth of the United States. At the restaurant, Julia wouldn't drink any wine, nor even any beer, she was afraid of the controls that the police make for people driving cars; they are extremely severe. If they discover even the slightest trace of alcohol on your breath, they take away your driving license for six full months. And everyone has to keep his seat belt fastened, even driving in the city, and so every time we got into the car Julia reminded me that I had to put it on. When we got back to the club, Galántai had a surprise for me: he had had my name written on the ground in great big letters in the middle of the pathway that leads up to the entranceway. And streamers made of my stickers were hung from one tree to another. I also saw some more objects that various artists had made in my honor. Halász Károly had set up ten phials in a little box, each phial was about ten centimeters long and had the name of one of his favorite artists on it: Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Joseph Kosuth, William Wegman, Cavellini, Ben Vautier, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Géza Perneczky, Man Ray. The danger that the show might be called off as Galántai had feared seemed finally now to have disappeared, and towards evening the room began to fill up and the show was officially inaugurated. Somogyi György, a middle-aged critic, with a bald head, eye-glasses, and a beard delivered a little presentation speech; he was seated in a chair and had a microphone in his hand, he was being film. ed with a TV camera. The doors were closed, though, and all the people had to wait outside until he was finished. When the doors were finally opened, the room filled up rapidly, and the public stood up to listen through a monitor to what the critic had had to say. I was accompanied by Barna Imre, who's a young man from Budapest and who speaks Italian; he was my interpreter for the evening since Julia was very busy trying to help Galántai and to officiate as the lady of the house. Barna Imre did his best to explain how the critic Somogyi György told the story of my adventures in art, and he tried to give me an idea of the Hungarian spirit of the things he had had to say. When people talk about the «beginnings» in Hungary, they refer to Adam and Eve, and so György transformed my name into Gugliadam Achilleva, and it was only logical then for him to call what I do a kind of «apple art». He said that fragments had been found of works of art by a certain Achilleopitechus Cavellinus, and that Cavellini studies concerned the future just as much as the past. He also said, «We know too that he is to be the only survivor of a catastrophic nuclear war. He attempted to warn the world, but without success, and thus he will be the only survivor; the new population of the world will then all be his descendents, and this new planet will see the birth of the mythic totality of a personage who had never been able to exist on the earth before». Then they projected the short color film done by the Canadian Vincent Trasov, and they also had a showing of the video tapes where I write on the bodies of Marco Lucchetti and Pierangela Colosio: these tapes were done by Lola Bonora at the Museum in Ferrara. I also did a few portraits, just as I had done in California. And I gave away a lot of color photos with dedications. The photographers never gave me so much as a single free moment. Galántai and Julia told me that there were any number of people there who wanted me to do their portraits: «But the Hungarians are very timid and proud», and so they didn't ask. A girl asked Galántai if the word «Cavellini» had a meaning, and he replied that it translated as «Modern Art». Julia assures me that this will be remembered as the most important exhibition in Hungary for all of 1980. The last interesting show, likewise organized by Galántai, had been Robert Filliou in 1976: everyone had been asked to participate and to hang up any found object that they liked on a string in the gallery. «But people didn't take it as a very serious kind of art», according to Galántai. Later, at the restaurant, I had to go through the inevitable interview for the radio station, but this time it was the official station. A half-hour tape of all the usual questions and the usual replies. But the interviewer wasn't really very interested or informed with respect to art since he made it very clear at the end of it all that he found self- historicization to be much too complicated. As we were eating, it was of course inevitable that someone tell a funny anecdote. They told me that Giancarlo Politi had written letters to the Hungarian artists asking them for a special lotion made in Budapest called «Bánfi» and that's supposed to make your hair grow. In exchange he said he'd send them copies of his 1979 Art Diary. If I could have an extraordinary ambassador like Galántai in every nation of the world - someone sincere, enthusiastic, and capable of getting things done - the Cavellini case would soon be very hard to overlook. He has told me still again of his intention to open a Cavellini Study Center and to use all of the material in the show as the beginnings of its archive. It will also include the work of many of the Hungarian artists. Galántai also made a public statement of the way he sees things in art: «Ouchamp simply stopped understanding things as he started to get old, and it's Cavellini who has finally shown us how to go beyond our limits as men and artists. The true art of tomorrow will be inspired by the ideas of Cavellini and there's no way of turning back. Cavellini is the entrance and we're going to have to pass through his door».