Nemes, Csaba: Kádár's Summer House No. 4. (2009)

The significance of the Bauhaus-style building in Csaba Nemes’ painting lies in the fact that it was this two-storey, not too spacious house where János Kádár, first secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and the political leader of Hungary between November 1956 and May 1988 took a rest from his tiresome life every summer. It is an interesting coincidence that Kádár’s mother, “mutter”, worked as a maid in the beginning of the 20th century in Opatija, the favoured summer resort of the Monarchy, at the Villa Austria. Taking a role in the illegal workers’ movement and later the communist party, Kádár was imprisoned in 1952 after a show trial; as compensation after his pardon, he received a four-week holiday among other things. After the 1956 revolution was crushed, the Kádár era transformed Hungary into the “happiest barrack” of Eastern Europe, where the price of the illusory idyll (apartment, car, summer cottage) was collective historical amnesia. The party’s holiday resort was built for the communist elite, where such privileged personalities spent their vacation as Fidel Castro, Erich Honecker, Ho Ci Minh and Leonid Brezhnev. House no. IV. stands abandoned today like its peers, consumed by decay with all its furnishings. Occasionally it is visited by illegal disaster tourists and photojournalists. Csaba Nemes intends to counteract amnesia and apathy with his works, as these are still components of the general Hungarian way of thinking. K.Sz.