St.Auby, Tamás: Scented Magnet (1965)

The familiar educational tool from school physics experiments—a horseshoe magnet with its poles marked in color, paired with a vial of amber—raises many questions for the viewer. Szentjóby regarded his pop objects from this period as meditation pieces. This work is partly an intermedial object, whose material, physical reality is not only full of meaning but also endowed with a function, even if that function appears in the form of a riddle. The combination may also evoke the idea of love magic: the scent traditionally associated with Venus, paired with the magnet that recalls the principle of magnetism. While animal-derived ambergris is known as an aphrodisiac, the fossilized tree resin—another form of amber—is used in esotericism. Szentjóby encountered traditionalist thought through the writings of Béla Hamvas, whose “forbidden” works, unpublished and banned from circulation, he had been copying and distributing since 1963. These materials and phenomena tied to spiritual qualities—magnetism and amber—play a key role in alchemy. Although Mesmer’s theory of “animal magnetism” does not explain the chosen material, the captured, ephemeral, volatile scent molecules sealed in a vial may represent qualities associated with the Sun or Jupiter. Amber, the secretion of the sperm whale, is in Kabbalah connected to the Keter or Crown, the so-called Admirable Intelligence, the fragrance of which symbolizes a connection between the human being and the energies of the cosmos. According to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, it signifies the symbolism of pure being, which unites solar and lunar energies. On a physical level, such a unification might be conveyed, for instance, through the magnetic properties of an amber amulet.