Work of Art in Focus – January 2024
Stage and costume designer Csaba Antal graduated from Budapest University of Technology in 1975 having majored in public building design. He has designed stages and costumes for numerous theatres all over the world including ones in Paris, Milan, Moscow, Epidaurus and various cities in Germany. He has also been invited to Boston and Venice as a guest lecturer.
His installation, currently on display in Pesti Vigadó, represented Hungary at the 2015 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, a quadrennial exhibition of contemporary theatre design and art. This installation is a model of the original live act presented in Prague in 2015. The artwork combined theatrical elements with science. At the same time, the artist draws attention to the importance of organ donors, and calls on everyone to advance the cause of creation through solidarity.
And you may well ask what the relationship between Prague, the Hungarian poet Imre Madách and the Greek titan Prometheus is.
Csaba Antal: Donor for Prometheus /miniature model/
In Scene VIII – set in Prague – of Imre Madách's The Tragedy of Man, Lucifer speaks to Adam and says the following:
"This blaze is welcome on a chilly night.
In truth from olden time it hath me warmed.
But now I fear lest it shall soon die out.
Not because man's resolve doth quench its flames,
Nor yields it place to a new attitude,
But in this listless age no man is there
To cast a new log on the embers red.
And I may freeze. – Every great intent
Ends but is petty ruin, vanity."
/Translated by J. C. W. Horne/
The common point of the two works of art can be the struggle against indifference, the desire to create and the metaphor of fire.
The exhibition is on display until 18th February in Pesti Vigadó's 6th floor Exhibition Halls in the scope of the Madách-Prague Exhibition. The showcasing is open every day from 10.00 to 19.00.
