Lechner
International conference on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of
Ödön Lechner's death

Ödön Lechner (1845–1914), one of the greatest representatives of
Hungarian architecture, and certainly its most original, deserves a more
prominent position in the international canon of extraordinary talents
from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This year, we
commemorate the Centennial of his death, which even UNESCO honours on
its list of international anniversaries. The Museum of Applied Arts and
the Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the Humanities of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences have jointly organised an international,
bilingual (English–Hungarian) conference and large exhibition for this
occasion. The conference is an official event of the Festival of
Hungarian Science in 2014. The two events will present Lechner's highly
important and original -but internationally little known - work to a
Hungarian as well as an international audience.

You can follow the conference online on the 20th and 21st November in
English via our youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/instituteofarthistor/


Programme

19 November 2014 (Wednesday)

17.00 Welcome speech of the organisers

Opening lecture of the conference:
Katalin Keserü (Department of Art History, Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest)
The œuvre of Ödön Lechner and the Lechner researches


20 November 2014 (Thursday)

9.00
Keynote speaker:
Stefan Muthesius (University of East Anglia, Norwich)
Authenticity: A concept for the late nineteenth-century century European
applied arts museum


Applied Arts – Museums of Applied Arts
chair: József Sisa

9.30
Matthias Boeckl (University of Applied Arts, Vienna)
Crafts reform, Ringstraße, early modernism in Vienna

10.00
Roland Prügel (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg)
Spreading good taste by displaying objects. The "Bayerisches
Gewerbemuseum" in Nuremberg and the applied arts movement (1869–1896)

10.30-11.00 Coffee break

11.00
Piotr Kopszak (National Museum in Warsaw) - Andrzej Szczerski
(Jagiellonian University in Kraków)
Designing modernity - The Museum of Technology and Industry in Kraków

11.30
Michaela Marek (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts): Everyday
aesthetics and economic promotion between common welfare and social
segregation


Architecture, architecture as art, engineering architecture
chair: András Hadik

12.00
Barry Bergdoll (Columbia University, New York)
Fames of color: the emergence of the polychromatic city in Third
Republic Paris

12.30
József Sisa (Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the
Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest)
The role of the Berlin Bauakademie in the training of Ödön Lechner and
other Hungarian architects, and the opportunities and limitations of
historicism

13.00-14.00 Lunch break

14.00
József Rozsnyai (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest)
The neo-Baroque, as predecessor to the Secession, in the œuvres of
turn-of-the-century Hungarian architects

14.30
Gyula Dávid
Innovation or experiment? The public lobby of the Hungarian Royal Post
Office Savings Bank


Industry, Applied Arts, Museums in Hungary
chair: Ilona Sármány-Parsons

15.00
Magdolna Lichner (Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest)
Words, objects and strategies. The beginnings of the collection of
applied arts in the Monarchy

15.30
Jenő Murádin
The Museum of Industry in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) and its collections

16.00
Miklós Székely (Institute of Art History, Research Centre for the
Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest)
From oriental inspirations to eastern markets. On an aspect of the
collections in Hungarian museums of industry

16.30-17.00 Coffee break


Orientalism and ornament
chair: Katalin Keserü

17.00
Gábor Klaniczay (Central European University, Budapest)
The consciousness of eastern origins in nineteenth-century Hungary

17.30
Ádám Bollók (Institute of Archaeology, Research Centre for the
Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest)
Under the spell of national ornamentation. Turn-of-the-century debates
on the origins of decorative art from the time of the Hungarian Conquest


21 November 2014 (Friday)

9.00
Keynote speaker:
Ilona Sármány-Parsons (Central European University, Budapest)
The genesis of Lechner's style in an international context


Orientalism and ornament
chair: Katalin Keserü

9.30
Jeremy Howard (University of St Andrews)
Orientalist presence and absence in architecture around 1900

10.00
Szántó Iván (Department of Iranian Studies, Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest)
The Islamic collection of the Museum of Applied Arts at the end of the
nineteenth century, and the "Damascene Room"

10.30
Magdalena Długosz (Maria Curie Skłodowska University, Lublin)
Sarmatism in Polish applied arts and architecture at the turn of the
nineteenth century

11.00-11.30 Coffee break

11.30
Éva Csenkey
The trend-setting cooperation between Ödön Lechner and the Zsolnay
factory

12.00
Ibolya Gerelyes (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest)
Miklós Zsolnay's collection in the context of other European collections
of Ottoman wall tiles

12.30
Júlia Katona (Museum of Fine Arts - Hungarian National Gallery,
Budapest)
Eastern architecture and decorative art in architecture training and
drawing instruction

13.00-14.00 Lunch break


Ödön Lechner – 'Father figure' of the modern Hungarian architecture.
Followers, criticism and reception of Lechner in the first half of the
20th century
chair: Tamás Csáki

14.00
Béla Kerékgyártó (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)
Otto Wagner and Ödön Lechner: similarities and differences

14.30
Herman van Bergeijk (Delft University of Technology)
Soul, mind and the ratio. Dutch architecture around 1900

15.00
Ladislav Zikmund-Lender (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design,
Prague)
Jan Kotěra between the evolution and revolution of the modernist idea

15.30
Róka Enikő (Museum of Fine Arts - Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest)
Excerpts from the reception to Lechner's works

16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break

16.30
Réka Várallyay (Gyula Forster National Centre for Cultural Heritage
Management)
"We joined forces so that Lechner's teachings might triumph…" The
Architecture of Marcell Komor and Dezs? Jakab

17.00
Hadik András
Lechner and Medgyaszay

17.30
Anthony Gall (Szent István University, Budapest)
Towards a "National Art" – an individual style or a collective effort?