The modification of meaning: Cézanne, Hildebrand, Meier-Graefe and the problems of cultural transfer

The exhibition 'Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904-1914',2 was staged at the Hungarian National Gallery (2006). This show, which was afterwards displayed at three locations in France, prompting widespread interest in the media there,3 was accompanied in Hungary by debates regarding terminology. 'Were the Hungarian fauves really fauves?' asked art historians and art critics. During the discussions which followed, problems of cultural transfer - i.e. those of the acceptance, adoption, translation, and interpretation of a given segment of another culture, another narrative - were given a good airing, especially at the conference organised as just one of the events intended to augment and interpret the exhibition. After preparations lasting four years for the exhibition that gave rise to this 'sea change', another four years needed to pass for the same 'research group' to step forth with a 'fitting' presentation of the Eight, as an organic continuation of the earlier show. The group's members undertook a task that seemed impossible, namely to reconstruct the three emblematic exhibitions staged between 1909 and 1912 at which members of the Eight (Róbert Berény, Béla Czóbel, Dezső Czigány, Károly Kernstok, Ödön Márffy, Dezső Orbán, Bertalan Pór, Lajos Tihanyi) - who were recruited from the much broader circle7 of the Hungarian fauves - took part along with friends they had invited (Artúr Jakobovits, Vilmos Fémes Beck, Mária Lehel, Anna Lesznai, Márk Vedres).