Dezső SzabóCopy

Leonardo addresses this in the chapter The Rules of Painters, points 60 and 66. "Do not think what I say trivial, nor dull; stop now and then and look at the stains on the walls, or look into the smouldering fire, up at the clouds, or down into the mud and other similar situations; if you observe these well, you will come to the most wonderful inventions, which fill the minds of painters with new inspirations: The struggles of men and beasts, landscapes, or various compositions of fearful things, such as devils and similar monsters: these, if you do, will do you credit, for the tangled things stimulate the mind to new insights. "* These words of advice, of course, appear here only as an intellectual exercise for students wishing to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for painting.

The work of Max Ernst (1891-1976) was greatly influenced by Leonardo's ideas described above. He used, developed and incorporated into his works techniques that make this specificity of perception an active art form. The first issue of the Cahiers d' Art in 1937 covered Max Ernst's work from 1919 to 1936 in its entirety.  Ernst himself described here how Leonardo's advice on the study of spots caused him an 'unbearable visual obsession'.

During the 20th century surrealism and the art movements known as abstraction made it common, or at least accepted to use methods of image-making that were not clear and obvious and that differed from traditional forms of representation. From our experiences through our senses, our minds continually model an existing, possible world. What we call an image, or more precisely a mental image is the result of what is known in image anthropology as imagination, or more clearly imagination.

Hermann Rorschach (28 November 1884 - 2 April 1922), Swiss psychiatrist who became famous for the development of the ink-flick test named after him, died 100 years ago. The Rorschach inkblot test is a diagnostic tool used in psychology and one of the most widely used projective tests of the 20th century. Its purpose is to enable the psychologist to map the personality structure of the patient in order to complement other tests. The test consists of ten panels with symmetrical ink blots. Five boards are black, two boards have black and red spots and three boards are multicoloured. The boards are uniform throughout the world and are among the most famous paintings in the world. Rorschach's nickname in high school was "Klex" (inkblot), and klecksography was a common game among Swiss children at the time. An ink stain was made on the paper and then folded in half. By mirroring, the 'blob' resembled a butterfly, bird or other shape.

Pareidolia is an illusory sensation in which vague and random stimuli, sounds or images, are perceived as concrete and distinct. Pareidolia is a subtype of apophenia. Apophenia is considered a general effect of brain function. In extreme cases it may be a symptom of psychiatric disorders.

The Copy series was created using the chemigram technique, which is understood within the field of cameraless photography. The visual representation of the concept of copy is realised based on the physico-chemical properties of black and white photographic paper. First of all, it is the unique materiality of the photographic paper, i.e. it is a sheet of paper that can be shaped, in this case folded. Secondly, it has the fundamental property of being able to capture and store light as information.  These two characteristics together gave rise to the concept for the series.

The copying here is not done from an optically imaged negative (paper enlargements), nor is the image created by a negative light print of a extraneuos object (photograms). It is only the chemicals used to call and fix the image, the light and the folding of the photographic paper as a dominant, unique element that create shapes on the surface. It is a kind of special monotype method, self-copying. The resulting shapes are similar to those in the Rorschach test.

A simplified technical description of how to make the works is as follows: call or fixative is applied to the photographic paper, which is folded in half along its vertical axis and then opened, and then the paper is folded and opened again and illuminated. A dark spot is formed in the area covered by the calling liquid and the image is then fixed by immersion in a bath of fixative. If a stain is made with fixative, the area affected by the chemical cannot be developed and remains white. It is then placed in a call bath and a white image is created on a black background. The image is then fixed in the usual process to make it permanent. Using the attribution of the black-and-white process, a white figure on a black background or a white figure on a black background can be obtained.

The right and left sides of the resulting patches are copies of each other - not quite perfect - due to the method. This first phase image can be called the original. In this system, the use of photographic paper can go beyond the possibilities and meaning of the artistic process created with paint or ink. Going further, the finished image (the original) can be reproduced by contact copying, using it as a paper negative, in which case we obtain a photographic negative of the original form. This can be in the same position or inverted mirror symmetrical. The copy can also be used in a subsequent copy to create an identical (very similar) image to the original. In this way, the abstract patches, the available processes and the variation possibilities form a system. They demonstrate the visual and photographic logic of self-copying, repeating, mirroring, copying or reproducing.

It was not the intention of this series to present all the assumptions that follow from the above summaries. It is a question of the basic elements of visual language, the possibilities of which can only be articulated in a further series.

The Copy series, beyond the two triptychs and one diptych consists of 18 separate plates. The diptych and each of the one-member works are based on a symmetrical patch. Some of these are "originals", while others are "copies". For visual effect and uniformity, the entire material, with the exception of a single image consists of white mouldings on a black background. These works can be best associated with the visual world of medical imaging devices (X-ray, ultrasound, CT, MRI, PET). Two important elements of these reasons are that they are predominantly black and white and that, because of their symmetry, the spots themselves resemble the structure of some kind of biological organism. The two triptychs are chemical impressions of circular shapes, both of which contain an approach from the visual-logical system of repetition.

*Leonardo da Vinci: On Painting (ed. Lajos Németh, trans. Dénes Gulyás) Corvina Kiadó, Budapest, 1973, 53.

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