DIALOG WITH JÓZSEF ATTILA – 12

Mixed-media on stitched, gessoed paper.
41″ x 34″ (105c x 86c)
2017

 

 

This large format mixed-media piece draws from József Attila’s controversial writing entitled A Collection of Free Associations In Two Sessions, or Szabad-ötletek Jegyzéke két ülésben. HIs audacious writing inspired an increase in the scale of my work, pushing the use of handwritten text as form-generating source material to a more developed level.

The Free Associations, written by J.A. in the context of sessions with his psychiatrist and quite raw at times, was long seen by many as being outside his body of verse. However, as I pulled excerpts from this long piece of experimental writing, working the fragments of phrases and words into my Dialogs, the free-flowing process of association at the core of so many of his poems was clearly recognizable. In Free Associations, József Attila offered himself up as object, to be penetrated with the same excruciating vision he so often directed towards the external world.

A full English translation by Tamás Baranyi can be read here in pdf format.

The original Hungarian text can be found here online, or here in pdf format.