November 15, 2021 | Monday | 17.00
István Orosz: A book in the mirror (or the sailors eaten), Balassi Kiadó, 2021
István Orosz: What a picture! Typotex Kiadó, 2021
The books are presented by István Orosz writer and graphic design artist, and András Török writer and culture historian
moderator: Andrea Soóky, CEO of Balassi Kiadó
A book in the mirror
The book of István Orosz, A book in mirror, is of a hardly detectable genre. Art historical investigation, in which he analyzes the mysterious faceless portrait of the British aristocrat, poet and artlover Edward James by the Belgian painter René Magritte. He seeks to solve the mystery of the book lying on top of the fireplace, under the mirror – a novel by Edgar Allen Poe. It is also a work of art history: one is guided through European surrealism, through the works of the competing artists, Magritte afnd Dalí, made in the thirties. It also dives into literary history, it analyzes the works of Poe, and the then phenomena of doppelgänger. And it is also a travel document: the author follows Edward James, the model of the Magritte painting, to the mountains of Sierra Madre in Middle Mexico. But if one must determine the genre of this unusal, enternatining, sarcastic and self-ironic book that is accompanied by many pictures and their analyses, then we would recommend the definition of one of the first reader’s of the manuscript: István Orosz “wrote an interdiscplinary associative essay”.
What a picture!
In this book I selected and collected essays related to perspectives, the unexpected sidepaths of perspectives – the anamorphoses, and the co-discplines of the arts. They were crowding for some time, as I deal with it also as a graphic designer, I move in htese circles, and I might even be a professional of it in some aspects, but of course, along the illustrative arts the constellation of science, technology and religion also emerges. I could even preach about culture as well, about what makes individuals into personalities, that actually can bring closer our differences educated by classic perspective studies and divided by points of view. The differences raise attraction and repugnance, and the magnetic space borne by the energies of this attraction and repulsion maintain the wheel of the world. /István Orosz/