The art world is not perfect. On "Man is Not Perfect", 1976 by Miklós Erdély

Abstract

Miklós Erdély (1928-1986), an exceptional artist in the international and Hungarian scene, created the work that serves as the basis of this analysis in 1976. Man is Not Perfect – the title refers to Karl Jaspers – consists of four panels. In its current state, the work bears little resemblance to what spectators saw in 1976 in the event Exposition - photo/art, for which the work was made. The changes in the visibility, what we can see in the reproductions from different periods, were “pre-programmed”, if we may say so, into the materiality of the work by the author, as Erdély was always especially conscious of the use of materials. Does this transformation in time change the meaning of the artwork, and if so, why and how? The relations between the diverse elements or “medium” of the montage, like original photographs, reproductions, blueprints, citations, ready-made parts, photograms and phantom images, may explain the “story” in a pictorial way.