ABSTRACT
In the multiplicity of discourses surrounding Hungarian modernism, Laura Nagy occupies a position both inside and outside the hegemonic structures of elite society. While Nagy may have been aware of this cultural appropriation, she developed a more intimate connection to modernism, relating folk motifs and female peasant artists to her own self-identity. This intimacy was not the result of an essentializing ‘female’ approach to art, but was related instead to the forms of matronage available to Nagy in late nineteenth-century Hungary. The stratification among Hungary’s elite led to the development of competing images of ‘Hungarianness’, and an emphasis on the importance of the Magyar population. David Crowley describes the importance of the nationalist intelligentsia in developing the theory of the peasantry as the authentic nation, arguing that the Magyar oppressors and oppressed peasants were united in their disaffection with Imperial authority.
