The historical relativity of the image notion today is already self-evident, although „image” belongs to concepts of art history which has not yet been defined owing to its apparent evidence.
The image played in history of the mankind different roles in different cultural circles, it took fundamentally different forms, but it survived even in ages definitely „opposed to image”, the form possibly conformed ideological expectations.

The image saw its first significant change in the Middle Ages when a new image concept developed from the Aristotelian mimesis interpretation, according to which the image embodied the material reality, and as a result of this change in content it became anaturalistic representation, that is there is relationship of substitution between form and content in the original sense of „repraesentatio”, where a thing materially existing visualized, represented another extrasensory. The formal quality then appeared as a criterion of true rperesentativity, where the reproduced form also preserved its authenticity and even whole series could be created, which, however, possessed representativity of the same degree.

From the Middle Ages to the age before modern art, the image underwent further change and became the representation in the present sense, which means that emphasis was shifted from representastion (repraesentatio) to sensory representation, and the image was able to create identification, personification as well as materialization without verbal formulation.

In the world before modern art, the image was peculiar visualization, that is a coherent visual/plastic system creating an independent pictorial world directed by the order of inner laws and enriching reality by a peculiar structure of values through its medium, the work of art. The image then bore the interpretation of a metaphor because the realtionship between „the material form and its spiritual content was indecipherable as the message hidden in characters or literary mode of expression could be revealed (Ernő Marosi).

Modern art first denied, then from Picasso onwards eliminated this interpretation of the autonomous image (see the ways of creation concetrating on the merely visual truth (Monet), paying attention to the logic of eyes (Seurat), constructing from reality ’s elements decomposed to its atoms (Cézanne), following visual logic (Picasso and numerous early avant-garde artists) or subconscious quasi-logic (surrealists) and accordingly, rational, transcendental and irrational image).

Beyond all this, as regards printmaking, we could say that until the end of the 60s – beginning of the 70s images taking shape in various genres of fine art and graphics do not stand out in sharp contrast to one another: the printing techniques as well as technological features only shade off the formal variety of the image concept.
For example, until the appearance of artistic use of xerox and other new technical media we could consider it valid that the image taking shape in a work of art is not identical with „optical image”, that is an image produced by rays of light coming from some object, with the help of optical instruments. In the same way, it was true until spread of printing based on photography, light-writing and computer that the image is not identical with the visual perceptible image, that is the result of arranging process of experience creating images or mere mapping of sight or form. Therefore we still accepted, ranking the world of fantasy and feeling, artistic representation of inner image among the elements of reality, that the image reflects the immediate reality and takes shape in a materialized form.
Until the appearance of the media, it seemed to be an unsahakable statement that in the image an intellectual content appeared in material form.
Today, however, only one thing seems to be sure: we cannot consider the image a constant quality springing from the activity of human consciousness creating images. The other earlier statements are in need of significant correction.

In contemporary art, the traditional relation of cause and effect seems to be questinable in the process of creation because the motive of the existence of the image can also be creating itself. Material and image do not have to have any significanse beyond themselves. The image can also be virtual.
The image today is generated, simulated, transforming it to an effect of reality or to a model, whereas the ready image taken in a given case from reality is manipulated.
Undoubtedly, the computer image is able to recall all the other preceding kinds of image, and by printing it, make tangible the immaterial image appearing on the monitor. The image is transitory and definite at the same time, it can be given in an algorithmic system of relations or only with the help of a seqence of numbers which produces that and only that image but which can be unristrictedly printed all the same.

The image today is lacking in all kinds of representation, imitative and denotative function: the image does not imitate, illustrate or document, decorate or even symbolize, its function is often independent of its creator. The image attempts the dimensions of human preception unknown until now, it makes us conscious of our existence in time. It can be repeated and continued, is simultaneously fiction and simulation: it mirrors the world, entertains the viewer, creates a new world at the same time so as to change us.
Its language differs from the meta- and pseudo-language of visual culture, it is not a language conveying a message, in some cases created expressly against the language, paralinguistic, which asserts the individual significance of the work. Its methods are diverse: distortion, projection on one another, mounting, curtailment, assembly, overpainting, automatism, etc.

In Hungary graphics seldom had a noteworthy part within fine arts, e. g. in the 10s and 20s of the 20th century and from the end of the 60s to the 80s.
These upswings, however, did not remain lasting and did not lead to a considerable increase of social prestige from the point of view of this genre, to getting economic, art political and social positions adopted, only to isolated partial results which did not contribute to the decrease of the distance of fine art and culture, nor to the nurture of the public of graphic art. Although from the end of the 60s our art became more and more open to the world, the standard visual language that would be the language of the work communicating with viewers still did not come into being, so building a bridge from fine art to the public stopped basically already in the phase of restart.
Even today there are no museums or galleries specialized purely in graphics, and also the daily press reaching great masses of people pays much more attention to amateur and dilettante artists than the best graphic artists.

In the 90s the tide turned nevertheless, to a lesser degree in the institutional background of graphics, to a higher degree within the genre itself: some institutions came into being that indicate the start of social acknowledgement of art (field of study intermedia at the University of Fine Art, intermedia teacher training at the University of Applied Art.) The Municipal Museums of Győr and Miskolc became specialized primarily in contemporary graphics, and some research bases were established which also deal with graphics (ArtPool Archive).

Apart from the Miskolc biennial operating for 20 years, an international drawing and graphic biennial (Győr), a pastel biennial (Esztergom), a drawing biennial (Salgótarján), a colour graphic biennial (Szentes), an international biennial of sculptors’ drawing (Budapest), a small graphic biennial and an international biennial of small-size electrogrphics were established and the forms of the power to enforce collective interests also changed: ideology-neutral professional organizations and ones of generations came into being Interdisciplinal Department of Hungarian Artists’ Association, Society of Hungarian Computergraphic-artists, Hungarian Graphic Artists’ Association, etc).
The artistic ambition connected with the change of view is more and more powerful. It is focused on the new prospect of creating images opened up by computer and the thoughts resulting from it, leading to further fields, which at the same time has strengthened the contradictions and questions of compatibility of printing and non-series character, outlining a kind of work in which, despite its conceptual load and motivation, even the most elementary means of form, the primary ways of leaving mark lose their immediacy and will have medium consciousness. In graphics the process and interminability of work generating itself as well as transformation of sheets to often three-dimensional installations is on the agenda (Lajos Csont, Gyöngyi Gallusz, Tamás Kótai, Kamilla Szíj, Pál Szacsvay).

The appearance of the new generation involved that painting did not take precedence in Hungarian art. The use of various objects and instruments and research of forms of social communication are characteristic of artists. They react upon phenomena of everyday kitsch and horror, environmental and social problems, manipulative nature of publicity, tensions and contradictions of art, sometimes using the most up-to-date media and effective techniques (computer, publication on the Internet, giant placard, brochures, leaflets, bills, etc.)

The beginning of the new era coincides with the information revolution fundamentally reshaping art of the whole world. The prospects of earlier unknown spaces and times opened up by xerox, computer, video, Internet, etc. in Hungary are also unpredictable.
Time and space have really become boundless, reality and imagination become blurred, places and directions have no more sense, everything can be and is always and everywhere.
The image, the sight are common mediums, our present-day culture has become visual.

The freedom of information, mediums and language in art leads to a freedom of another kind. It is characteristic especially of the younger artists that they use the abundance of media more unrestrictedly, seek for visual and sensory effects simultaneously, laying the emphasis on the exactness of thought, the sensitivity or up-to-dateness of form and the originality of language. Artists today pay no regard to anything, are not interested in history, they take it apart, cut it up without batting an eye, and make it a part of the works with cold objectivity or expert attention, concentrating merely on the object in question, creating a new way of seeing things, new expression, a new image.
They do not even strive to a consensus or at least a summary, closing of art of the last 40 years. They are „scientific”, sensitive, and analyse their own problems very sharply at the same time. Art today open reflective-critical and interactive environmental mediums, communicative spaces in everyday field.

In this new situation the image is neither what it used to be. Since it has been able to appear in all corners of the world simultaneously in the same moment, and in an infinite number of copies, to be destroyed in a split second or to yield its place to other images, to be continuously manipulated, formed, it has been obvious that the new image is a visual condensate of space and time, material and spirit, form and content, and every preceding image belongs to the sphere of the traditional image concept.
The medium of art – not only its way of appearance – is communication, its material is information, its forms are any material, real or virtual space or time in and with the help of which it can appear, that is for example on the monitor. In the case of these works not the computer but communication is the medium.

The consequences of the visual culture created from new images today are still unpredictable.

Lecture: Prague, Inter-Contact-Graphic, Conference on the contemporary graphic arts, 2001
Published: Grapheion 17, Prague, 2002
in Hungarian languague: A ’90-es évek. Progresszív képzőművészet a Városi Művészeti Múzeumban. Catalogue, City Art Museum, Győr, 2002. p. 27-31.