AN AMERICAN AND A HUNGARIAN, BOTH SPECIALISTS IN THE STUDY OF FOLKLORE AND MARGINALIZED CULTURES, RECALL THEIR RECENT VISIT WITH THE PAINTER

Daniel Wojcik, a professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene, is a specialist in folklore, mythology, and religious culture. His research has also looked at unusual social-cultural customs, events, and practices, and at the work of certain outsider artists. He is now assembling a new book, Artist as Astronaut: The Otherworldly Art of Ionel Talpazan, which will be published next year in the United Kingdom by Strange Attractor and distributed in the U.S.A. by MIT Press. It will recall the life of a Romanian-born outsider artist who made paintings and sculptures depicting unidentified flying objects and died in 2015.

István Povedák, a specialist in folklore and cultural anthropology, is an associate professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. His research has covered modern mythologies, celebrity culture, conspiracy theories, UFO culture, religious neo-nationalism, ethnic paganism, and Romani culture in Hungary. Among his numerous publications, including scholarly essays and books: Pseudo-Heroes, Fake Gods? The Contemporary Cult of Heroes and Celebrities (Szeged, 2011, published in Hungarian) and Heroes and Celebrities in Central and Eastern Europe (Szeged, 2014, published in English).