FULL COLOR: The show includes Zlatko Prica's The Steel Benders
UNITED KINGDOM SUMMER PEARLS: London's architectural gems along the banks of the Thames
MUSIC: Europe's best pop and rock gatherings
BAGPIPES: The plaintive sounds of Scotland
SUBMARIUM: Journey to the bottom of the sea FESTIVALS: Fun in the sun in West Belfast
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FRANCE and SWITZERLAND VULCANIA: Blow your top at France's volcano park
ART: Berthe Morisot, the unknown Impressionist
FESTIVALS: Aix-en-Provence has it all
ART: The Barbizon School painters come to life
ART: Take a stroll through medieval gardens of delight
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SPAIN, PORTUGAL, ITALY and GREECE SALAMANCA: The city splashes out on culture
MUSIC: God's rock stars: the singing Greek monks
FOOD: Italy's unusual culinary delights
FILM: Great outdoor viewing in Rome
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GERMANY and BENELUX HORTICULTURE: The world blossoms at Floriade
BRUGGE: Belgium's second city shines
ART: Berlin's homage to multiculturalism ART: The best of the world's artists on show at Documenta 11
DANCE: Czech twin ballerinos steal the show in Hamburg MORE ..
CENTRAL and EASTERN EUROPE ART: Yugoslavia's modern art museum is back
ART: A retrospective of Samizdat art and writing from the Communist bloc
GRAZ: Austria's little-known city of culture
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THE NORDIC REGION DESIGN: Denmark celebrates Arne Jacobsen
MUSEUM: Get a blast from the past at Stalin World
STOCKHOLM: Welcome to the Venice of the North
MUSIC: Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on tour MORE ..
PLUS LISTINGS: Other things to see and do in each region
Belgrade's modern art museum celebrates its relaunch with a look at Balkan works since 1900
Prominently displayed in the offices of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade is a series of exhibition posters from the 1960s, '70s and '80s — the museum's glory days when it hosted exhibitions of Picasso, Miró and Klee and promoted Yugoslav art around the world. The last poster is from 1991, the year the Balkan wars began and the beginning of a tortuous decade in which Yugoslavia stagnated in almost every sphere of life, including art.
In the early 1990s, a gun-toting Milosevic apparatchik
took over the museum and hid all the non-Serb art in the basement.
Exhibits of foreign artists ceased, and the museum averaged
two visitors a day. But now — with a democratic leadership
running the country and a young, energetic team running the
gallery — the Museum of Contemporary Art is celebrating
its relaunch with "Yugoslav Artistic Space 1900-1991."
The retrospective, which runs until Sept. 20, features works
from all over the former Yugoslavia. Most of the pieces come
from the museum's permanent collection and were purchased by
the Serbian government. In contrast to the virulent nationalism
with which Serbia has come to be associated, "the Serbian cultural
élite had a strong sense of being part of Yugoslavia as an artistic
space," says Branka Andjelkovic, the museum's director. Many
of the works from the early part of the 20th century are derivative
of West European Impressionists and Romantics, but by the 1920s
Yugoslav artists were starting to find their own voice.
The "Zenitism" movement was among the best of Europe's avant-garde.
Zenitism — from the Serbo-Croatian word zenit, which means
zenith — was an uneasy merger of Russian and French intellectualism
with Balkan passion. Ljubomir Micic, the movement's founder,
called Zenitism "barbaro-genius." "They paraded the fact that
they were barbarians, that they were primitive," says Branko
Dimitrijevic, the exhibit's co-curator (and Andjelkovic's husband).
The group's magazines Zenit and Tank feature prominently
in the show. But modern art didn't take root in the still-feudal
Yugoslavia, so the movement had a short life.
In contrast to most other communist countries, Yugoslavia had
a relatively brief flirtation with Soviet-style socialist realism.
And when the country broke with Stalin in 1948, the new regime
didn't dictate what artists should create. Artists used this
freedom to produce original works — such as Petar Lubarda's
The Gusla Player (1952), a modern take on this traditional
subject. By the 1960s, Yugoslav artists were again doing world-class
work. The Zagreb-based Gorgona movement, named after a poem
by one of the founders, was among the most radical abstract
movements in Europe, stripping painting down to its bare essentials.
One piece — White Painting with Silver Line by Josip
Vanista — comes with a set of instructions, implying that
the painting itself is not necessary: "A horizontal silver line,
width 180 cm, height 3 cm, runs through the center of the canvas
..." The exhibit highlights conceptual art from this period,
when Yugoslavs were at the vanguard of the movement. One work,
by Serb performance-art pioneer Marina Abramovic, is called
Imponderabilia. Captured on a grainy video of a 1977 event,
Abramovic and her partner stand naked on either side of the
gallery door so that visitors have to squeeze between them to
enter the exhibition space.
Tucked to one side is what Dimitrijevic calls "the right-wing
corner." Far from being nationalistic kitsch, this area contains
some of the most visually compelling pieces in the exhibition,
works made in the 1960s and '70s by a group of conservative
Serb artists who challenged modernist orthodoxy. One prominent
member of the group was Radomir Reljic. In Europa Terra Incognita,
he painted a phantasmagorical map of Europe showing Serbia surrounded
by Nazis, cockroaches and royalists. It was one of the first
rumblings of the nationalism that would later tear Yugoslavia
apart, and Reljic was a hero to the same people who later brought
us the idea of Greater Serbia.
A few steps away from Europa Terra Incognita hangs Polyptych
III by the Pop artist Dusan Otasevic. It consists of four
cartoon-like images from the life cycle of a wooden match: ready
to strike, bursting into flame, burning and, finally, a blackened
stump. Dimitrijevic says the image is a metaphor for what happened
to his country. "This is the story of Yugoslavia," he says.
He and other art lovers no doubt hope that the reopening of
Belgrade's Museum of Contemporary Art will help Balkan artists
burn brightly again.
Yugoslav Artistic Space 1900-1991, Museum of Contemporary
Art, Belgrade, Yugoslavia • Open:April 13-Sept.
20 • Tickets:€0.65,
free on Wednesdays •Phone:+38
(1)113 11 57 13 •Website:www.msub.org.yu
