International exhibition for the first time

Belgrade, 11. September - 31. October 2004

Ješa Denegri

Art historian and art critic

The Contemporary Serbian Arts Scene in an International Context

Another context in which art in the former Yugoslavia (and therefore Serbia) is placed, is the context of Eastern European art, as described and defined by the Russian theorist Boris Grojs, who discussed the issue with regard to the IRWIN group. Grojs believes that there is a considerable difference between modern art in Western and Eastern Europe, which is evident not so much in the artistic styles and methods as in the social and political contexts in which the styles are used and the meanings thus generated.

According to Grojs, this difference between the art worlds of the European West and the European East is actually a consequence of the continent’s partitioning into blocs at the time of the Cold War until the fall of the Berlin wall. Thus, the socio-political context of Eastern European art was communism, and later, after the fall of the Berlin wall, post-communist transition. However, people who lived in Yugoslavia after World War II are quite aware that the socio-political context of the communist East was not identical to the socio-political context of the then Yugoslavia, including Serbia.

Yugoslav art therefore developed in its own specific way from the moment of the country’s break with socialist realism in the early 1950s, over the next few decades marked by the domination of a domestic brand of "socialist modernism" and up to the great crisis in the 1990s which reduced Serbian art to the position of "art in a closed society". For almost the entire second half of the twentieth century, roughly from 1950 to 1990 i.e. until the disintegration of the "second Yugoslavia", Serbian art can and must be considered within the context of the Western, rather than the Eastern European art scene, because it is with the former that it had numerous immediate ties.

Of course, we should bear in mind that the Serbian arts system in the second half of the twentieth century was quite different from the Western system, mainly because Serbia lacked a free, developed arts market; instead, the arts system relied on government and social funds, unevenly distributed among the various artists and art projects of the period. The international position of Serbian art underwent a fundamental change in the early 1990s when, due to political circumstances, the Serbian arts scene was relegated to the extremely unfavorable position of "art in a closed society".

Previously intensive contacts with Western European art were for the most part discontinued, and it was thanks only to the efforts of rare individuals and institutions that they were not entirely broken off. The situation changed again after the overthrow of Milosevic’s regime on Oct. 5, 2000. From that time on, various exhibitions in different countries began to include selections of Serbian art (Dossier Serbien in Berlin, Welcome Understanding in Bratislava, Inside/Outside in Warsaw, En Fin in Paris, all organized in late 2000), and certain Serbian artists were invited to participate in numerous international art shows.

Thus Serbian art ceased to be "art in a closed society" and displayed a new vigor inspired by the reinstatement of contemporary Serbian art to its position on the international scene. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen whether all this can satisfy the aspirations of the domestic cultural milieu, which has only recently embarked on a process of transformation; it will depend on assessment of the effects of this participation and on which protagonists of the Serbian art scene reap the benefits of the renewed artistic cooperation.

It should be noted that the protagonists of this integration into current international artistic trends in the 1990s and after the year 2000 have been those Serbian artists and artistic concepts whose symbolic and communicative idioms fit notions of art in the post-bloc political and, ultimately, artistic situation. In this sort of situation a marked preference is shown for "informational works of art", executed in the technical media of static and moving images (photography, video), less so for installations with a socio-political subtext, while almost no interest is shown in works of art with high formal characteristics in the classical media, regardless of their quality.

The criterion for this selective approach basically corresponds to the tenets outlined by Boris Grojs, who had in mind the characteristics of art created in the political, social and cultural situation in Eastern Europe when he wrote that "works of art do not speak for themselves; they speak of the context, and from the start are perceived as signs informing about the state of the world in which they originated (…) A work of art is seen as a source of information about the state of the society in which it was created

" It is precisely this aspect of the contemporary work of art that fits in with the overall change in the perception of art in the "era of culture", i.e. in the period when, according to Frederick Jameson, everything in social life becomes "culture", and when art at the turn of the millennium manifests itself as an almost infinite number of semiotic repertoires of diverse individual and collective cultural identities. As a result of many adverse processes, the international status of Serbian art at the beginning of the 21st century is extremely shaky, uncertain, and practically at the mercy of unpredictable current events.

Basically, a cultural-political strategy in this field is lacking, or is only beginning to be created; the prime movers behind this strategy are the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the Konkordija in Vršac, and the Pancevo Biennial of Visual Arts with their international activities, and this year their ranks have been joined by the reformed October Salon in Belgrade, entitled Continental Breakfast.

All these initiatives display a high degree of awareness of the imperative for Serbian artistic space to become integrated into regional and broader European contexts. Particular emphasis should be placed on the term "European" because there is an increasingly strong tendency in many parts of Europe to strive for a unified European artistic space within the overall present and future global society. The general characteristics and perspectives of globalization may be viewed and judged in various, even entirely negative ways but, at least in the sphere of culture and the arts, there should be no doubt that global connection, with respect for existing and possible differences, has no alternative.

Therefore, no closed borders, especially not narrow local and national ones, can continue to exist, and the borders that have until recently been, or still continue to be referred to as intra-Balkan and Eastern European, will also disappear. In place of these limiting categories we should advocate and implement the idea of an entirely unified European cultural and artistic space in which every region, including ours, will have an adequate and appropriate place.

Of course, no place is assured nor is to be taken for granted, but, like everything else in public life, depends on concrete human potentials and qualities. On a political level, the present situation in our country with regard to European integration does not give too much cause for optimism, as the state union of Serbia and Montenegro is practically last in line for admission to the European Union.

Unfortunately, things are not very different in the sphere of the arts, as shown by recent important art shows in Europe, from the central pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the latest Kassel Documenta and Manifesta, in which Serbian artists did not take part, to exhibitions such as the Istanbul Biennale where their participation was extremely limited. It is therefore important to bring about the institutional integration of the Serbian arts scene into European and global arts scenes, and the exhibition Continental Breakfast can be viewed as a necessary and positive step towards this integration.