Avant-garde and critical realism
Fragments of continuity in Yugoslav culture and art in the interwar period
Vida, Knežević
Kultura
161
28
38
0023-5164
10.5937/kultura1861028K
http://scindeks.ceon.rs/article.aspx?query=ISSID%26and%2614227&page=0&so...
2018-2021/07/05/09:05:45
This paper deals with a rereading of avant-garde and critical art practices that were emerging and developing in the interwar period in Yugoslavia, and their interrelations. Unlike dominant modernist art historical analyses that see a discontinuity and breakup with the avant-garde practices that predate it - in the 'socialist art' of the fourth decade of the twentieth century - this research is trying to read the above mentioned art practices as a certain continuity and with organic coherence. Through a case study of artistic practices of Mirko Kujačić, the paper will show strong influences of Zenithism and Surrealism on the 'socialist art', defining it the art of 'critical realism' (term by Lukács). It is stated that one can find avant-garde tendencies in the art of critical realism that take on different art methods and forms due to the changed sociopolitical circumstances, fast fascistization of the society and the proximity of war. In such political atmosphere, the avant-garde currents are reflected in the 'temporal overlaps' of art and politics.