art criticism / art history

IVANA BAŠIČEVIĆ ANTIĆ

TRIUMPH OF THE WORD

in the Visual Arts of the 20th Century

Published in association with Atropos Press Balkans, d.o.o.

Hardcovers –July 2023| 310 pages| ISBN 978-86-82604-00-6

Contemporary art today is a result of series of revolutionary changes, conceived and created by artists who strongly believed in power of art. Entrance of text into the field of painting is one of those changes. This book is the result of extensive research of textual practices in the visual arts of the 20th century which starts from the idea that painting became too weak in the postwar scene filled with advertising and communication boom. The Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers and the Yugoslavian artist Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos,, devoted their lives to building subtle but meaningful art practices that are poetic and philosophical, based on text - verses and words. Their art is difficult to decipher but it became a call for new generations to follow their path so Broothaers and Mangelos stand today in front of us as important postwar European “artist’s artists.”

“Major turning points in art history are rare, but when they do happen, their consequences can be dramatic. The penetration of words into pictures that happened in the art of the sixties is one such turn - the words in the picture did not mean only different forms of painting, but a completely different status of the image in the Western visual culture. The painting has lost its ontological grounding - from paint on the canvas it has become a discourse, from an object of aesthetic contemplation it has become a space of social practice. Ivana Bašičević Antić, studying this breakthrough on the example of authors coming from different cultural backgrounds (Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos, Marcel Broodthaers), shows to what extent this upheaval was global and culturally irreversible.
”
— Dr. Nikola Dedić, University of Arts, Belgrade

About the Author

dr. IVANA BAŠIČEVIĆ ANTIĆ

is President of Ilija Mangelos Foundation (since 2007). She has received her PhD degree from the University of Arts in Belgrade. She has been a member of the Board of Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos Award for the best Young Visual Artist in Serbia (part of the YVAA network) since 2010. Curator of numerous Mangelos exhibitions among which: Julije Knifer/Mangelos: Investigating the Limits of Painting, galerie frank elbaz, Dallas, USA and Wer nicht denken will, fliegt raus! – Joseph Beuys and Mangelos – 100 Years and Art Today, Goethe Institute, New Gallery of Visual Arts and U10, Belgrade, Serbia.