Academic literature on the topic 'Sculpture, Serbian'

Meštrović’s political activity, reflected in his sculpture and architecture, was closely tied to the idea of a political union of the South Slavs which culminated on the eve of and during the First World War. As a political idealist and a person who always emphasized that he was first and foremost an artist, Meštrović had no inclination for classic political activism which meant that he was not interested in belonging to any contemporary political faction. Since his political activism was not tied to a specific political party and since, unlike the politicians with whom he socialized, he did not have a prior political life, Meštrović cannot be defined either as a supporter Ante Starčević and an HSS man, or as a unionist Yugoslav and royalist. He was passionate about politics, especially during the time when the idea about a single South Slavic state took centre stage in politics, and he actively promoted this idea through his contacts with politicians, kings, cultural workers, and artists. He never acted as a classic politician or a political negotiator on behalf of a political party but as an artist who used his numerous local, regional and international acquaintances for the promotion of a political interest, that is, of a universal political platform of the entire Croatian nation as part of a Slavic ethno-political framework. Even within the political organization he himself founded, the Yugoslav Committee, Meštrović did not present a developed political manifesto but, being an artist and an intellectual, ‘encouraged the ideology behind the idea of unification through his activism and especially through his works’ (N. Machiedo Mladinić). The very fact that he was not a professional politician enabled him to ‘learn directly about some of the intentions of the political decision makers at informal occasions he attended as a distinguished artist, particularly in those situations when a direct involvement of political figures would have been impossible due to diplomatic concerns’ (D. Hammer Tomić). For example, he was the first to learn from the report of the French ambassador to Italy Camillo Barrera that Italy would be rewarded for joining the Entente forces by territorial expansion in Dalmatia. Equally known is Meštrović’s attitude towards the name of the committee because, unlike Trumbić and Supilo, he did not hesitate to use the word ‘Yugoslav’ in the name. He believed that a joint Yugoslav platform would render Croatian interests stronger in the international arena and that this would not happen had the committee featured ‘Croatian’ in its name and even less so if it started acting under the name of wider Serbia as Pašić suggested. Meštrović’s political disappointment in the idea of Yugoslavia went hand in hand with the distancing of Croatian and Serbian politics which followed the political unification. The increasing rift between him and the Yugoslav idea was becoming more and more obvious after the assassinations of Stjepan Radić and Aleksandar Karađorđević between the two Wars. His reserve towards the Republic of Yugoslavia, augmented by his political hatred of communism, was such that Meštrović never seriously considered going back to his native country and after his death, he did not leave his art works to the state but to the Croatian people. This article focuses on the most politicized phase in Meštrović’s work when he even changed the titles of the art works between displays at two different exhibitions: the works that bore the neutral names, such as ‘a shrine’, ‘a girl’, or ‘a hero’, at the 1910 exhibition of the Secession Group in Vienna were given the names of the heroes of the Battle of Kosovo the very next year and displayed as such in the pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbia at the exhibition in Rome. Special attention was given to the idea of the Vidovdan shrine, a secular temple to the Yugoslav idea, and the so-called Kosovo fragments intended to decorate it. The heightened controversy surrounds the sculpture and architectural projects Meštrović created during the period in which his political activism in the Yugoslav political and cultural arena was at its peak and he himself did not hide the intention to contribute to the political programme with his art works. This is why critical remarks which were expressed against or in favour of Meštrović’s sculpture during the early twentieth century are inseparable from the contrasting opinions about the political ideas from the turbulent time surrounding the First World War, and all of this, being a consequence of Meštrović’s political engagement, pulled him as a person into the political arena of the Croatian, Serbian and Yugoslav cause. The closest connection between Meštrović’s sculpture, architecture and politics occurred during his work on the Vidovdan shrine and the so-called Kosovo fragments. At the same time, there was a marked difference between Meštrović’s architecture which is eclectic and referential in its style and bears no political message, and sculpture which strongly personified the political programme based on the Battle of Kosovo and expressed in monumental athletic figures. Meštrović opposed the desire of the political establishment to depict his figures in national costumes so that they may witness ‘historical truth’ and, instead, continued with his idea of universal values and not historical and political particularism. Believing that only the passage of time could assess the historical protagonists best, he deemed that some of them would vanish while the others would remain, ‘so to speak, naked’ and acquire ‘supernatural dimensions’ (I.Meštrović). By depicting his figures as having torsos stripped of any sign of national identity, Meštrović wanted to provide them with a ‘general human meaning and not a specific one of this or that tribe’ (I.Meštrović). Aside from the Vidovdan Shrine and the Kosovo Fragments, the article discusses a number of other works onto which Meštrović grafted a political programme such as the Mausoleum of Njegoš on Mount Lovćen, the funerary chapel of Our Lady of the Angels at Cavtat, the equestrian reliefs of King Petar Karađorđević and ban Petar Berislavić, and the sculptures of the Indians at Chicago as ‘ahistorical’ pinnacles of his monumental Art Deco sculpture. The article argues that, based on the consideration of Meštrović’s ‘political’ sculpture, it can be said that the best achievements are found in the works in which political agendas and historical evocations (for example the caryatids, kings and bans, and even the portraits of Nikola Tesla and Ruđer Bošković) gave way to the naked ahistorical physis of a number of Kosovo heroes, female allegorical figures and, most of all, the pinnacle of the Art Deco equestrian sculptures of the Chicago Indians. What matters in the Chicago statues is the contraction of the muscles which accompany the movements of the Bowman and the Spearman and not the type of their weapons which are absent anyway, because this feature indicates that Meštrović focused on what he was best at: the naked human body relieved of the burden of costume, signs of civilization, and the pomp of political, ideological and historical attributes. This is why the politics of Meštrović’s sculpture is at its strongest when it is at its most general or, in other words, when it embodies an ideal and not a political pragmatism or a specific historical reality.

The paper discusses the structure and carved decoration of the restored marble sanctuary screen from the island of Kolocep near Dubrovnik. Based on the early medieval history of present-day southern Dalmatia and the fragmentary inscription commemorating a queen as the donor of the screen, it may be concluded that she was one of the Serbian Doclean (Duklja) queens from the second half of the eleventh century. The inscription is the only evidence that the kings of Dioclea ruled over the Elaphite islands. The carved decoration is typical of the Middle Byzantine period (9th-12th century), with some regional traits. The only exceptions are the figures of putti. They can be associated with Romanesque architectural sculpture in southern Italy created in the late eleventh century, after the Norman conquest of this region. The author puts forward the hypothesis that the donor was Queen Jaquinta, wife of King Bodin (1081-1101), who was a Norman woman from Bari.

Researching musical instruments on frescoes, miniatures, icons and sculptural decorations of mediaeval Serbian art, painted and sculptured in the manner of Byzantine art, we discover Oriental and Western influences. Musical instruments arriving from the Orient were unchanged for centuries and those from West Europe were mainly used in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. Oriental and Western influences can be observed on instruments of all families-idiophones, membranophones, bowed and string instruments, as well as on aero phones. The same form of some crotales and cymbals can be found both in Oriental and Western art, the majority of membranophones are of Oriental origin, but the tambourine on Bodani frescoes originated in West Europe. Lyres and angular harps are close to Antique tradition. Some bowed instruments, psalteries, lutes, harps, short horns, business and shawms have Oriental patterns and other instruments of these families accepted Western shapes. There are, as well, same kinds of bowed instruments and S-trumpets peculiar for both continents.

In the last issue of Starinar (LXII/2012) a contribution On Neolithic Authenticity of Finds from Belica was published. The authors Dragana Antonovic and Slavisa Peric (further A-P), dispute the 'Neolithic' provenience of finds from the village Belica. The reason is based on two articles published by me and possibly the pending publication in T?bingen of my monograph Belica, the Greatest Group Find of Neolithic Artistic Cult Sculpture. A-P based their conclusion that the objects from Belica are not 'Neolithic' on the premise that the pit with these objects did not exist, that the objects are of 'contemporary provenience', most probably made by 'an archeologist-amateur aiming to create confusion in Serbian archaeology', that there are 'no analogies for them', that the site in Belica represents 'a small Neolithic settlement', that 'objects were made mechanically' and that traces of fast revolving 'grinding instruments' are visible on them. Also, A-P cite me as the only author to have written about the find from Belica and who believes that the find belongs to the Neolithic period. Technical, geodetic and photo documentation from systematic excavations, as well as the homogeneity of protostarcevo material confirm the existence of a pit, belonging to early Neolith. Four radiocarbon tests prove, apart from the characteristics of the material and the analogies, that the objects are not 'contemporary provenience' but belong to the Early Neolithic period. In connection with the possibility, as A-P state, that 'an archaeologist-amateur ... dug in the finds in the earth.' aiming to 'produce confusion in Serbian archaeology' I cite here what this 'archaeologist-amateur' needed to know to do this. He needed to shape artistically 93 objects of four typically Neolithic materials, stone, flint, bone and pottery (16 pottery, 66 stone, 11 bone objects) and to dig them in clandestinely, together with some protostarcevo pottery. He would need to find various types of stone which are not found in the region, such as serpentine and albite, and to make several dozen objects from them; to find animal bones (Bos/Cervus), from the protostarcevo period and make a large number of figurines exclusively of this material; then using baked clay (as A-P state), also from the protostarcevo period, make anthropomorphic figurines. He would then have to put all these objects into a pit which he dug out in the centre of the Neolithic site, surrounded by a trench 75 m in diameter and then cover it with a great quantity of ochre. To fill up the pit clay of specific content would have to be transport from somewhere else. He would also need to have excellent knowledge of the religious symbols of Neolith, (particularly the connection of the symbolism of woman and moon, as well as the symbolism of moon, woman, snake etc.), to shape such objects which stylistically, typologically, chronologically and symbolically completely correspond with the cultural tradition of the Stone Age of Europe, Asia Minor, Near and Middle East, including the ambivalent figures (which represent at the same time man and woman, i.e. male and female symbols, otherwise a recent term in archaeology) and to know how the vulva looks immediately before birth which was depicted on all figurines of woman in childbirth in Belica. The statement by A-P that 'there are no analogies' is not correct because numerous analogies are known in Serbia and other parts of the Balkan Peninsula as well as in Asia Minor, the Near and Middle East. As geomagnetic investigations confirm, the protostarcevo settlement in Belica, contrary to the opinion of A-P that it is 'a small Neolithic settlement', is one of the largest settlements from the Early Neolith in Serbia, covering an area of more than 7 ha. Also the statement, that parallel traces, such as those which exist on the surface and in grooves on the stone objects, are the remains of work with 'contemporary grind tools with a large number of rotations' is incorrect. The expertise of professional archeometrologists using a 3D electron microscope in the Institute for geology in Heidelberg and an experiment by conservators from the University in T?bingen confirm that the finish of the outer surface and the finish of grooves on the objects of serpentine (expertise was carried out exactly on objects which A-P explicitly marked as examples of mechanical finish) was done with typical Neolithic techniques. The statement that I was the only one who wrote about the Belica finds and identified them as Neolithic, is also not true. Although it is not important in this discussion about the 'Neolithic originality' of the Belica find, the fact is that apart from me five other authors have written on this subject.

Palynomorphological characteristics of Campanula lingulata, the Balkan-Carpathian endemic species growing in Serbia, have been investigated using light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy for the first time, in order to provide some information helpful for a better understanding of the taxonomic position of this species within the genus, as well as to contribute to the pollen atlas of Serbian apiflora. The pollen grains are radially symmetrical, isopolar, 3-zonoporate and medium-sized monads oblate-sphaeroidal in shape. Mean of the polar axis (P) is 27.6?1.9 ?m, while the average length of the equatorial axis (E) is 28.8?1.6 ?m. The apertures are operculate. The sculpturing pattern of the exine is microre?ticulate-microechinatae. The exine surface is covered with evenly distributed supratectal spinules of variable length and sparse granules. The longest supratectal spinules are 0.64?0.05 ?m in length and the smallest sculptural elements are less than 0.2 ?m high. The microechinae density per sample area of 5 ?m x 5 ?m averages 17.4?2.4.

The monument to Prince Milos Obrenovic unveiled in 1898 embodied the concept of national-dynastic monument in the Kingdom of Serbia at the end of the nine?teenth century. The statue in the manner of academic art by Djordje Jovanovic, a prominent Serbian sculptor, may be seen as a creative transfer of European practices in designing majestic monuments to rulers. Set up in downtown Pozarevac, the monument to Prince Milos was intended to act as a place of collective remembrance and a means of legitimation of King Alexander Obrenovic. Forming part of the process of constructing the cult of Prince Milos, the monument may be seen as a visual testimony to the attempt of the shaken dynastic regime to define its own ideological model by using the image of its charismatic founder. The unveiling ceremony, pervaded with a military spirit, confirmed the place of the Pozarevac visual topos on the map of patriotic geography, pointing to the power of the visual work in the system of the representative culture of the state and the nation in the late nineteenth century.

The paper presents two Serbian travelogues published in 1928 in Belgrade: Impressions from Russia (Утисци из Русије), by the writer Dragiša Vasic and Impressions from Russia (Импресије из Русије) by the sculptor Sreten Stojanovic. On the occasion of marking the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, Vasic and Stojanovic, as journalists, had the opportunity to spend two months in Moscow and Leningrad. Driven by great respect and love for Russian culture, they wanted to acquaint the Serbian public with the social, political and cultural life in the new state. Both travelogues emphasize the image of Soviet society in which there are still conflicts between traditional and new values that are gradually but surely being established. The authors pay great attention to the Russian art of that time, primarily to the theater. Both travelogues are important literary and documentary evidence of the image of Soviet Russia that was formed in the Serbian cultural public in the period between the two world wars.

?Beauty? - the crucial aesthetic category is conceived in the Serbian language by two lexemes: ?lepo? and ?krasno?. Iconicity of lexeme ?lepo? (Old Church Slavonic - l?p'' ?something that is bonded with something; mud, mortar or most often mud mixed up with chuff to ?glue with? or ?spread over with?) is linked with the imagination of soil, while the concept of beautiful is conceived by lexeme ?krasno? (I.E.*(s)qer-, ?beacon fire?) and is defined by heavenly and divine splendour. The difference in iconicity of the two lexemes, in essence, is the difference between terrestrial and heavenly beauties. The terrestrial beauty is defined by the creative innate impulse in humans to guide them towards amorphous but ?binding? matter that can be sculptured into ?beautiful? things with a function that is not necessarily utilitarian - but perhaps it had a sacramental character. On contrary, the heavenly beauty exemplifies manifestation of heavenly splendour - beacon of divinity, beacon of creativeness and effervescence which presents the terrestrial world in its glorious beauty. The picture of heavenly ?fire?, quite independently form the benefit it may bring us, especially from the benefit that may be gained from the terrestrial fire, as well as the pure aesthetical satisfaction, have defined the original concept of beauty as splendour in the Serbian language.