Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Mladen Stilinović
Croatian, Yugoslav; 20th-century
Zagreb, Croatia: Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti
83%
Eksploatacija mrtvih (Exploitation of the Dead). 1984-1990. Mixed media
There are many many components (around 500) to this cheeky paean to socialism and its erstwhile aesthetics, but I only saw these 20 in Zagreb. It's part of the artwork's "text," though, that it can be installed partially and in various configurations and still be considered complete. It's tough to think of any artwork (not just Balkan, but period) that better eulogizes, lauds, castigates, disenchants, parodies, advances, and mourns (and all these things at once) the radical, potentially transformative visual and conceptual program of high modern art. (The funeral photo in the top left corner is Malevich.) The components demonstrates an irreverence, even a hostility towards Yugoslav life and and politics and cultural practices (the tie is bureaucratic, the empty plates beside fake slices of cake refer to economic-collapse-caused hunger, the marred painting of a communist insignia is pointed), but the visual unity of all the objects altogether, with their firm and powerful reds and blacks, bespeaks a degree of buy-in to old Suprematist notions and forms — a faith, perhaps, in their ability to continue doing their work on our souls outside of their particular historical context. This commingling of reverence and abuse, facilitated by Stilinović's fluency in the old utopian visual idiom, makes the work feel both pointed and somehow supraideological. This is a nearly impossible line to toe. (TFS, 2025)
Zagreb, Croatia: Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti
79%
Crveni Kruh (Red Bread). 1976. Bread, paint, artificial silk, styrofoam
A commentary, perhaps, on the quashed transubstantive aspirations of communist society in the 20th century? Either way, a hilarious and dumbly elegant artwork. The way the red of the bread just sits there on the gauche pink substrate is perfect. The feigned solemnity of the presentation, and then the way this is undercut by the stains on the silk and the lowliness of the object that's being sacralized, is also perfect. And perfect as well is the simple, stupid conceit of celebrating bread like this at all. It's evidently a work of political commentary, but it seems agnostic and interested above all in confounding, not supporting or producing, any particular way of thinking. It seems like the task of conceptualism in the communist East was to deflate ideology by using official languages and visual modes against themselves — heightening contradictions, so to speak. Outside of its historical context, this comes to as aesthetically as an impossible-seeming coexistence of a belief in firm meanings and a disbelief in our ever being allowed to grasp them. (TFS, 2025)