Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Josip Stošić
Croatian, Yugoslav; 20th-century
Zagreb, Croatia: Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti
76%
Nerukotvorena Ikona Vlasti (Non-handmade Icon of Administrative Power). 1982. Iron sheet
This is a readymade whose title does a substantial amount of the aestheticizing work. That's not a bad thing: the name manages to be both caustic and lighthearted, politically direct and formally evasive. Is it an "icon of administrative power" because the sheet metal was the result of social processes (industrial manufacturing) that were shepherded by the Yugoslav administrative state, or because its ragged appearance represents corruption and grift? Is it "non-handmade" because it has come to us straight from God or because, even in a nominally socialist country, its real makers were alienated from their labor that went into producing it? Unanswerable questions, the asking of which is one's aesthetic experience of this object. (Plus, it provides basic visual interest: the contradiction between the grid and the wear-and-tear; the random distribution of color gradients and pockmarks.) (TFS, 2025)