{"id":1962,"date":"2020-04-30T12:21:44","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T12:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/warped-development.com\/?post_type=blog&p=1962"},"modified":"2024-09-15T17:27:41","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T17:27:41","slug":"lubardas-art-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/warped-development.com\/en\/blogs\/lubardas-art-chronicle\/","title":{"rendered":"Lubarda’s art chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Illustration: Petar Lubarda, archives of the House of Legates in Belgrade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In May 1951, a historic exhibition by Petar Lubarda was held at the ULUS Gallery on Knez Mihailova Street. The May Day celebrations, which brought people together in a festive atmosphere, also marked the birth of a new era in Yugoslav painting. The exhibition attracted a large audience, and media, critics, and essayists wrote extensively about it. It was visited by both art enthusiasts and curious passersby who paused in front of the gallery windows. Lubarda presented something new and different, shaking the public with bold and powerful strokes. Reflecting on the exhibition, Lazar Trifunovi\u0107 compared the event to a “comet with a tail” striking the center of Belgrade. Through this exhibition, Lubarda introduced a new artistic language, inspiring others to seek their own. No one remained indifferent to Lubarda\u2019s art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was followed by his participation in the S\u00e3o Paulo Biennial in 1953, where his new inspiration was recognized with the jury’s purchase award. Afterward, he completed monumental public commissions, such as the mural Battle of Kosovo<\/em> (1953) in the building of the Federal Executive Council of the People\u2019s Republic of Serbia, as well as Journey to Space<\/em> (1962) and The Great Relay of Human Reason<\/em> (1965). His art gained a privileged place at the first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, where his painting Prometheans of the New Age<\/em> adorned the stage behind the speakers in the Federal Assembly Hall. This resulted in a three-month trip to India and exhibitions in New Delhi and Bombay. Lubarda\u2019s prominence in the Yugoslav art scene was confirmed by numerous domestic and international awards and large public engagements. His art of the 1950s sparked a “new creative renaissance” (Trifunovi\u0107 1990: 162), and he was given the role of a cultural attach\u00e9 for Yugoslav art, whose work served to affirm the country’s new democratic aspirations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drago\u0161 Kalaji\u0107’s article “Petar Lubarda \u2013 State Painter,” published soon after the artist’s death, uses this unflattering term with the intention of positively describing Lubarda’s role, although the author acknowledges that it “implies a form of insult.” By equating Lubarda’s artistic transformations with the state\u2019s, Kalaji\u0107 notes that “the horizontal complexity and vertical depth, synchronicity and diachronicity of Petar Lubarda\u2019s work from that period (the 1950s) provide a far deeper or higher and broader insight into the content of the new Yugoslavia than a mere political chronicle could offer.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lubarda\u2019s Art and Visual Chronicle<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Interpreting Lubarda\u2019s art as a chronicle aligns with the artist\u2019s personal belief that “the task of art is to reflect reality” and that art “should be social in character\u2026 to actively participate in the community\u2019s efforts and construction” (Anonymous 1951). Lubarda\u2019s painting was woven from what was personal and familiar to him: the Montenegrin landscape, literature, folk poetry, drawing inspiration from old masters exhibited in galleries and museums, which he claimed were his “only school.” His art communicates through recognizable content: misfortune is depicted as a raven, conflict and the madness of war through compositions from national history like The Battle of Kosovo<\/em>, while divine inspiration is embodied by the image of a national bard, the guslar. The artist once remarked, “The national tradition transformed in my consciousness haunts me both in dreams and reality” (Anonymous 1971:8). Lubarda\u2019s appropriation and transformation of content inherited from the past made him one of the most prominent post-war modernists and one of the greatest interpreters of national pathos and epic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paintings such as The Battle of Vu\u010dji Do<\/em>, Sr\u0111a Zlopogle\u0111a<\/em>, The Battle of Kosovo<\/em>, The Raven<\/em>, The Guslar<\/em>, and The Mourner<\/em> were recognized by contemporary critics as a revolutionary step in Serbian painting and are today considered his most significant achievements. Lubarda himself stated that in this post-war period, he spoke in his true voice. The power of this visual language was highlighted by Mom\u010dilo Stefanovi\u0107\u2019s comment that Lubarda “sang of The Battle of Vu\u010dji Do<\/em> with the license of a guslar” (1988: 136), while Miodrag Proti\u0107 compared viewing The Battle of Kosovo<\/em> to reading an ancient tragedy (1955: 141).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Illustration: Petar Lubarda, To Emperor Trajan goat ears, nitro lacquer on hardboard, 1974, collection of the House of Legates in Belgrade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The folk tradition also served as the foundation for Petar Lubarda’s lesser-known painting Emperor Trajan\u2019s Goat Ears<\/em>, created near the end of the artist\u2019s life in 1972. This painting is now housed in the Petar Lubarda Legacy, in the home where the artist lived and worked from 1957 until his death in 1974. The story, familiar in local tradition, was taken from a folk tale recorded by Vuk Stefanovi\u0107 Karad\u017ei\u0107 in 1829 at the quarantine station in Zemun, where he heard it from Gruja Mehand\u017ei\u0107 of Sentoma\u0161. It was published in Vienna in 1853 as part of the anthology Serbian Folk Tales<\/em>. The tale tells of Emperor Trajan, who had goat ears, a humiliating secret he kept by executing his barbers. One barber was wise and discreet enough to save his life but decided to relieve the burden of silence by digging a hole, confiding the emperor\u2019s secret, and burying it. Over time, a tree grew in that spot. One day, a shepherd passed by with his flock. He decided to rest under the tree and made a flute from one of its branches to amuse himself. When he blew into the instrument, it produced the sound: “Emperor Trajan has goat ears.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lubarda\u2019s painting captures the moment when the flute reveals the truth about the emperor\u2019s ears. In the lower right corner of the painting is Lubarda\u2019s autograph, illustrating the following verses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Ask a poet, he\u2019ll tell you the truth,
Poets always speak honestly,
And the poet came, writing an ode:
‘Emperor Trajan, your courtiers deceive you.
They\u2019re powerful with you, nothing without you,
They fear the collapse of your rule,
So listen, emperor, hear the truth at last,
On your head are goat ears.’
The poet perished, followed by many,
The emperor, in fury, silences the truth with death,
But the shepherd sings, and the flute plays:
‘Emperor Trajan has goat ears,
Emperor Trajan has goat ears.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Illustration: Lubarda’s autograph in the lower right corner of the painting “To Emperor Trajan Goat Ears” – the author of the lyrics is the artist’s wife Vera.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The author of the verses is Vera Lubarda, the artist’s wife, who personally wrote them in a notebook, noting that they were composed during a visit to \u0110erdap in July 1972. The painting was a gift from the artist to his wife for their twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. It also serves as a reflection of a specific historical and social moment, capturing the circumstances in which the country found itself in the years following the constitutional changes in Yugoslavia, which led to increased national tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lubarda gave his emperor the name Trajan, instead of Trojan<\/em>\u2014the name born out of folk tradition and adopted in literature in that form. The change of name was not a mistake on Lubarda\u2019s part but an allusion to the \u0110erdap area, which had been a focal point of public interest in Yugoslavia during those years. This region, which had not seen major construction or economic ventures since the reign of Emperor Trajan, became the site of the largest and most ambitious project in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) starting in 1964\u2014the construction of the \u0110erdap 1 hydroelectric power plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The preliminary works for the construction of the hydroelectric plant included terrain surveys, which led to the discovery of the previously unknown and original culture of Lepenski Vir in 1965, marking the first controversy that challenged the realization of the project. The first generators were put into operation in 1970 after six years of effort and the inevitable difficulties that accompany projects of such scale. These projects also came with sacrifices, in this case, the flooding of villages, archaeological sites, and monuments, including the site of Lepenski Vir itself. Over 8,000 residents on the Yugoslav side and 14,000 on the Romanian side were relocated. The hydroelectric system was officially inaugurated on May 16, 1972, the same year Lubarda created Emperor Trajan\u2019s Goat Ears<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Illustration: Petar Lubarda, sketch “Pompean Pastoral”, archives of the House of Legates in Belgrade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The symbolism of Trajan\u2019s portrait is evident: he is unmistakably a representation of authority, crowned with a laurel wreath. The meaning of the figure of the shepherd playing the flute is revealed through the mutual interpretation of the image and the poetic text within the painting. The identity of the flute player is hinted at in the opening verse of the illustrated poem: “Ask the poet, something will tell him, poets always speak the truth.” Lubarda himself believed that \u201cThe task of art is to reflect reality, not to be servile, not to please anyone, to be creative, to lead like a symbol on a flag\u201d (Anonim 1951), and he identified painting with poetry, asserting that he did not paint but wrote. The shepherd in the painting is, in fact, the artist himself, the herald of truth; his symbol, through which he proclaims to the regime the truth about the unsustainability of power. Lubarda did not live to see the fulfillment of the prophecy in his painting, passing away in 1974.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lubarda remained loyal to the artistic language he introduced in May 1951 until his death, enriching it and expanding its boundaries. He remained true to his artistic theory, developed in the early 1950s, which was based on the belief that art is the sublimation of experienced reality. In 1951, Stanislav Vinaver wrote, \u201cI don\u2019t want to wait a hundred years,\u201d giving Lubarda\u2019s painting the highest praise and recognizing him as a great painter. Lubarda’s work did not merely document but actively shaped a historical and artistic period, of which it remains an eloquent witness to this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been 69 years since the exhibition in Knez Mihailova where Lubarda presented his vision of painting, and his art continues to write new chapters in the history of our painting with its content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SOURCES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anonim (D. A.) \u201cJedan trenutak sa\u2026\u201d NIN<\/em> no. 10 (13.05.1951)
Anonim (D. S.) \u201c1001 no\u0107 na platnu,\u201d Ve\u010dernje novosti<\/em> 3, November 1971: 8.
Drago\u0161 Kalaji\u0107, \u201cPetar Lubarda – dr\u017eavni slikar,\u201d Delo<\/em> vol. 20, year 20, no. 4 (1974): 422-428.
Lazar Trifunovi\u0107, Studije, ogledi, kritike<\/em> vol. 3, ed. Dragan Bulatovi\u0107, Belgrade, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1990.
Mom\u010dilo Stefanovi\u0107, \u201cIzlo\u017eba Lubarde, Milosavljevi\u0107a i Aralice,\u201d in: Studije, ogledi, kritike<\/em>, ed. Radmila Mati\u0107 Pani\u0107 and Je\u0161a Denegri, Belgrade, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1988: 135-139.
Miodrag B. Proti\u0107, Savremenici, likovne kritike i eseji<\/em>, Belgrade, Nolit, 1955.
Je\u0161a Denegri, Srpska umetnost 1950-2000. Pedesete<\/em>, Belgrade, Orion Art, 2013, 117-129.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1298,"template":"","class_list":["post-1962","blog","type-blog","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/warped-development.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog\/1962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/warped-development.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/warped-development.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warped-development.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/warped-development.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}