The enigmatic Mrs. Parrot

In Chicago's Grant Park, a bronze sculpture of an Indian on a horse, the work of Ivan Meštrović. Interesting: when the prominent sculptor finished the sketch of the monument, he asked Mihailo Pupin to express his opinion. Pupin was not satisfied with the appearance of the horse, and, according to Vesna Barbić, an art historian, he resented the author to a considerable extent.

Chicago, a large American city, has also attracted Montenegrins since the mid-XNUMXth century. Before the First World War, there were already twenty thousand Montenegrins in America. It was sung: "America dewy flowers/There is no one who will not want you/Not a child of two summers/Not an old man of a hundred summers..."

They worked in the mines, so the writer Janko Đonović said: "When the yellow light of the carbitusha fades at the mouths of underground pits, the earth returns blacks and Montenegrins - both black and black..."

And the "loves" wrote: "I'm asking my brother, I'm asking my godfather/to lend me three hundred crowns/to go to Chicago/so that I can see my beloved/how it works and fails/and far away woes".

Grant Park along Lake Michigan blossomed. A cluster of skyscrapers plan in the autumn sun. Not far away, in the prestigious Diversi Avenue, Sava Rakočević, a prominent American artist. Born in Peja; graduated in 1960 in Belgrade as the best student of the Academy of Applied Arts. And then in 1966 he went to the United States of America, a country, as he says, of great opportunities.

A drop of soul

From the ninth floor, from the painter's posh apartment, a wonderful view of Lake Michigan.

- This is, in fact, the real Chicago - says Sava Rakočević. - Everything else is a distant periphery. And those who have not branched on their own trees will not leaf out in other people's cultures either. My lines in the pictures are like the rivers of the motherland; she lives in man. Rivers flow and do not return to their sources. The lines on my canvas like rivers have a serpentine shape. A picture is a face without a face. Looking at the painted canvas, let's try to feel it, without asking what the painter wanted to say. Especially if we are talking about an image that has not been given a final shape, where a drop of oil has not yet settled into the content. So when someone asks so easily, he probably expects the painter to answer him even more easily and quickly. There is no answer there. An attempt to explain a work of painting takes us away from the secret sources of truth and the message that the painting carries in itself. It finds conception in the dark ranks of the inner world. And in that dream, outside of waking life, he rushes to the bright spaces of consciousness. Who knows what consciousnesses act on its formation? When the thought about the picture is formed, the painter transfers that world of thought to the canvas. From his thoughts to the canvas, the thought has already undergone certain changes. How many changes would there be on the way from the image to its explanation.

Image does not translate. The writer conveys his thoughts with signs, writing pages; the painter places them on canvas or other materials, defining them with line and color, and in that connection with matter they live and move in space - diagnoses the painter Sava. - There are many painted canvases with flowers, that we are already suffocating from their smell. Painters, like poets, emphasized the tenderness and beauty of the flower and fell and cried together with it. Matter giggled at their senses, preparing juices for new blossoms. Let's look at the stones, no stone is the same in terms of shape, color, hardness, weight; each has a different character. If a flower grows on a stone, we believe that the stone also has a heart. More content can be found in a stone on which age has accumulated, the color frozen and moisture hidden in lichen, than in a face. There is no stone that cannot be a picture. How much dense weaving in his tissue, how much star dust. From one block of stone, the veins of which are covered with white coldness, the sculptor will create a work of art, impressing it with beauty and a drop of soul...

Sava is preparing a big exhibition in New York. The largest American city, apparently, is becoming the world metropolis of art.

- You're right. In my opinion, New York is increasingly taking over the primacy of fine arts from Paris, investing in art. It is probably waiting for some new genius. And he doesn't appear often - says Sava. - If one nation gives birth to three or four great creators in a century, then that is truly great. And all the rest of the mass of creators and semi-creators is there to help the geniuses stand out and grow.

Remembering Dučić

In the painter's apartment, in the heart of Chicago, a lot of beautiful, valuable things; two apprentices from Imperial Russia, a commode in the style of Louis XVI and on it a wonderful, white, marble clock, which belonged to the poet and diplomat Jovan Dučić.

- I want to donate everything I have from Dučić to some future museum of writers in the old homeland, of course with the guarantee that it will be preserved - explains Sava. - I own some of Dučić's style furniture, which he received while he was on duty in Italy from a countess from the Borgia family. There are two old Chinese vases; I also have Dučić's death mask. Someone remembered, when the poet died, to preserve his image. The mask should be poured; I keep the original in plaster where the remains of Dučić's hair and eyelashes can still be seen.

The painter Sava also shows me a drawing by Marija Papago, which Dučić always carried with him. Jovan Dučić loved that beautiful woman very much, so on the back of the drawing he wrote a text in his own hand, which is being published for the first time:

"The picture represents Mrs. Maria Papago, nee Kalinski, daughter of the first adjutant of King Constantine of Greece, General Kalinski, and the wife of the late Minister of the Army General Papago (1935-39). Personal gift to Jovan Dučić from Mrs. Marija (year 1916) in Athens. J. Ducic".

Meštrović's Indian on a horse is gilded in Grant Park.

- It is easier to go somewhere than to come back - says Sava Rakočević. - As time goes on, the return becomes more difficult, because those we left behind are no longer waiting for you. Someone told me that in the quarters of Morača Monastery they are preparing a room for my studio. Oh, you know what that means to me?! It will not be empty. For me, that would be more than half of Belgrade if they gave me...