"Lexicon of Fine Arts of Montenegro" is a unique publication that for the first time presents the overall artistic culture of our country, created from prehistory to modern times. This comprehensive overview of the extraordinary artistic wealth is based on the experiences of generations of researchers, new knowledge and modern scientific approaches.
Primary objective Lexicon is to present to the Montenegrin and European public, in accordance with universal lexicographical standards and methodological principles, an integral presentation, in all chronological stages, of the complex, heterogeneous artistic culture of Montenegro, which both conceptually and formally expresses the epochs in which it was created. Very often, it not only reflects the general currents of European culture, but excels in their expression.
Montenegro is a country that has existed for centuries in the windswept areas of the Balkans - on the imperial road between East and West, at the same time in the center and on the periphery of historical and cultural flows. At the junction of ancient land and sea routes, as a bridge between Constantinople and Rome, all kinds of cultural, religious and ethnic influences crossed over time on its soil. The identity and continuity of Montenegro can be clearly read in the artistic culture, in the genesis of which the influences of European-Mediterranean civilizations are registered: ancient Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Islamic-Oriental, up to Western European responses. Those cultural-civilizational strata, biographical markers of ontogenesis, in full synthesis, make Montenegro unique. The territory of today's Montenegro, in various historical panoramas, was called by various names: Duklja, Zeta and Montenegro. The proper names registered in its genealogy are actually an expression and confirmation of historical and state continuity and cultural identity, and the foundations of modern Montenegro. Truly, regardless of how many times it changed its name and its borders, Montenegro, during all epochs of development, preserved its rich cultural and spiritual treasure, the deeds of belonging to the Mediterranean civilization circle.
In shaping and affirming the Montenegrin spiritual, national and state tradition and modernity, the permanent development of artistic culture is an essential element.
In addition to traditional artistic disciplines - painting, sculpture and architecture, material from cultural history related to certain styles and stylistic epochs, following the standard periodization and denomination - prehistory, antiquity, middle ages, new century, modern and postmodern, was processed. Elements from the wider cultural context are also presented: museums, galleries, academies, art associations and art magazines. Integral material is processed in the form of biographical and topical articles.
Most of the lexicographical articles consist of brief biographies of fine artists, real estate architects, photographers, comic book authors, art historians and art critics, analyzes of their fine poetics, along with a selection of representative works. In this corpus there are also many foreigners, present for centuries, as well as outsiders (artists of the South Slavic peoples) who, especially during the wave of national revivals from the second half of the XNUMXth century, achieved an enviable artistic reputation with works with a Montenegrin theme. Their achievements represent the main pages of Montenegrin cultural history. There are also artists from Montenegro, whose work is embedded in the immanent values of the cultural heritage of other countries. Everything given indicates that the constitution of the Lexicon presupposed a research process to a certain extent, actually facing all kinds of challenges and limits.
The visual documentation of the Lexicon, an important segment in the architecture of publications of this type, is illustrated through various illustrations (reproductions, photos, drawings and sketches), which accompany the relevant legends.
Applied (decorative) art is not included in this encyclopedic reading, since its diversity and richness deserve a special lexicographic audience.
This fundamental project, whose goal is to collect, remember and affirm the spiritual creativity of universal values, is the collective work of a team of reference authors, text writers, field editors and collaborators. Thematic variety and author's stamps determined the degree of linguistic and stylistic unification of the texts.
In other words, the "Lexicon of the Fine Arts of Montenegro" represents a kind of vademecum through the historical layers of artistic culture and a breviary of its actuality.
Bonus video:
