The world-renowned artist Dragoljub Raša Todosijević, one of the most influential artists from the former Yugoslavia, participant of the first Cetinje Biennale, winner of the most prestigious international awards, was buried on December 6 in his native Belgrade in the presence of family, friends and colleagues, and in the absence of state and city officials. who did not even find it necessary to express their condolences for the death of the artist, which was reported by many regional and many world media.
Thanks to Raša Todosijević. Grateful Serbia. Perhaps?, said art historian and senior curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade (MSUB) Una Popović in her farewell speech at the cremation at the New Cemetery, who spoke on behalf of the institution, but also on her own behalf, since she grew up with Raša Todosijević, a member of the informal Group six artists gathered in the early 70s around the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade, which included her father, the artist Zoran Popović, along with Marina Abramović, Neša Paripović, Era Milivojević and Gergelj Urkom.
Una Popović began and ended her speech with Raša's famous sentence, "Thank you Raša Todosijević", noting that he was actually the best at explaining himself, despite hundreds of expert analyzes of his work.
On one occasion, as she recalled, Todosijević stated: "If I really had to describe myself - which is truly a thankless task, I would say that I am first and foremost a European artist whose work consists of heavy mining of consciousness and subconsciousness, but also the conscience of our merciless civilization".
Knowing Todosijević from early childhood and noting that their relationship was always warm and friendly, Una Popović pointed out that through such communication she also learned from him - direct, analytical, open and, of course, satirical art, and not just for this time and to this country, but also to life in general.
Through those immediate analyses, seriousness and readiness for changes and progress, intellectual, artistic, existential, was reached, said Una Popović.
Una Popović recalled that exactly one year ago, her mother, art historian Jasna Tijardović, Todosijević's friend, intellectual and artistic comrade-in-arms since the 1970s, whose companionship and respect lasted until the very end, was also buried in the same place.
"It seems to me that the greats of this city, country and culture are leaving and I can already intimately say - on my behalf - some of my extended family, but also in general in relation to all of us here - the basic driving nucleus of constant struggles, disagreements, brave hearts and fair reasoning", said Una Popović.
Dragoljub Raša Todosijević was one of the key protagonists of conceptual art in the late 60s and early 70s and one of the most significant artistic figures of our time, who contributed to the affirmation of a new artistic practice in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. During the 70s, together with other artists in the informal Group of Six Artists, he redefined the function, need and goal of art, as well as its form and materiality.
Todosijević developed a radical political discourse in his works - from actions, performances, installations, pictures and texts.
One of his statements: "The way an artist asks a question about art is a work of art", confirms the special side of his art. Critical intervention, i.e. constant questioning, analyticalness, direct politicization, according to Todosijević, are the way and purpose of acting in art, pointed out Una Popović.
Through artistic practice, Todosijević realized drawings, paintings, graphics, collages, sculptures, objects, installations, performances, video works, posters, program texts and stories, as well as group exhibitions.
"Was ist Kunst, Marinela Koželj?" (1978) represents his emblematic work and one of his most performed performances in general, and it can be said that it is also one of the most significant works in Serbian art of the 20th century, pointed out Una Popović, after reading a part of the statement of the Ministry of Education and Culture, which she wrote on the occasion of Todosijević's death.
Todosijević, as she emphasized, was also one of the most internationally active, most exhibited and most respected artists from Serbia.
MSUB organized a retrospective for him in 2002 "Thanks to Raša Todosijević", and he also participated in numerous national and international collective exhibitions organized by MSUB, Una Popović recalled.
Dragoljub Raša Todosijević died on December 3 in his native Belgrade at the age of 79.
Earlier this year, Todosijević was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS), which is the highest recognition for all professional creativity in the field of fine arts.
He is the recipient of a number of other awards, including the Unicredit Award at the 54th Venice Biennale for the exhibition "Light and Darkness of Symbols" (2011), as well as the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art's IASPIS Residential Award AWARD (2001), then the ArtsLink Award for 2004 .year and the Emily Harvey Foundation Award from New York (2006), which is awarded to artists associated with the Fluxus movement. He is also the winner of the "Ivan Tabaković" award of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (2023), the Lifetime Achievement Award of the 50th Okobar Salon in Belgrade (2009), the City of Belgrade Award (2003), the "Nadežda Petrović" Memorial Award in Čačak (1998), the "Sava Šumanović" award (2008) and others.
His most famous works - "What is art?" (Was ist Kunst?), "God loves Serbs" (Gott liebt die Serben), "Edinburgh declaration" and many others, provided him with a worldwide reputation.
Todosijević's works were bought for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, the Center Georges Pompidou - Bobur in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, the Tate Museum in London.
The video of his cult performance from 1976 "Was ist Kunst" was included in the collection of the Tate Museum in London in 2014, which bought in 2019 also part of his works from the famous series "Nulla dies sine linea" from the mid-70s .
Todosijević held about 40 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 200 group exhibitions starting in the early 70s, including, among others, - Edinburgh Art Festival (1973), 10 European Artists (Hillyer Gallery, Northampton, Mass, USA, 1975) , Paris Youth Biennial (1977), New Art Practice 1966-1978 (Zagreb, 1978), European Dialogue, 3rd Sidney Biennial (Australia, 1979), Krakow Encounters (1981), 16th Biennale in Sao Paolo (1982), Private Symbols as a Social Metaphor (5th Sydney Biennial, 1984), Cetinje Biennale (1991), Private-Public (Podgorica, Belograd, Novi Sad, 1992-1993), Europaer (Graz, 1993). Project for Europe - Europe Rediscovered (Copenhagen, 1994); Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles 1997); Museum d'Art Contemporani (Barcelona, 1998-1999); Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo, 1999)…
He had his last exhibition, "Big Fantasy", in September at the X Vitamin gallery, and it included collages and small-format watercolors that were created mostly in the 90s at the artist's kitchen table.
In 2015, Todosijević lost his studio at the Old Fair in Belgrade. On this occasion, he spoke in an interview for SEEcult.org about the situation in art then and now, cultural policy, art education, the lack of a value system and interest in art, and about the chances of young artists, whom he advises to go somewhere outside. He believed that the authorities do not need culture, because it gathers a numerically small population that is worthless in the sense of a voting machine.
A revolution like Serbia has never experienced
In an interview given to Radmila Stanković for Belgrade Radar he spoke about some current topics.
Many years ago, in an interview, you told me that Mediala was just a small spice on a big nationalist theme. Do you know who was affected by that claim of yours?
I know, and I don't care. I still think what I said then, even today I don't understand how I hit someone with that statement who said he was a very successful painter in Paris. Well, when you're such an emperor in Paris, why do you itch what a painter in Belgrade says.
When someone works and lasts for so many years, he witnesses changes, not only social and political, but above all changes in the value system. How do you see those changes under the current government? Do you think, for example, that it is normal for all European capitals to have their main railway stations in the city center, where they were built a hundred or more years ago, only Belgrade decided to abolish them?
What you described are, unfortunately, the facts we are witnessing. When everything is erased and the story returns to the beginning, we come to the basic intention - to make money at the cost of destroying history. In that way, why wouldn't the Eiffel Tower collapse? What's the use of that ironwork in the middle of Paris? Come on, tell me what it's for? You tear down the Eiffel Tower nicely and build some twenty-story skyscraper. You do the same with the Triumphal Arch.
What we have been witnessing in recent years is the kind of death that Serbia has never experienced, the likes of which it does not remember. Those people who went to the protests in the nineties, and are no longer among us, are turning over in their graves because they could not even imagine that this country would be so cruel. To be brutalized culturally, economically, politically, in every way. If this nation does not come to its senses, it will be much worse. The biggest danger is that every day we are sinking more and more into a kind of fascism.
I can only look with contempt at the triumphalism of a fake guy, an athlete for example, who comes and immediately asks for an apartment, and some money for drooling over the flag
Do you think that the people are aware of this danger?
In my accumulation of knowledge, I lack awareness, information, what is happening in the depths of Serbia. I don't like the word province, because we all came from the province. I don't know if something is changing in people's consciousness, or if the fear of the authorities is even greater in smaller places. I know a case from the eighties of the last century, which well illustrates the behavior of people in the interior. A group of artists from Belgrade, members of ULUS, was invited to the small town to select the works of local artists and make an exhibition of them. They did all that, returned to Belgrade. In two or three days, one of them goes to that city and sees that there are completely different works on display than the ones they chose. As soon as they saw their backs, the local powerful made an exhibition of their local favourites. I am afraid of that continuity in behavior that essentially continues today. I am afraid of the fear of people who are not allowed to express their thoughts and their demands, because they are surrounded by those who support the government out of love or interest. It's dangerous to be alone in a small environment, because the punishment for that starts from kindergarten to the workplace. (…) I was prevented from having any career except to do my own work at my own expense. But I was invited abroad and I was a professor in San Francisco. Who of these who were powerful here to prevent me from completing my graduate studies, who of them taught in America? Nobody, of course, because their power was to eliminate anyone who could threaten them. After 2000, I had a great invitation from Sweden and I spent two months in Stockholm, I had good accommodation and a studio. I saw how an artist can live.
I am afraid that what I am saying from the domain of culture, that is, art, with small corrections, can be applied to the whole society. It's as if there are nations that are moving forward at one point, and others, who for some, I don't know what reason, some indescribable karma, start falling behind.
"We were just in front of those peasants"
And this is how Todosijević, in the text of Lidija Marinkov Pavlović (Vreme, 2022), explained the possibility of a new avant-garde today, but also the global artistic situation.
"Such criteria are not valid today. There were several waves in Europe, waves of upheaval, but that ended. It seems that money was very important here. Do you know how much one Richter is? The horror! Our friend, Rene Blok who was the director of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, offered me to move in with him for 15 days while he was away. Provided I don't break his dishes. What dishes! There was one 20 Richter in the apartment, each of which does not move without 10 million. I asked him how man, where did you get this? Well, we were friends, and Richter was without a lick, he tells me."
At the beginning, Gerhard Richter exhibited photorealistic portraits at the Venice Biennale, which no one wanted to buy. "And when he got going," continues Raša, "without 10-20 million, there is no picture. Imagine a Serbian artist who sells a painting for 10 or 20 million euros. On the other hand, Blok bought one of my large works with barrels, fans and flags for 30.000, which was a little for poor Dragoljub, but for me as a Serb, it was terrible money".
God loves the Serbs is the slogan written on many pictures and objects, which can be seen in retrospect, but it is also the name of several works that include the form or format of the swastika. This inscription/name began to appear in the early 90s and very clearly articulates a political position, which can be heard as a rallying cry even today. One of the larger works under this title is an installation with a bathtub and a red swastika, which is owned by MSUV and occupies a central place in the exhibition. Works God loves the Serbs they are represented in many collections around the world.
A little later, an exhibition titled On Normality was prepared in Klagenfurt. Then, in two days, Todosijević received a work with a piano from a private museum located on a Norwegian island, packed "like a rocket to the moon". The owner of the work did it for himself, of course, but the whole endeavor was fascinating. Then the whole of Klagenfurt was plastered with posters of that work. In Spain, they tried to perform the work without the presence of the artist, because Todosijević could not travel. Harald Ziman organized important exhibitions, among others Honey and Blood - Future is on the Balkan, where Raša performed some of his great works. "Szeemann made huge undertakings. He didn't get rich, please, but he gained a reputation, these are people of great caliber." In Hamburger Bahnhof, they successfully executed a work with a large swastika, which, with some vicissitudes, was later bought by the Moderna Museet in Sweden. "Money here - work there, it's all done in three days. That's how I grew and matured. Slowly and gradually learn some things in contact with the world. And here - nothing. I am only satisfied with the extensive catalog on the occasion of the Venice Biennale, I always carry it with me. The retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade was forgotten in 10 seconds. That's why I wonder, well Dragoljube, where did we go wrong? We didn't make a mistake, we were just in front of those peasants". KV
Bonus video:
