Painting Nikola Gvozdenović represents, philosophically speaking, the exercise of a kind of artistic monism. It is quite possible that it begins as an examination of a personal nostalgia, but it is also quite obvious that it ends as a single, precisely and completely processed artistic vision. Monism in such a clear and thoughtful, and in a way experienced form, and to such an extent practiced obsessively, is, as far as I know, rarely found in art. Among the rarities of this kind, one famous example is Paul Gauguin with its topological, thematic and coloristic commitment to (the island of) Tahiti. Another notable and striking example is Matija Bećković in its mature period, we are mostly and definitely convinced that Nikola Gvozdenović's painting is in a very close (and undoubted) relationship and connection with this poetry, more than with any other artistic monism.
The affinities of these two artists begin, first of all, as a final, obvious and striking topological commitment to a place, a situation and a human habitation. Whether, in one case, that place is a village in the Montenegrin tribe of Rovca, as the poet suggests to us in an epilogue, and whether, in the other case, that place is a village in the Montenegrin tribe of Crmnica, where Gvozdenović was born, is secondary, and although with such an identification we will not make any particular mistake (especially since many traces in the works of these artists suggest it to us), with it we will not even remotely guess either the goal or the essence of these arts. For when we follow the transition from empirical and psychological topology to artistic topology, then both of these (mentioned) places can be called the Waste Land, as we will soon see.
As a theme, as an artistic problem, and as an aesthetic pattern, the Wasteland, as it is called Thomas Stearns Eliot, has marked and defined a large part of modern literature and a good part of modern theatre: The Wasteland is a literary and stage territory in which many of, for example, lead their grotesque, tragic and comic, poignant and tragicomic existences. Kami's, Beckett's or Faulkner's hero. In a significantly different key and with a completely different tone that transports us to the archaic nature of a primordial homeland, Bećković's characters are also found there, and as their artistic counterparts, Gvozdenović's characters are also there. In my opinion, we are on the real Wasteland only with these proto-characters. As for the artistic breakthrough into the Wasteland itself, the following should be kept in mind. The discovery and restoration, and then the "explosion" of modern art, most likely began precisely in painting. At the same time, all experimentation with form and expression was, first and foremost, focused on the destruction of classical three-dimensional space (discovered in the Renaissance) and then, at the same time, on the restoration of a new plastic space. However, although artistic research was carried out precisely in connection (and above all) with space, in it (in the new space as well as in the classical one) no such territory was established in its (aesthetic) sovereignty, which is called the Waste Land in literature and which, among others, the writers mentioned a little while ago, have already shown us many times that it is probably our first and last (metaphysical) abode, and that the last truth about us as human beings is woven into it. (the truth about human creation). It is as if to say that, when exploring the plastic space, many great masters of modern painting did not have all the necessary tools for navigation and that the Waste Land was not found in painting in a completely precise, literal and definitive sense, or at least its artistic geography was not fully articulated. It is true, there are many, more or less, undoubted and, in the aesthetic sense, very impressive hints and traces of her possible artistic existence. Sculptures can be mentioned as an example T. Marinetti as well as a good part of German expressionism. A particularly striking example is Edvard Munch, or rather Munch's "The Scream" which, as far as I can see and hear, is heard in the Wasteland or, perhaps, at the first touch and encounter with it.
Gvozdenović is, without any subsequent doubts or re-examination, the painter of the Waste Land as a final, once and for all given state. He carried out the entire artistic treatment and plastic foundation of the Waste Land in such a way that all the paintings for which he is known as an independent and original artist can be observed (and we can consider them) as an artistic cartography of this territory and of course as messages coming from it, and we will notice that these messages are without any screams or, if you will allow, without any signs of hysteria.
I would like, for a moment, to see one (I think the last) artistic signpost with the help of which, in my opinion, Gvozdenović was able to articulate his nostalgia (if it is nostalgia) and thus, working on it, travel to his artistic vision. Of course, this implies Lubarda both towards the object and towards the method of its perception, but I think that clear lyrical commitments on the one hand and epic on the other stopped Lubarda at the very threshold of Pusta zemlja, or perhaps he did not want to enter it. Let us therefore look at Lubarda's object and look at it by defining it verbally using Isidora's essay on Lubarda himself.
“The dry stone of Montenegro,” he says. Isidora Sekulić, - “incredibly abundantly thrown and undulating, it holds a middle ground between the image of the sea and the image of the desert. Although this landscape is more of a drawing than a painting, it is still full of plastic forms and soul. The enigmatic beauty of this landscape is accompanied by another rare attribute, deep seriousness. No matter how much excitement the Montenegrin landscape arouses in us, we are always struck by an element of heavy and proud seriousness. There is always something of night and icy peace. God did not joke in Montenegro.”
And, indeed, God was not joking, and therefore neither is Gvozdenović when he incorporated this “steady middle ground between the image of the sea and the image of the desert” as a permanent and obligatory landscape into his paintings and his artistic vision, and when he, like a painterly demiurge, extracted and built a human creature from the same substance, just as if he were working by analogy with the biblical creator who made a human creature from the dust of the earth. In Gvozdenović, the human creature emerges, therefore, from the very landscape in which we see it, from the very dust of the earth (and the dotted method of Gvozdenović’s painting, a kind of pointillism, testifies that it is dust), and from that emerges its basic ontological skeleton. Therefore, the basic pattern of all of Gvozdenović’s art is the image of the sixth day of creation, that is, the image of that biblical day when the creator extracted and built man from the dust of the earth.
But first of all, we need to clarify the exact reasons why we call this artistic structure and human situation The Waste Land. Perhaps, if we stick to the analogy with the Old Testament, we are talking about that state after the (first) sin when we find the human creature already expelled from the Garden of Eden and when he is already "in the sweat of his brow..." etc. It may, indeed, at first glance seem that this is exactly the case, considering that we have long become accustomed to such a topic as the main topic of the so-called. social art, and we also know that it is precisely in this that many social utopias have found their theme and their energy since time immemorial. It may be, I say, that this is also the case with Gvozdenović - but I, again, think that it is not, since Gvozdenović is not, at least not primarily, a social painter, although social art could have been one of the basic signposts, so I would, once again and quite decisively, say that Gvozdenović's vision incorporated, once and for all (and) exclusively (only and only) the sixth day of creation, as well as the fact that this is a, so to speak, finally given and forever determined sixth day after which the seventh did not even come, so I would almost say that it is the sixth day, practically without the five that preceded it, as if those first five days did not even exist or that, if they did exist, that during that entire period the Creator was (continuously) grumpy or careless, so that creation also proceeded carelessly, and that the Creator, although, of course, he was not joking, did not completely complete his works - and thus did not completely separate light from darkness (that is why we have "something of night and icy peace"), just as he did not separate the upper and lower waters (hence the sea and the desert in the same stroke), while the vegetation, even when he had not completely forgotten it, was considered mostly superfluous - and that is why the few branches (and the few lambs) that slipped through the (so incomplete) creation and were nevertheless embodied in existence, are continuously privileged (in Gvozd's) paintings, and that is why they are often found in human hands, found in their embrace, in the same way that, in these paintings and with those same hands, small children and newborns are hugged. These are all reasons why we have designated this entire artistic structure (and the human truth contained within it) with the term monism. This (monism) is about an original artistic method and an artistic metaphysics, it is about the monism of the sixth day of creation, before which, as it were, nothing was created. Through this monism, and with its help, Gvozdenović traveled to his Wasteland and thus realized his artistic vision - at the center of which he discovered and defined the human creature, as one forever inhabited by his solitude, and he defined him in such a way that his very and, as we see, mere existence is and must be a feat. Sensitive to this state of feat (as indeed to everything that is important), Gvozdenović gave this creature such optical magnification that it is elevated above its landscape and we can see from afar that this is a real "giant made of earth dust", as he expressed it in the famous "Legend of Joseph".Thomas Mann.
We must now ask ourselves what artistic or any other beauty is and what it consists of, regardless of whether this expression can be tolerated by modern aesthetic theory at all and, above all, whether there is any beauty here at all? There is, of course, and this structure is full of natural and moving beauty because all the dots of this artistic world, all the ingredients of this dotted world and all the grains of this earthly dust are full (as can be clearly seen) of light elements, so, in this way, every dot and every grain is a value in itself - and so, in this way, through this structure (and through this monism) existence is confirmed, in a way it is (here, right here, on the Waste Land) and consecrated, in other words, it is confirmed as "heavy and proud seriousness", in a word, it is confirmed as greatness - or, to put it more modestly, it is confirmed as a reason for greatness and that is, let's say right away, another among the reasons why the (artistic) dimensions of this painter are undoubtedly very serious, as is always the case with those (rare) artists who manage to bring nothing but living truth to the light of day (and before their eyes) with their reliable and sensitive hand from the very foundations and the living archetype itself.
Bonus video:
