If I knew and could, like he can Lidija Vujacic, if I were to paint the legs so convincingly, I would most likely not stop there, but would continue and, in the same manner, paint everything else that, from the outside, makes up a human being, or anthropos (to put it that way for the sake of the anthropology professor) - and I certainly would not fail to paint the head. Moreover, I would start with the head, following the most common artistic practice, and I could not swear to you that I would not stay with the head, as many painters (and even more sculptors) do, since, whether they knew it clearly or not, because they are so educated, they are obsessed with the belief that the head, with what is in it, is the crowning element in the definition of a human being as a creature who, as they say, first of all, thinks and by thinking creates and maintains numerous clever institutions to which we have to thank for being more civilized than we would be without them and more than we would be when they are, for example, corrupted.
One cannot accuse the said belief of not being correct/correct, although one should not overlook/obstruct the alternative, and sometimes opposed, belief that it is not the head and brain but the "heart" in the chest and the feelings that either inflate or tear them apart - (that they are) the anthropo-center, as shown by countless verses or dramas (and dramatic TV series) or scores accompanied by symphony and other orchestras, in which they can be heard cheerfully singing or whining and lamenting, and with their piano-pianis and forte-fortissimos they transport us to other shores (mostly fantasized and utopian). And, while we are on the subject of great beliefs or great anthropo-truths, it would be worth mentioning the one with which the digestive zone is centered, from which those mass movements, ideologies and manifestos originate with their fortissimo calls for all the despised in the world/all those who are starving to rise.
Well, when we have mentioned all this, or when we have, I guess, completed the repertoire of great truths and, therefore, also great/famous artistic codes, it would be appropriate, on this occasion, to pause with the question: What is it with Lidija Vujačić and her paintings, i.e. what is it with all those legs with which Lidija begins and ends her paintings, what is it with the legs that the frame of the painting “amputates” and isolates from everything else, thus making them the only (or at least dominant) theme that, from painting to painting, manifests itself through various variations, emphasizing its claim that it is precisely here that the anthropocentric is located. This is undoubtedly another centration that (along with those that center the head, heart or digestive tract) no one has particularly reckoned with and, as far as I know, has said anything special about it in terms of visual language, to quote it. It is not, of course, a question of legs being overlooked, neglected or even prohibited by law, and therefore not present in paintings at all - who would say such nonsense? It is a question of legs being neither a striking nor an obsessive theme in painting - they were not the point. And in Lidija Vujačić's paintings, they obviously are, and this therefore points to another centration that concerns what (at least) another great and comprehensive anthropo-truth is concentrated around. And in addition, just as we said "centration", here is a decentration: namely, the legs, isolated in the painting, i.e. amputated by the frame of the painting as a figure without a background, are actually a pars pro totto or part for the whole, an element of the whole that our attention and intelligence must understand and they must necessarily understand it all the more so because the vital state of the legs is filled (as is clearly seen with lively muscular tensions which makes that whole unmistakable and it implies that the entire body, although we do not see it, because it is not depicted/painted, is also vital) and so that whole, I will emphasize, is also an absent presence (to borrow that expression from literary aesthetics) because of which we need to decenter ourselves and rotate in our minds in order to (possibly) understand and see in what position (and that depends on which painting is in question) or in what action that whole/that body is, which is mostly outside the frame of the painting (and so that whole is absent), but one part of which is inside the frame and so that whole is present for us.
Summarizing - and somewhat repeating - as the feet are repeated here, I would say that this is, therefore, about a centration, i.e. a great anthropo-truth that is presented to us for the first time through visual means and that, from image to image, i.e. from one mental rotation to the next, moves us from sitting to standing positions, from standing, to walking or even running when it is especially necessary to flee in order to save the head so that it can utter its "I think, therefore I exist" or to exclaim "rise up, you despised ones of the world" i.e. rise up to wipe out some bastille or, perhaps, to embark on another migration of peoples, i.e. a great migration; and, of course, also to preserve the chest, so that it swells and this or that song rises from it.
And, well, all of this (and there's more) is the context from which Lidija's exceptional art comes and which concerns it, as lucid, thoughtful and demanding in terms of mental rotations as this exhibition, which we will congratulate Lidija on with great respect and pleasure, is coming up.
Bonus video:
