Because of its artistic and narrative seduction but, even more, because of its metaphysical deepening, painting Voj Stanić we can compare and bring into analogy with many great names and phenomena of modern and classical art and spirituality. My list includes: De Chirico, Chagall, Magrit, Bruegel i Boss, Jones, Pirandello, Marks, Gogol i Goldoni. Vivaldi. Chaplin, Luj De Fin, Volt Disney i Felini, finally and Rable (to supplement i Balša Brković thank you for that) - then, surrealism, anti-drama, magical realism and commedia dell arte - and the question that, just in case, we have to clarify is: How, in addition to all of them and in addition to all that, is it possible to claim that Stanić is at least and they see an original painter, and he, like few others, by God, is exactly that. But, once again, when we saw all this and recognized all the mentioned sizes, wouldn't it, at least in the final analysis, still be appropriate to conclude that this is a very skillful a painter's spy's eye which managed to spy on painting subjects for itself from others, as well as from reality?
Indeed, it is easy to believe in Stanić's spy's eye, especially when it comes to the so-called reality. Moreover, Stanić himself suggests something like this, for example in one of his paintings, in which he himself, sometimes crawling and sometimes crouching, flies behind a wall and from there, very indiscreetly (but, given that all this is presented irresistibly witty, and above all humorously at his own expense, we will not say blindly) observes the situation from the other side of the wall, where everyone in his own (that is, typically Stanić's) way - that is, everyone doing his plot and exercising his obsession - betrays the hedonism of a brightly sunlit beach. In much the same way that, as the naive say, Tolstoy stalked his swastika to carve out a character, it would be said that Stanić stalks (and spies) life in some Mediterranean place - and on the streets, squares, beaches, open seas and waterfronts, neighborhoods and pubs, on the roofs and above the roofs of that place, he observes various episodes in which, then, he combines the banal, the sublime and the comic, then the tragic, the pathetic, the grotesque and the fantastic, and finally, the possible and the impossible - that, moreover, he combines De Chirico, Ionesco, and the others mentioned, that he mixes them all as easily as he mixes colors - and, lo, his art!
Indeed, one would say that it is exactly so because, at first glance, it looks that way. But, on second glance - there is not much left of it. Why? First of all, because Stanić is, before anything else, philosopher, as we must call him for lack of a more appropriate term, and although he was undoubtedly always good-looking and open-eyed, his job could never be to simply observe and notice what was happening in various local situations in order to present it to with his paintings - because if that were the case, Vojo Stanić would be an ordinary local painter and (I) don't see how, in that case, he could even hang in the very construction of the visual and empirical world and to consider and arrange within that construction as many details, as many human and other events as, we see, he did. Stanić, I say, is first and foremost a philosopher of the visible and, especially, of the human world, and his work consists of ideas and artistic experiments that arise from them. It was from these operations that the aforementioned construction emerged and a system emerged which, as noted, at the same time, and the cosmos and the state for which (for the state) we should immediately say, that if perhaps it is not quite a "drunk ship" (as he would say Arthur Rimbaud) must be quite tipsy.
Considered as a country, Stanić's world is a constant spectacle, carnival and circus. But beyond that, he is a colorful stage of absurdity. However, that country is not like that because they are They in it they decided to make a carnival, a spectacle and a theater of the absurd (or perhaps some spectacular absurdity) - but it is like that because some higher (physical or metaphysical) force maintains it in such a state, because one unknown gravity he makes of it a separate cosmic system and determines its obvious tilt, stupor and crookedness, regardless of what they think about it and what those who inhabit it want.
Thanks to the discovery of such anti-gravity, Stanić, in his competition with reality, created one of the most spacious artistic worlds in which more or less possible everything, and in which, in its own way, everything is understandable - with the sole exception of human communication and understanding itself. That is why in his state-cosmos, human beings, irresistibly similar to children's toys and, regardless of the crowd to which they belong, isolated like dolls, sleepwalkers and robots, exercise their actions and obsessions within a ritual without faith: namely, there is no, in that ritual, faith in cause and effect as well as faith in the next moment and the passage of time. There is not even faith in elementary prudence! And, frankly, there is not much reason for such faith - so, for example, one of these creatures, smoking a pipe, as in a circus, pushes a bicycle along a wire stretched across the sea, and it does so strictly for its own account, which is not in the least it doesn't concern the other participants in the picture - who, moreover, won't even look at it, while we, for our part, can be quite sure that they can't do that at all, given that each of them, at the same time and also for his account, he is already forcing something in his own way, or simply fornicate in the horizon whose boundaries reach as far as his own nose.
The previous example is one of many that, in a characteristic Stanić style, explain the atomized world in which communication between human beings, like communication between robots, dolls, sleepwalkers and dead souls, is difficult and impossible. Roughly, something similar is presented in Jones's and other anti-dramas in which, of course, there are many conversations, but they are always conversations without understanding and real contact - and also, something similar really happens in the reality we know all too well. and we feel it on our skin, especially in these years/decades when almost everyone, no matter how "small" or "big" they are, is persistently pushing (like the wire stretched across the sea) - persistently he enforces his politics and presents his beliefs in precisely such a way that no one else can understand him, even if they want to (and they won't!). Unless, of course, we do not understand communication in terms of that crowd, in an old painting by Stanić, in which, along one side of a ridge, members of a tribe (or, say, prisoners of some obsession or option) swarm and rush to the top, while, along the other side , the prisoners of other obsessions and options do the same and, after a head-on collision at the very top, each of them, like a simple and dead body, falls down, into the sea water - so for all of them, by all accounts judging, the way up and the way down, one and the same way, as that (great) Greek philosopher who was called "Dark" would say.
Voj Stanić's art stage could be said to be a spacious, bright and brightly (really Renaissance) lit void (and for it one would even think that it is our true and only homeland, our first and last metaphysical abode) - in which the various events and many miracles happen, that it is a sumptuous and brilliant show of mental, moral and every other neglect, a colorful picture of alienation that, who knows when (and especially now) seized individuals and communities.
One theory with which we will verbally describe and explain the events of this "living theater" can even be drawn from the old one Leibniz: therefore, this is a system of monads well closed within itself, with the fact that this system bears on itself the sign and coat of arms of this time, so it is a colorful system of monads without mutual connection - and that, it seems, is a faithful picture of the world which, therefore which, semantically and in other ways, has been exhausted (once again), has lost its fundamental sense and meaning.
The second theory - which, in contact with the previous one, will finally define Stanić's art as metaphysical can be derived from They secrete microcosms, since precisely in Stanić, as a visual axiom that cannot be explained any further, as an a priori optical (and metaphysical) principle that subordinates his cosmological system, like few other places, it is presented exactly that "it will be very bright" - as it is said in "Microcosms" - although (let's stick to it a little longer, paraphrasing it Njegosha) it is not, at that, generally clear whether "land is not an apparition".
Moved away from that fragmented system of monads in order to study it and bring it a subsequent (and that means aesthetic) connection, moved away from those sleepwalkers, carnivals and toys - and brought close to them - as micro events which are formed and exist (and last) for a certain (longer or shorter) time in the light macrocosm (and then they pass) - and drawn close to them, therefore for the same (cognitive and aesthetic) reasons, Stanić created a huge work which, in terms of brilliance and truthfulness, is in contact and collusion with the works of all (those) greatnesses that we mentioned and which and Stanić himself, as the closest relative, certainly belongs.
I don't know anything special about the real influences between them (I even believe that they don't exist, in a direct form) just as, I think, it is not known at all how, despite all the correlations, each of them is completely his own, unique and authentic - but in any case, it is clear that (here) it is a big code and consensus about reality, just as it is clear that it is a consensus and borba za code great spirits.
Bonus video:
