The Misfits.pdf - Muzej suvremene umjetnosti Zagreb

Branka Stipanie
A_
In id Manifesto, drawing upon the biopsycho
theory he had heard of as a school boy in Sid,
Dimitrije Baievi divided his life into nine
and a half Mangeloses. According to this theo-
ry, the cells of the human body undergo a
complete change every seven years. This
means that completely different subjects exist
within the same person. Mangelos uses this
theory to account for the differences in the
early and late phases of various artists and
philosophers: there are two Rimbauds, two
Marxes, three Van Goghs, "several" Picassos
and nine and a half Mangeloses.
One Mangelos was a critic and a curator,
another lost faith in all of that and decided to
start afresh from a tabula rasa. One was
involved in the running of cultural institutions,
while the other began to doubt the values of
such organisations, prompting yet another to
persevere in his struggle to formulate the
artistic idiom called "no-art".
Mangelos no.1 (1921-1928) was a country boy from
Sid; Mangelos no.2 (1928-1935) was a secondary and
high school student: Mangelos no.3 (1935-1942)
began making black marks in his school notebooks
marking the deaths of friends killed in the war, later,
he called these Paysages de la mort and Paysages de
la guerre, Mangelos no.4 (1942-1949) wrote his first
Alphabet and began studying the history of art;
Mangelos no.5 (1949-1956), no.6 (1956-1963) and no.
7(1963-1970) were, by now, deeply involved in art,
producing Tabulae Rasae - painting black tablets
and Paysages - pages resembling school slates with
lines drawn across them; writing words and texts on
paper and boards: drawing over art reproductions
and calling them "anti-peinture"; writing "no-sto-
ries" - texts and poetry inscribed in notebooks
painted black: writing theses and projects... and
becoming a member of the avant-garde Croatian
group Gorgona whose radical projects were rooted
in the notion of anti-art. Mangelos no.8 (1970-1977).
no.9 (1977-1984) and no.9 and a half (1984-1987) for-
Dimitrije Baieevie - Mangelos
Paysage de la querre
33 I THE MISFITS