The New Art Practice in Yugoslavia, 1966-1978

eing Matkovi, who in 1973 wrote an essay on this and thus
made his theoretical contribution.
Matkovi began realizing his project Marking a Surface (Figs.
206, 209) in 1973. In this major work he proceeded from the
fact that the basic factors in the creation of a work of art are
the language organization, the endowment of space and
surface with form, «while the basis of visual creativity lies in
the individual technical method of marking a surface., in other
words, in the specific language of the individual. All that
remains for him to do then is take sheets of ok, paper, draw
diagonal lines and, after having set down ordinal numbers
for them, declare them to be the key system of his art.
Matkovi believed that every artist marks certain parts of the
surface using a specific language, and these extremely
simplified linguistic resources represent a condensation of the
whole process of thinking. After having marked his surfaces
with numbers, setting out diagonal lines in the form of the letter
«X., Mat kovi invited other artists to «sign» the squares which
had already been drawn, using their own code, i.e. the most
chararacteristic elements of their own linguistic system.
" I came to the conclusion that by marking space I was in
fact attempting to resolve the opposition between mental
perception (conception) and the material appearance of a
given form (cognition), says Matkovi in the second edition
of the magazine WOW. His views are in keeping with the
views of Mukafovsky, according to whom «there is no
difference in principle between linguistic activity and artistic
creativity, in other words, a work of art like language has
the character of a sign.» The recognition of the fact that art
is above all an activity of marking determined the basic
theoretical views of some of the members of Bosch + Bosch
and immanent criticism of creativity.
Matkovi's project / am an artist (Fig. 205) was already the
result of profound inquiries into the original idea of Marked
Surface, which became the sign of his individual «artistic
expression.. Matkovi, in fact, believed that in the preceding
project in which he introduced and deleted surfaces he
still remained within the traditional framework of art, which
means that he was still incapable of conceptually radically
expressing, i.e. resolving the very idea of marking surfaces.
In other words, the realization of the idea itself its
materialization did not satisfy the basic principle of
conceptual art which regards the idea as work of art. He
believes that any kind of written statement which leads to
the materialization of the idea makes it possible once again
for renewed aesthetics and aesthetic criteria to be produced
from the arsenal of traditional art. Such considerations brought
him face to face «with a huge void, a large nothingness, the
end of art, (...) I could no longer function and create because
each piece of work I produced, if it were in any way redorded,
automatically became contrary to my principles and views
I was not longer capable of «justifying» myself as an artist
through works of art Since he could no longer produce
«works» through which he could try himself out as an artist,
he decided to put out a newspaper advertisement about his
artistic existence and this he did applying a form and idea
which was not at the level of artistic creativity. Thus the
newspaper advertisement became the most appropriate way of
realizing the idea / am an artist. The ad came out in the
Harzburger Zeitung in 1974.
introduced semiology
It was in 1972 that Matkovi and I finally
into the theory and practice of our art. The semiological
experiments which I carried out in the field of visual art
resulted in a series of photos Lenin in Budapest (Fig. 211) and
Bauhaus (Fig. 212) to which can be added the short
structuralist study on photography «Sign and Image.. Matkovi,
for his part, subjected the comic strip to semiological
observation and contributed many practical solutions.
For me, however creativity is not connected with production,
the creation of material objects, but like Enzo Mari, I strive
to set up models of new linguistic systems, or to be more
precise, to detect the already existing but still insufficiently
known linguistic forms. The analysis of such a linguistic
articulation of the urban environment (Figs. 213-214) which,
though it does not create itself, in any case contributes to the
forming of others, in which partial relations gradually create
an increasingly complicated system of relations (linguistic fields
of mural surfaces, colour structures, poetic objects of the
urban environment, Gestalt codes, etc.). There are certain
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developments within relativley closed systems capable of
transforming. restructuring. Sign systems are never given in
advance, they accumulate within a given period of
development, while the object takes on the function of the
marker, as an expressive plane, and during observation
attention is directed towards its content which differs from the
concrete material traits of the object. 'It is a situation
peculiar to the sign ranging between the material (signal)
and non material (sign) characteristic while retaining the
original applicative function, the object can no longer be
connected with external, physical characteristics. In its
function of marker the object, while serving to mark and
express new contents, retains nevertheless its characteristics
deriving from its primary, everyday application. In this case
it is no longer a sign but a sign phenoinenon that we are
dealing with. «My creative work ultimately centred on
semiological research in the field of visual art. and I have so
far summed up in several volumes my observations on
spontaneously created sign systems, i.e. languages originating
in the human environment. Characteristic of my work if that
aesthetic factors are increasingly pushed into the background,
so that when I deal with aesthetics or the aesthetic what
this implies for me is the quantity of aesthetic information,
i.e. I consider the quantitative rather than the qualitative
aspect. The above mentioned definition that «art is not a closed
sphere can be appropriately applied to my activity. It was
on the basis of this conception that the project With Ida Biard
in Novi Sad / With Balint Szombathy in Paris was initiated in
1974 and published in the fourth edition of the magazine WOW.
Another aspect of the linguistic activity, of the linguistic
treatment, is reflected in the works of Csernik and Ladik.
Csernik, who joined the group in 1973, is a poet of concrete
poetry (Figs. 195-197), but like the other founders of the
group he started out as a painter. Through the years, however,
he achieved considerable results, but unfortunately only
through practical solutions in the field of concrete visual
poetry. The basic difference between him and other concrete
poets is that he has actualized writing on objects, i.e. that he
has practically succeeded in presenting space up to the third
dimension. In 1971 in his study New Pathways of Visual
Poetry Matkovi pointed out that not even on an international
scale has visual poetry managed to go beyond the plane, the
surface of the paper, and what is more, «it considers this
to be the only possible place for expression.. At the time, in
his thc.oretical work Matkovi insisted on writing on objects,
so he made experiments of his own with visual poetry situated
in space. However, though he was interested in all the
theoretical and practical aspects of the problems of visual
poetry, the so-called writing on objects was realized not in his
works, but, as I have already mentioned, in those of Csernik.
He first assigned elements of the text to the hands and face
and then to other parts of the body, raising them thus to the
rank of a work of art, while photography and film, which
served for recording, only had a documentary role. «Csernik
draws our attention to the text, its elements, creates new
syntheses, makes possible an aesthetic experience, thus
humanizing texts already alienated by usage. The works
dealing with the context of body and letter most precisely
illustrate this relationship,. Gabor Toth concludes. Csernik
laid down the fundamental theses of his visual poetry in 1973
in his eight-millimetre experimental film and in several book
objects.
Ladik, the only artist engaged in phonic poetry in
Yugoslavia, became member of the group in 1973, at the same
time as Csernik. Up to that time she had already achieved
significant results as an individual artist. Just as artistic
processes come out from art galleries and dank museums, so
Ladik's musical-poetic events come out from the concert halls.
The creation of phonic works involved «the study of completely
new themes and techniques., where new resources were of
vital importance: .new methods, tone recordings, radio, television
and synthetization multiply the possibilities of research and
experimentation.. Musical effects, sound. mimicry, rhythm,
bars and pauses serve as factors in Ladik's works, while her
own poems or concrete poems by other authors serve as the
score (Figs. 201-202). Such phonic material is contained in
the record ,Phonopoetica., printed by the Students' Cultural
Centre in Belgrade. which made Ladik a prominent figure
in international phonic poetry. In May 1977 she took part at
the international review of phonic poetry in Amsterdam.