Art and Authority

APT artist Jasmina Cibic is participating the Exhibition Art and Authority:Landscapes from the collection of Josip Broz Tito, by author Ana Panić, curator at MIJ. The exhibition will be inaugurated byAleksandra Fulgosi, assistant to the Minister of Culture and Information for protection of cultural heritage. At the inauguration, speeches will be given by MA Neda Knežević, director of MIJ, MA Tijana Palkovljević Bugarski, manager of Gallery of Maticasrpska and Ana Panić, exhibition author.

 The artistic selection of the author is comprised of landscapes from the collection of Josip Broz – 45 paintings and 10 prints. These works illustrate the trends in Yugoslav art, but when viewed from another aspect, they are a reflection of ideology of the regime. They are not just innocent representations of nature and cities, but have a clear role in political propaganda, as images of new society and a historic confirmation of new Yugoslavia. Landscapes that methodically represented carefully selected moments from the early life of Josip Broz Tito, thus contributing to development of his cult, which was one of the legitimizing bases of the regime, are an inseparable part of the exhibition.

 The time period in which the landscapes given to Josip Broz Tito were made spans eight decades of the 20th century: from ‘Spring’by Ivan Grohar from 1903, to the last works of Peđa Milosavljević and Vasilije Jordan.

 The exhibition premiered in the Gallery of Matica srpska in Novi Sad and is a result of cooperation of the Museum of Yugoslav History with the conservation team of the Gallery of Matica srpska.

 Besides artistic depictions of Tito’s home town, made by famous Yugoslav artists including Stojan Aralica, Josip Generalić and Vilim Svečnjak, the Belgrade exhibition will also include 11 models of houses in which Broz lived or stayed in different periods of his life. The models were made with great precision and dedication by amateurs – pioneers, pupils, college students and pensioners.

 By exhibiting the following models – the birth house in Kumrovac, the house in Smederevska Palanka where Josip Broz lived for only a year, the house where military and political counselling of the management of National Liberation Movement of Yugoslavia was held, the chalet on Zlatibor where he stayed in 1941 with Supreme Committee – the author Ana Panić points to mythical practice and methods in which biographical elements from Tito’s life were selected through different media, thus creating the myth of Josip Broz.

 An integral part of the exhibition is video work of art called Products of Our Country and Framing the Space, by Jasmina Cibić, a Slovenian artist, made in 2012 and 2013 within the project called For Our Economy and Culture at the 55th Biennale in Venice, which fits the new interpretation of landscape and presenting how figurative images convey not only what is presented on them, but many other messages as well, ideological in this case.

 The exhibition will be open by October 12th , 2014. During this period, an accompanying program will take place: expert guides through the exhibition and creative workshops for children.