Avant-gardes in Yugoslavia

Abstract

In his paper the author presents theoretical interpretations of artistic and cultural relations between different avant-garde practices (Dada, Zenitism, surrealism, constructivism) in the territory of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The avant-garde was the leading formation, perhaps also vanguard, of the “historical development” of modernism. For the most part, the notion of modernity comprises the culture of Western societies from the mid 18th century to the final third of the 20th century. The notion of modernism denotes the culture and art of modern liberal society, although one could also speak of complex reactions to “liberal modernism” in the political practices of modern totalitarianisms (National Socialism, fascism, Bolshevism). Liberal modernism is predicated on a progressive development of society, culture, and art, as well as projections, positings, and realisations of projects of modernisation, i.e. modernity. Modernist culture and art are practices of industrial society and the high degree of professionalization attained thereby, as well as the cultural, political, and aesthetic autonomy of the social disciplines. Avant-garde art emerges within modern art, culture, and society as a radical, excessive, transgressive, and experimental artistic and cultural practice. “Yugoslav avant-gardes” refers to a multitude of transgressive, experimental, inter-media, and interdisciplinary phenomena in the inter-space between literature and the visual arts in the Slavic south (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) between 1918 and 1935. In the 1910s, ’20s, and early ’30s, the South Slavic cultural space saw the formation of specific avant-garde cultures, such as the Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian avant-gardes. These avant-gardes were not mutually isolated, but defined by international, inter-textual, and inter-subjective influences and exchanges.