DADA ART CRITIC DRAGAN ALEKSIĆ

DADA ART CRITIC DRAGAN ALEKSIĆ Who was Dragan Aleksić Art criticism poses only one segment of creative endeavors that Dragan Aleksić made. He also wrote literary and theatre criticism articles, he made a career in journalism and film, he was a poet, an essayist, novelist, playwright, but most of all, a dadaist. He was born in Bunić, near Korenica (Croatia), on 28th December 1901, and attended the gymnasium in Vinkovci. He published his first poems in Zagreb high school newspapers called Omladina/Youth in 1918, and then, in 1919, his poems were printed in several more Croatian papers. In October 1920, he enrolled Slavic studies in Prague which was a home to a large colony of students from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Soon after arriving to Prague he discovered dadaism and, together with Branko Ve Poljanski and other students from the homeland, organized dadaistic sessions, first of which was arranged in October, with two more to follow. After his first show at “the St George's square, in a gym filled with gymnastics apparatuses“ Dragan Aleksić, “Vodnik dadaističke čete“, Vreme, 6th January 1931, XI, No. 3243, 29‒30., he met one of the leaders of the Czech avant-garde, Karel Teige, the founder of the “Devětsil Union of Modern Culture“ (1920), a pro-dadaistic movement that organized one of the German dadaists' gatherings in Prague. He also published newspaper articles in Národný politika/National Politics papers, started boxing and learned the rules of typography. He shaped dadaistic ideas through the theory of “organic art“ – orgart, and proclaimed “kakotedragost/as-you-likeness“ as basic creative principle. After that he made contact with the most prominent European dadaists like Kurt Schwitters (Hanover), Raoul Hausmann, Walter Mehring, Richard Hilsenbeck (Berlin), Max Ernst (Cologne), and Tristan Tzara (Paris), all of them involved in his later dadaistic activities. Also, in Vienna he visited Lajos Kassák and published a poem “Taba ciklon/Taba Cyclone“ in Hungarian activist journal Ma/Today. “In Prague, DADA offered a representation and the success is rising like a drumfire,“ he wrote in Zenit, in April 1921. Dragan Aleksić, “Dadaizam“, Zenit, No. 3, Zagreb, April 1921, 6. The development of his dadaistic concepts through his own actions, and the reception these concepts were receiving from the leading spokesmen of European dadaism were about to reveal Dragan Aleksić as the first Yugoslav member of this movement and as its leader on the Balkans. After he quit his studies (after the summer break in 1921, due to the administration problems, he did not return to Prague to continue his studies) he arrived to Zagreb, where he participated in making of the first Yugoslav film magazine, Kinofon (1921-1922) by Branko Ve Poljanski, at the same time focusing his personal interests towards dadaism. He also worked for the Hungarian activist journal Ut/Path whose editor in Novi Sad was Csuka Zoltán. While still in Prague, since April 1821, he started spending time with Branko Ve Poljanski, as well as Ljubomir Micić whose mutual work on Zenit journal led to publishing various pro-dadaistic articles (until its 14th issue). In the third issue of Zenit, in 1921, he published the first dadaistic manifesto in Serbian language, and in May and June 1922 two more publications saw the light of day: Dada-Tank and Dada Jazz. Aleksić's position within European dadaistic circles, the foundation of the Dada Club, and the publishing of dadaistic journals evoked antagonism and a harsh reaction of Ljubomir Micić who, being a founder and an editor of Zenit journal and a coordinator at the Zenit Gallery in Zagreb, saw himself as a leader of the avant-garde. This led to a tumultuous and permanent separation of yesterday's associates. In the same year, Aleksić took part in dada matinées: 3rd June in Novi Sad, together with a group of Hungarian activists, 20th August in Osijek, 1st October in Vinkovci (together with associates from Dada-Tank and Dada Jazz), and 3rd November in Subotica. Before the matinée tour, on 14th May, Dragan Aleksić sent a letter to Tristan Tzara Two of Aleksić’s letters that are kept in the Tristan Tzara's Archives at Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris were discovered in 1987 by Patricia Stodolny; the French translation of the letters was published in Patricia Stodolny, “Dada-Yougo 1920‒1922“, Migrations litteraries, No. 10‒11, Paris, automne-hiver 1989‒1990, 29– 30. Referring to Patricia Stodolny, Predrag Todorović published the letters in Serbia: “U potrazi za Dadom”, Književna reč, No. 341, Belgrade, 10th April 1989, 1, 8; Predrag Todorović, “Dva pisma Dragana Aleksića Tristanu Cari”, Književna reč, No. 329, Belgrade, 10th October 1988. I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to Mrs. Brigitte Weltman Aron for helping me obtain the photograph of Aleksić's letter from 20th October 1922 kept in Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet., in which he announced his further activities. He also contacted him immediately after the show in Osijek, on 20th August 1922, but this time the letter was not sent from the address in Zagreb; instead it was sent from Vinkovci. The awareness that dadaism exhausted all options ripened inside Aleksić later that year, when he decided to end with the movement and move to Belgrade. Despite the fact that Aleksić intentionally abandoned dadaistic way of thinking, his work heavily influenced young Serbian surrealistic poets like Moni de Buli, Risto Ratković, Rade Drainac, and others. Yougo-dade archives, which included copies of the journals published in European dada centres, correspondence with the leaders of dada movement, and their works acquired through exchange, used to be in Dragan Aleksić's possession until his death, when, at his request, it was destroyed. When Aleksić arrived to Belgrade, an intellectual circle which gravitated around “Moskva“ Hotel had already been established under the name “The Group of Artists“. In 1923, Aleksić worked for Misao/Thought, Hipnos/Hypnosis and Tribun. In 1924 he published poetry in Moni de Buli's Crno na belo/In Black and White almanac; in 1926 he wrote for Večnost/Eternity; in 1928 his works were in Letopis Matice srpske/ Chronicles of Matica Srpska and in Oktobar/October. Concurrently, in 1922 he became a co-editor (in charge of culture) of a daily newspaper Vreme/Time where he worked as a full-time associate and published art critic (until 1935), literary , theatre, and film reviews almost until the very end of the paper (on 6th April 1941). The attempt to remain documented in the history of Yugoslav cinematography, together with Boško Tokin, failed. In 1924, while filming “Kachaks in Topčider“, based on the script by Branimir Ćosić, the film reel caught fire and the filming was cancelled. After he was arrested in 1941 and tortured, he was released in 1942 from Belgrade Gestapo prison, owing to the editor of Vreme. Unfortunately, the torture left permanent health issues. Alone, forgotten, and bedridden, he spent the remainder of his life entertaining children from the area who gladly listened to his stories. I am deeply thankful to Blagorodna Radak from Belgrade for sharing with me her memories of Dragan Aleksić. He passed away on 22nd July 1958, and the memory of him was noted in only few lines of Film danas/Film Today magazine Vojin M. Đorđević, “Dragan Aleksić. Dada“, Film danas, year I, No. 4, Belgrade, 15th August 1958, 2.. The same year, Književnost/The Literature magazine posthumously published several poems, while some poems were included in the poetry anthologies Urnebesnik (1960) and Ponoćno sunce/Midnight Sun (1962) selected by Vasko Popa. For a long period of years the intellectual legacy of Dragan Aleksić was observed solely through the context of his dadaistic writings and his poetry, which is especially noticeable in the research of Gojko Tešić. Among other works, Gojko Tešić published the collection of Dragan Aleksić's Dada Tank, Nolit Beograd, 1978. The visual aspect of Aleksić's dadaistic work is not discussed only in the Encyclopedia of Fine Arts, but also by different authors who used to review the Yugoslav art scene. The references on the visual aspects of dadaism: Irina Subotić, Miodrag B. Protić, Vera Horvat Pintarić, Jerko Denegri, Arturo Schwartz and others. See: Jasna Jovanov, “Kulturološka recepcija Aleksićevog dadaizma“, in: Jasna Jovanov, Demistifikacija apokrifa (Dadaizam na jugoslovenskim prostorima 1920–1922) Apostrof, Novi Sad, 1999, 103–111. Ultimately, this topic was processed by Radonja Leposavić, Radonja Leposavić, “Jugo-Dada“, Tri+Četiri, Belgrade 1981, 10–16. which triggered more thorough investigations of the field. A long silence about Aleksić after the Second World War almost made him entirely disappear from our culture. Only few photos offer an insight into the way he looked and there is one letter as a sample of his handwriting. However, he did present himself in dadaistic fashion, in Večnost magazine, Dragan Aleksić, “Autobiografija“, Večnost, No. 4, Belgrade, April 1926, 1. in 1926, in an article entitled “Autobiography“: “Too old to be young, incompetent to fly on a trapeze. Sensuality. A soldier of fund to calligraph a phrase 'romantic poet'. A journalist, a boxer, a guzzler of wine and Emmental cheese. Body features private. Visiologist not, a robber when needed, humorous never. Experienced like a lion and a rat. Good intentions play on his parades. Woe to you if your fists are not as strong as his – firmness with fists and harsh poems.“ Three steps ahead: an avant-gardist “The painting is colour. A suprematist is indefinitely one's own without any colour. [...] There is black and white. The abstraction of everything is a colour in a whirl. The form is an escapade of a mirror play. No signature should be on the painting. [...] The painting is colour, noncolour or a whirl.“ Dragan Aleksić, “Dadaizam“, Zenit, No.3, Zagreb, April 1921, 5. These sentences are the summary of Dragan Aleksić's ideas about contemporary visual arts, whose creation would only partially be affected by the visual design of Dada-Tank and Dada Jazz magazines. Not long after he published his dada manifesto in Zenit, in April 1921, the fifth issue of this journal brought his analysis of the avant-gard activities of Kurt Schwitters: Dragan Aleksić, “Kurt Schwitters Dada“, Zenit, No.5, Zagreb, September 1921, 4–6. “And yet, if DADA means rupture, one of its ruptures belongs to Schwitters,“ noted Aleksić in the beginning, obviously craving to show that dadaism is not a unison movement, but a body of individual expressions. Even though it has no rules or a system, continues Aleksić, dadaism has become a worldwide movement that possesses a single common perspective: the synthesis of different arts: “it fiddles the painting verse of sculptures or paints the music-sculpture in verses.“ He identified Schwitters with Merz-Kunst, a style that opposes the academic and classical principles, the threats that, according to Aleksić, lead to the end of the art itself. In his oppinion, Merz is also a mainly creative direction, since it was established on autonomus code of an artwork. After excluding classical art materials and using only trivial, rejected, and worthless objects, Schwitters rearranged his surrounding into magnificent dada universe, filled with visual, literary, and audio elements. This conglomeration of collected old junk and rubbish, which the Schwitters himself called “The Cathedral“, Aleksić viewed, in the light of his plans for Gesamstkunst Merz, as an ultimate form of dadaistic synthetism that included not only material elements, but the senses of sight, touch, smell, and hearing. In this regard, Aleksić perceived “The Cathedral“ as an absolute work of art, but he did not neglect Schwitters' collages which were also composed of the “nonmaterial“, and sometimes devoted to cubism and futurism (according to Aleksić, Braque, and Clee). A well-informed Aleksić did not miss the contrast between the Schwitters' work and the taste of dadaistic core, and that it contains the elements of expressionism, particularly in dadaist drama plays. However, he eventually concluded that, “Dada unconditionally prevails in Schwitters“. Soon after the review about Schwitters, the November issue Dragan Aleksić, “Tatljin HP/s * Čovek“, Zenit, No. 9, Zagreb, November 1921, 8, 9. of Zenit brought the article about Vladimir Tatlin. Like in the previous record on Schwitters, its structure, lexicon, and stance, emphasized by Aleksić, fully fits the essence of dadaistic poetics. The personalities both reviews deal with, including the latter about Alexander Archipenko, each one in their time and way, radically affected the shaping of dadaistic or an identical avant-garde practice: futurism, constructivism, surrealism. Even nowadays they are considered the dominant figures of European modern art. Aleksić’s text about Vladimir Yevgraphovich Tatlin poses a kind of sequel to his dada manifesto First time published in Zenit No. 3, manifesto “Dadaizam“, republished in Dada-Jazz in 1922. which analyses the achievements of contemporary Russian art. “Mayakovsky argued: the entire old ‘art’ should be sent to oblivion,” began Aleksić, and continued, “Excellent man, Mayakovsky,” which is a pre-condition for creative eruption. Besides, this article (would it sound too pretentious if we called it an ‘essay’?) which represents the first Yugoslav interpretation of constructivism as a language of the avant-garde, modern era, and the new Russian society, could be perceived as a sort of prologue written for the issues of Zenit, which emerged from the Micić’s close ties with Russian artists. The issues 17 and 18 would most accurately reflect the editor’s attitude. The visual identity of Zenit magazine, which in the beginning seemed overtly expressionistic, received, in the spring of 1921, certain constructivist properties illustrated in the typography of the cover pages, headlines, and text wrapping. These properties were influenced by the works of artists such as Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Archipenko, Kassák, Rodchenko, Malevich, Kandinsky, and others. Moreover, being conceived as a literary magazine in its beginning, the third issue of Zenit, in which Dragan Aleksić published the aforementioned dada manifesto named “Dadaism”, brought three articles by Egon Schiele in the context of expressionist tendencies of the European art (Rastko Petrović, Ljubomir Micić, Virgil Poljanski, etc.), thereby sending a message to readers about his intention to deal with visual aspects of art. Some particularly notable works of domestic artists could also be viewed in that light (Vinko Foretić, France Kralj, M.S. Petrov, Jovan Bijelić). Their works were being replicated along with the popular European painters like Modigliani, Survage, Delaunay, or Czech and German artists. On the other hand, this article, dedicated to the Russian art and Tatlin, suggests orient-occident point of view and Micić’s slogan, “Artists of the world, unite!”, which would culminate in the aforesaid notes on “new Russian art”. The dada flavoured review on Tatlin has its subheading: “Tatlin and tatlinism. Down with the aesthetics and grooming of art!!” He perceives the vigorous art of modern Russia as “twitching of anarchy and dilettantism”, as a follower of “every vigorous firmness”. Being consistent with the spirit of the avant-garde, Aleksić discusses “tatlinism” by denying the eternal genius of an artist, and demands the autonomy of art, as well as its “brief duration”. The same way he denies the quality of old art, he also denies the need for its durability: it should exist only in the present. He sees the ultimate creativity in the combination of a man and machine which is made of metal (“iron, brass, bronze, silver”), but also of glass, paper, rubber, kauchuk, wood. The primary reason for Aleksić’s article could have been Tatlin’s monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin’s Tower, whose design began in 1919. It was being developed through the following year and was conceived as a monumental tower made of glass and steel: “an electric pedestal which revolves the immensity through the air”. It was designed to be three times bigger than the Eiffel Tower, the symbol of modern society and architecture of the 19th century. Its purpose was to glorify the new Soviet state and its values, the place where the new Soviet man defeated the force of gravity and where “up above: man – brain” dominates; similar to Micić’s Barbarogenius which came after. In the centre of a double spiral steel construction, Tatlin envisioned three construction blocks which would revolve with different velocities: the first one, a cube, would take a year to complete the rotation, the second one, a pyramid, would take one month, and the third one, a cylinder, would take one day. At the top of the construction, there should have been a radio transmitter, as well as the projector that would send visual messages towards clouds. This design inaugurated its creator as the central figure of Russian constructivism and the maker of art that would serve the purpose of modernity which mostly implied the goals of the revolutionary Soviet Russia. Attempting to achieve the synthesis of art and technology, he strived to put the art in service of everyday life and use it to express the dynamism of 20th century existence. In order to provide his creations with real life application, Tatlin was not as committed to the properties of possible materials as he was preoccupied with technology and machines. Even before the revolution, owing to his reliefs and experimental three-dimensional constructions made of wood and metal, Tatlin deserved to be recognized as the leading artist of the Russian post-revolutionary constructivism. Although he did not see himself as a constructivist, and having even personal discords with some aspects of constructivism, by creating these sculptures Tatlin wanted to reconsider the traditional notion of art and the processes of art creation. His work, and particularly the unfinished monument to the Third International, made him a symbol of utopian understanding of reality, instead of achieving a practical goal which lies in the foundation of his endeavour. By using art to proclaim new ideas of society in its making, Tatlin anticipated some other tendencies which would, a decade later, completely change Soviet art and affirm the “values” of the new society with far more success than his ideas had ever done. All the while insisting on “expressiveness“, Aleksić eventually sums it up: Tatlin’s construction adds to Schwitters and his dimension of “chaos“, Kandinksy and his break from emerging world (“rupture“), and Chagall with his surreal dimension (“doctrine of modernity“). With his approach to this subject, as well as his unique language of dadaism, delivered from lexical and spelling conventions, Aleksić questioned the foundations of both common aesthetic form and the art itself, as well as the criticism. In accordance with the dadaistic denial of everything that the tradition had adopted from art and aesthetic, Aleksić built his own anti-aesthetics, based on complete freedom of thought and creation (as-you-likeness). His decisive, critical, and destructive attitude opposes general civilization achievements, including art. It is compelling how Aleksić in his early reviews of art focused solely on a new sculpture. His attention is caught by the abstract displays like “beautiful name for art“ and the use of alternative (accidental, rejected, worthless) and new materials (glass, metal, concrete, rubber, etc.). The last dadaistic publication of Dragan Aleksić, Dada Jazz, unlike Dada-Tank, announced certain pacification. It is artistically more purified, visually reduced to typographic experimenting, with very few advertisments, without aggressive dadaphorisms, advertising messages about dadaistic ideas, and echoing pseudonyms; it looks serious and, most importantly, intellectual. This is manifested in the articles. Beside the republished proclamation “Dadaism“, an essay on Alexander Archipenko, a sculptor, was also published. These texts had a task, like the essays on Kurt Schwitters and Tatlin from Zenit, to promote certain dada ideas about art and they deliver a harmony of styles, if dadaism can be considered a style at all. Aleksić remained consistent with using rather informal, even rude and aggressive language abundant with random coined words and mathematical formulas, permeated with associations and dadaistic metaphors that form the meaning which is only seemingly left to a random choice of sentences and wordplays. Yet, this illusory dadaistic chaos in these essays is impregnated with highly accurate and articulate ideas. Using brief and concise sentences, like swift and deadly darts, Aleksić, a dadaist critic, opposes his epoch, history, continuity. Aleksić pleads for dynamism (“As many events per time unit“), while looking on abstraction as a new dimension of creativity and observing that “being comprehensive, it is you, DADA“. This is why he considers Kurt Schwitters, a comprehensive dadaist, complementary to him. In his writings about Schwitters and his dadaistic Merz works, Aleksić views art from a larger scale, opposing Schwitters' ideas to stereotypical academism; the ideas that break down the barriers between art categories. “He fiddles the painting verse of sculptures or paints the music-sculpture in verses. Schwitters is a man who the future world will acknowledge,“ Dragan Aleksić concludes, which sounds a bit pathetic but yet prophetic. With regards to a very short time period between the making of Schwitters' Merz-sculptures and the aforementioned article, which could be applied to the other two critically flavoured works (on Archipenko and Tatlin), it is curious and, at the same time, significant how Aleksić objectively approaches the issues of post-cubism, expressionism, abstraction, Russian futurism, and suprematism, as well as other terms of the contemporary avant-garde. What is even more intruiging is the tangibility of his beliefs and our time. Aleksić sees Alexander Archipenko as a great reformer of sculpture and as a strong opposition to the traditional achievements. In the title of his essay on Archipenko there are names of Hans Arp and Ivan Puni, which leads us to conclude that Aleksić saw in their work one of the main features of the contemporary sculpture development. Unfortunately, the following issue of Dada Jazz journal was not published, and neither was the announced sequel of the essay. However, the existing text already offers a great insight into the constructivist sculpture based on most essential elements of Archipenko's sculpting ouvre. Starting from the established opinion on classical sculpture that features the reverse sense of homogeneity and the literal application of classical ideals of power and beauty of the human body as a mean of achieving harmony, stability, and analitical symmetry, Aleksić states that Archipenko creates his own system which gives way to gravity instead of stability. Namely, gravity does not require a classical notion of materiality, but it can be determined with a curve. This refers to spiral forms that Archipenko applies to his sculptures, and which suggest movement as the first step further from tradition. By inserting abstract elements, Archipenko raises the matter to a higher level, and extracts and delivers the utmost out of every material, offering associations to their synergetic animation. Then, by introducing colours, which is not closely tied to painting, he enables the synthesis of all possible impressions; so, the colour adds to the materialization of the abstract. However, the power of the artist's experience is shown in the destructiveness of the instincts, followed by a complex reflection which leads to the synthesis of elements; such structure dissolution is a necessary stage in constructing abstract forms. Thanks to the abstract elements, the matter is raised to a higher level of meaning – the optics of a surface and the optics of plasticity modify the moment of tactility. It is also conditioned by the use of different materials (“mixing of materials – mulatto, creoles, pederasty“), which results in the extended effect of the matter. Mixing produces a full range of the abstract wholeness, but the pieces still stay apart, like the pieces of the “pan-notion“. Dragan Aleksić sees the similar relation between the agents within the “pan-drama“, that represents the bulk of all kinds of collective and individual gestures; random swearwords, movement-painting-sculpture-music-mimic-light. “The notion of all kinds of collective and individual gestures: fresh thoughts and random swearwords, infiltrated systems and repellent anti-movements, word-painting-sculpture, music-mimic-light, etc. Because it is always possible to use only matters, changing at will. Archipenko is a material master of composition and variation which at moments seems expressively infinite and sometimes cubistically bounded.“ Dragan Aleksić, “Archipenko“, Dada Jazz, Zagreb 1922, 12–15. Such advancement in critical thought demolishes the established understanding of only one existing true order and only one functional reality, and makes a crack in the massive wall of conservative criticism. For yougo-dada art these articles show a certain connection between what Yugo-dadaism offers in theory and far less elaborate practice; a kind of compensation for the unfinished work – verbal collages, textual sculptures, and theoretical explanations about the missing painting. Some years after the shocking Aleksić's alienation from dadaism, Moni de Buli depicted his personality in the poem “Trakt“/“Tractus“, a portrait of a critic who was able to articulate such brilliant dadaistic reviews on the contemporary art, like it was the case with Dragan Aleksić. “Out of the ring across the upper floor pull out the wet thread used to embroidier the outer letter of a monogram on a shirt of a glass tube, slowly cross your legs with geography maps of the black bulldog ants fallen empire, use the same sponge to wipe from the sky some stars and wait for my reply. She follows the left wing She screams every evening She kisses the boxing gloves of the winner inner She picks candles from the Christmas tree She consumes live lava She aims so well that when she shoots you would say the bullet is a dog that obediently runs to beg the target. She is above all a delicate lady She is (surely) our wretch. After you have carried out my orders, wring the neck to the electric bell, once for the porter, twice for the maid, three times for spite, look at this year's list of deadborn works, get over sleeping shortly and that would be about all.“ Moni de Buli, Kiša oko Beograda, Belgrade 1926. Bibliography: Dragan Aleksić, “Autobiografija“, Večnost, No. 4, Belgrade, April 1926, 1. Dragan Aleksić, “Dadaizam“, Zenit, No. 3, Zagreb, April 1921, 5, 6. Dragan Aleksić, “Kurt Schwitters Dada“, Zenit, No. 5, Zagreb, September 1921, 4–6. Dragan Aleksić, “Tatljin HP/s * Čovek“, Zenit, No. 9, Zagreb, November 1921, 8, 9. Dragan Aleksić, “Archipenko“, Dada Jazz, Zagreb 1922, 12–15. Moni de Buli, Kiša oko Beograda, Belgrade 1926. Dragan Aleksić, “Vodnik dadaističke čete“, Vreme, 6th January 1931, year. XI, No. 3243, 29‒30. Vojin M. Đorđević, “Dragan Aleksić. Dada“, Film danas, year I, No. 4, Belgrade, 15th August 1958, 2. Jasna Jovanov, Demistifikacija apokrifa (Dadaizam na jugoslovenskim prostorima 1920–1922) Apostrof, Novi Sad, 1999. Radonja Leposavić, “Jugo-Dada“, Tri+Četiri, Belgrade 1981, 10–16. Patricia Stodolny, “Dada-Yougo 1920‒1922“, Migrations litteraries, No. 10‒11, Paris, automne-hiver 1989‒1990, 29– 30. Gojko Tešić, Dada Tank, Nolit Beograd, 1978. Predrag Todorović, “Dva pisma Dragana Aleksića Tristanu Cari”, Književna reč, No. 329, Belgrade, 10th October 1988. Predrag Todorović, “U potrazi za Dadom”, Književna reč, No. 341, Belgrade, 10th April 1989, 1, 8.