Verbessertes Partisanendenkmal (Jasenovac)
Marko Lulić
pressboard and varnish
approx. 200 × 200 × 200 cm
2002
Acquisition 2002
Inv. No. 0114
Marko Lulić was born in Vienna in 1972; his family comes from Croatia and Serbia. He concerns himself with the cultural history of ex-Yugoslavia as an alternative model to Soviet communism and detects therein an aesthetics of modernism which is substantially easier to find in everyday life in Yugoslavia than in Vienna, influenced as the latter is by Baroque and Jugendstil. His tableau for the evn collection belongs to the work group Organisiertes Dekor (Verbesserte Partisanendenkmäler) [Organised Décor (Improved Memorials for Partisans)]. The picture motive is taken from a photo which shows Tito holding a speech at the 2nd Congress of the Council for Self-Government. The red dots on a white ground are a nice 70’s design motif. A frying pan from his own kitchen served Lulić as the pattern for his re-make. Interpretations of partisan memorials, small-format reproductions of “real” monuments accompany the picture. They come from the anthology Spomenici Revolucije which Lulić used as a pattern book. Lulić tinkers around the myths of the Yugoslavian battle against fascism using cheap materials such as wire, papier-mâché, cardboard and pigment while at the same time he documents his interest in the aesthetics and structure of the sculptures. He makes political art which, however, still remains form, as Lulić himself says. Pierre Bourdieu called it “décor for the ruling classes”.
Brigitte Huck, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingPublications
evn sammlung 95–05, Cologne 2005, p. 204 ff
evn sammlung. Ankäufe 2000–2002, Maria Enzersdorf 2002, p. 33