“[...] Must an artist who possesses sufficient training and accomplishment create, in solitude, far away from his contemporaries, various works of art that transcend the ideas and products of other artists ? And must an artist only prosper if he receives sufficient recognition from connoisseurs of art ? Men of letters claim that an artist only grows and creates if he reaps recognition. Otherwise he declines, does not work and is extinguished.”
“[...] ali mora umetnik, ki ima dovolj priučene in lastne izobrazbe, snovati v zatišju, daleč proč od svojih sodobnikov razne umetnine, ki bi presegale misli in izdelke drugih umetnikov. In ali mora uspevati umetnik le, če ima dovolj priznanja poznavalcev umetnosti. Literati trdijo, da vsak umetnik raste le in snuje, ako žanje priznanje. Sicer propada, ne dela in ugasne.”
From the diary of Elda Piščanec, 27th March 1948
Last Wednesday, I bade farewell to Italy. After three weeks travelling through Genoa, Chiavari, Bagnone, Florence, Vallombrosa, Bologne, Venice, Udine and finally Trieste, it was time to leave the country of art and music behind. There was still so much to see - I could have stayed longer - I could have spent the whole two months there - I could have…. But I needed to move on.
Making my way to Budapest (read last week’s piece), I’ve stopped for a few days in Ljubljana. It is a calm and soft capital, lazily stretching along the Ljubljanica, a muddy river dashing along with great gusto and speed. What a contrast with the quaint charm of the city ! I discovered Ljubljana in the rain - a constant, cold, miserable rain, which soaked my body and mood. It seemed like it would be a gloomy stay here indeed.
I found refuge in the Narodna galerija - the National gallery. I got a bit lost, to be honest, among all the unfamiliar names. I did find, though, the painter Elda Piščanec, to whom a temporary exhibition was dedicated. Born in Trieste in 1897, she moved to Ljubljana as a child - I had unwittingly done the same journey as her. After studying painting in Florence and Paris, she returned to Slovenia, where she created a diverse body of work : landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, and religious subjects, working in oils, watercolours, drawing, printmaking, and mural painting (she was commissioned to paint several churches in the area). She enjoyed recognition during her lifetime, and she was included in the travelling exhibition of women artists organised in 1938 by the countries of the Little Entente, at the initiative of the Yugoslav Women’s Federation. Many of the women included in the project have since been forgotten.
Elda Piščanec, Still Life with a Horse’s Skull (Still Life with a Green Vase), 1928, National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.
In her diary, Elda Piščanec writes her thoughts about art and artistic creation. “Must an artist who possesses sufficient training and accomplishment create, in solitude, far away from his contemporaries, various works of art that transcend the ideas and products of other artists ?” It is an interesting question, which speaks to the common conception of artistic creation as a solitary endeavor, one conducted in isolation. To “transcend” comes from the latin scandere (to climb), and has the basic meaning of “climbing so high that you cross some boundary” (Mirriam-Webster) - art understood as something which is above and beyond normal experience.
Now, is that so ? Thinking about museums, where traditional forms of art are generally presented, it appears they do create a special - nearly sacred - space. A space removed from normal life - a space of stillness, and often of discomfort. Museums physically separate the inside space dedicated to art from the outside world, where real life happens. Seeking to create a transcendental experience, feeding into the aforementioned narrative of artistic creation, museums are anything but “madding”.
And yet, isn’t art real life too ? Indeed, on careful inspection, art is not above and beyond, but everywhere and in between. Art happens in all the nooks and crannies of human experience. The following day, when the rain abated, I visited Metelkova, an autonomous and cultural centre in the outskirts of Ljubljana. Sprawling across several blocks of buildings (former barracks apparently), it is a higgledy-piggledy assemblage of sculptures, mural paintings, and mosaics, scattered across the whole area, pouring off the façades, springing out of crevices. It is a place of active creation, and several artists work in the workshops there.
There was a small show at the Galerija Alkatraz, Terra Inhabitabilis - Life After the End of the World (or in Slovenian : življenje po koncu sveta), exhibiting three local artists : Rok Mohar, Danilo Milovanovič and Uroš Weinberger. The booklet reads :
“In their work, everyone, in their own way, draws attention to the inequalities of the imperfect world we inhabit. The red thread of the exhibited works are ecological themes, which are of central importance for modern times. In the name of the profit, ecology is ignored by capital and its building block - consumer society; it is commodified and then enmeshed into the mechanisms to produce profit. [...] For the sake of maintaining social status quo, it is not really possible to stop the mechanisms that are destroying the planet. The artworks at the exhibition, which show the connections from several angles, reveal the activist attitude of each artist [...].”
For instance, Danilo Milovanovič’s work interferes in and directly disrupts the public space : in Plastic Makes It Static, performed in 2017, he emptied the fountain in Novo mesto’s town square and returned its content, liquid water, filled in found plastic bottles. He filled an inconspicuous public space with art and a political message. That too is real life, happening outside the museum walls.
Danilo Milovanovič, Plastic Makes it Static, installation Galerija Alkatraz, 2022, (photo from the exhibtion booklet).
***
Elda Piščanec goes on to wonder whether “an artist [may] only prosper if he receives sufficient recognition from connoisseurs of art ? Men of letters claim that an artist only grows and creates if he reaps recognition. Otherwise he declines, does not work and is extinguished.” So if the act of creation is solitary, the art must nonetheless exist in society, and gain recognition by experts.
Surely most artists wish more or less secretly for recognition, but the question is : do they decline and are they extinguished without it ? The artists I have met over the past weeks seem to contradict this, flourishing in their respective practices - music, painting, poetry, comic strips - and living and creating outside of the ivory tower of the art world and art critique. (I actually met most of them in youth hostels - no tower, no ivory.) All the dilettantes, the amateurs, the artists creating despite general indifference to their work, those who are only recognised posthumously, those who are acclaimed and then forgotten, and even all the mediocre ones : they create also - and tough luck for the “connoisseurs’” opinion. Maybe one could even frame the question quite differently : can one recognise an artist because they are precisely not extinguished by lack of recognition ? They create regardless of recognition or lack thereof.
I was pondering what I would be writing this week over a beer with Marcell, a musician I met here. We both had creative pursuits to attend to - him busking and me writing - and we were both procrastinating. (He later corrected me: having a beer is never procrastination, but an end in itself. I would add : we weren’t so much procrastinating as building up to - a time-consuming but necessary part of the process.) I don’t think he was striving for any particular “recognition of connoisseurs” in that instant, and yet, he seemed itching to play. Proving my point ?
***
Transcendental and mundane, inside and outside, everywhere and in between : that is where and how I have been experiencing art over the past weeks. Progressively, the network I am exploring is becoming a rich tapestry. I visited Udine, the birthplace of Tony Modotti (read For the love of art), I ended up in Trieste, Elda Piščanec’s birthplace, I’m off to Budapest… And in between : Ljubljana - which didn’t end up as gloomy as I expected. The weather improved - it even got positively sunny on Saturday morning - and I returned to Metelkova with Marcell on Friday evening. The whole place had turned into one big party, music (and more or less inebriated individuals) spilling out of all the buildings.
I have time still for a last walk around the town centre - one more evening and I’m off again. Travelling is leaving over and over again.
Twenty-four days, three countries, over ten museums & exhibitions visited, 1 526km travelled. Would you like to help The Peripatetic Museum go even further ? Please consider supporting the project on Tipeee, with a one-off or a monthly contribution.
You will get extra news on the project along the way, and for all contributions of 7€ or more, you will receive a special Peripatetic Postcard, from one of the museums I visit.