Archive for: Текстови објављени у часопису Култура на страном језику

A division of cultural events to high and low, as well as differences

between the established and popular culture, are subject to a number

of interpretations of cultural theories. The right-wing critical thought

defended the “real” culture from the crude culture of the lower

social classes, while the leftists found mass culture positive for its

democratization. Thanks to the impact of the global media, position

of music occupies a high place in the hierarchy of industry and market

culture. The opposed relationship of art and popular music is being

relativized in terms of class identification. The ideology of taste, which

is also related to the possession of a larger or smaller cultural capital,

has adapted to the requirements of populism and market. Agreeing to

concessions is a kind of democratization of elite musical forms (for

example opera), and movement of various musical forms in the system

of two-way (higher / lower) and circular (from one form to another)

forms representing both resistance and compliance in mutual encounter

and permeation of classical and popular music, both in practice and

in theory. With the exception of the avant-garde “outages” in classical

music or lowest genres of folk, all other types of music (classical, jazz,

rock, pop, folk) have found some sort of balance in their relationship.

Along with the general crisis of the spirit of criticism, this certainly

contributed to value relativism, as one of the essential features of

popular culture.

In this paper, for the first time in national historiography, the life and

work of Olga Kešeljević Barbezat, an art historian and actress, are dealt

with in more detail. Having arrived in Paris in 1936 with the intention

to defend her PhD thesis in art history, she established relations with a

circle of Yugoslav artists: Ljubica Cuca Sokić, Ivan Tabaković, Bora

Baruh, Petar Lubarda etc. During the Second World War she married

Mark Barbezat, a young intellectual who would soon launch L’Arbalète,

the publishing house well-known for the works of Jean Genet, Antonin

Artaud, Albert Camus, Lana Leclercq, Sartre, Eluard etc. Considering

the published correspondence between Barbezat and Genet, numerous

dedications in the books owned by the Barbezat family, Olgaʼs portraits

painted by some of the most influential Serbian twentieth-century

artists, the testimonies of the successors of their families, postcards

and letters sent to painter Nedeljko Gvozdenović (kept in the Archive

of SASA in Belgrade), as well as other material traces, this paper

discusses the role of Olga Kešeljević Barbezat on the cultural scene

of France, as well as the intelectual relations she had with the Serbian

artists whose works were part of the Barbezat art collection. At the

same time, knowing that the family heritage was put up for auction in

2016, after Olga Kešeljevićʼs death in December 2015, it is important

to think about the availability of any new material and possibly existing

personal correspondence with Serbian artists that would contribute to

the results of this research in the future.