THE ASPECTS OF MINIMALISM IN THE ART OF THE NINETIES: MIRJANA ĐORĐEVIĆ AND IVAN ILIĆ

Text topic: Minimalism

Text author: Јасмина Чубрило

The paper focuses on mapping out the elements of historical Minimalism on the art scene in Serbia during the nineties. Modular structures, repeated units, serial syntax, reductive, primary and/or geometric forms, were all present in the art of Serbia (and Yugoslavia) during the sixties and the seventies, although more systematic reference to historical Minimalism and its formal and conceptual aspects will be featured in some art practices during the nineties. Artistic practice of Belgrade artists Mirjana Đorđević and Ivan Ilić (who spent some time at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with the professor Klaus Rinke and Jannis Kounellis, respectively) in the late eighties and during the nineties served as study cases in this research of the nature and meaning of the aspects of Minimalism in the art of the last decade of the 20th century. Therefore the paper investigates whether the formal codes of Minimal art presented in their artworks from that period have been the outcome of some kind of critical reception as was the most common case in the worldwide art productions during this decade, or they have been related to contemporary visual culture that inclined to reductive and minimal ‘look’ and aesthetics. Ilić and Đorđević certainly were not the only artists in Serbia who, under the influence of the ‘cool’ and hi tech industrial design, adopted the essential minimalist lexicon, but they have been very consistent in pursuing and developing in different ways. Their art practices were beyond question in terms of historical Minimalism. as much as the Minimalist aesthetics fashioned the visual horizon of the nineties and as much as the new technology and the possibilities based on logical structures and algorithms produced series, difference, subjects, objects, representations and reality and by the Minimalist model became desirable and included into process of making art. In the worldwide art of the nineties the artists have adapted the forms of historical Minimalism for their own use: the cold, precise, calculated, reserved Minimalist aesthetics was replaced by relational aesthetics, i. e. by interactive human relations and social exchange de facto following the processes of establishing the postindustrial society. In the circumstances of different kind of transition or more precise double transition: from Socialism to Capitalism and from industrial to postindustrial, post-Minimalism reflects the transition desire created and modelled by commodification and ideology of choice.