THREE REFLECTIONS OF YUGOSLAV MODERNITY IN THE MIRROR OF THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN BELGRADE

Text topic: Changes

Text author: Милан Попадић

The paper examines the character of Yugoslav modernity in the socialist period, seen through the prism of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. Starting from the presentation of three special “visits” to this museum in the years immediately after its opening, certain characteristics of Yugoslav modernity are recognized. The main thesis is that the Museum of Contemporary Art was a specific generator of Yugoslavia’s image as a modern country, and that this concept is related to the general socio-economic conditions in the Socialist Yugoslavia. Hence the assumption that the three chosen “visitors” of the museum – Ivo Andrić (writer), Josip Broz Tito (president of SFRJ), and Nenad and Predrag (fictional twin brothers) – reflected in its inverse mirror, can reliably testify about specificities of the Yugoslav modernity in the socialist period: about its cultural and social paradoxes, political and ideological validations and individual and collective seduction.