Braco Dimitrijevic
In 1976 Braco Dimitrijevic, already well known for his Casual Passer-by works, made a gesture without precedent: in National galerie in Berlin he included original paintings of Kandinsky, Mondrian, Picasso, Monet and Manet into his own installations. The installations for which the artist coined the generic title Triptychos Post Historicus, included paintings by modern masters together with everyday objects, fruits and vegetables.
According to the artist, the time of history is the time of division and classifications of know ledge, of creating specialized institu tions, one of which is the museum. Dimitri jevic’s Triptychos Post Historicus tend to abolish these Cartesian classifications by presenting together on the same platform a museum painting, which represents high art, an ordinary object which stands for every day life and labour, and fruit which represents nature.
With this continuing body of works, the artist revisits both history of man kind and history of art, creatively in corporating master works such as Leonardo’s “Madona, Saint Ann and Jesus”, Malevich’s “Red Square”, Rubens’ “Rape of Europe”, David’s “Death of Marat” or Turner’s “St. Benedict, Looking Toward Fusina” into new visual and conceptual structures.
The artist not only questions fetish status of the master works but also shakes up the accepted hierarchy in which art or culture would be at the top and nature at the bottom of our value scale. Once placed on the same platform, complex symbolic interplay develops between them.
“Our world is not made of mas ter pieces, norof bicycles or apples but of all these things together”, he says.
Whilst Dimitrijevic’s Casual passer-by series made an important influence on art in public space tendency, his interventions in the museum collections irreversibly changed relationship between contemporary art and old museums collections.
Past exhibitions in the last three de cades include master works from museum collections including Tate Gallery London, Gug genheim Museum New York, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Ludwig Museum Cologne, Mu seum Moderner Kunst Vienna, Van Abbe museum Eindhoven, the Louvre, State Russian Museum, amongst the others.