recognisable and charismatic. The hat as a mark, an index, but also
a metonymy (under the glass bell) not only of Joseph Beuys and his
mythologisized-trangressive biography, nor only of the co-called
“dematerialised” art, but above all, of the effect to Belgrade and Belgrade history of transgression (of art). As Caranović himself explains
“that is why I made such a small hat as a homologated object and
not something that would indicate a fetish, which would most certainly happen it were of regular size”.
Then, “I also wanted to ‘sustain’ the dilemma whether he
was a charlatan or a genius. That is why I placed in the other compartment a tool of an unknown use, but of noble craft that should
represent a kind of an esoteric tool used by alchemists […] But I also
wanted to have some of the most intimate parts of his personality,
so I packed in the very base a half-secret opening where I placed the
anecdote of his rescue in Mongolia or something of a sort.”
A2. Pure Art
The work is in relief, somewhere in between the language of
abstraction and the language of the “poor” realism, and even some
Beuys advices on sculpture (material as pure energy). Easily recognisable objects, examples (exempla) consist in a wooden base
(board), a wire coil, a nail, a hook. Examples of a certain history of
evolution of art, in the early 70’s in Yugoslavia and Belgrade.
The board. The composition of the work the author explains
by his intention “to reach […] the emancipation of trivial on one side,
by using the objects of low intensity and formal energy that I recognised in the spirals of the wire that suggested energy by its form,
materiality, and even the physical dimension by its immense length
(tens of meters) packed and all tangled around the core.” A very economical language the choice of examples disposed in such a manner
that basically recall some highlights of the arte povera of the 60’s
(for example the works of Kounellis)
The nail. It’s only recalling, because the work does not remain just a mere annotation of recognition or more precisely, of necessary transformation of the recognisable in a certain very free,
work-in-progress alike. That is, whereas Kounellis very obviously
Without title, 1974
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