Predrag Caranovic sculptures Sep. 2014 | Page 41

historical situation, in a moment when that war that lasted for so long that it seemed eternal, apparently was terminated. Figure. The work reveals a (ideological, but also aesthetic) model within another, a mutual relation that was best to be seen in the example of the Yugoslav Cold War Art. Let us explain. Whereas the ideology of change and freedom of choice is linked to individual Abstract art, the ideology of totalitarian state art and the impossibility of choice is linked to Socialist Realism. We all, of course, know that these two ideologies were somehow shifted in the praxis of art in Yugoslavia. That is how abstraction, at a certain point, turned up side down (Moebius strip or band) and become a state art in Yugoslavia. Caranović insists that he “had always appreciated Soc-Realism, but without being conscious, that is without soc”. He continues: “ What amazed me […] was above all great capacity of craft.” That, of course, is the paradox or the essence of paradox of ideology, that is that the “essence” is always revealed in a form of phantasmagoria of sensible, clearly recognisable, as an example of “craft”. Flag. “That flag I couldn’t possibly forget and so I took it and made one for myself. Though, in those times, I was already working on monochromatic operas and this was F