Nebojša Bradić
(on the occasion of the opening exhibition „Heritage in the work of Dragoslav Živković“, AntikaFest, Zaječar/Kladovo, 2019)
Journey of the soul of Dragoslav Živković
Who is art for? Is it for the people who order and pay for it or is it for the rest of us? Who is it talking about and what does it say? Those questions are much more important today than ever. The way we are represented in art has an impact on how we are treated in the real world, who is respected and who is underestimated. Art and power are deeply connected.
Many people felt that there is something special in the smile of Mona Lisa. Walter Pater, an art critic of the second half of the 19th century, in his essay on Mona Lisa tried to discover what lies in the power of this smile: “She is older than the stones among which she sits; like a vampire, she was dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave; and she was the diver in the deep seas; and was traded for the strange fabrics of the eastern merchants, and, like Leda was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, like St. Anne, was the mother of Virgin Mary; and it was all like the sounds of the lyre and flute to her, and it all lives only in the delicacy with which it shaped her changing features and nuanced her eyelids and hands.”
Why do I mention this legendary portrait? Because every art, if it is real, invites the journey of the soul. Paintings of Dragoslav Živković invite us on such a journey. In these paintings there are Kierkegaardian fears, as well as the dark journeys of the soul, which, poisoned by life and soured with experience, still has a naive love for the country, rituals and people. That country breastfeeds its children with poisoned milk, and yet it offers Epicurean consolation – women, wine, song – which alleviates the suffering and lingering because of the divine absence and life in a wormhole town.
Happy is the artist who manages to overcome the absurd, the most difficult and fateful of all temptations, alive and conscious. Happy is the one who does not sink, but swims to the other bank together with his work. And in that work, as Andrić would say: “suddenly all the unseen places and all the unheard songs of the world are found, all the desired fruits of the earth, all the hands and all the eyes, all the strength and all the forms all that could not be reached nor had – achieved, mastered and conquered; now, completely and forever.”
I invite you to, together with the works of Dragoslav Živković, go on such an exciting journey!