Odgovornost umjetnika i/ili odgovornost likovne kritike (Uz knjigu Jean Claira)
Responsibility of artists and/or responsibility of art criticism (On Jean Clair’s book)

Summary/Abstract: In one of his last books, Responsibility of Artist, Jean Clair, a renowned French art historian who was the director of the Picasso Museum and the selector of the Venice Biennale in 1995, discusses political responsibilities of artists and the responsibility of their public activity. In this „dual and contradictory legacy of avant-garde“ Clair recognizes causes of numerous „ramblings, ambiguities and complicities“ of art and politics in the course of the 20th century that have left their mark on the contemporary art production as well. This book has served as basis for consideration of the role and meaning of art production in the 1990s in the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is a paradigmatic example of understanding of artistic activity as a shield against the attempts of ideological manipulation or abuse and as a space of supreme freedom and responsibility. The media presentation of war images, in which series of images of products that promise perfumed beauty and eternal youth were presented – with equal indifference – next to the images of destruction and death, is juxtaposed to the perception and understanding of those who were the victims and witnesses of that very conflict. When viewed in hindsight, the works of art produced in the beginning of the 1990s disclose a completely new attitude towards the place, material, artist’s own earlier body of work, tradition, as well as towards the imposed ‘universal’ cultural models.

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