Tijelo/organizam u umjetnosti 1920-ih: o skupini “Elektroorganizam”
Body/Organism in the 1920s Art: On the Electroorganism Group

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the issue of the traditional organic/mechanic opposition, which in the 20th-century art transformed into a specific equivalence between the organic and the mechanic. The focal point of the paper is the praxis and manifesto of the Soviet artistic group Electroorganism, which produced very distinctive visual representations of the human body. The name of the group implies a self-sustained text that in paradoxical way reveals the opposition between the corporeal and the organic. In a long cultural tradition (since Romanticism) the organic and the corporeal were seen as synonymous but in the 20th century their equivalence turned into opposition. However, on the level of mythology they remain closely interconnected. The corporeal inherits the principle of continuity though the organic, which appears analytical and discreet: when combined, they complement each other. Artistic practices and especially artistic ideas of the group are discussed in the context of contemporary philosophy and ideology in relation to the body and electricity, in the writings of the priest and philosopher Pavel Florensky, the physiologist and politician Alexander Bogdanov, the poet and ideologist Aleksei Gastev, and others.

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