AESTHETIC ANTAGONISMS IN THE RELATION TRADITIONALISM–MODERNISM, ACADEMISM–AVANT-GUARDE IN PAINTING OF VASA POMORIŠAC

Abstract

The painting of Vasa Pomorišac represents a significant and theoretically undefined phenomenon on the Serbian art scene. Simultaneously close to traditional and academic on one side and modern and avant-garde on the other, the artistic concept of Vasa Pomorišac deserves the attention of critics and theoreticians polarized between traditionalists and modernists. Fine poetics in his opus is most often constituted on the principle of aesthetic animosity towards the dominant currents of Serbian art at the time. Pomorišč’s creativity appears as an important paradigm of Serbian modernity, however, the basic premises of his painting brings it to the level of an anti-modernist concept. Expressionist aesthetics of the ugly, grotesque and unpleasant were also rejected. The ontological structure of his art is established as deeply autonomous. Pomorišac’s avant-gardism was constituted on the principles of strong antagonism towards the ruling paradigms of modernism and academism, but also towards the dominant currents of the official avant-garde of the Serbian art scene at the time.