Todosijević Dragoljub Raša:

Short and embellish version of my miserable life in Belgrade

Belgrade 2009


I was born on the second day of September in the year 1945 in Belgrade, in the People’s Front Street; before Second World War the name of the street was Queen Natalia’s Street. At first, we – my honest and righteous parents and me – we have lived in Romanian Street, up there, on Dedinje Hill. Afterwards we have, and nobody knows why, moved to Šajkaška Street no. 17. You know, it’s down there, next to “Danube” railway station. When city authorities, for no apparent reasons, have crashed that beautiful edifice in Šajkaška Street, we have moved to Cvijićeva Street no. 115, close to New Cemetery. After, let’s say, ten years, and perhaps a few more, we’ve gone to the outskirts of the town, beyond nowhere, in Jablanička Street no. 21. Much later Marinela and me finally got our own flat, our own little room of freedom, on Senjak Hill, in Prahovska Street no. 4a – actually in former American Lane. When her parents had left this world we have settled downtown in General Zdahnov Street no. 9, which regained, few years ago, its old, prewar name: Resavska Street.

Erstwhile, I tried to be an air force pilot. It was in Mostar. Since I was no good at this, nor did I like the boring company of the cadets, I have returned to Belgrade. For two years I’ve took courses in drawing and sculpture in Šumatovačka Street no. 122a. Finally, in the year of 1964 I’ve enrolled the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. My professors at the Academy were people of unpleasantly low talent and even lower education. There was nothing left for me but to travel throughout the world and to educate myself, the ways only I did knew, in order to be able somehow to break, with my tiny powers, the invisible bondages of omnipresent provincialism. I’ve got my studio exactly after thirty years, at the so-called Old Fairgrounds, which during Second World War was a German concentration camp. Sometimes, when in my atelier I listen to the silent music on the radio, it seems to me as if souls of murdered camp inmates are visiting me.


I was born on the second day of September in the year 1945 in Belgrade, in the People’s Front Street; before Second World War the name of the street was Queen Natalia’s Street. At first, we – my honest and righteous parents and me – we have lived in Romanian Street, up there, on Dedinje Hill. Afterwards we have, and nobody knows why, moved to Šajkaška Street no. 17. You know, it’s down there, next to “Danube” railway station. When city authorities, for no apparent reasons, have crashed that beautiful edifice in Šajkaška Street, we have moved to Cvijićeva Street no. 115, close to New Cemetery. After, let’s say, ten years, and perhaps a few more, we’ve gone to the outskirts of the town, beyond nowhere, in Jablanička Street no. 21. Much later Marinela and me finally got our own flat, our own little room of freedom, on Senjak Hill, in Prahovska Street no. 4a – actually in former American Lane. When her parents had left this world we have settled downtown in General Zdahnov Street no. 9, which regained, few years ago, its old, prewar name: Resavska Street.

Erstwhile, I tried to be an air force pilot. It was in Mostar. Since I was no good at this, nor did I like the boring company of the cadets, I have returned to Belgrade. For two years I’ve took courses in drawing and sculpture in Šumatovačka Street no. 122a. Finally, in the year of 1964 I’ve enrolled the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. My professors at the Academy were people of unpleasantly low talent and even lower education. There was nothing left for me but to travel throughout the world and to educate myself, the ways only I did knew, in order to be able somehow to break, with my tiny powers, the invisible bondages of omnipresent provincialism. I’ve got my studio exactly after thirty years, at the so-called Old Fairgrounds, which during Second World War was a German concentration camp. Sometimes, when in my atelier I listen to the silent music on the radio, it seems to me as if souls of murdered camp inmates are visiting me.

priča

THE CHAIN OF SAINT…

… and these letters circulating forever – wherein simple words coming from simple-minded people inform one of the certainty of material gain, the certainty of future happiness and love, naturally, only for those who continue to spread their messages; in addition to these empty words, lest one should forget, a punishment is mentioned, actually, an ominous hint of a nasty accident and possible death, not just for those who receive this letter but are unwilling to have it copied and continue to distribute it but also for those who stop its distribution through sheer negligence, presumably failing to observe that, even in the sphere of plebeian metaphysics, awards are given for obedience and severe punishment is meted out for sensible behaviour – usually begin like this (quote):

Dear Sir/Madam,

This letter may bring you joy and welfare. This is really a good reason for you not to throw it away but to read it carefully and make a few copies of it. If you send these copies – within seven days at the latest – to all the people you wish good to, you may be certain that fortune will knock at your door soon.

On no account enclose any money or securities with the letters.

This chain has been initiated by ............... He has received a decree from Saint ............... to create a chain of love and hope. Not doubting the finger of fate, ............... set about forming a brotherhood based on this letter and the dialectics of its symbols.

These are the symbols of the chain of Saint………………..

Several days before his long-awaited holiday, Fulvio Salvatore, a Colonel of the Italian Army, received a letter of this kind. In the course of a dinner he arranged for his friends, he showed the letter to those present, asking them all what would be the best thing to do with this paper whose content was rather vague. Some advised him one way, others advised him differently, and he himself said that he would burn the letter because he did not trust such nonsense, and on top of everything else, he had never heard of this Saint............... Thus Colonel Fulvio inadvertently foretold his fate.

Some time during the night a group of six or seven Black Shirts of Mussolini’s burst into the house. The guests were very alarmed. Their confusion was all the greater because none of them could have dreamed that such a bunch of obscure characters would even dare peek into, let alone burst so arrogantly into the house of a senior officer, a man married to the daughter of an industrial magnate whose connections reached to high heaven.

One of the Black Shirts, presumably their leader, told the people present to remain calm and seated, that nothing untoward would happen to them because the Black Shirts had come to talk with Mario Gattini. At that very moment, Mario happened to be at the far end of the big dining-room table, somewhat to the side of the other guests, sunk comfortably into an armchair, glass in hand, right next to an open window.

Knowing full well what the man they were looking for looked like, one of the Black Shirts, a giant of a man, separated from the group and went over to Mario, taking but a couple of steps to reach him. Acting like a clumsy street magician, he unfolded a newspaper wherein he had been hiding a cleaver and, howling with all his might, started hitting the man with it on the head, neck and shoulders. He swung the cleaver until he was certain that he had finished what he had come to do. Then this satanic figure, face flushed, turned to the guests and ordered them to keep quiet about it, or they would suffer the same fate that had befallen that European garbage if they uttered a single word, let alone tried to run away, God forbid.

Shattered by the unexpected event and the horrible sight of their butchered friend, whose body, head mangled out of shape and arms half-torn from the torso, remained seated in the armchair by the window, they remained mute long after Mussolini’s thugs had gone away, staring nowhere in particular in oppressive silence; none of them was able to move, say or do anything. Even the Colonel, his revolver almost at arm’s reach, sat in a daze, staring fixedly at the unrecognisable remains of the head of Mario Gattini, with whom he had been talking about something or other until but a moment before.

The police, having arrived to investigate the case, praised the Colonel’s presence of mind, his military cool, for he managed, owing to his determination, wisdom and sensible conduct, to prevent greater evil and a possible slaughter of innocent people. After all, this was true up to a point. The Ministry issued an official statement to the effect that, naturally, depending on the circumstances, everything would be done to solve this case and punish the villains most severely.

Some time later the Colonel’s younger brother Carlo, an architect, dreamed a strange dream: in it, he held a burning candle whose flame was bloody and, with some effort, made out and read the very lines you are reading now. The next day, Carlo, very worried, hurried over to his brother intending to tell him about the dream and warn him of his foreboding – as if his brother had not lived through something much worse than his brother’s bad dream. People are like that. However, Salvatore had left town with his family an hour before, convinced that a long vacation at the seaside would help them and soothe their souls.

Sometime at dusk, on the outskirts of Naples, the Colonel’s car swerved off the road for no apparent reason, hitting a tree, then a stone wall surrounding a Dominican monastery. The car overturned, caught fire, and the Colonel burned to death together with his wife Stefania and twin sons Alberto and Nicola.

All in all, the main topics at their funeral were the fatherland, the hectic pace of modern life, Abyssinia, nerves, health spas and the beautiful uniforms of the officers of Fulvio’s regiment.

In his brother’s flat, Carlo found the half-burnt remains of the letter he had seen in his dream. He somehow made out its content, that is, its ending, establishing that its words did point out what fate might befall his kind but too suspicious brother unless he carried out the Order imposed upon him by the letter he had received.

xxx

A young and poor Filipino fisherman by the name of Francesco Hernandez received a letter identical to the one received by the above-mentioned Colonel Fulvio. Even though he was almost illiterate, Francesco understood the message. He made a firm pledge to the Unspeakable that he would continue his chain and that he would do whatever the letter demanded of him by the day named in it. Relying on his modest savings and small contributions from his relatives, Francesco had about fifty copies of the letter made, then sent it to almost all the inhabitants of his poor fishermen’s village, which was received very enthusiastically by almost everyone concerned. The unselfish Francesco wanted fortune to smile on everyone in this world. Inspired by his generosity, the local fishermen had copies of the letter made and equally generously sent them everywhere, as if they were cheques. Soon enough, there was no house on the island which had not received at least ten identical messages and sent out an equal number, if not more, of them.

A week later, having gone to Aparri to purchase some fishing equipment, Francesco bought a lottery ticket which won him the main prize: four hundred and eighty thousand US dollars. Everybody believed that his good fortune was just the beginning, a modest harbinger of the coming prosperity for all. They also believed that the good Francesco, their lucky man, would share some of the windfall with them until they got rich themselves, or if not that, that he would invest part of that money into a new fishing boat and equipment, enabling them to make a greater catch more easily, which would be quite understandable. Unfortunately, Francesco forgot all about the difficult, always uncertain profession of a fisherman. Wasting his time and indulging in all sorts of vice, the young man forgot his relatives, friends and the help he had recently received from them. While he had a whale of a time in Aparri, even in Manila, spending his money on whores, all sorts of foolish things and nightly binges in expensive, more often disreputable bars, the island grew nervous, waiting tensely; a mournful kind of hope, mixed with apprehension and disbelief, literally paralysed the life of the small village.

All of a sudden everybody was all eyes and ears. Everyone started telling fortunes and philosophising. Everyone started snooping around, staring everywhere, listening for any suspicious sound, hoping to be the first to tell where fortune might call and where the sound of happy voices would be heard.

On the local radio station (a gift from an unidentified donor from Kansas) women claiming to be seers competed among themselves talking at length about their dreams, describing all kinds of omens which, if interpreted correctly by one possessing otherworldly powers, if unravelled correctly, might point to the names of those who, in a day or two, would be the recipients of a great fortune. The most brazen liar of them all was a certain Mrs Adela Canosa. She kept trying to persuade the listeners that bridges, benches, doorknobs, shoes, even kitchenware, had a soul. To prove her point, she offered the example of a knife with a metal handle, made in and imported from Solingen, Germany, which had told her to drop in on little Velásquez (the listeners would know who she was talking about) and impart to him that he, the worthless no-good scoundrel that he was, would receive an inheritance, most likely from America, but he would do well to give her back the two thousand pesos she had lent him before New Year; after that, let him sit down and daydream about travelling to Aparri, a bank account, whores, beer and American dollars.

Sensing which way the fashionable island breezes were blowing and how the hearts of not very bright fishermen of the island beat, Adela told the listeners, in her very convincing tone of voice, interspersed with killer dramatic pauses, the story of spoons which had finally realised the truth about reincarnation, the truth about samsara and the true causes of their cursed samsara-like existence.

Thus, in a nutshell, without any embellishments or lengthy philosophising, her spoons were convinced that each of them individually and all of them collectively carried clear memories of past existence. As they told her, in their previous lives they had been gears and springs, actually component parts of a great series of faulty Japanese alarm clocks put together in the year 1913 in Osaka. Naturally, in their own peculiar way, they were highly dissatisfied with their previous lives, even though it was not quite clear to them where the roots of this discontent lay. The long years of darkness and boredom, and the sepulchral silence of the Japanese warehouse had been killing them, they said, and it was ironic that they were rescued from the warehouse by a heartless trader, a one-eyed creature bereft of conscience; this fox of a man, a pirate who fleeced his victims, sold them at an exorbitant price to some poor smelters in the Philippines.

The way they are today, having been resmelt into cheap iron spoons, objects mixed with parts of other objects – carrying other memories, stories and experiences from far-off lands – is the only true balm that makes their samsara-like fate, a fate of suffering and neglect, bearable.

To be quite open about it, the spoons are bitter about their current existence as well. They keep complaining of the fate allotted to them, that of helpless spoons, which any moron who gets it into his head to slurp something can push shamelessly into his smelly mouth, without asking himself who they are, where they come from and whether it is decent to do all those terrible things to their current existence – without thinking that their past could be more glorious and elevated than his hideous toothless slop container drooling all over them.

If anyone should ask them what they would rather be, in one of their future lives, of course, they would choose the life of chromed figurines adorning the front end of that pride of British car industry, Rolls Royce. It is true that such wishes are somewhat old-fashioned, just like the drawings on the covers of novels Adela reads to them, but her spoons have been yearning for centuries for days of noble leisure, for the far-off barking of purebred dogs, for fine manners and the tingling freshness of morning air.

Adela’s confused parable about the past lives and dreams of reincarnated parts of Japanese alarm clocks, now spoons, would have remained mere female fantasy (originating from a good-looking widow whose charms had only slightly faded) had it not been for her golden aura of a proven prophet. Her reputation, for that is what it must be called without any doubt, stemmed from the fact that she was Francesco’s mother’s sister, that is, an aunt of the man who had recently become the richest person on the island.

What was possibly more decisive in this case, maybe even much more important than a blood relationship and all those clear and not so very clear feelings that go along with it, was the quite proven fact that she was the key person who persuaded (witnesses say – merely reminded in an off-hand manner) her nincompoop of a nephew, the inexperienced Francesco, to purchase by all means, on top of a number of things he was supposed to get in Aparri, a lottery ticket. Bearing in mind Saint Unspeakable’s letter and her own visions, of which she was not at all willing to speak, Adela spiritually prepared that nincompoop and bag of bones to step onto the endless and unknowable cosmic merry-go-round and grab what one could grab there at an opportune moment or change to one’s own advantage.

xxx

Francesco became what one would have expected an uneducated island boy to become: a rich drunkard, a lifelong champion of island patriotism and an insufferable fool.

Owing to his money, a French doctor, Adela’s unstoppable kinship-based enterprise, and many other things which slowly crystallised in the course of magmatic nighttime talks she had with the mysterious doctor Eric Hugo, Francesco was sent off straight to France, to Paris, without resisting. In accordance with a long and thoroughly developed plan, and then in a mad race with time, the nephew was placed in the sanatorium “The Eiffel Tower” at no. 9, Place des Vosges, Paris.

Its former patients proudly tell fairy tales about this discreet and prettily furnished shelter, intended to be a spiritual refuge of first-class gentlemen. They will tell you confidentially (while praising the cuisine and the charm of the professional staff) that “The Tower” excels at treating a complex whole made up of very different symptoms, a whole called “the French syndrome”, otherwise known as “the French cirrhosis”, thought to occur as a result of long-time and immoderate consumption of low-quality red wine, which is admittedly at odds with the exorbitant prices charged by the aforementioned rest home nestling in the very heart of old Paris.

Apart from the main entrance, which is located where two shaded colonnades intersect at an angle of ninety degrees, “The Tower” also has a secret passage, “a vessel for saving one’s soul and face”, as it was affectionately referred to, among the select few close friends, by Mlle Sophie Saphir, an old maid, the owner and God of the sanatorium.

Place des Vosges has always been the pride of those living in its surroundings; formerly just a windy uncultivated plot of land, a gathering place of thieves, traders and peddlers, it was considered by the city authorities to be a proper place for gallows made of stone, the first of their kind – built ten years before the much better known ones from Place des Augustins.

A careful examination of judicial chronicles kept towards the end of the sixteenth century will reveal, here and there, not always very clearly, mainly through asides, that there exists (or existed) a connection between the place where, to the delight of Parisians, public executions used to be carried out for years, and a ditch, shoulder-deep let us say, through which the guards led convicts who were about to meet their maker and the rope to the square.

That is the origin of the phrase, coined by the riffraff of Paris, mockingly turning whatever was down to something that was up: “He’ll pass through the ditch”, meaning that the good-for-nothing vagabond in question might easily end up swinging from the gallows.

Out of respect for that ditch’s past, later builders, the inheritors of the good-natured apron-wearing craftsmen of old, left it intact: they built what there was to be built, then made a path of stone tiles, and when that great flute had finally been made, ready to resound hollowly in the jaws of some giant, the builders deftly made it part of the foundation of the future edifice. Many years later, the heavily made-up Sophie Saphir would move in there with her girls and her servants.

The secret passage, actually just a tunnel caving in here and there which time has not managed to gnaw away, is about twenty steps long and connects the sanatorium with the back room of a grocery store, actually a warehouse filled with the mainly worthless goods purchased in the kasbahs of Maghreb and western African shores.

From the warehouse, the soul- and face-saving passage leads further on through the shop and from it straight to Rue Turenne. One might jokingly observe that the said passage was often used in the opposite direction as well – at least while Mlle Sophie tranquilly reigned over “The Tower”.

Sophie rented out the place, which had a telephone and two big shop windows, to a Tunisian. It was more important to her that the Tunisian should oversee the “lifeboat” passage than to draw rent from the premises she had not invested a single franc in or to collect a measly percentage from the sale of gaudy cloths, all sorts of trinkets or the grinning African idols and ugly women with giant breasts hanging down that queers and all sorts of Parisian painters went mad about.

xxx

It was raining over Paris; a pleasant spring rain was falling and the sun shone through the clouds. It is 11 o’clock in the morning; the month of May.

People go about their business not paying any attention to occasional bursts of rain. Women enter expensive shops and go out, repeating the well-rehearsed choreography of closing and opening their umbrellas. Some women wave their hands trying to get a taxi. When one does appear and stop by them, they carry in various boxes, sit in the back and go off somewhere. Several boys tread through the puddles along the curb – they are happy to be able to do as they please and because no one disturbs their defiant game, no one bothers them or cautions them. The city lives the full life of a proud capital. This unimaginably big human habitat is the ideal capital of Europe, the whole world, the universe. To the many serious-looking men in dark suits hurrying about on some important business and to the elegant ladies spending money making the rounds of extravagant shops, it seems that this kind of life, the exciting life of a metropolis, will last till the end of time, until the sun burns out and the planet sinks into eternal darkness.

Francesco sits by the window in the attic of the sanatorium. He has his new suit on, designed and made to measure. The suit is somewhat uncomfortable for a young man unaccustomed to continental climate and life in a big city. He also has a striped shirt on, the collar of which has rounded tips, and a tie on which there is a bird which might be a parrot embroidered with a gold thread. His underwear is also brand new and it itches. His freshly cut hair, parted in the middle, still smells of the sharp but pleasant liquid which the barber used to massage the roots of his hair.

Francesco concluded that he was doing well at “The Tower”: he assured himself that he was much better off than he had thought he would be. After all, he lived in a big city now, among people (mostly women) whose language he did not understand, but all in all, he lived in a comfortable flat – even the most expensive hotel in Aparri had nothing like it. He ate and drank what he wanted, he had a fine suit, he spent all day looking around, doing nothing and, most importantly, he had money.

A man of twenty-four, in his prime, swarthy, dark-haired and black-eyed, he is not aware that he is becoming a creature that Sophie dresses up merely to parade him, to show him, the way one shows antique furniture, a nice painting by a trendy artist, a new horse-drawn carriage, a new car or a newly-purchased astrakhan fur coat. Francesco looks down through the closed window at the street, the people hurrying somewhere, the hats, the umbrellas, honking cars, then at the curtains with floral patterns and tiny men with eyes open wide. His thoughts are confused, but everything hinges around the question: how will his life in Paris continue? The smell of coffee and freshly baked pastry wafted in from the corridor.

If he could snap out of his reverie, or if his image in the mirror could ask his other self – the flesh-and-blood one – that image would certainly, under the circumstances, wonder whether to speak out or to advise him what to do, of his own accord, for his own sake, regardless of what Sophie has already decided about this, that, anything, or literally about everything that concerned or would ever concern “The Tower”, its subjects, patients, guests, flowers, menu, finances and so on and so forth.

As on this rainy day, he had imagined, on several earlier occasions, hearing the sound of sailboat sirens coming from some place or other. He was familiar with those sounds and there was no way he could have mistaken them for the sounds of some other device, the noise of machines or factory sirens. One moment he would maintain to himself that Paris was possibly by the sea, and another he would try to stop himself believing this. If Paris was by the sea after all, beside some great expanse of water, why did Sophie never take him to the shore to show him the famous Paris harbour?

Whenever he asked one of Sophie’s whores about those sirens – imitating the sound like some Negro jazz saxophone player – she would shrug her shoulders, thinking to herself that it was such a pity and truly a sin that this strapping, handsome fellow in his prime should be so much off his rocker.

Raša Todosijević

EDINBURGH STATEMENT

1975

Who makes profit from art and who gains from it honestly?

The author wrote this text to somehow profit from the good and bad in art

The factories that manufacture materials are necessary to artists.

The firms that sell materials are necessary to artists.

Their workers, clerks, sales personnel, agents, etc.

Firms or private business owners who provide the equipment or decorate the work of artists.

The carpenters who make frames, wooden structural supports, etc.

The producers of glass, paper, pencils, paints, tools, etc.

Their workers, clerks, sales personnel, retailers, etc.

The real estate agencies that collect rent for studios, lofts, living quarters or

holes where artists live.

Their employers, clerks, etc.

All those producing and selling wholesale or retail everyday items to artists.

All those producing and selling wholesale or retail footwear and clothing to artists.

All those creating and selling wholesale or retail cultural requisites to artists.

All those producing and selling wholesale or retail drugs, sanitary supplies, and alcohol, contraceptives, cigarettes and sporting goods to artists.

All those collecting taxes on artists’ incomes.

Municipal clerks and other administrative personnel.

The banks with their higher and lower-ranking staff.

Small craftsmen: tinsmiths, doctors, frame-makers, shoemakers, gravediggers, etc.

Professional mosaic craftsmen who execute someone else’s mosaics.

Professional casters who cast someone else’s sculpture.

Modellers and experts in plaster, wax, marble and bronze.

Goldsmiths.

Signet makers.

Zincographers.

Professional producers of large print runs, lithographs, etchings, aquatints, silkscreen prints, woodcuts, etc.

Medallists.

Stonecutters.

Galleries.

Sales galleries and their staff.

Non-profit galleries.

Gallery owners, gallery administrators, gallery curators and their personal secretaries and friends.

The subsidised gallery council.

The voluntary gallery council that collects moneys because they are not subsidised.

Purchasing commissions, their members and consultants.

Extremely well-trained conference experts whose intentions concerning art are bad or good.

Managers, retailers, dealers and all other small-time or big-time art profiteers.

The organisers of public or semi-public auctions.

Collectors.

Shrewd profit-makers who profit from better or major work outside public collections.

“Anonymous” benefactors.

Well-known and respected benefactors.

The low, higher and highest-ranking personnel of cultural institutions and the organisers of art, cultural and educational programmes. Staff members involved in the organisation of an exhibition.

All administrative employees.

The clerk who orders, issues and accounts for the materials required for an exhibition.

The account office.

The janitor.

The secretaries or other persons related to institutions that provide funds for cultural programmes.

All technical personnel.

Professional and non-professional managers.

The designer of the catalogue, of invitations and posters.

The messenger.

The fire inspector.

The critic, writer or other individual responsible for writing the preface to the catalogue.

The copyeditor who checks the preface or the artist’s texts, or texts about the artist in the catalogue.

Translators of the preface or texts about the artist or the artist’s texts in the catalogue.

The typist.

The photographer who took pictures for the catalogue.

The catalogue publisher.

The catalogue editor.

The printing firm responsible for printing the catalogue and poster.

The workers who set the type, bind the catalogue and print the invitations.

The proofreaders.

The administrative personnel of the printing firm.

Those who fix tax rates and collect taxes on the printing of the catalogues.

Those who sign and issue certificates deeming that the catalogue be tax-free.

Postal fees for mailing invitations and catalogues.

Telephone expenses connected with arrangements made for the exhibition.

The electric companies that charge for electricity used during the exhibition.

The gallery guard and catalogue, postcard and ticket salespeople.

The cleaning women.

The housepainters.

The person giving the introductory address at the grand opening of the exhibition.

Outside information services.

The advertising department of the daily paper.

The journalist giving a long or short report on the exhibition.

The critic writing a short review of the exhibition in the daily paper.

The editor in charge of the cultural section of the daily paper.

The technical editor of the cultural and all other sections.

The critic or commentator giving a more detailed review of the exhibition.

The publicist who has nothing to do with art but writes about artists, their works and problems in the art world

The author scribbling lyrical descriptions of art for daily, weekly or monthly newspapers, marketing these and thus displaying his ignorance or lack of knowledge of particular branches of art.

And all others who regardless of their professional fields either attack or defend the exhibition and the artist in the daily and weekly press.

The cartoonists.

Those who devise ruses, epigrams and sophistries related to art and artists,

The television station, its personnel, workers and “artists”.

The cameraman who films either the opening of the exhibition or a subsequent report.

The worker responsible for the camera lighting.

The lower-ranking associate of the television’s cultural programme who covers the story.

His technicians and assistants.

The editor of the television station’s cultural section.

The director, stage designer and remaining amateurs.

The commentator or presenter who reads the news on television.

The organiser and television presenter of cultural programmes.

The organiser and host of television interviews with the artist.

Those who write, direct or film either short or long TV films and plays about the lives of living or dead artists.

Those who make films about artists to promote tourism.

Those who film full-length romanticised biographies of artists.

Radio stations, their staff, workers and other associates.

The advertising section.

News reports and features.

The gossip column.

Authors of radio programmes who write about artists and those reading or reciting this material.

Presenters and hosts of the radio programme.

Organisers of various interviews and shows on or about culture and art.

Writers of radio obituaries concerning the artist or some artistic movement.

All associates and other radio staff.

Publishing houses, their staff, workers and consultants.

Creators and editors of bulletins about art.

Weekly art magazines and the staff that writes for them, as well as those staff responsible for the magazine’s distribution.

Monthly, quarterly or bimonthly magazines dealing with culture and art.

Monographers, biographers and editors of collected essays dealing with a particular artist and his work.

Those recording anecdotes from the artist’s life.

Those assisting the artist in writing his autobiography.

Those who retell anecdotes and jokes from the artist’s life, in this way earning cigarettes, coffee, beer, brandy, cognac, wine or food, etc.

Art critics in all fields, of all ages and orientations.

The stores that sell books, magazines, reproductions and original prints created by artists and non-artists.

Antique shops, antique dealers, private sellers, agents and retailers.

The collectors.

Second-hand stores and dealers.

Commission stores, churches and sextons.

Those selling their knowledge and familiarity with the artist’s earlier works.

Experts familiar with later works.

Experts in prehistoric art, primitive art, modern art, etc.

Experts in a particular century or a particular year or epoch.

The organisers of an artist’s one-man show.

Organisers of group exhibitions, cultural events, presentations, etc.

Organisers of exhibitions involving several cities or republics.

Organisers of international exhibitions.

Organisers of huge exhibitions: from ancient times to the present day.

All their directors, secretaries, associates, assistants, consultants, proofreaders, publishers, administrative staff, technical personnel, workers, etc.

The juries, consultants, experts and women serving coffee.

The conservators: restorers, technicians, etc.

Institute directors, museum directors, museum curators, clerks and other staff. Spoiled sons and daughters who – thanks to a father, grandfather or senile aunt with connections or party membership – are employed by museums so that they can spread their foul odour and the misery of their slippery forebears.

The night guards of museums, galleries, collections and this and that type of compilation or legacy.

Those posing as guards of galleries, museums and collections.

Informers.

Technical staff of the galleries, museums and collections.

Organisers of symposiums, meetings and art festivals.

Organisers of seminars and short or crash courses in art.

Organisers of organised profit-making activities concerning art.

Their ideological, administrative and technical personnel.

Tourist organisations, agencies and their personnel.

Airline companies, bus companies, railroads, etc.

Caterers, cafes, waiters, waitresses, restaurants, hotels, boarding houses, etc.

Professional guides working for galleries, museums, ruins and smaller collections.

Professional guides with knowledge of one or more foreign languages.

Auction houses

Fans.

Teenyboppers.

Young female students.

Models.

Married women.

Wives.

Mistresses.

Girlfriends.

Widows.

Children.

Pederasts

Old friends and acquaintances.

Relatives and other closer or distant heirs.

Lawyers.

Housewives and mothers who occasionally chatter to the press in support of and against art.

Shrewd directors and trustees of legacies, inheritances and collections.

National saviours of artistic treasures.

The overseers of art funds bequeathed to be distributed as awards, gifts and scholarships: to rich students, careerists and other assorted thieves.

Patrons and organisers of funds and scholarships given as one-month or one-year or hundred-year scholarships to sycophants, cowards, and wealthy children and to solid epigones.

Patrons and organisers of grants for study abroad that are usually awarded to children of high government officials, children of prominent bankers, and children of disguised and clandestine bourgeoisie under socialism.

Organisers of art associations and the necessary technical and administrative personnel.

And all other lower, higher and top- ranking bureaucrats squeezing money out of artists with a smile, proud of their “holy mission” on behalf of art and in culture.

The poster makers, graphic editors and designers who steal from the artist.

Industrial designers of all kinds.

Anti-designers.

Producers and sellers of flyers, posters and portfolios with autographs or (cheaper) without.

Producers and sellers of “records of the artist”, full of hope and dreaming of lots of money.

Those who earn or hope to earn money from reprints, the Dada movement, Fluxus and so forth, though they never dreamed of doing this when it was truly necessary for the artists.

Souvenir makers and their salespeople.

Makers of postcards, greeting cards and reproductions of art works.

Those who print calendars with reproductions of works of art and kitsch.

Recognised and unrecognised copiers of works of art.

Those who forge works of art in secret.

Known and acknowledged forgers of works of art.

Fashion designers who publicly insult the artist and make money that way.

Creators of designs that systematically degrade artists, for which they are paid.

Ceramicists or private persons who use well-known works to decorate vases, jugs and dishes, and who sell these as art.

Wall decorators.

Architects

Façade makers.

Tapestry makers.

Photographers and the entire photo industry.

Makers of candy, sweets. stockings, tobacco and all other products that reproduce a work of art on their wrappings, thus earning from it.

All those using a work of art on stamps, labels, flags, picture books, wallpaper and kitchen or bathroom tiles.

Heads of publishing houses who occasionally use their influence to make a profit on the side from small deals involving “works of art”.

Those supporting helpless and senile artists in order to get hold of their inheritance, profiting like gangsters.

Exclusive distributors of and those that profit from videotapes, documentary and historical photographs, autographs and artists’ napkins.

Those abusing occasional passers-by.

Those who are glad to do “this or that”.

Impostors who make a living by imitating artists.

Serious and self-confident epigones who imitate artists without feeling the least bit guilty, thereby faring better and earning more than the artists themselves.

Counterfeiters of art history who make money on such falsifications.

Those favouring a particular style in art based on their own greed and lust for profit.

Those pointing out one artist, or a number of them, or a particular idea, theme or thesis or problem, in order to draw attention to themselves and their ideas, thus earning something from it sooner or later.

Dilettantes, artists, and slandering, ill-trained theoreticians in secret partnership to facilitate the hunt for profit in art.

Ladies from fine families who engage in all kinds of business with artists for the sake of “Art”.

Ladies studying art and artists.

Those who support “street art or “protest art” and thus thrust, sell, advertise and put these ideas on exhibit in the most elite galleries.

Critics, theoreticians and other quacks engaged in everyday politics so that they might attain a position in the art world and ensure themselves a profit.

Disguised ideologists, demagogues and reactionaries in institutions, institutes of higher learning, university departments, museums and academies who have a greater interest in power and influence in the art world than in education and culture, which offers no sort of profit.

And all those who use liberal language to disguise their decadent, dated, reactionary, chauvinist and bourgeois models of art and culture with verbal liberalism, that they might attain positions outside the world of art and culture, thus being both above and beyond art and culture.

Psychologists and sociologists who derive nebulous conclusions about art and then sell this bluff as a great contribution to a better understanding of art.

Philosophers writing about art without ever really understanding it.

And all the other cheap politicians who have seized the sinecure in this “mysterious” way – through relatives, friends and connections – preaching to artists and making enough money for two lifetimes with this foolish business.

Raša Todosijević

Belgrade, 21 April 1975.