Aleksandar Macasev

Belef

It is not big news that art can get out on the streets and be presented on billboards and posters. This form of advertising is unavoidable in order to bring art back to life.

The idea of Aleksandar Macasev to display the face of Joseph Goebbels (former Nazi minister of propaganda) made of media companies' logos is very aggressive. His point is that we cannot bear the attack of the advertising.

Art abandoned esthetics, beauty, optimism and positive thinking long ago. Therefore we don't blame Macasev for bombarding us with the image of Goebbels...

But I blame BELEF that with Macasev's idea we get further involved with the hard and heavy media images in our country. This summer media images include Bratunac, Srebrenica, killers, witnesses, rapists...

I just don't want to believe that BELEF did that intentionally (with my money too). And to make it so intense that you might go mad. You already get nauseous when you see any cover of Serbian newspapers or magazines. When you turn on the TV you don't know whether you are watching the news or a movie about a catastrophe. Now you have to be scared in the streets because of Goebbels. I think it is a little bit too much for this hot summer. Let me decide whether I shall go to Macasev's exhibition or not. Don't attack me in the streets with this art project in the form of an advertising campaign made by a Belgrade designer. My head will explode. There are a lot of icons. I am afraid that the next one who will stare at me from the billboards will be some of the villains from the headline news. Between this and the exhibition of nude paintings by Vlaha Buhovac I choose the latter one.

Milena Marjanovic
Art historian