The Evocation of the Russian Empire Style in Serbian Architecture. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 8. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Univ. Press, 2018, pp. 401–410. ISSN 2312-2129. http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa188-4-38 (original) (raw)

Royal Power and its Influence on Architecture - The Architecture of State Buildings in Belgrade During the Reign of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia

The aim of this paper is to present influence of ideology on state buildings in Belgrade during the reign of King Alexander I. We shall follow the role of King Alexander as a mastermind of building the new state and a new nation, the new Yugoslav national entity and the city of Belgrade as a new capital. The architecture has its fundamental role in presenting this image, and it follows the ideological pattern rooted in general European academism. However, there is certain lagging behind general European trend of the epoch, transposing the late 19th century architectural praxis into third and fourth decade of 20th century. Besides being driven by Alexander's energy, the realization of this project is made possible by commissioning Russian émigré architects, who fled their country in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1917. The Russian architects interweaved their pompous interpretation of academism into those representative buildings projected by them. This whole arrangement and Alexander's preference for Russian (White) émigrés served not only as definition of new identity of state and the city of Belgrade but also, in the light of Alexander's authoritarian rule and general stance of Yugoslavia in international arena, served as an expression of his staunch anticommunism, positioning Yugoslavia firmly onto ideological map of contemporary Europe. The main object of this analysis will be the following representative buildings: the Army Headquarters building (by W. Baumgarten), the State archive building (by N. Krasnov) and the Ministry of agriculture, water management, forestry and mining building (by N. Krasnov).

The Participation of Russian Architects and Sculptors in Making the Art Deco Architecture in Serbia

The aim of this paper is to present the participation of Russian artists in the emergence and development of the Art Deco style in Serbian architecture, the style that marked the period between two world wars. In emanations of this style in Serbia, Russian architects and sculptors were of great importance, though their role was not discussed in historiography as a separate phenomenon. The decorative attitude made this essentially modern style more accessible to the refined artistic taste of Serbian social elite, which made Art Deco part of the image of its representative identity. In this period, Belgrade engaged architects arriving from Russia, who followed the local artistic demands, oriented toward decorative but also modern architectural form, and produced significant artistic oeuvre. Art Deco in Serbia was based on the modernization of constructions and building forms, nevertheless focused on façade decoration, enriched with ornaments, stylized reliefs, sculptures and fine-detailed ironwork. Architect and sculptor Roman Verhovskoj interpolated elements of the Art Deco style in an expressive and powerful way. Vladimir Zagorodnjuk decorated many public and apartment buildings with reliefs. Viktor Lukomski as the architect of the Yugoslav government designed the Palace of the Patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the State Hotel on Avala mountain. Architects Aleksander Medvedev, Valerij Stashevski, Andrej Papkov and Grigorij Samojlov embraced the style of softened, rhythmical, ornamentally enriched architecture, and developed a specific line of ornamental Art Deco. Creating the elaborate Art Deco interior of Cinema Belgrade, the most elite movie theater in Yugoslav capital, architect Grigorij Samojlov brought the spirit of Hollywood to Belgrade. The interwar development of the city and the quadruple increase in population were followed by the creation of its architectural identity, decisively marked by the modernity of Art Deco, following global trends that put it close to Paris, New York, Madrid, Casablanca, Havana, and Mumbai. In the oeuvre of Russian architects who worked in Serbia between two world wars, we notice a large variety of typical Art Deco motifs. Either contemporary or originating from classical, national, religious or mythological art, they are always transformed in accordance with contemporary modern spirit without direct application of topical templates. Already present in the early, initial phase of the style (1920-1927), related to Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in 1925, Russian architects and sculptors strongly reflected the new style in the mature stage of its development (1928-1934), adopting both ornamental and sculptural forms of Art Deco. In the 1930s, their involvement in public and private architecture alike intertwined with the activities of local builders, with whom they equally participated in winning markets and personal self-fulfillment. In the late stages of Art Deco style, which in Serbian architecture developed in the period of 1935-1941, the Russian builders expressed the “joie de vivre” spirit characteristic of Art Deco, which became the most explicit form of the positive, creative global connectivity bringing to life some highlights of Serbian architecture.

A.Kadijević, Ottoman-Balkan style in Serbian architecture (late 18th – the early of 19th c.), in: A.Temizer (ed.), 8th International Symposium оn Balkan History Studies: Culture, Architecture and art in the Balkan, September 1st-4th 2022, Istanbul/Türkiye, Proceeding book 1, Lyon 2022, 293-304.

The main architectural stream in Serbia from the end of the eighteenth to the thirties of the nineteenth century was the Ottoman-Balkan style, a mixture that lasted even longer in some parts of the country. It is based on an oriental architectural-urban matrix that has been gradually Europeanized, approaching the morphology of the classicist style. In the uprising (1804) and post uprising vassal principality of Serbia, for a long time Ottoman-Balkan style was the dominant choice of the Serbian political elite, who were determined to imitate the Turks in almost every way. Profane architecture of oriental towns was dominated by half-timbered objects, with adobe filling and tile roofs. Pivotal points of lively settlements became lodgings of the leaders of the uprising, among which the residences of Prince Miloš Obrenović are the most prominent. They were built by leading local builders-Hadži Nikola Živković, Nikola Đorđević and Janja Mihajlović. Karađorđe's city in Topola, the largest urban-architectural endeavour in Serbia during the First Uprising, gradually lost importance. The main centres of political power-Kragujevac, and then Belgrade, become the centres of building activity on Ottoman-Balkani oriental style. The main researchers of this phenomenon in Serbian cultural historiography are

CHRONOLOGY OF THE IMAGINARY IN THE ESTETICS OF THE SERBIAN ARCHITECTURE OF THE SEDOND HALF OF 20TH CENTURY AND ITS SOCIAL RELATIONISM

CHRONOLOGY OF THE IMAGINARY IN THE ESTETICS OF THE SERBIAN ARCHITECTURE OF THE SEDOND HALF OF 20TH CENTURY AND ITS SOCIAL RELATIONISM , 2019

Abstract | Imaginary is not a lie - regardless of whether the imaginary is a category used by the society to confront the real or rather to spread beyond its limits, what remains is the question of its presence not only in the esthetical, psychological and anthropological, but also in the social and historical situation, especially in case of a feature which is a significant catalyst of creativity and esthetical formation. The discovery of the imaginary in the esthetic codes of the development stages of the overall Serbian and Belgrade architecture in the Yugoslav ideological milieu, opens the possibility of classificatory schemes, which yield the potential for the critical history of formation of the visual culture of the capital city and Yugoslav state heritological valorization. Discovery of the imaginary represents the theoretical mechanism which, in the hermeneutical circle, connects the esthetic theory, heritological matrix of architectural creativity and social relationisms. Comparative observation of the esthetic tendencies of Serbian and Belgrade architecture of the late 20th century in large chronological chunks, leads to the conclusion that there are three key chronological phases of the visual transformation of the architectural esthetic medium: [1] the phase of the modernity tradition, alongside the ideological pressures of the short-term neo-Marxist antibourgeois revolution till the early 1950s, during which it goes beyond the Eastern-European socialist-realistic esthetic paradigm; [2] the phase of the highly modern architecture, alongside the changing tendencies of ideological revisions of the socialistic autonomous idea of the liberal society and industrialization, during which the western architectural esthetics was surpassed through the establishment in the domain of critical regionalism and features of the advanced classical construction system, and finally [3] the postmodern phase, alongside the populist social revolution and the final phase of the populist vulgarization of the state during the final stage of the Yugoslav cryptofederal union, during which the renewal of the tradicionalistic discursive formations takes place, as a dominant centrifugal forces in the framework of the official ideology. In a political platform of the populist vulgarization of the state which foreshadowed the social hypocrisy of the then already Serbian, so called, transitional period, the postmodern esthetics was, on a global wave of pop-culture and, by means of social populism, transformed into a vulgar architectural kitsch, permeating profoundly into the 1990s. Key words| imaginary, architectural chronologies, aesthetic paradigm, social relationalism, simbolic formation

A.Kadijević, Ottoman-Balkan style in Serbain architecture (late 18th – the early of 19th c.), in: A.Temizer (ed.), 8th International Symposium оn Balkan History Studies: Culture, Architecture and art in the Balkan, September 1st-4th 2022, Istanbul/Türkiye, Proceeding book 1, Lyon 2022, 293-304.

The main architectural stream in Serbia from the end of the eighteenth to the thirties of the nineteenth century was the Ottoman-Balkan style, a mixture that lasted even longer in some parts of the country. It is based on an oriental architectural-urban matrix that has been gradually Europeanized, approaching the morphology of the classicist style. In the uprising (1804) and post uprising vassal principality of Serbia, for a long time Ottoman-Balkan style was the dominant choice of the Serbian political elite, who were determined to imitate the Turks in almost every way. Profane architecture of oriental towns was dominated by half-timbered objects, with adobe filling and tile roofs. Pivotal points of lively settlements became lodgings of the leaders of the uprising, among which the residences of Prince Miloš Obrenović are the most prominent. They were built by leading local builders-Hadži Nikola Živković, Nikola Đorđević and Janja Mihajlović. Karađorđe's city in Topola, the largest urban-architectural endeavour in Serbia during the First Uprising, gradually lost importance. The main centres of political power-Kragujevac, and then Belgrade, become the centres of building activity on Ottoman-Balkani oriental style. The main researchers of this phenomenon in Serbian cultural historiography are

Defining a style: Applied art and architectural design in the Serbian architecture

Proceedings of the international conference SmartArt2019, 2020

The aim of this paper is to present a complex relationship between applied arts and architectural design, made through the development of styles in the Serbian architecture of the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. It is based on previous conclusions and new perspectives arising from research of archival material and legacies of builders and applied artists, as well as present observations and conclusions. Observing the parallel development of architecture with the economic , political, social and cultural phenomena of the period, one can notice qualitative and quantitative rise of the applied arts, which in their various forms are a reflection of the time. The bond between applied arts and architecture had shown a significant role in shaping the styles of the Serbian architecture prevalently in Belgrade, largest Serbian city and the capital of The Principality of Serbia (1830–1882) and The Kingdom of Serbia (1882–1918) and The Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1945), as well as The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1963), through developing stylistic flows of Academicism, Secession, Art Deco, Modern and Socialistic realism, as well as many transient stylistic phenomena depending on local and foreign influences. Although it was not widely open to constructive experiments, the architecture of Serbia embraced the spirit of contemporary aestheticism adapting it to the local taste, expressing it with various sophisticatedly designed stylistic elements of applied arts. Stained glass, mosaic, wall painting, sculpture and relief, modern locksmith work, furniture and interior design, as well as the concept of facade composition in relation to the personal creative sensibilities of the author, taste and wishes of the clients, were given particular motifs and characteristics that determined the identity of the building in terms of style. Despite the importance of applied art and its significance for the development of the Serbian architecture of the noted period, insufficient knowledge of its opulent corpus, its authors and tendencies, conditioned by poorly preserved and rarely presented documentary material, puts to historiography the conclusion of the need for more thorough research and of publication of the knowledge about applied art in Serbia. Pointing to this specific collaborative practice of applied arts with architectural design is an attempt to contribute to this aim.