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‘East? West? Or Both?’ Foreign perceptions of architecture in Socialist Yugoslavia

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602360802705106

1466-4410

Vladimir Kulić,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes The title of the article quotes a chapter title from one of the chief Cold War studies of Yugoslavia: George W. Hoffman, Fred Warner Neal, Yugoslavia and the New Communism (New York, Twentieth Century Fund, 1962), p. 417. Dubravka Ugrešić provided an excellent literary articulation of such self-perception after the collapse of Yugoslavia; see: Dubravka Ugrešić, ‘Zagreb – Amsterdam – New York’, in Cross Currents, no. 11 (1992), pp. 248–56. For a scholarly account of the evolution of Yugoslavia's ‘place in the world’ and the construction of corresponding self-identifications, see: Predrag J. Marković, Beograd između Istoka i Zapada 1948–1965 (Belgrade, Službeni list SRJ, 1996), pp. 73–101. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997). Some scholars have convincingly analysed views of Yugoslavia within an orientalist perspective; see: Robert Hayden, Milica Bakić-Hayden, ‘Orientalist Variations on the Theme “Balkans”: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics’, in Slavic Review, 51, no. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 1–15; Milica Bakić-Hayden, ‘Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia’, in Slavic Review, 54, no. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 917–31. Le Corbusier, Journey to the East, edited and translated by Ivan Žaknić (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1989), p. 43. This redefinition of Socialist Realism was most obviously expressed in a prolonged polemic on the pages of the journal Arhitektura (Zagreb) between 1947 and 1949. The predominantly young architects who contributed to this redefinition included the journal's editor, Neven Šegvić, together with Andrija Mohorovičić from Zagreb, Milorad Macura from Belgrade and Mira Kreigher from Ljubljana. For more on this topic, see Chapter 2, ‘Architectural Culture of a Stalinist State’, in my forthcoming dissertation, Land of the In-Between: Modern Architecture and Politics in Socialist Yugoslavia 1945–65, The University of Texas at Austin, 2009, supervised by Prof. Danilo Udovički-Selb. By ‘international orientation’ and ‘frame of reference’ I mean foreign sources that informed architectural discourse in Yugoslavia: published articles, exhibitions, destinations for travel, etc. After 1948, these became of almost exclusively Western origin; articles on architecture in the communist bloc became exceedingly rare. For more on this topic, see: ibid, Chapters 2 and 6. Strictly geographically speaking, an exception was the fascination with Kenzo Tange after he won the competition for the reconstruction of central Skopje in 1965. But in political terms, Japan was by this time an integral part of the Western world. The bibliography of this topic is extensive; see, among other sources: Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1983); Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York, The New Press, 1999); Paul Wood, Francis Frascina, Jonathan Harris and Charles Harrison, Modernism in Dispute: Art since the Forties (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993). In the context of architecture, characteristic of the situation was the advocacy of Elizabeth Gordon, editor of House Beautiful, that proclaimed the austere modernism of European immigrant architects ‘un-American’. She received support from Frank Lloyd Wright, but also vigorous protests from the AIA. See: Monica Penick, The Pace Setter Houses: Livable Modernism in Postwar America, doctoral dissertation (University of Texas at Austin, 2007). Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Art under a Dictatorship (New York, Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 236–48. Yugoslavia's own anticommunist diaspora was often instrumental in raising such suspicions; see, for example, Slobodan M. Draskovich, Tito, Moscow's Trojan Horse (Chicago, Henry Regnery Company, 1957). For example, the 1954 Japanese volume World's Contemporary Houses included Yugoslavia as the only socialist country simply because of the ‘difficulties in obtaining the material… [from] the Soviet orbit’; see: Shinji Koike, Ryuichi Hamaguchi and Kimimasa Abe, eds, World's Contemporary Houses (Tokyo, Shokokusha Publishing Co., 1954), p. 3. Aline B. Loucheim, ‘Cultural Diplomacy: An Art We Neglect’, New York Times (3rd January, 1954), SM16. ‘Awards at the Sao Paulo Bienal’, in: Architectural Review, 115 (June, 1954), p. 413. Harrison E. Salisbury, ‘Building Pattern Set by Belgrade’, New York Times (22nd August, 1957), p. 8. On the exhibitions of Croatian (and Yugoslav) artists during the 1950s and their reception abroad, see Ljiljana Kolešnik's excellent book, Između Istoka i Zapada: Hrvatska umjetnost i likovna kritika 50-ih godina (Zagreb, Institut za povijest umjetnosti, 2006), pp. 339–55, esp. 354. ‘Slavs Without Marx’, Newsweek (7th February, 1966), p. 40. Multiple hosts of the Pavilion reported about such reactions: George Sweeney of the Guggenheim wrote them down in the Visitors' book; Cassou expressed them in an interview for the French wireless. See: Izveštaji domaćina paviljona, n.p., Archive of Serbia and Montenegro (Belgrade), Fond 56: Generalni komesarijat jugoslovenske sekcije na Međunarodnoj izložbi u Brislu 1958, Fascikla 6: Izveštaji-informacije. ‘Six Outstanding Pavilions: Jugoslavia’, in: Architectural Review, 124, no. 739 (August, 1958), pp. 116–18. Quoted after George E. Kidder Smith, The New Architecture of Europe (Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, 1961), p. 332. Several of the Pavilion's hosts reported on the generally positive reactions from architects, as well as on the various versions of their surprise; see: ‘Izveštaji domaćina paviljona.’, op. cit. This lack of obvious communist iconography was also the target of some unpleasant comments from Soviet visitors, who then also took the opportunity to criticise the exhibited modernist art; but the real cause for such criticism was political and lay in the still unstable relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR; see: ibid. A recent volume on the architecture of EXPO includes a text on the unbuilt Polish pavilion; see: Rika Devos and Mil de Kooning, eds, L'Architecture moderne à l'EXPO 58: ‘Pour un monde plus humain’ (Brussels, Fonds Mercator and Dexia Banque, 2006). Richter himself acknowledged his disappointment at the absence of the Polish pavilion; see: Vjenceslav Richter, ‘Osvrt na arhitektonske rezultate izložbe u Bruxellesu 1958.’, in Arhitektura (Zagreb) XII, nos 1–6 (1958), pp. 56–62. Illustrative of this dissolution of Europe's ‘aesthetic borders’ was A. Dorgelo's Modern European Architecture, which, alongside West European projects, also presented buildings from Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia; see: A. Dorgelo, Modern European Architecture (Amsterdam, London, New York and Princeton, Elsevier Publishing Company, 1960). I owe this reference to Professor Danilo Udovički-Selb at the University of Texas at Austin, who has remembered the offence for almost forty years; see: David Binder, ‘Those Friendly Beogradjani’, The New York Times (21st November,1965), pp. 92–104. The Prague architect Ludjek Kubeš arrived in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1947 and stayed there after the break with the communist bloc, eventually designing the city's first postwar master plan and a number of modernist buildings; see: Kokan Grčev, ‘Aрхитект Лудјек Кубеш (1913–1996)’, in, Georgi Stradelov, Krum Tomovski, Mihail Tokarev, eds, Архитектурата на почвата на Македонија од средината на XIX век до крајот XX на век (Skopje, Makedonska akademija na naukite i umetnostite, 2006), pp. 107–12. A Czech team also designed the Railway Station in Sarajevo, but in 1948 had to leave the country before construction was complete. Most prominently, Adolf Ciborowski, the chief planner of the reconstruction of Warsaw, participated in the design of the master-plan for Skopje after the disastrous earthquake of 1963. Besides that, Polish architects designed the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje and the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad. Владимир Н. Белоусов, Coврeменная aрхитектура Югославии (Moscow, Stroiizdat, 1973; second edition, Moscow, Stroiizdat, 1985). Белоусов, Coврeменная aрхитектура Югославии, first edition, op. cit., p.112. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 116. See, for example, Zoran Manević, Žarko Domljan, Nace Šumi, Ivan Štraus, Georgi Konstantinovski and Božidar Milić, Arhitektura XX vijeka (Belgrade, Prosveta; Zagreb, Spektar; Mostar, Prva književna komuna, 1986). The best text in this respect is: N. Zlidneva, ‘Природа и миф в мемориалах архитектора Б. Богдановича’, Советское славяноведение (Moscow) 14, vol. 6 (November-December, 1979), pp. 62–74. See: Udo Kultermann, Zeitgenössische Architektur in Osteuropa (Cologne, Du Mont Verlag, 1985), pp. 194–229. Ibid., p. 218. Ibid., p. 222. The case in point is Zlatko Ugljen's White Mosque in Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which received broad international attention after it won the second Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983. While reinterpreting traditional Ottoman architecture, the mosque took obvious lessons from Le Corbusier's later work. During the Austro-Hungarian period, the advocates of a ‘Bosnian style’ were architects from the North-western regions of the Empire, predominantly Austrians and Czechs. After World War I, chief proponents of a Bosnian regionalism were again newcomers from the North-West; native architects were, as a rule, more interested in international functionalism. Particularly contrary to the alleged ‘Oriental’ character of Macedonia is the fact that the most promising Macedonian architects were educated at American universities as part of US aid after the earthquake. If a certain ‘regionalism’ emerged in Macedonia in the 1980s, it did in other parts of Yugoslavia as well and very much because of the postmodernist interest in tradition. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, new edition (London and New York, Routledge, 2002), pp. 46–50.