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ANONYMOUS AUTHORS; NAMELESS HEROES; UNKNOWN HISTORIES

(A local historical overview of the strategies and motifs of the variable)

by Ana Peraica, Croatia

“Then perhaps the subject returns, not as illusion, but as fiction. A certain pleasure is derived from a way of imagining oneself as individual, of inventing a final rarest fiction: the fictive identity.” (Roland Barthes, 1973)1

The unknown, unnamed, anonymous are the pseudo-someone’s; as they can’t be identified, as someone, because they may also be many. The only thing they can’t be is no one. But, they’re closer to being no one than to anyone in particular. Through their intervention in the historical axis they mask what is opposite, or become known, through the process of disidentification. And most of the agents of history are unnamed. They write it, though history doesn’t write them, except in terms of the “mass” or the “crowd”…

The theme of this essay is the birth of the continuity of reading at the expense of the author and the history of the author in general. This piece is trying to to go deeper in terms of ‘the proper name’, ‘the institution of the author’, ‘authority’ than just using them as a cliché of narratology, or repeating the preoccupations of film studies.2

The disscussion on the author in the Western theory is extended, though not so much practically investigated in the art itself (except for several of cases that would be mentioned before the neostic practice of the eighties)3.

But even before this discussion the topic was already applied practically in Eastern Europe. It had a certain success in the time of the partisans – the graffiti authors with the underlining action of hiding their or their comrades identities. In a variety of ways, the practice of the anti-author was introduced -- starting with the copyright problem (samizdats, tamizdats) and the use of

1 Roland Barthes The Pleasure of the Text (1973) trans R Miller (Hill & Wang, New York, 1975, p 27)

2 See for example; Theories of Authorship, ed by John Caughie (Routledge, London /New York, 1984)

3 The autheur, as Barthes noted, is a product of the society that emerged in response to the need for the identification of medieval scriptoriums and English romanticism, together with French rationalism and personal belief in Reformation. It is based on the idea of prestige. The New Criticism led to a new consolidation of the issue of the author. Despite the poetics of Mallarme, which attempted to push back the author in the interest of writing, visual theory was especially reliant on a biographical reading. This was despite the turn announced by Proust – who advocated the intervention of the work into life itself3. Despite the de-sacralization of the author, romantic concepts survived in new versions (the Creator, Demiurges, the author as genius). A new standpoint was taken in the visual arts by the Surrealists, not only through automatic writing, but also through the possibility of several people working at the same time. But this development was not discussed until the advent of French theory (Barthes, Foucault, Derrida Etc…).

1 pseudonyms to avoid censorship. But it wasn’t only unofficial history that used a “soft” definition of the author. Official history also practiced this. It was less about a pure use of the pseudonym and more a recipe for an artistic/political practice.4

There is an intrinsic relation between the name and politics; the former was the necessary background for the arts since 1945, whether or not this was admitted in the artwork itself. Since the recent laws on authorial rights were passed, the copyright has suddenly replaced the copy left principle. According to Croatia’s post-socialist law on authorial rights (Authorial work and the author of the Penal law, 1991), not only is the practice of falsification prohibited, but also that of pseudo- speech, a category under which some well-known artists from the not-so-distant eighties would fall, including the Belgrade Malevich (Djordjevic) and the “Virus” project of Svebor Kranjc (Krantz)5.

At this point the histories of the illegal and the legal merge, providing grounds for an interpretation that would be unfamiliar to Western European chronology, and as is common, producing a feeling of being constant late with regards to its speed.

4 The intellectual censorship always refers to the author, while material censorship to the proper name (see Sue Curry Jansen: Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 1991)

5 “He who under his own name or the name of another publishes, presents, executes, transports or in any other way suggests to the public that the work of another that is according to the law considered as authorial work, or even allows that this be done, will be punished with financial punishment or punishment in jail for up to three years”. (Article 229, Penal Law, Croatia, 1991)

2 1. JOSIP SEISSEL (1904 – 1987) OR JO KLEK (“Happening”, the beach, Brela, Summer 1949)

The digressions of history [including art history] are most commonly written in the footnotes. In contrast to the famous footnotes of Derrida, which lead us nowhere or remain curiosities, sometimes-late annotations of works produce new readings of the work.

Label “Josip Seissel, or Jo Klek, in the company of Bozidar Tushek and some other people, with one stone on the head and the other in the hand” (Vjesnik July 30th 1999) is a pure biographical curiosity, a kind of blind footnote and annotation to the biography. The author of the text, illustrated with the photo, art historian Josip Depolo, claims it was the first "happening" in world history, one taking place even before the appearance of the term itself.6 But following radical Barthesian methods, one can oppose Depolo's interpretation -- the photograph can’t speak for the “swimmers, stone on the head, stone in the hand”, any more than the ordinary game of the nearby Dalmatinska Zagora “stone from the shoulder” or Mediterranean “headball”.

Two historical axes are twining – one terminated, while the other one is invented from foreground to background, and attached to the interpretation. Namely, the artist, a Zenitist (futurist), was the author of the first national abstract painting “Pafama” (1921), a sort of “The Great Nude” of Croatian art, under the pseudonym Jo Klek, but the painting left no trace until the rediscovery of abstraction. Seissel usually takes that paradoxical place in history reserved for dreamers and geniuses; a lonely proto-modernist, making himself alone for a whole chapter, or being attached to the work of even thirty years later – EXAT, the movement that institutionalized abstraction. But even then, he is not a prototype, but an avant-garde, as the movement itself was more influenced by the dynamics of the international art scene7. So, Josip Seissel as a protagonist of history is sliding between different points of historical narration; the story of him if not written biographically, paradoxically ends up in a later time where it hangs as a warning that something had already happened.

But still, the question might be asked: did Shakespeare invent Bacon, or was it vice versa? Or perhaps it was another author who invented both. The fact of the existence of Jo Klek is realized through his relation to Jacques Durand (Pierre Dupont) and Stendhal (Henry Beyle), according to the relation of the author to the genre8. Authorization is done under different names, so we can repeatedly distinguish the ‘proper name’ from the ‘name of the author’, the first being the one that “moves from the interior of a discourse to the real person outside who produced it” while the second “remains on the contours of texts – separating one from the other, defining their form, and characterizing their mode of existence” (Foucault, ibid, p 284)9. There is the chain of ‘the proper name’ equalling ‘the name of the author’ which again is ‘the author of the name of

6 http://www.vjesnik.hr/html/1999/07/30/Clanak.asp?r=kul&c=3 7 This narrative digression includes proto-dadist SHumanović (during the time of his studies at A. Lhote), on whose work Mangelos wrote his thesis, and works on magazines as Zenit, Dada Tank and Dada Jazz D. AleksiCC published in Zagreb. 8 The number of pseudonyms Stendhal used grew to over ninety, which is the most known.

9 V. Michel Foucault What is an author? (Paris, 1967), in: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1977, some very interesting relations are also in “The Order of things” (1966) and Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). The basic theory is in John Searle Speech Acts; An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge University Press, 1969, pp 162-74)

3 the author’ being the same as the proper name but filling the other function (or Josip Seissel and “Josip Seissel” as the author of Jo Klek).

The situation is more obvious on the biographical axis, where through the use of a pseudonym Jo Klek actually doubles the story, making a kind of pseudo-history.10 The question is always: is the use of a pseudonym actually the result of a wish to make another story that is not limited by time - a story that has no logical starting or ending points, a story with some deeper psychological rhizomes? Fabrication of a new persona, a pseudo-persona, may also, a second point, suggest some interesting broader investigations with respect to schizoanalysis, as proposed by Guattari, the pseudonym representing the historical point of a social splitting. In this case it is a gap between the bio-story (biography) and artifactual-story (arti-graphy), the real and the official history.

This paradox may be of great use in realizing the nature of photography, the real “death mask” (Barthes, Sontag) or the death mask of the real. The face in the photograph functions as a signature, an imprint of the real that can’t be Jo Klek for sure, as he had no face, but only the architect Josip Seissel. Even the stone itself has more (common sensical) relation to architecture, in this sense, than his abstract painting.

For analysis of this work the double biography must be taken into the account, otherwise the radical consequences of the possible act might be omitted – the escape from the inside of one’s own self, a kind of Socratic womb giving birth to the irrational, normative Daimonion, the non- institutionalized rule (or the unlawful norm itself). The relations of the architect to Dada- movement, and of the painter to EXAT-a is beyond doubt, but criss-crossing these views is also interesting. In writing the story I remain defeated in story-line; Josip Seissel being born in 1904 and passed away in 1987, authorizing the narrative on Jo Klek, and therefore being the second narrator.

10 Namely Seissel / Klek is followed with the EXAT movement that introduces computer experiments to Yugoslavia. Among other artists at the fifth exhibition of the group Dimitrijevic and Trbuljak were also presented.

4 2. ANDRIJA MAUROVIĆ (1901-1981) OR “THE OLD TOMCAT”

>From this time on it is a challenge to re-define Socialist Realism, which usually in practice is narrowly meant as a bad form of realistic painting, though actually its program itself is drawn on a broader base of social engagement, and has a succeeding history. Among the best examples of a quite realistic social engagement one may mention Andrija Maurović. Twice arrested for partisan activities, “Red Maurović” became a biographical prototype of the post-revolutionary artist, and therefore fit the needs of society, in making a dogma visible. Starting with postcards from the battlefield, done immediately after the war, he proceeded with the other commissions11. This practical approach, and later kitsch paintings employing natural motifs, or cataclysms made no headway into the history of belle arte. What’s more, he was expelled from the professional societies. In that sense, he had almost the same biographical status as those anonymous artists making images of unnamed partisans on the crossroads of many villages and cities12. But Maurović entered history not through the main gate of establishment art, but through the popular genre of the comic book13.

Speaking precisely, there are two unavoidable points of reception for this genre within the territory of ex-Yugoslavia – Maurović’s “The Old Tomcat” and Allan Ford (ending with the Corto Maltese by Hugo Pratt). The continuity of their reception represents changes in the popular representation of heroes that has a particular relation to history, invented and distorted in all of them in such a way that it made a nice curve around official history, which suffered from the same delusions. But just as mythomanic stories have a relationship to mythology, so do histrionics have a relationship with history14.

11 He executed commissions to decorate auditoriums for the celebrations with Social Realist motifs …

12 Generally, the motif of the “unknown” of the post-socialist times served to avoid a division of the society, on those “merit” and “un-merit”. But as unknown in general carries metaphysical connotations a reduction to more material variable (empty space of identity) was needed, so terms as hero were replaced with revolutionary, partisan, worker... and also they were "faced"(in sense of being given a face as the identity) in numerous sculptures spread all over countries, as once the unknown saints (de-faced, in sense of non being given a proper face) that had, to the contrary their own names.

Here also may be mentioned Maurovicc’s comic Stranger (1952) dealt the topic of a variable.

13 Though not recognized by Socialist Realism, the role of popular culture in general was a major point in Lukacs’s writings (see Realism in Balance, in Aesthetics and Politics, Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht, Lukacs, ed. Jameson, Verso, London/New York, 1980)

14 And in relation recent issues of Allan Ford, and stories of a mythoman No1, among characters as Homer, Napoleon, and other figures, the main paraplegic claimed to save from the shame of history even Josip Broz Tito. Decomposing history could also be connected to the problem of the proper name decomposition... A particular relation to a proper name of the historical figure (or proper events) is can be also read in the story Dimitrijevicc gives to the magazine Gloria, speaking on the project “Unknown Citizen”: “Maybe it was precisely Tito who was my first “Unknown citizen” – he says in a joke, but that project, he adds, was on some way undoubtedly his answer on the autocracy and the power of politics. - My father knew Tito from the thirties, when he was studying in Paris with the known cubist painter Andrea Lotta. He lived there and he had some meetings with the engineer Babic, that was Tito’s pseudonym at that time, and who came to my father in parties when the republicans lost in Spain”.

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This is also obvious in the relationship of the author of the work towards his own character, which uncovers a mythomanic delusion. While Allan Ford was drawn under the generic historical identity of the name Magnus (a medieval signature; Magnus pictor fecit – done by a great artist), and therefore explored the long history of the pseudonym, Maurović was a pure inversion of this position. While Roberto Raviola hid behind the signature of a skilful, an a-historical but still an unknown author, Maurović moved towards the particular end of filling out his own character to create an avatar. In this way he become one of the most prominent examples of Proust’s reverse positioning of the biography and work15.

Biographical data recounts how he used to call himself by the name of his most famous work, “The Old Tomcat”, so one of his wishes was to have that name carved into his gravestone, exploring to the end the fictional biography. Furthermore, feeling the necessity to merge, Maurović let his beard and moustache grow to become more similar to his own invention:

“‘The Old Tomcat’ was from the first moment an old man, as I created him that way. Then, slowly, I was ageing too. Aren’t the ways of humans strange; I created ‘The Old Tomcat’ so I in the end became ‘The Old Tomcat.’ That’s what happens when someone dives in the depth of a human soul!”

But the paradox is still more complex. The scenario wasn’t written by Maurović, but the journalist Franjo M. Fuis (under the alias Fra Mu Fu).

(Slikar sa cetiri adrese, Mirjana Brabec, Glorija, br 341, on http://www.gloria.com.hr/dimitrijevic341.html) 15 see note 3

6 3. DIMITRIJE BAŠIČEVIĆ AND MANGELOS: MANIFESTOS (1978, Zagreb)

The appearance of Mangelos in the context of comparative art history may be connected to the “second modern” period introduced in Croatia by the Gorgona group 16.

In this particular case it is a tight relation between, similar to the one formed between Duchamp and Broodthaers. In that sense Mangelos’ antecedent was Jo Klek. The similarities are obvious. The modernistic application of the pseudonym, as instanced in the split between Seissel and his alter ego, Klek, is clear, coupled with a rationalist approach to architecture and the irrationalist modus of “art” production. In Mangelos’ case, the work is coherent and consistent, with the theoretical work of art historian Bašičević logically supplementing the artwork of Mangelos. There is only a formal separation. And it is precisely this formality which provides the grounds for the appearance of the alter-author. The alternative ego exists, but becomes a unique solution that the second modern movement gives to the failures of the problem of totality in the first modern. Namely, because of the formal prohibition to cross the meta-artistic breach (based on an ethical norm being foisted as the law itself) is set from the outside of the art production. This is in contrast to the inner contradictions of the activities of Seissel – Klek. In Mangelos’ case the application of the pseudonym becomes a resolution. While Seissel bridges the mental barrier of modern premises by using two different axes (the rationalist inductive and irrationalist deductive method), Mangelos crosses the formal border of this prohibition by using the illegal ground. It is therefore a histrionic move, a rhetorical entanglement with history.

The serial of Manifestos (1978) written by Mangelos on a school chalk-board, the most interesting of which might be “The Manifesto on α”, also demonstrate the second-modern movement solution17. The texts themselves aren’t programmatic, but poetic. The “The Manifesto on α” enters the domain of the double flow, again bridging two different realities; the cosmic and the particular (or, the general and the specific), in which the dissolution of the algebraic problem on α, (being an ordinary dog, a canus simplex) refers also to the algebraic problem of Duchamp, but introducing a new variable – the proper name (again) and the context of its application. A metonymy which functions as the translation of α into a grand historical being, also functions as the file named Bašičević and his avatar Mangelos.

“The one that legally is forbidden access to the possibility of further evolution” draws us back to a discussion of the relations between the biological (and biography) to the artificial (and arti- graphy) in history.

16 The group consisted of the painters Josip Vaništa, Julije Knifer, Marijan Jevšovar and Đuro Seder, the art historians Radoslav Putar, Matko Meštrović and Dimitrije Bašičević - Mangelos, the sculptor Ivan Kožarić and the architect Miljenko Horvat. “…Gorgona is for absolute transience in art. (…) Gorgona is constantly in doubt. Gorgona values the most that which is dead. Gorgona speaks of nothing. Undefined and undetermined”. (J. Vaništa.) Despite some of the authors in the rough two tact of the interpretation of art history (or radicalization of the difference in rational - irrational, and sharp difference between the modern and postmodern period) tend to emphasize the break with totalitarian ideas of the modern, Gorgona actually continues the questions of the modernistic experiments with anonymity, constructed identity, that indeed (but smoothly) end up in the anti modernistic ideas with the deconstruction. In that relation may also be noted there is a continuity of writing manifestos (EXAT 51, Mangelos, and even DimitrijevicC s Post-historic tracatus. 17 Nena DimitrijevicC, Manifesti na školskoj ploci Dimitrija Bašicevica - Mangelosa, Umetnost No. 60, Beograd, July-August 1978., and catalogue of the retrospective of Mangelos (Museum of Contemporary Arts, Zagreb, 1990, ed. Branka StipancCicCC)

7

In that sense it appears in the same way Derrida writes about the naming of God in “Sauf le nom”; “As reference to just what name supposes to name beyond itself, the nameable beyond the name, the unnameable nameable” (Derrida, 1993)18. As it is what is one of “there where it is impossible to go. Over there, toward the name, toward the beyond of the name” (ibid). It’s in precisely this way that the variable (of both α and Mangelos) functions.

18 Jacques Derrida Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum), 1993, in: Jacques Derrida On the Name, ed. By Thomas Dutoit, translation by David Wood, J. Leavey, McLead (Stanford University Press, 1995), p 58, continuing “as it was necessary to save the name and to save everything except the name, save the name (sauf le nom), as it was necessary to loose the name in order to save what bears the name, or that toward which one goes through the name. But to loose the name is not to attack it, to destroy or to wound it.” (ibid)

8 4. RED PERISTIL AND “RED PERISTIL” (Urban intervention, Split, January 11th, 1968)

Four youngsters in front of the city café with their heads down. The citizens are prepared for the attack, a lynching; in front the group washes the street. It was during the night in 1968, when a group of authors (P. Dulčić, S. Sumić, R. Dapić and I D. Dokić) turned the main square of the Roman palace red. Because of the assumed political context, the authors were hunted for days, and attacked in most of the newspapers. Only one art historian stood in their defense (Cvito Fiskovic). It was only years later, after the show “Mogučnosti ´71”, that even the most reactionary theorists had realized that urban interventions could be accepted as an art genre. Only then did they realize their mistake.

Since then, succeeding history has been totally inverted -- with the event happening before the moment of recognition, instead of disidentification in the face of the law or of a public lynching we witness a hyper-identification with the protagonists. Progressively, with each new retelling, more people are attached to the assumed list of authors (who were only half-identified in the press). The story grew in two directions; along the paths of immediate local history and of official art history; in the end a total of thirty protagonists were mentioned. But the lists didn’t match. One list was characterized by elements of the urban Mediterranean macho milieu, and in that context drew reference to the lives of famous prostitutes, pimps and night creatures, while the other was inhabited by skinny careerists, mystics and spiritualists. Still, in the determinants of the style (proper name – author – the author of the author which is a proper name) some of the major mythologists could be traced – Vladimir Dodig Trokut, whose anti-museum is a logical continuation of the practice of the Red Peristil, and Želimir Kipke, who attached mystic elements to the story. By the time the work was recognized most of the authors, whose real names were only known to a circle of friends, had died or vanished and a revision of data wasn’t possible19.

The group was named after the artwork, and there were even factions invented within the group. All attempts were made to provide authorization20. This tale is a history of attempts to synchronize two sub-histories; the sub-histories of the proper name and the name of the author. Here the proper name, in contrast to earlier examples, is far more important. Proper names were added, while the name of the author was invented. While both were specified, and named, the author of both remained under-cover, but his style was obvious, as both the names and the authors were derived from the first authorial discourse, which was now internalized. On the one side a profession which lives on proper names, on the other the nameless mass…

Until the twentieth century, the history of unauthorized works (stories, folk tales, folk songs…) had been one in which stories following an aural tradition came into the city (this transition is instanced by Baccacio, who transferred popular tales into a narrative structure – ten friends telling ten stories). The author problem grew out of a need to professionalize the activity of authorship and in this new context the author was no longer unknown, but was still unidentifiedi.. Anyone could appear under the name of Homer, Hermes or Trismegite, and furthermore, many of them could be uncovered.

19 Except the texts that encouraged the formation of the myth, some of data sources on the authors were published on the thirtieth anniversary of the occasion. The exhibition held between 18th December 1998 and 11th January 1999 entitled Pave DulcCCicC – Red Peristil 1968 – 1998 (Man/gesture/time) published the first catalogue.

20 Recent interview of Vladimir Dodig – Trokut (Vijesnik, 18th August, 1999)

9 The resurrection of the author from the work carries into art history a need to address the problem of the mythological practices that remained after arts’ passage into the era of the post- mythological. “Red Peristil” has no more or less of a relation to the author than Holy Scripture has to the saints to whom it is attributed. The actual authors – the acknowledged authors and the attributed authors – form three distinct spheres. Based predominantly on the reading the author from the scripture, which produced nonsense out of factual possibilities, just as biographical figures later continued on within the discourse of modernism. Unfortunately or fortunately, it became a social practice – the reconstruction of the author, as in a crime story, produced the possibility of its creation inside an urban mass society hungry for a new dogmatic discourse21.

To analyze this problem, notions of the “proper name” and the “author” aren’t sufficient. Through Foucault’s theory of the interdependence of discourse and the “initiator of the discourse”, who in fact is the author, we might conclude that a group was self-invented, or were not the original authors, based on the criteria of the production of the author from the authorial discourse, based on the consequence of the coherency (homogeneity, filiations, reciprocal explanation, authenticity, common utilitarity). The discourse may invent the author, only becoming quasi- discursive, as the consequence of the discourse not the first persona. Then the style also becomes discursive, as the discourse is emancipated and self-generative, or dynamic, in this way supporting the authorial function that is filled by a plurality of egos. The produced model is similar to the one Foucault derives from grammatology and narratology: “In a mathematical treatise, the ego indicates the circumstances of composition in the preface is not identical, either in terms of his position or his function, to the ‘I’ who concludes a demonstration within the body of the text. The former implies a unique individual who, at a given time and place, succeeded in completing a project, whereas the latter indicates an instance and plan of demonstration that anyone could perform provided the same set of axioms, preliminary operations, and an identical set of symbols were used. It is also possible to locate the third ego: one who speaks of the goals of his investigations, the obstacles encountered, its results, and the problems yet to be solved, and this “I” would function in a field of existing or future mathematical discourses. (…) “The ‘author-function’ in such discourses operates so as to effect the simultaneous dispersion of the three egos”. (ibid)

The questions Foucault asks are contrary to the ones that had as their goal a classical identification, they are framed completely in the example of practice; the modules of which govern the existence of this discourse, who is controlling it, which places are given to the possible subjects, or who can fulfil the various purposes of subjects. In short, as he noted: “what matter who’s speaking?” (“What does it matter who’s speaking”?)

21 Sv Jerome gives several criteria that define the author 1) standard level of quality, 2) conceptual or theoretical coherence, 3) uniformity of style, 4) dating or historical dependence, where the author is defined as a historical figure. Foucault connects all of them to the modernistic critique.

10 5. Braco Dimitrijević and Goran Trbuljak: THE PENSIONER TIHOMIR SIMČIĆ (Urban intervention, Zagreb, 1968 – 1971)

Between 1968 and 1971 Braco Dimitrijevic and Goran Trbuljak worked intensively on a joint project of urban interventions, setting up various situations in which passengers were actively included. “Behind a closed door, Trbuljak places some soft modelling clay. The person who arrived a few minutes later opened the door and left an imprint in the clay, thus spontaneously creating a plastic quality. Trbuljak asked the man to sign the work he had accidentally created”22.

His name was Tihomir Simčić, and it was after him that they named the group. The grounds for this approach were a certain critique of the institutional theory of art: “A person could become a creator if he possessed all the links in the creative chain that he lacks. An artist enables people to perceive fragments of their surroundings that are otherwise invisible to him… when everyday fragments of life become the objects of interest for the ordinary person, he will be in the position of a creator… the next step towards the realization of our assumptions would be the creative people who may or not have an affinity for art greater than that of mere observers, their transformation into persons who, without being aware of it, cooperate with the arranger (ex- artist), or create themselves” (quoted in Stipančić, ibid, p 9). It was in fact Beuys who tried for all of his life to take the authorship of the claim that ‘everyone is an artist’, claiming “The most important element, for someone looking at my objects, is my fundamental thesis: every human is an artist. This is my one contribution to ‘Art History”” (Beuys, 1980)23. But while criticizing Duchamp at the same time for not having arrived at the same point, as a consequence of the institutionalization of ‘everything as art’, a critique of consistency could always be pointed at Beuys himself, as how can one be the author of everyone as an author? The only possibility of not introducing a metaphysical stance into the de-authorization of the one that claims, or own inclusion is the set of everyone (Beuys refused to be naming himself in the set of everyone).

But this was consequently done by the actions of Dimitrijević and especially Trbuljak. In the realm where the division between the author and the public is actively broken, their work may find its literary counterpart in Barthes’ theory on the abolishment the author, and its critique of the authority of the author in the reception of the work. It is about the pataphysical death of the author, a total disruption between the author and the authority24. As in “The Birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of Author” (Barthes, ibid, 213)25 But contrary to the general point of Barthes’ theory, in which “as soon as the fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of

22 Nena BaljkovicC: Prolaznici stvaraju, Omladinski tjednik, Zagreb, 28. 10. 1970, quoted in: Branka StipancCicCC Goran Trbuljak, Biblioteka Opus, 8, MSU, Zagreb, 1996. More resources: Grupa penzioner Tihomir SimcCicCC, Newspaper of the Student Center Gallery, No 12, Zagreb, 1969 / 70, Nena BaljkovicC Braco Dimitrijevic, Goran Trbuljak, Grupa Sestorice Autora, catalogue of the exhibition “Nova umjetnicka praksa 1966 – 78”, Gallery of Contemporary Arts, Zagreb, 1978

23 Joseph Beuys Interview with Irmeline Lebeer, Cachiers du Musee National d’art Moderne 4 (1980) 179, translated in Theirry de Duve (ibid. p 284).

24 Roland Barthes Death of the Author (Paris, 1968) in; Image-Music-Text, London, 1977)

25 Anyhow, what art historians are most scared of is – being uncovered. Forgeries uncover not only the ignorance, but also the insensibility, as many theorists wanted to emphasize in their l´art pour l´art theories, of a curator and selector. Forgery is in that sense – the Other of history, as history itself sees through the history of authenticity.

11 the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice looses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins”, Trbuljak and Dimitrijević’s projects focus on the moment of the death of the author, which is the point of their practice.

In other words, awareness of the act as a unique occasion introduces the non-historical discontinuity of the post-modern, exposing the utopianism of the biographical. It breaks with the totality the Modern. Or: the author doesn’t exist prior to the work, but emerges with it in the performative act. The All that is left is the foreignness of the unknown – which is always particular. The unknown or the social being allows for the coexistence of the other, but always – someone, unnamed, someone – else, and here even that ‘else’ is broken up into a variety of viewpoints. It is one and the same individual that creates the mass, making the anonymous action possible.

It is hard to find a reference to the proper name of the pensioner, though it might be introduced through a footnoted history of the companions, lovers, and the romantic stories of suffering artists. Simčić is a proto non-author, in the sense that he stopped being an artist. He is by definition an ex-artist. And this problem is emphasized by the “Story about two Artists” (Dimitrijević)26.. Furthermore, in being a persona inhabited by several protagonists (two at least), the Pensioner becomes a prototype of the Neoistic figure.27 And there he is precisely a hybrid, “a bastard” that exists between logos and mythos, factually exiting while not being the one that is being identified with his own name, which is expropriated28. Though, is not lying, not stating a false claim the authorship, as once the work has been authorized by a Pensioner T.S (while

26 “Once upon a time, far from cities and towns, there lived two painters. One day the king, hunting nearby, lost his dog. He found him in the garden of one of the two painters. He saw the works of that painter and took him to the castle. The name of that painter was Leonardo Da Vinci. The name of the other disappeared forever from human memory” (Braco DimitrijevicC, Story about two artists, 1969)

27 Starting with the name of the project, it is notable that many societies during the socialist times carried the proper names of heroes (known partisans). But also a certain group anonymity was practiced under the personal names, especially by the working groups of artists, or working associations. Organization of artists in social groups was widespread (see Z. KoscCCevicC Umjetnicke grupe u poslijeratnoj umjetnosti u Hrvatskoj (Zivot umjetnosti, 1988, pp 43-44). Starting with the predominantly political project of southern Slav utopia “LADA” (1904, Sofia), continuing on through the Group of Four (1919), Zenit (1921-23), Group of Three (1925-26), Group of Four (1928), Zemlja (1929), Group of Six Painters (1930), over EXAT 51 (1951), Gorgona (1959-1966), Biafra (1970-78), Group of Six Authors (1975- 1978), Group Mart (1975-76), Group Tok (1972-73), Group Sami (1954-55), the Group 5, etc., history is also characterised by the group dynamics, uncovering the micro-political problem of the leader and the follower, and therefore hiding many of members behind. In the context of relation of artist and society of socialist time, groups were also strategic political formations, at least that is how some Russian constructivists survived despite the fact some of those groups had a clear political program (i.e. UNOVIS, AKhRR, INKhUK, GINKhUK) understood as “ambiguous pluralization”, see Susan Buck Morss; Dreamworld and Catastrophe; The Passing of the Mass Utopia in East and West (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 2000) At the same time some of these societies carry the names of heroes. Working associations of artists on the level of functional organization had parallels with the art workshops for workers, for that stratum of society that had, in a certain sense, to identify with artist (or the other way around; the artists with them). Some of those workshops and exhibition spaces survived as latter-day gallery spaces (for example Gallery Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb) 28 Reference to Derrida’ notion of oneiric and bastard reasoning between logos and mythos (Khora, 1993)

12 done by the “Pensioner T.S”), but adding the connotative plan (of the author) to the denotative plan (of the proper name)29.

29 The fictional author (as Crveni Peristil) is completely outside the “fiction of the author” (Penzioner Tihomir Simcic). Geoffrey Nowell-Smith calls the author of the fiction one “who is by no means dispersed but who in ‘his’ notional coherence provides the means for us to grasp the text in the moment of its production before us. See: Geoffrey Norman – Smith “Six authors in pursuit of the researchers” (press and date?)

13 6. SVEBOR KRANTZ “ZAGREB VIRUS” (22nd Salon of Youth, Zagreb, 1990)

In the same manner in which R. Mutt managed to enter that salon in 1917, Svebor Krantz (“Zagreb Virus”) managed to enter the 22nd Salon of Youth in Zagreb. This exhibition was ‘unofficially’ conceived as one where “everything goes,” but at the same time imagined the ideal of no jury – no prices – no commercial tricks, wasn’t followed – as was also the case in the show that refused that Fountain30.

If Duchamp’s intervention amounted to the institution of institutional practice, the work of the young artist Svebor Krantz was an attempt to demystify its own failure.

Namely, the artist used different works to apply to the 22nd Salon of Youth, under many names (Zvonko Cuker, Goranka Matić, Mario Matić, Sven Mraz, Aldo Prpić, Ante Soldo, Blanka Sekulić, Duško Trifunović…). In contrast to R. Mutt, they were accepted. In the accompanying brochure the artist wrote the basic formula for this activity: “All basic conditions which establish a work of art have to be simulated to insure access to the program through its system of defence (the jury). It is to simulate authorship (individuality, personal data), form (e.g. a bit of paint on canvas) and the so-called spirit of the work (which boils down to a psychological identification with various trends or other popular intellectual clichés)... At the moment when the virus gained enough “quality” to pass through its access, it was chosen to participate in the exhibition of equally valid works of art. At this point, identification of the virus and the other works degrades the last ones a lot. It is actually the criteria of choice and quality which are declining and therefore the works of art have to lose the honor of being “chosen” (Krantz, Amsterdam, 1990)31 It may seem that the author himself mixed up the notion of authorship belonging to the author, with the notion of the biographical proper name, a mix-up which continues within the context of a critique of institutional art practices.

His reference to new media with the metaphor of a computer virus capable of hiding behind files, and even arriving from known senders, is interesting. Much theory in the eighties and nineties has been concerned with a form of remote communication that produces the effect of a multiple person (in situ) but which also allows for a kind of a manipulation through avatars (Turkle, Stone…), but this development was routinely presented in a negative light. The positive view was only provided by followers of Neoism, a movement that emerged during the eighties and that reached its peak in the nineties. The Neoists introduced strategies of multiple names or multiple personas behind a single name, enlarging upon the subjects of authorship and the author32. One of the most famous examples of using such a practice, especially related to

30 Maybe it is irrelevant to repeat the details of the case of the R. Mutt Fountain which ceased to exist (rejected on a technicality by Rockwell Kent, broken by William Gluckens or simply removed by Walter Arensberg), and was neither seen nor listed in the catalogue. All that remained, as in the case of the Red Peristil, were replicas by Sidney Janis (1950), Ulf Linde (1963), Arturo Scwartu [???] (1964), all done according to the Alfred Stieglitz photograph (1917). The case itself, prior to the identification of Duchamp as R.Mutt was treated as one among others where “an unknown among all the unknowns … grabbed their chance to call themselves artists” (Thierry de Duve Kant After Duchamp, October Books, MIT Press, 1996, p 98).

31 Svebor Krantz: Zagreb Virus (A Svebor Krantz Production, Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, pages not enumerated)

32 Neoism developed the practice of multiple names. They are 'tags' that the avant-garde of the seventies and eighties proposed for serial use. They have taken a number of forms, but are more commonly

14 forgery, was Luther Blissett’s plagiaristic work – the fake Hakim Bey (the ‘real’ Hakim Bey is also a figure writing under a pseudonym). The work of Svebor Krantz also falls under this anti-ethical aesthetic.

There is still one question of consistency to be solved – it’s not so much a matter of how one can be a “singular plural” but rather a question of how much there is which is inseparable from the singular – the plurality of quality.

'invented personal names' with which, their proponents claim, anyone can take on as a 'context' or 'identity'. The idea is usually to create a collective body of artistic works using the 'invented identity'. In the mid-seventies the British mail artists Stefan Kukowski and Adam Czarnowski propagated the first of these ‘collective identities’, ‘Klaos Oldanburg’. A few years later the American mail artist, David Zack, proposed 'Monty Cantsin' as the name of the 'first open pop-star', a name anybody could use. Factional differences between those using the 'Monty Cantsin' tag resulted in the 'rival' names of 'No Cantsin' and 'Karen Eliot', both of which emerged in the mid-eighties.

15 7. FERAL TRIBUNE AND LEGAL ISSUES

The logic of one history may approve the other. It’s unbelievable to those dealing with the different branches of history: playing either a fool or an artist or both may cover the political speech under the legal status of the madness of an “art piece,” and therefore fall under a completely different legal status. Many modernist artists have tested this marginal position of the art-world against the political stage, playing with “innocence” within the frames of the white rooms of madhouses and the white cube of the gallery or museum.

The magazine Feral Tribune, which during the nineties was one of the rare free media voices in Croatia (remember this was during a time when Croatian artists made shows such as “Art against War” and “My Bleeding Country”, and organized pathetic societies to fight with paintbrushes, uncritically accepting the political conditions produced by such gestures).

The conditions under which Feral Tribune was produced are related to rules on censorship which are usually applicable to texts. This was during a period of strict press controls, in which usually the only free space or noncensured space is the non-textual expression33. “Grand history” is a verbal chain, and the hyper-textualization of laws was introduced by bureaucracy -- a domain that hardly included visual documents (except through Bertillion’s invention of ID photography).

This was already practiced in photomontage, a genre that emerged in the Modern period. Photomontage developed as a political vehicle, not only for Heartfield but also German modernists such as Höch and others, and Russian constructivists (Rodchenko, El Lissitzky…), who used this method for propaganda purposes. More recently American artist Martha Rosler made anti-Vietnam War montages, and later Peter Kennard applied this method against the Cold War of the 80’s. But photomontage as a genre founded on the popular motif of the caricature also appeared during times of oppression (for example fanzines in Russia and Argentina).

But what might be different in Feral Tribune from the ancestors I mentioned above is the type of humor employed – no longer a soft humor, but a sarcastic black humor similar to the one that the group ®T Markt used in its rogue sites against George Bush, or their Barbie Doll Liberation34. The cover page of the Feral Tribune was one of the most reprinted in the history of journalism. Its unique intervention in the political field makes it not so much artwork as the art sortie of the decade35.

33 See Leo Strauss: Persecution and the Art of Writing (1972) 34 In 1993, ®TMark channel $8000 from a military veterans' group to the Barbie Liberation Organization, which used the investment to switch the voiceboxes of three hundred BarbieTM and G.I. JoeTM dolls. 35 See Ana Peraica: From Photomontage to Digital Sabotage (Issues in the Contemporary Arts and Culture No 12,, ed. Sue Golding, Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, pp 91 – 98)

16 8. SANJA IVEKOVIĆ - GEN XX (Media interventions, the magazines Arkzin, Zaposlena, Frakcija, Kruh i ruZ/e and Kontura, 1997-1998)

Sanja Iveković’s GEN XX, People's Heroines, is a series of fashion photographs of women titled with the names of national heroes; partisans, with short statements on the way they were persecuted, connects directly not only to the problems of woman (as anonymous agents of civilization before the birth of emancipatory movements), but also to heroes. Through a composite image fusion the original advertisement is transformed into its opposite: it is a death certificate.

In the context of feminist groups, some would recognize that the foundations of this work is the Antifascist Women’s Front (AFŽ), the first anti-erotic woman’s group in Yugoslavia (working on the equality of the sexes, and consequently suceeding to de-sexualise the image of the woman, which was founded during WW2 and continued its political work throughout the post-war period.

The main question is whether art and the image of the face and their roles in society identifies a person. A series of heroes whose names were ubiquitous during socialist times (Nada Dimić, Dragica Končar…), as most of people were not aware of the role of the person identified with name, or historical roles is contrasted to a series of fashion photographs36. In this way two histories of women are balanced with the problematic created by a passive object and an active intervening agent, both serving history, and in so doing becoming forgettable, describing two points of historical anonymity37. The author publishes work in magazines which are not signed, with these becoming the third instance of a presentation of anonymity. The author is both the object of an erotic act of intervening and of a modernistic understanding of the analysis of the work and of the author as the intervening agent in a cultural body -- merging the two contradictory positions, of both being the subject and object38. The relation of the name to the unnamed – the name of the unknown – and the name of the one that is referring to both unnamed and unknown becomes complex. Similar in complexity is the argument Foucault develops with the object of Magritte’s pipe, but here it’s not playing with names but rather with notions of the unknown39. Authorship and identification (two “who's” aren’t connected, though in the ordinary grammar they both appear in the nominative, as subjects. They split the function of the proper name as the subject and as the object.

36 And an anecdote related to this: the name Nada DimicC, as with some other partisan heroes, found its honourable place on institutions, factories, and various nursery houses and streets after 1945. So Nada Dimic, a young woman, become a symbol of an underwear factory, which with the arrival of foreign products, was revealed to make underwear that was very good in quality but extremely ugly. Somehow it becomes a sign of a partisan kind of underwear. The chaos of these names was revealed by younger generations that didn’t know the history of either of those names, so they started to relate the name and a purpose of the institution the same name was given. So, for example, Juraj BonacCCi, whose name was carried by an institution for the mentally disabled, was believed to also have been mentally disabled.

37 Eros and hero have a rhizome in the same word. 38 Some of the writers compare IvekovicC to Judith, for the ability of creating a double codification of the visual text, consciously relying on an anamorphic effect.. 39 Even the authorization is done in a subtle way, through one of the photos, representing Nera SHafariCc, the artist’s own mother, who was persecuted for her anti-fascist activities and arrested at the age of 23 in Crikvenica in 1942 to be taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp, from which she was freed in 1945 (Nada BerosH, Taming of the Dark, A-R-C, issue 2, July, 2000)

17

The general xenophobia of socialism, where NN (None Named) becomes the main conspirator against which the annual militant practice of war is exercised (NNNI, nista nas ne smije iznenaditi – nothing should surprise us), was also a subject of the other works of Sanja Iveković. referring to the latter paranoia of post-socialist times, of any reference to the socialist past. The garbage dumps where socialist sculptures end up, as Susan Buck-Morss observes, become in the end the dream worlds of the unnamed. The case Sanja Iveković mentioned in one conversation is related to a totally hilarious attempt by the inhabitants of the street of the “Unknown Heroine” in Zagreb to change its name, during a time when the names of many public places were revised, because they assumed that the unknown heroine might be a partisan heroine. This was also the topic of a work by Slaven Tolj, “Pissed off by…” (Gallery PM, 1999), which was an intervention in a building which had changed its name, along with the square on which the building is situated. The work dealt with political nominalism, with the absurdity of authority in a way similar to the practice of Humpty Dumpty of explanation of meaning and name40.

40 The story says that those who walk according to the map of Zagreb refer to this square and building according to its name from when the map was produced (the “Square of The Victims of Fascism” for the older maps, the “Square of Glorious Croatia” for the newer maps), while life-long Zagreb residents call it “Mosque”, despite the fact the Mosque doesn’t exist anymore, and in place of it the Academy of Sciences was built according to the plans of Ivan MesHtrovicC. Today that building is actually in the hands of the National Association of Artists.

18 9. ANONYMOUS AUTHOR AND THE MANAGER (Urban intervention, Split, January, 11th, 1998, Split and media installation 33rd Zagreb Salon of Arts, Zagreb, 1998)

History can move in a curvilinear direction. Thirty years later someone painted Peristil again, but this time – black. A pitiable note was left41.

Among the numerous careerists that wanted officially to annotate the myth of Red Peristil, The mayor’s office of the city of Split received two, this time official, applications to cover the Peristil again (one with animal blood, the other with red paint again) as homage to the group. Neither of these requests was approved, but few years before a green carpet covering was legally allowed. Finally a round black version appeared, but – illegally. The author wasn’t caught, escaped, remains unknown. And again, of course, a discussion developed, but this time informed art historians and critics reacted positively. City leaders, on the other hand, predictably reacted negatively, but not as negatively as thirty years before. It all happened as a reworking of history42.

Again the arguments lasted for days, and many of the artists were called in for police interviews. In the end documentation of the whole polemical exercise entered the 33rd Zagreb Salon, gaining an award. The work received third prize and was submitted anonymously – thus fulfilling the goal Goran Trbuljak had when he asked the galleries to participate in the Anonymous Artist project43. Though the anonymous author was identified, at least by the jury, and the “superstition of names” of the institutional art world was re-activated as soon as the originators identified themselves44

This appearance was done not as an author, but as a proper name, in the center of the definition of the proper name “a finger pointed to someone” (Foucault, 1969, p 282), as it was threatened the first one was to be prosecuted. Namely, the one who presented himself as the representative of the author, which in any case is the proper name that legally stands behind, but this time clearly, as a neutral person out of the reach of any law relating to the material damage to the monument was actually the author covered, at the same time de-authorising the work, and therefore not being legally responsible.

Though, after the case of Alexander Brener, the author of the author (or the proper name) showed aesthetic cowardice, and a lack of historical bravery45. But, if something could be blamed, according to both copyright and authorship laws, it would be an intervention in the

41 The message found, on the doors of a chapel on Peristil, claimed: “In honor of the Crveni Peristil group. Thirty years later, Peristil is a magical mirror reflecting the condition of the social conscience” 42 So, for example, Marija Gattin, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Arts, claimed the artist should be protected (from the legal prosecution politicians were threatening with. Though, it is notable, the work would be far more better if he would take the consequences of the action. . 43 Jury members Antun MaracCicCC, Ratko PetricC and Marija Gattin gave the 3rd prize to the work of the unnamed author.

44 And in that sense even his name should be put in a footnote– Igor GrubicC

45 Here I especially mean the way Brener hold during the drama accompanying his intervention on Kazimir Malevich's painting "White cross on white background" in Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, 1997. Namely, after the sabotage of writing a sign of $ on the painting valued over $6 million) he was arrested and sentenced on and got Brener a 10-month jail term.

19 meaning of the original work, the Red Peristil46. The paradox of this situation, not only because of the painting but also the method, is an inversion of Dambek’s movie “Master’s Game” (1997) which elaborates the ethical problem of one who paints the work of other over, becoming angry once it is done to him. The action falls in own system explanation as at once it uncovers the old Kantian ethical norm: of not doing what you would not like others to do to you47. Namely, the vanished author of Black Peristil (or his manager) didn’t accept the legal status of the work, as his "ancestors" of the original had done. They "paid" own fee of 50 DM (that was the equivalent of 2 days in prison).

It emerged at the end of 19th that there is an obvious paradox in making any law on authorship, and it centers on the fact that it refers not to the proper name, but to the author, who may not actually be guilty, because he/she is not a real person. It is rather the person behind the author that is guilty. That paradox is actually a consequence of the longer history of the split between the religious and social status of the artist, which intensified in the twentieth century: “In our culture (…) discourse was not originally a thing, a product, or a possession, but an action situated in a bipolar field of sacred and profane, lawful and unlawful, religious and blasphemous” (Foucault, ibid, p 285).

The schizoid split of the author; this time not a split of the self, produced a new paradigm of the author – the representative of the author (the artist–manager as a post-industrial, global multi- mediated phenomenon in the institutional history of art), to the contrary of the anonymous - author relation.

46 The previously named law assumes that punishment for damaging protected cultural property can include imprisonment for from six months to three years (point 3 article 229, Croatian Penal Law), with the applicability of point 4 of the same article: “He who destroys, devastates, demolishes or in any other way without the permission of the author changes the work of the other from the first point of this article, would be punished with financial punishment or punishment in prison of up to three years”, according to which the author may also be charged.

47 Painter Arnolf Rainer (professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna since 1981) developed a technique of over-painting his own paintings and those done by others. But when an unknown person over-painted his own paintings in black in 1994, he didn’t recognize himself in this act anymore, and activated the police and all available medias in quest of the “Vienna phantom.” The question was who over-painted the over-painter.

20 10. A TREE WITHOUT AN AUTHOR (Urban intervention, work in progress, Entrance to the Split Civil Hospital, 1990’s)

An intervention on a tree might introduce another question – of the curator as an author, applying a theory of the “proper name of art”, and value of the alibi of the quasi-distribution.

The ground of the explanation is drawn between two definitions of the artwork: institutional modernistic theory claiming “everything is art” (if in a known context), and the altruistic post- modern definition claiming “everyone is an artist”. The first of these may be called the ‘dilemma of the artwork’, of everyone in particular while the second, of everyone in general ‘the dilemma of the author” (Foucault).

Between those two the questions appears: if by everything we mean "something" or "anything", and if by ‘everyone’ do we mean ‘everyone in particular’ (some unnamed ones) or ‘everyone in general’ (anyone)48.

In a given case of an tree intervened ‘the dilemma of the artwork’ can be resolved in a detailed theoretical pseudo analysis (justifying the art as art) that would conclude that chewing gum couldn’t be anything other than a politically incorrect anti-globalization (or anti-Americanistic if signs are taken literally: tree, chewing gum) alternative expression, and therefore art, of anonymous mass. The “dilemma of the author” may be rescued in the continuity of the "author", whose work (always the same way intervened tree) is appearing with completely impossible chronology on different locations, being translocated by the anonymous mass that has no needs to identify itself, on the other location. Appearing as art-ish and having a pseudo-biographical continuity, this tree may be seen as an art.

But, the first dilemma, a certain spell of the ‘white cube’ leads to precisely inverted situation from what the art practice tried to establish – the criteria of the quality, anartism was not having problems with. At the same time the second dilemma produces an authorised quality question; as De Duve once asked, “why would a democratic grouping of free individuals produce art of ipso facto inferior quality to that which has been screened by the trained eye of a dealer less interested in commerce than in purist aesthetics`?” (De Duve, 1996, p 123)49.

Furthermore, outside of the institutional and optimistic ontology present within two border definitions of the modern (proto- and post-), another question arises – the definition of the act alone that is artistic. The problem, in the end, is which would be the author of the author. In recent history this place was also opened to another branch of authors – the curators. Being outside of the institutional and optimistic ontology both present in border definitions of Modern (proto and post) the definition of an act as artistic, which does not ask if something was at all thought as an artistic act (both definitions do), the problem becomes – inaugurations of the art from the outside.

This is finally the resolution of the Mangelos' problem… a pure authority of the author, at certain point passed on curators. The condition of art become more than cognitive author related issue, it become literally political, authorial (If I say so...). Cognitive explanation of the art, the aware creation (or at least the awareness of the creation) vanishes. It arrives to the point of the times were no art was existing, though there were artefacts produced, as it was a case in the early

48 The criticism of both theories relies precisely on locating a consequence of uncritical "everything goes 49 Thierry De Duve: Kant After Duchamp (ibid)

21 drawings and paintings labelled “art” latter. This doesn’t mean it had fallen into a post-historic hole, though, as history still moves without the authors.

The question would be if the power of authority (in this deliberate choice) was practiced without a demanded critical aspect. For this case, I may defend, enough for the conclusion (at least for this historical point) with merging of the known modernistic theory, that announced process of the de-iconization of the author in its post-period, where the necessary drawing back to the magic loop with the history of art into anonymous was started, last chapter of which was written with the neoistic practice.

The point from which neither the author can be read through the work, or the work through the author, is the point where the author becomes a symbol. That is the point where one is able to talk, not programmatically, about changes in the authors’ positions through time.

(Amsterdam, 02/3/1)

i Which was supported by the development of ethnology and some other social disciplines.

22