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Ivan Meštrović: Art and Politics, Idealism and Practicality

The presentation Ivan Meštrović: art and politics, idealism and practicality explores the political and the psychological habitus of the sculptor, builder and politician Ivan Meštrović during the period of the formation of the first Yugoslav state, a process which unfolded alongside Mešrović's artistic aspirations. It can be said that the tendencies Meštrović evinced toward monumental sculpture, toward heroization and the art of so-called tempelkunst were pre-political but that they found their ideal expression in the politics of the time which sought to find a common foundation for the unification of the South Slav peoples. An analysis of Meštrović's political habitus shows that Meštrović was a nationalist-idealist who was always a Slav, a Croat or a Dlamatian before he was a follower of this or that profiled political group. As a political being, particularly during the formation of the first Yugoslavia, he was inclined to a personal politics which presupposed his legitimation as an artist and only afterwards as someone participating in politics. His political self-consciousness derived primarily from his artistic self-consciousness, that is, from the importance of his art on the domestic and international scene which opened many doors for him and ensured that he easily found political interlocutors. This is the reason why Meštrović's political activities were always determined by his personal contacts with the political figures of his time, spanning kings and party leaders, ministers and ambassadors, with whom he conversed not as someone belonging to a party, not even as a member of the Yugoslav Committee, the only political group he was a member of, but as Meštrović the artist. Meštrović was doubtlessly a political romantic who viewed politics as the continuation of idealistic projections, as the expression of race as was then customarily said, as the expression of a people and not of a political-party identity. As the first Yugoslav state developed, as practical matters and not idealistic projections of a common people became dominant, Meštrović more and more separated himself from politics. As the Yugoslav identity conceived as a national romantic melting pot became weaker and weaker in the Yugoslav Kingdom, so did it weaken in Meštrović himself. More and more Meštrović began to emphasize the particularist interest of the Yugoslav constituent parts, more specifically the Croatian one. For Meštrović the Yugoslav name became merekly a framework that had a meaning only if it was confirmed by individual national entities. If Yugoslavia was no longer viable, Meštrović held, the alterantive was separation according to national lines. Meštrović's sculpture, better to say, its most valuable part, confirms that the master was at his best when he focused on the naked human physique, unencumbered by costumes, by fixtures of civilization, political, ideological and historical attributes. This is why Meštović politics as embodied in the scuplures is most powerful when it is most general, that is when it bears witness to the ideal and not to political practical matters and particularist phenomena. This is why his Chicago Indians, however distant from his homeland and political aspirations, are better than the reliefs of king Peter or of viceroy Petar Berislavić.

Ivan Meštrović; art; politic; idealism; pragmatism

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