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Intimacy of Planetary Event


Cause and reason…Was the assassination in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, a “typical” example in historiography where these two notions have different meanings? We have learnt at school that Sarajevo assassination was “just” a reason for the beginning of World War I, and that there were a number od causes: geopolitical circumstances, antagonism and a need for the new distribution of colonized territories on the part of powerful countries, in general “late imperialism” and incapability of civil political options to carry out peace policy, and who knows what else… However, the event itself, as a unique point of intersection of local and planetary causes, was a moment of meeting of what we call singular, marginal and uncontrolled and what is universally relevant. The assassination was above all an act of participation: the participation of a poorly and desparetely enough infatuated Bosnian Serb in the creation of some planetary fate.


Dialectics of cause and reason is interesting even in the field of art theory. The reason for the creation of an art work is in the domain of personal initiation, decision, in the creation of events, in the possible surprise of oneself, even in some random burst. The cause is, on the other hand, in the domain of “other” that is others. The cause is in the domain of interpretation, the reason in the domain of intention: but intention not comprehended as some rational intention but as a “disabusing circumstances”. The reason is the question of “interpellation”, a moment of recognition and reaction. The cause is in the field of culture, the reason in the field of art.

Series of paintings of Radenko Milak “inspired” (a worn-out word suits fine here) by Sarajevo assassination, deals with the relationship of cause and reason: the event itself and contemporary painting recollection on that event as well. Paintings have been created on the basis of film and photographic documentary material. Their look is dictated by “aesthetics” of that material so the paintings are achromatic and compositionally related to the pattern, but they are “painter’s” paintings, the paintings that reflect an epoch in art, the time of first significant and accepted modern art language in the territory of the future Yugoslavia. Milak’s paintings evoke in a special manner those first “free strokes”, first excitement of having seen the move of a brush on canvas, that it was something that shown artist’s particularity, by bringing in a quick stroke so as to “catch” a certain moment and all those individual observations which differentiate a modern painting from a photographic presentation. Such a painting language would become in the South-Slovene territory in the first half of XX century a sign of one intimistic experience, one limited and subjective comprehension of modernity that is not related to the universal project but to the narrow spheres of privacy. In that way Milak’s paintings are not only the evocation of the event itself but the evocation of breakthrough of a new comprehension of painting related to the time of event.

In that extent in which Princip’s act was an act of transformation of local to planetary, the painting style that Milak evokes was an act of transformation of planetary (modern art wasn’t planetary phenomenon still but it became later) to local. Asked for his “reason” for the creation of these paintings, Milak says: “I’ve always felt personally some sentiment for event from behind the time, and so current nowdays”. And actually in that paradox we can rummage into associative-political-cultural layers and speak about current issues of the behind time event which is and enough current, and not enough current for someone to paint it. Milak is a Bosnian Serb. He is also a painter. That’s why there is a interpellation. The cause. There are relevance of events and pontetial of his intimization through the question of identity as well. But there is nothing in the domain of cause that can particularly attract us to this painting. But that in the domain of reason can do that indeed. No matter if it is about reason in the field of unique ambivalency that art could communicate or it is about political burst by which one intervenes in too stifled field of existed interpretations of this event that have been based on usual divisions – the assessination is a shot on Europe, a heroic act of spite of a small nation, assassination is an act of modern terrorism, and at the same time belonging to modern world, assassination is an attack on modernity from the position of primitive Bosnian nowhere land, assessination is an authentic anarcho-nationalistic act, assassination is an event that had been prepared in Serbia, etc., etc. Aren’t all these topics characteristic for conflicts over contemporary historic events on the same land?

Reason and cause… Dr Martin Pappenhiem, a psychiatrist from Teresienstadt where Princip was imprisoned and had died before the War that his act was a reason for was ended, testified about the mental alienation of the assasin, who was torn by the feeling of guilt for the reprisal over Serbs: “The news about golgotha through which his people passed completely destroyed him. He was consoled by the fact that the War would have broken out even if there hadn’t been the assassination”.

The central question that Milak’s paintings evoke and specify is still the question of manner in which this event can be presented as the event of modernity, and paintings themseves dispute it, that late, just partly started then neglected modernity. Does it illustrate better this kind of articulation of modernity than that of stale cyanide which was given to Serbian assasins by major Tankosić so as not to get alive in the hands of Russion imperial police, and which in the stomach of Princip and Čabrinović induced only pain? However, the imoprtant thing about Milak’s paintings is that they are the paintings from the beginning of modern class society: for example we can see on them 6-7 different caps, hats or fezs which denote class picture of Bosnian society: rulers in uniforms and their instruments of power, traders of fezs and new civil class and police officers in civil clothes wearing hats, and opposed class to them wearing caps, etc. All of them are on current topics stage of behind time event. But as well in the situation of intimacy, fragility, instability.

And therefore on one seemingly small and quickly painted “impressionistic” painting we can see Ferdinand and Sofia coming down the stairs infront of which the car is waiting for them. They are descending cautiously, with their heads bowed. Taking care not to stumble.





Branislav Dimitrijević

sarajevo 1914

2006
200 x 145

sarajevo 1914

2005
80 x 120

sarajevo 1914

2005
oil on canvas
120 x 80

sarajevo assassination

2007
oil on canvas
60x80 cm

sarajevo assassination

2007
oil on canvas
60x80 cm

Cries and Whispers

2009
oil on canvas
100x120

Cries and Whispers

2009
oil on canvas
20x30

Cries and Whispers

2009
oil on canvas
30x50