Viktor Majdandžić - The Supreme Logic of Chaos by Chianciano Art Museum

Viktor Majdandžić The Supreme Logic of Chaos

Front Cover: Detail of “June 2014” by Viktor Majdandžić - Acrylic on canvas

Viktor Majdandžić

ICAC

International Confederation of Art Critics

Viktor Majdandžić

The Supreme Logic of Chaos

CONTENT THE ARTIST

EXHIBITIONS

MAGICAL SYMMETRIES

Karen Lappon, International Confederation of Art Critics

THE UNEXPECTED LOGIC Elena Foschi, Art Historian at Chianciano Art Museum

THE LAWS OF NATURE RELEASE THE FLOW OF VARIATION Elena Foschi, Art Historian at Chianciano Art Museum

THE FORMATIVE POWER OF ORDER Ingrid Gardill Ph.D., Art Historian and Art Critic

EXPRESSIONIST INSIGHTS Christopher Rosewood, International Confederation of Art Critics

AN UNAVOIDABLE TRANSITION Timothy Warrington, International Confederation of Art Critics

ARTWORK ANALYSIS Karen Lappon, International Confederation of Art Critics

MAJDANDŽIĆ’S PHILOSOPHY

LIST OF WORKS

Edited by the International Confederation of Art Critics 7

“Majdandžić achieved a real aesthetic of order, combining the rigorous essence of mathematical laws and the spontaneous beauty of the artistic creation in perfect harmony. In these sensational works, the viewer’s eye finds a perfect correspondence between a natural order and inner entropy.” Christopher Rosewood, International Confederation of Art Critics

2006 - Acrylic on board

Viktor Majdandžic at his own retrospective exhibition at the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery in London, 27 January – 14 February 2014.

THE ARTIST

Viktor Majdandžić was born in 1931 in Ivanjska, Bosnia. After studying Foreign trade and Economics, he devoted himself to the Fine Arts and studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, where he was awarded first prize for his painting. He contributed to turning the town where he lives, Banjaluka, into a recognized centre of modern arts, with a widely known Biennale and a museum of modern art. In 1969, Viktor migrated to the Netherlands, where he started working as an art therapist. This way, he could paint as he wanted: unconstrained and without having any obligations towards the mainstream. During a large part of his artistic career he shared his studio with psychiatric patients, inspiring them to find their way in life as autonomous and free individuals. After retiring, Viktor continued to paint, inspired by his journeys across the globe. Viktor Majdandžić exhibits his paintings since 1958 and his works have been displayed on more than 200 exhibitions in 12 countries, including recent shows in New York, Florence, Las Vegas, Brussels, Montreal, Geneva, Vienna, London, Venice, Berlin, Mannheim, Rome, Helsinki, Brussels, and Amsterdam. His art can be viewed in many art books and collections in Europe and America.

EXHIBITIONS 2015 Marziart Galerie, Hamburg, DE, 13 November – 2 December 2015 Chianciano Biennale, Chianciano, IT, September 2015 “Donato Bramante” Award for the Arts, Rome, IT, August 2015 Burn-IN Gallery, Vienna, AT, July 2015 Jubileum Exhibition, Gallerie Böhner, Mannheim, DE, May 2015 Marziafrozen Gallery, Berlin, DE, May 2015 London Art Biennale, London, UK, January 2015 2014 European Contemporary Art, Gallery Gall, Frederiksvaerk, DK, September 2014 Spirit in Art, Moya Museum of Young Art, Vienna, AT, August 2014 Retrospective exhibition, Royal Opera Arcade Gallery, London, UK, January 2014 2013 Gallery Böhner, Mannheim, GE, September 2012 – February 2013 “Il Collezionista” Gallery, Rome, IT; 8 – 21 March 2013 Museum of Art and Science, Milano, IT; 15 – 29 May 2013 Revelations in Reality, New York City, USA, 18 July – 4 August 2013 AVA Gallery, Helsinki, Finland, 16 September – 6 October 2013 Pinna Gallery, Berlin, Germany, November 2013 COLLECTIONS Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art, Las Vegas, USA Museum of Modern Art, Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina Museum of Golden Ratio, Virtual Collection Private collections in Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Bosnia. RECENT AWARDS 2015: Leonardo Award for Painting - Third prize, Biennale Chianciano, IT 2015: Sandro Botticelli prize, Florence, IT 2015: Third prize, London Art Biennale, GB 2014: Personal book Award, ICA publishing, New York, USA 2014: Public Prize, Euro Art Denmark, D

April 2015

MAGICAL SYMMETRIES Karen Lappon International Confederation of Art Critics

Viktor Majdandžić is an astounding abstract expressionist painter whose work goes beyond the sphere of visual art itself. In fact, his unique and bold geometric structures are embedded in biological and geological analogues. He translates the mathematical code of nature to paint panels that are a dreamlike juxtaposition of geometrical precision and beguiling sensual curves. The strikingly vibrant colours intensify the astonishing visceral impact of the work’s biological underpinnings. The interplay of various circles, curves and lines is enhanced by multicoloured shadows which contribute to the effective play of the lines that appear to extend beyond the canvases. In his emphasis on colour and form, Viktor increases perspective and reminds us of avant-garde artist Lyubov Popova and her Cubo-futurism. The emotional effects of colour and the balance and natural harmony of the lines, together with the overlapping shapes, create a rhythmic pattern and a sense of speed and space typical of German Expressionist masters like Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger. The structural flow, the natural precision and the organic symmetry of Viktor’s compositions are set in motion by a potent and striking energy that originates from the artist’s creativity and study of the mysteries of nature and the universe. Viktor observes, deciphers and elaborates the world that surrounds us in order to propose it to us in his sublime oeuvre. An artist whose great talent is overwhelming and intriguing beyond discussion. Observing his works is like a journey to the origins of life itself, like participating in the magic of creation, like the ultimate answer to the existential questions we ask ourselves. Astonishingly enlightening.

“My art refuses to shun intrinsic beauty. Beauty is, I believe, the soul of art. In the maintenance of life it is an alternative for violence and dominance. Enjoying beauty in art resembles a juvenile being in love: intimately but from a distance and nonpossessive. The structures on a painting may, in the perceiver, evoke a feeling of competence in space and time in this volatile world, while at the same time permitting a certain degree of coincidence. Finally: Art is present when the artist is not. ” “Viktor Majdandžić: paintings, a statement” - ICA publishing NY, 2014

May 2011

September 2003

June 2015

THE UNEXPECTED LOGIC Elena Foschi Art Historian

“Out of chaos, comes order” this famous quote seems made especially for these astonishing pieces of art. A supernatural order arises from Viktor’s works even though he never avoids irregularity. From the very beginning we perceive a strong structural essence and a deliberate investigation into the laws of universal geometry. Iconic and meaningful shapes overlap each other, albeit keeping their forceful singularity. The artist applies an unexpected mathematical logic and rigorous sequences in his paintings, creating architectural structures similar to the systems found in biology. The Golden Section and the Fibonacci string drive his compositions in accordance with a flow of paint that possesses balance, harmony and integrity. Majdandžić adds different layers of pigment to create new structures, in a growing process of careful and attentive contrasts that terminate in balanced constraints, after which the painting “creates itself”. Hence, his works come to life in a succession of geometric references. Asymmetries and irregularities emerge powerfully at the same time. Majdandžić introduces the unexpected in the perfect logic of the artwork: this tiny variable is enough to increase the allure of chaos. A more fluid and discontinuous paint is applied over the geometrical structures, giving a new shining glaze to the previous layers.

April 2007

Quarrel, September 1989

“As an artist I feel respect for the unique identity and the bodily integrity of a work of art. I am not trying to express myself through my art works; I am just creating metaphors to understand the world and the mind”. Viktor Majdandžić

Above: August 2012 Opposite: February 2013

July 2015

May 2006

THE LAWS OF NATURE RELEASE THE FLOW OF VARIATION Elena Foschi Art Historian

A progressive interplay between continuity and discontinuity emanates from Majdandžić’s works of art and the perception is stimulated by the areas of paint that has overrun the perfect disposition of the composition. Ultimately, Viktor Majdandžić’s work is a harmonious ensemble of order and chaos. It is no coincidence that the Bosnian artist is also a mathematician, a philosopher and a scientist that communicates with analytical shapes, sequences and variations, on the basis of an inherent logic, made of squares, diagonals and triangles. His rigorous lines and structures follow fixed rules, in a complexity that our eyes can immediately perceive. The viewer is catapulted into looped spirals and concentric spheres, but on the other hand he perceives a magnificent beauty that derives from the variations and irregularities that “close the circle”. The paint shines through the layers creating an unforeseen imaginative angle on the geometrical structures. Viktor Majdandžić underlines that he does not feel his paintings as an impression of himself: he exemplifies the very existence of the whole and the essence of the process of growth. His art is a representation of the Genesis of Nature, through geological processes and primitive structures. The obscure identity of the world is crystallised on the panel, submitted to the laws of pictorial composition and reinforced by the unpredictable and beautiful stains of paint.

THE LAWS OF NATURE RELEASE THE FLOW OF VARIATION Viktor Majdandžić describes his paintings as “an instance of geology on a single square meter, where natural processes such as crystallization, erosion, and sedimentation interact”. Crystallization can be recognized in the structural forms and rules it; erosion and sedimentation are embodied in the flows and speckles of paint. To Majdandžić painting is the perfect balance between mathematical structure and beauty. A wonderful paean to the laws of nature, enriched by calibrated drawing and brilliant hues: by adding new layers, the colour sings and assembles itself in new structures and contrasts. If we focus on our initial impact with his works, our attention detects an order, a recognizable shape and harmonic scenery. But suddenly we feel attracted to surprising elements. We are drawn to the irregularities. Forms are determined but at the same time retain a sense of potential change. The viewers allow their own visual experiences to influence their perspective of the outcome of the form and its future possibilities. Viktor’s artworks evoke the transitory quality of living organisms by combining traces of past, present and future in the patterns that make up his planes and forms. Majdandžić’s works are like a symphony made of an orchestra with strict rules but also unexpected notes that give it a unique rhythm and tempo.

Opposite: August 1988 31

November 1978

THE LAWS OF NATURE RELEASE THE FLOW OF VARIATION The unique conceptual art reminds us of one of the most-often quoted expressions of Piet Mondrian’s theory. The brilliant Dutch painter explained his philosophy in a letter he wrote to the artist Henk Bremmer in 1914: “I construct lines and colour combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things… I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.” Piet Mondrian, 1914 The theory that surrounds Mondrian’s neoplasticism and his vigorous grid of vertical and horizontal black lines perfectly fit with Majdandžić’s vision of artistic beauty. Majdandžić goes deeper than the ethereal and spiritual white background of the Dutch painter. Viktor is not inspired by a superior and sublimated geometry in itself, but by the very substance of the world. Viktor feels the necessity for a more physical contact with life, the palpable colours of reality, the hearth, the human passions: he looks for an ontology of what we perceive, a self-identity that convinces the senses.

Elena Foschi Art Historian

Above: February 2001 Opposite: March 2002

May 2000

THE FORMATIVE POWER OF ORDER Of decisive significance for the artistic production of the Bosnian painter Viktor Majdandžić is the awareness that the formative power of order is behind everything that is beautiful. This principle is inherent to his expressive paintings, even if it is not immediately apparent to the viewer. This is because he leaves sufficient space for chance during the painting process, endowing his works with energy and vigor. Thus while regularities and complex systems form the backdrop of his compositions and the selection of their formats, Majdandžić largely entrusts the execution process to intuition. This results in formations deriving from fractal geometry or compositions ensuing from the Fibonacci sequence. These successions of numbers often determine the sequence of the colours within an ordered structure. They can be soft and harmonious or full of contrasts and dynamic. The atmosphere of a painting is continually the consequence of a lively and flowing merger of order and chance. Majdandžić is particularly concerned that the viewers of his works are able to surmise or even perceive the beauty concealed behind the regularities and models. He has devoted his life’s work to this notion of finding expression for that beauty that can equally be found in nature. This is especially evident in the incredible diversity and abundant richness of the striking works he has produced over the course of his long artistic career.

Dr. Ingrid Gardill Ph.D. Art Historian

Opposite: Icon for Darwins Cathedral II, 2009 39

Above: November 2013 Opposite: August 2015

September 1989

EXPRESSIONIST INSIGHTS Christopher Rosewood International Confederation of Art Critics

Viktor Majdandžić grew up between Bosnia and Serbia, a land that has been witness to painful conflicts and massacres, indelibly marking the life of the artist and engaging his inner feelings and his artistic pathway. In the aftermath of the Second World War, while Viktor was studying Fine Arts in Belgrade, the Balkan states of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia became part of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. After the death of long-time Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, growing nationalism among the different Yugoslav republics threatened to split their union apart. Since 1989 Majdandžić’s sensitive soul started to perceive a malicious aura in the fate of his homeland and soon, his art radically changed. Viktor perceived a growing tension hovering over his fatherland and he poured his most intimate anxieties into his paintings, anticipating and foreseeing the dramatic events that were to come. This had a crucial impact on Viktor’s artistic pathway. Viktor Majdandžić felt an irrepressible need to express his abhorrence of the brutalities of war, leaving a powerful imprint of his distress in his work, in his attempt to represent the anguish he felt between 1989 and 1991. The awareness of a coming war inspired Majdandžić’s genius, encouraging the creation of incredibly expressionist works of art. The Bosnian artist found himself in a destabilizing condition and his paintings became testimonials of a strong “urge to create”. Such creative impulse can be interpreted as the enunciation of self-defence, an instinct for survival in critical times.

Fear, May 1990

EXPRESSIONIST INSIGHTS Majdandžić felt the innate impulse to express his repulse for the barbarities of war and the spectator can easily perceive a sense of death and exhaustion in his work. Dark and large brush strokes, staring and creepy eyes, incomplete edges and deformed profiles concur to outline an attempt to paint the suffering of mankind. Viktor puts aside his distinctive passion for a perfect geometry and a pure balance of natural rules, to reproduce the most intimate and stifling feelings for a humanity torn apart by grief. It is not the time for a extra-mundane order and human reason has been replaced by an insane devastation. The duty of the artist is to try, with all his might, to delineate something indescribable in words. The horrible atrocities of war are expressed by this Bosnian artist, in a fine analysis that goes from the loss of freedom to the laceration of human dignity. The subject of his work is the agony and anxiety expressed through emotionally charged portraits and profiles of faces mangled in an expressionist distortion reminiscent of Egon Schiele; in fact, the representation of his own deep response to such a tragic condition leads Viktor to a powerful, unexpected and exasperated interpretation of reality. A conflict is always a pivotal moment in world history and consequently in the history of art. No one better than Barnett Newman was able to condense into one sentence the result of warfare on artists: “After the monstrosity of war, what do we do? What is there to paint? We have to start all over again”. And that is exactly what Viktor Majdandžić has done.

Christopher Rosewood International Confederation of Art Critics

February 1995

AN UNAVOIDABLE TRANSITION Timothy Warrington International Confederation of Art Critics

When an artist like Viktor Majdandžić interrupts his consolidated abstract expressionist style to paint figurative avant garde paintings of such intensity, there is something very deep and disrupting taking place in the very recess of his soul. Of course what would take place - after less than two years from having sensed and foreseen it - was of such portent and horror that Viktor’s heart and soul just could not ignore it: the Bosnian war. His homeland torn to pieces by hate and violence in such a way that the whole world was mute with shock. This resulted in a series of magnificent paintings of an incredibly astonishing, instinctual and raw energy. Compositions made of images of unidentified figures emerging from turbulent feelings of disquieting turmoil and merging with the overpowering and suffocating backgrounds. Underlying emotions of fear and panic, confusion and frenzy, anxiety and incapability to give a sense to the atrocity of this fratricidal war. Viktor uses lines to denote chaos and contrast between motionless figures and violent swirls in a continuous movement of dark dynamism reminiscent of Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla. Suffering figures appear throughout his creations in a static freeze reminding us of Jean Dubuffet. The paint is applied with loose brushwork and characteristic force in thick, sweeping strokes, creating a harsh and brutal image typical of the Cobra movement of Appel, Corneille, Dotremont, Jorn and Noiret.

AN UNAVOIDABLE TRANSITION Majdandžić’s use of colour highlights and reinforces the sense of drama and desperation imbued in these extremely captivating, embracing and overwhelming compositions. These canvases reproduce strong, explosive and expressive patterns that are visions of the artist’s mind’s eye, without compassion or subtlety as if imprisoned in a dramatic construction of nightmarish intensity. They vibrate with all the forcefulness of colour in which the edges of shapes and figures are blurred with emotion. Viktor’s message is clear: the only hope for mankind to survive and resurrect from such an empowering and devastating experience is through the return to the basic and regenerating forces of nature expressed by means of its strict mathematical and geometrical structure. A return to the origins of creation via a universal, transversal lexicon and pathway of hope. If not forgetting atrocities of the past such as these makes us conscious of the responsibility we have to create a better future, then Viktor’s work is to be annoverated amongst the milestones on which each and every one of us must learn to build that future upon.

Timothy Warrington International Confederation of Art Critics

Opposite: Monument for Yugoslavia, September 1989 51

Dark Fear, 1990

Doctor and His Patient, March 1989

Self-portrait in Wartime (Detail), May 1990 Opposite: Trinity, July 1989

Becoming earth, January 1989

“I believe nature has appointed two sentinels of life: the guardian angel of pleasure and the devil of pain. Art from the twentieth century has been enthralled by the devil of pain for too long, whilst the aesthetic sold itself away”. Viktor Majdandžić

February 1989

September 2000

ARTWORK ANALYSIS Karen Lappon International Confederation of Art Critics

Viktor Majdandžić is the man that takes the mathematical codes of nature (completely incomprehensible to most) and translates them into a language every being can clearly understand: the language of visual art. His vision of the world is scientific, his explanation of the world is pure art. In between there is a deep and complex process of analysis and synthesis, evaluation and application in order to deliver this new, mind opening and absolutely fascinating point of view on the magnificence of nature to us observant bystanders. Let’s take painting September 2000, for example. One could observe that it is mixed media on panel, that it is painted in a purely expressionistic style, that the colours are mostly analogous, warm hues interrupted by few complementary pigments and patches of black and white, that the play of light and shadow creates depth and perspective. But is this painting just to be looked at from a purely artistic point of view? No. In this painting there is a whole universe of infinitely complex aspects that cannot go unnoticed. One can see the Golden Ratio, the Fibonacci Sequence, trigonometric functions, geometric figures that work together to explain the laws of nature. One can see Stravinsky’s graphic representation of music, Bach’s prelude for piano in C major, shapes translated into harmonic visual structures. The universe decoded, concentrated and transposed into a 102 x 80 cm panel, through an amazing array of colours and lines, of chiaroscuro and perspective, in a never ending dynamic movement. A journey into the origins of life itself through a unique and rare pathway that we all must endeavour to explore without second thoughts.

Above: Virtual Geology, 2004 Opposite: Homage to Pavarotti, November 2012

December 1998 and related preparatory studies.

Square Root of Golden Ratio: 17,1(f):21,8(e):27,8(d):3 5,2(c):44,8(b);57(a) a+b=length of the painting b+c=width of the painting f touches a 66

MAJDANDŽIĆ’S PHILOSOPHY “As a finite entity, a work of art reflects the pertinacity of life embodied in a finite organism that is again embedded in nature, specifically in geology. Trying to ponder the ontology of life I recognized that patterns are the basic primitives of its structure [...] The structures and process models have to submit to the laws of pictorial composition, creating the identity of a particular painting. Therefore I do not experience a painting as an expression of myself. We live in a time where everyone is an artist and everything can be a work of art. Yet I don’t share that confidence. I start a new painting not knowing what it will be like, nor if it will succeed in becoming an artwork. The geometrical structures in it are like dikes that prevent the stream of novelties from dissolving into entropy. On a single squared meter I replay a kind of geology, where natural processes such as crystallization, erosion and sedimentation interact. I am trying to create the illusion that the presented forms were born out of nature, although it remains clear that they are man-made models. My paintings display simple structures from which our visual system constructs an image. This process of constructing is a mode of “intelligent design” by which we perceive, imagine and understand the world. Structuring space and time is essential, since our bodies interact with it constantly. Rather than expressing myself, I feel like an ascetic who is mumbling prayers of useless knowledge of the what and how of the world, bound to an identity that I consider a point instantiating eternity. After all, the soul of a painting, I believe, is beauty, which is also a direct expression of the conditions of liveliness, both of living organisms and of their environments.”

“Viktor Majdandžić: paintings, a statement” ICA publishing NY, 2014

Preparatory studies

A piece of art can trigger many emotions and impressions, many of them just as the artist intended. However, the same painting, unintentionally, reveals much about the workings of the brain: how the brain recovers the light and space and surfaces that we see. Painters often stray from photo-realistic styles, taking liberties with the rules of physics to achieve a more effective painting. Critically, some of these transgressions of physics such as impossible shadows, shapes, or reflections go unnoticed by viewers - these undetected errors are the ones that tell as which rules our physics actually count for visual perception. As artists find the rules they can break without penalty, they act as researchers neuroscientist and we have only to look at their paintings to uncover and appreciate their discoveries. Which means that 40,000 years of art also counts as 40,000 years of documented, neuroscientific research, a record unmatched in any other discipline. We will survey art from cave paintings to the modern era, and show how to do “science by looking”, and unlocking the discoveries in art every time you give a painting a second, knowing look. Patrick Cavanagh, “The artist as a Neuroscientist”, 2005 Harvard University & Université Paris Descartes

1969

“These patterns crystallize and dissolve, accumulate and interchange, replicate and recombine, stabilise and diversify, endure and dissolve, in touch with the warm breath of entropy. I began and kept on representing those patterns in my art with structures derived from three manners of sequencing squares. These structures, with their intrinsic logic and stable growth, resemble crystals in geology.” Viktor Majdandžić

1979

LIST OF WORKS January 2005 - Acrylic on board

May 1989 - Acrylic on board

2006 - Acrylic on board

September 1989 - Acrylic on board

April 2015 - Acrylic on board

May 2011 - Acrylic on board

September 2003 - Acrylic on board June 2015 - Acrylic on board

Quarrel, September 1989 - Acrylic on board

April 2007 - Acrylic on board

February 2013 - Acrylic on board

August 2012 - Acrylic on board

July 2015 - Acrylic on board

26 - 27

May 2006 - Acrylic on board

August 1988 - Acrylic on board

November 1978 - Acrylic on board

February 2001 - Acrylic on board

March 2002 - Acrylic on board

May 2000 - Acrylic on board

18 - 19

36 - 37

Icon for Darwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral II, 2009 - Acrylic on board

27 November 2013 - Acrylic on board

LIST OF WORKS August 2015 - Acrylic on board

September 1989 - Acrylic on board

Fear, May 1990 - Acrylic on board

July 1990 - Acrylic on board

46 - 47

February 1995 - Acrylic on board

Monument for Yugoslavia, September 1989 - Acrylic on board

Dark fear, 1990 - Acrylic on board

Doctor and his patient, March 1989 - Acrylic on board

Self-portrait in Wartime, May 1990 - Acrylic on board

Trinity, July 1989 - Acrylic on board

Becoming earth, January 1989 - Acrylic on board February 1989 - Acrylic on board Shared Sorrow, January 1990 - Acrylic on board

56 - 57 59 60 - 61

September 2000 - Acrylic on board

Virtual Geology, 2004 - Acrylic on board

Homage to Pavarotti, November 2012 - Acrylic on board

December 1998 - Acrylic on board

1969 - Acrylic on board

1979; 1979 - Acrylic on board

December 1991 - Acrylic on board

72 - 73

Edited and published by International Confederation of Art Critics London, 2016 Copyright © 2016 International Confederation of Art Critics Layout by Elena Foschi www.international-confederation-art-critics.org

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International Confederation of Art Critics 78