Mangelos

And manifesto of the day


Mangelos, a great but for some reason not really well-known artist and art historian inspired me a lot when I started turning to a more conceptual direction with my art.
His work is both, conceptual and very sensual at the same time playing with material and thoughts (represented by texts in different languages).

Born as Dimitrije Basicevic, 1921 in Sid, Serbia (died in Zagreb, 1987), he made art under the pseudonym Mangelos. The name is taken from a village close to his hometown Sid.
He divided his life in different "Mangelos", each Mangelos lasting 7 years (the period for all body cells to reniew). As he predicted, his life took 9 1/2 Mangelos.

His work contains different technics and media, such as drawings, collages, watercolors, paintings, altered books and especially his "globes", ordinary globes that he used for his drawings and collages. They are often inscribed with his manifestos and "no-manifestos" concerning philosophy and art.

A manifesto was for him a kind of a vehicle transporting a thought concept without any metaphorical meaning.
The postwar thinking was to him represented by a functional, direct thinking, the manifesto per se.
A manifesto to him is this functional thinking, including systems like alphabets, mathematical proofs, scientific theories and perceptual schemas.

He was against all kind of metaphorical thinking and emphasises at the same time the rational side of the art. He tried to bring the information to its most laconic form, to a clear and prezise thought (that he called "Super-Wittgenstein-Thought").

His work can be seen in the context of the absurd feeling in the existentialist Nihilism. It's marked by a freedom of expression and a transzendence of media as found in the fluxus movement, as well.
He turned against all what seemed to be exhausted und senile and created in his art his own point of view, called No-Art.

As mentioned before he was also art historien, critic, curator and part of the "Gorgona"-artgroup, organising exhibitions, creating concepts, projects and new forms of artistic communication and publishing the Anti-Magazine "Gogona".