The reason for writing this text was extremely unexpected: Vojislav Jovanović, director of the Valjevo Modern Gallery, managed to convey to the gallery Triptych in honor of James George Fraser Ljuba Popović. Wanting to commemorate the installation of that triptych, among other things, with a suitable publication, he suggested that I write a text about that painting for the occasion. That proposal, on the one hand, "activated" my old intention to write about Ljuba's painting, but, on the other hand, that intention could not be limited to just one painting, regardless of its value, and especially regardless of its dimensions. . I thought that everything that Ljuba painted before and after it should be stacked to the left and right of this triptych: everything, from student works (Yellow person, Evaporation, Cleopatra with an apple, Nude with flowers, Green painting of the attic, Tower guard, Miss's nude), then through the rich Belgrade, and even richer Paris period, until White Moon Landscape i Dance of the Dead, painted in 2015, and encompass it all in one glance, as a unique whole. And then look for the place of that triptych in that whole.
Then something happened that unexpectedly gave that concept, a unique whole, the greatest weight: Ljuba passed away, and that concept, which was initially supposed to serve as temporary and relative, dramatically imposed itself as definitive and irrevocable.
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Judging by the titles of his paintings, Ljuba is regularly obsessed with large and spectacular scenes and themes: Creation of the world, The secret of creation, Cosmic man, Paradise Lost, Sodom and Gomorrah, Stiks, Hell, Facing hell, The road to hell, The mouth of hell, Children of hell, Fiancee from Hell, apokalipsa, Labyrinth, Labyrinth of the Apocalypse, Flood, Crucifixion, Dance of the dead, Obstacle to eternity... (Those large scenes and themes, according to his feeling, also require large formats: his ideas and moves require formats of two hundred by three hundred, two by three meters, up to the record dimensions of the mentioned triptych: 260 by 810!)
Not only with big and spectacular motifs and themes: Ljuba attracts our attention by bringing devils, vampires and witches before us. He arranges for us Vampire séance, hold on to us Sodomy lesson, reveals to us Genital blossomingWith what intention?
Perhaps I would find an answer to that question more easily if I went back to the names of his paintings. With the names of her paintings, Ljuba directs us to their content. However, this does not help us much in trying to understand his paintings. His treatments of biblical themes are so free that, even if we follow their name, any attempt to identify what we see in the picture will end in failure. Which, after all, doesn't have to be seen as a failure, especially if you take into account what Ljuba himself said on one occasion: "The subject of the painting is of little importance from a purely artistic point of view."
Picture Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, takes nothing from the biblical story it interprets. And I, standing in front of that picture, stop looking for the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah in it, and try to discover something else: the relationship between the upper and lower zones, light and dark, those women and those monsters.
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I tried to approach Ljuba's paintings from one point which, after many years of checking, seems acceptable to me, and which Milan Komnenić pointed out in his time, when he concluded that Ljuba "seems to paint one unique picture all his life". This claim is not difficult to verify and prove: the constant repertoire of Ljuba's motives points us to it. His paintings were initially reduced, both in terms of color and composition. However, already in his Belgrade phase, and especially after going to Paris, his painting expands, grows and flourishes, it is filled with architecture and vegetation, female nudes, apparitions and ghosts, verticals and horizontals, perspectives, depths and heights. The majority of his paintings are regularly dominated by the female nude, the woman who once was Lily, Sleepwalker, Venera, Tamer, Lolita, Siren, Storm goddess, Goddess of love, Beauty of the day, Woman of the night, Queen fire, A woman cvet, A woman snake.
It sometimes multiplies, and turns into Three graces or u Fiancee from hell. The dark lower zones of his paintings are filled, and that woman is possessed and threatened by "evil forces", vampires, witches, gnomes, monsters, robots, ghosts. From these dark lower zones rise a multitude of steps, which, through dense vegetation (Andre Pierre de Mandiarg says: "expansion of vegetation"), through "constructed landscapes" (Gustave René Fox), and through rich and highly stylized architecture, which is also could not be disputed by "expansion", leads to the upper zone, to height and light.
Looking at the series of paintings in which the same motifs are constantly repeated, and following more or less visible changes in their relationships, I think that Ljuba's painting could be defined by those famous lines from Paul Verlaine's poem, about a woman who "is not always quite the same, and not quite another".
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Instead of looking for his understanding of "hell", "paradise", "apocalypse", etc. in Ljuba's paintings, I started looking at them more freely and casually. And so I entered into a relationship with them in which I did not get what was suggested and dictated to me, but what the painting "as such" offered me. A relationship in which - to give one of the most bizarre examples, while looking at one of these pictures, you discover that someone in the picture is looking at you.
So you from the darkness of the lower left corner of the picture wounds two bristling eyes are watching. The eyes above the gaping eyes are also directed at you The mouth of hell, and eyes on Organ for the Black Mountain, and eyes from White Moon Landscape. And not just the eyes: from the darkness of the picture Billhook, two tits are looking at you with protruding nipples.
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It is not the moment that on this occasion, when we are in a hurry to face the triptych painted in honor of the author Golden branches, I describe what I experienced in the encounters with Ljuba's paintings, and what I read, and what I wrote down, in relation to that dark lower and light upper zone, or in relation to those dense verticals and horizontals. Horizontals that, most often represented as stairs, stacking on top of each other, themselves take on the role of verticals, and take us up, to castles and towers, to the open seas, to the storm, to the sky and light. That's why I hasten to turn to the triptych, which is the reason for this text, as soon as possible.
Ljuba himself, both with the impressive dimensions of this painting and with the dedication to Frazer, indicated its exceptional place in his painting. Our interest in it, however, could not be satisfied: for so large a picture every door was narrow, and every gallery cramped, so that the curious spectator had to content himself with seeing reproductions of it. Fortunately, the enterprising people from the Modern Gallery in Valje have, by demolishing, walling up and expanding, made it possible for this painting to get a roof over its head, so that everyone can face it directly, and look at it in its natural size.
Preparing to meet this triptych, I reminded myself, as much as possible, of everything that Ljuba Popović painted, so that I would be as prepared as possible before that painting, which, from today, like a whole new horizon, fills the Valjevo Modern Gallery .
Approaching that triptych, I wonder if I will succeed in discovering its message and its secret, or if I will end up among those who admired Ljuba's paintings and raised them to the heavens, and who, as Ljuba says, "didn't understand anything" , and who, as Milenko Radović writes, "were left empty-handed" after everything.
August 2016.
(from the text Access to Ljuba's Triptych In honor of James George Fraser)
