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Unexpectedly, out of a more than defined, and in a certain way, frighteningly precise, world of allegories, which is impressive in stature, as well as provocative, owing to its parabolic consistence, the painter Misa Jelic, has suddenly decided to make a particular shift. This shift or departure from the usual, technically speaking, is completely legitimate, since it demonstrates the simple decision that an artist can shift his point of observation, to approach the object of his art, to approach and come nearer to the motif which he is otherwise preoccupied with. But this action of approaching could have been pointed in this or that direction. The Master artist had at his disposal a wide array of iconic incentives to approach; his canvases offer a gallery of scenes which by means of their compressed symbolism call upon or provoke further interpretation or explanation. Misa Jelic has decided on horses.
A horse is a figure which is inseparable from dense esoteric symbolism. It, therefore, is emblematically exhibited as a symbolic apparition, before a long and very entangled chain of archetypal meanings which have the affinity to, by their grotesque folklorism, and consequent to its gothic exhibitionism (frighteningly prone to conceal the kitsch-like
worn-out ness on the very fringe of theosophical hocus pocus), to conceal or to make void any other dimension of its significance, or any other correspondence of its representation with meaning. Although, it would be more attractive here, for sheer intellectual entertainment, to expound, as extensively as possible, on all the aspects of worn-out symbolism of intertwined Asian (or Indo-European)
Civilizations which would be easy to consult in appropriate lexicons intended for totemistic/fetishistic necrophiles staring into Pagan star constellations, nevertheless, here we shall undertake a somewhat different task. We shall attempt to point to a fact that the horses of the Master painter, Misa Jelic, have dug in deeply with their hooves on some other distinct wasteland. That they, indeed, belong to a different stable. These are horses that are quite free. And opposed to magical outcomes. Just as they do not carry - for they cannot bare, saddles, they do not carry any
sub signed meanings. These horses of Misa Jelic celebrate America, even if this may seem to be, on my part, in opposition with the philo-ideology of the artist, they celebrate a particular pre-European,
pre-civilization idea, for between the artist's frame and the frame of the unspoilt prairie there is no essential difference, it is non-existent because Jelic's technique is perfectionist to such an extent that it provokes sentiments of Pioneer Spirit. Of course, this is just the external image, but is, also, an image which points to the non-neglec-table line of anti-intellectual vocation whose central figures are
Remington in America and Jelic, in Serbia. In between Remington and Jelic many European and American painters have dealt with horses in motion. Viewed in retrospect, and only the retrospective view is useful here, from Remington toward Serbia, toward Byzantium, the realm of the glorification of horses is even further out of sight. It would be difficult, in a social, artificial or any other manner of formulation to isolate any aspect of this provocative motif, which has not been dealt with earlier, and which has not been exploited to the fullest.
Misa Jelic, has discovered, an untouched point of expression. His horses, as has already been hinted at above, stride in freedom, outside of any symbolic, and outside of any parabolic plane. They race forward toward the artist. They are in conflict with his point of observance. They would wish to move counter to him -toward him. Hitting at the artist, they break away from and shatter the propositions of the fonnat, they multiply according to their own initiative, they lean toward the left (sic!) and to the right (yea!), they thrust forward and back, wanting all this and wanting it all simultaneously. These are horses which are trying to break loose from the drawing, opposing perspective, not
recognizing any borders, not recognizing the differences between East and West, the internal and the external, metaphysics and dialectics. They are not horses which precede their plasticity, they do not show their anger toward the philosophical dimensions of space and time, they warp and are distorted through the experience of the line which they do not
recognize in the prescribed format. They vibrate to the pulse of the artist's neurosis. In his feeling that the contours of the faces, must be destroyed, if only by the blows of hooves, in order to show the cracks existing on the backside. This is the point where the genius of painter Misa Jelic is revealed. On one side, entirely defined by the rhetoric of Orthodox iconography, and on the other, a total dedication to the pragmatic expertise of Western technology, crucified and stretched in-between Byzantine heritage (behind the mirror) and
cinemascope coquetry of the profane iconostasis, he, perhaps(or definitely) intuitively, with the attribute of the primordial Master, utilises, commits, the horse's hoof, in praise of God, against the Devil's hoof, that if he does not destroy, then at least bang on the polished surface (emulsion) of the cryptic frame of the world. His horses, diversified, prancing in innumerable dimensions, conjuring even the wings of Pegasus, the wings of an eagle or hawk, come from over there, in full gallop over here to us, in order to give us warning, in order to point out a simple fact to us, that there is no border between the past and the future, between sky and earth and between light and darkness. They, like wrathful (?!) angels wish to convey to us that our darkness is not final, that we are lit up with charisma, enlightened, shining with the beauty and goodness of the Holy Spirit, but that we must
recognize this beauty and goodness in ourselves and to rush toward them! Only thus will we, outside of the confined space of the Western Order of the world, encounter freedom in movement, only in this manner shall we attain Love, Truth and Faith, only thus shall we be unreachable!
Prof, of Dramaturgy Nebojsa Pajkic
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