A year after the publication of the Manifesto, Breton tried to explain the complex relations between Surrealism and painting in his text Le Surréalisme et la peinture (1925).58 It had not been his intention for Surrealism to become yet another art movement or a new school of painting, but to proclaim a revolution and an overall revision of values in theretofore art. Experimentation and exploration of the “inner model” of expression, meaning the subconscious, free associations, hallucinations and dreams, were the foundations upon which to set out on new adventures of cognizing the unconscious.

The visual language of Surrealism, thus, sprang from the same sources from which poetic language drew its strength, so that these two forms of expression were, consequently, totally equal. This can, inter alia, explain why numerous members of both the French and the Serbian group of Surrealists simultaneously experimented in different media: in uncovering the hidden impulses of the subconscious, all of them, in addition to the language of poetry, also used the potentials offered by other media: painting, drawing, photography and accidentally found objects. If poetry was expected to respect the purity of the dictation of thought without any aesthetic, moral or other conventional reservations, the same criterion was set before the visual works of the Surrealists. Many of them are also known to have openly voiced their aversion to the fine arts, as Marko Ristic or Pierre Naville: “The only taste I know of is a taste of revulsion. Masters, blackmailers, blacken your canvasses. By now everybody knows that there exists no surrealist painting< neither pencil lines left to chance gesture, nor a picture depicting characters from dreams, nor the flight of imagination, can be called that. But there are scenes. Recollections and the pleasure of the eyes: that is all there is to aesthetics.”59

Radojica Zivanovic Noe, the only trained painter among the signatories of the Surrealist manifesto, undeniably had profound doubts in his painting experience and his disillusioned wanderings through the painting schools of the past and present. His ultimate relinquishing of the picture and renouncement of painting in the traditional sense are symbolically expressed by his resolute cancellation of his own past artistic work. The negation of the picture was performed as a rite offering a sacrifice in redemption for a new, higher level of individual development. In a singular ritual, recorded only in The Impossible, namely in the language of print, a traditional oil on canvas was crossed out by a large black cross mark. This crossing out “X” mark is visually shocking and upsetting in the context of a civil culture and civilization which has a due appreciation of art but does not disregard the material value of works of art, i.e., oil paintings, either. Thus, the painting as an artistic and aesthetic object, but also the painting as a commodity, was renounced by a symbolic move. The good old representative painting in a solid frame was crossed out just like one of the days in Radojica Zivanovic Noe’s own intimate, erstwhile, calendar of realistic art.

“I do not know whether I am an artist and to what extent I am or am not one, but that does not confuse me before my own fires, earthquakes, before the edges from which I might precipitate”, he stated openly and publicly in the text Arena in the almanac Nemoguce–L'impossible. That position is “illustrated”, or better to put it, graphically confirmed, by the stricken over picture, which, in the form of a visual metaphor, reiterates his stated doubts in his own identity as a painter. It is, ergo, not only the picture that has been canceled as a traditional form of representation, but also the artist’s identification with his self–portrait. If, instead of a self–portrait, a portrait, landscape or a still life or any other motif from the rich repertoire of the history of art had been crossed out, we could not at all speak about a double negation. The fact that it was precisely a self–portrait that was renounced in a sort of cathartic ritual, can be understood as a definitive decision, one concurrently negating the institution of painting and the picture and the institution of the painter – the artist. It is, namely, a consistent and revolutionary Surrealist demonstration, which is, on top of that, an unusually daring and unconventional action and individual act of the artist in the context of the Serbian cultural milieu. The crossed out self–portrait of Radojica Zivanovic Noe constitutes an open visual metaphor of anti–art publicly manifested in 1930 on the pages of the almanac.

As a painter of unremarkable knowledge and ability, Radojica Zivanovic Noe enthusiastically joined the Surrealists, boldly explored dreams and visions with them, but worked within the group for a short time – from 1929 to 1932. Later, together with Mirko Kujacic, Djordje Andrejevic Kun and a number of other painters of the younger generation, he founded the art group Zivot (Life) (1934), which espoused the idea of socialist realism. Only one oil on canvas remains preserved from his short period of Surrealist activity, Prividjenje u dimu (The Apparition in Smoke), from 1932. It is hard to properly judge on the basis of just one painting the concept or the artistic reaches of his Surrealist painting. Still, The Apparition in Smoke, whose black background suggests the image of a dream, can point to Noe’s figurative concept of the Surrealist painting. Similarly to other works of this orientation, it features fantastic zoomorphic creatures interfusing as unstable organic forms. In Noe’s concept of the painting, primarily his shaping of visual forms, montage plays a prominent role and he employs it liberally in drawings as well as in, naturally, photomontages.

The assumption that other works by Noe, including a large number of paintings, have been lost, cannot significantly alter the current knowledge about Surrealist painting, and it is in order to reiterate the position that in the history of Serbian 20th century painting, Surrealism was a fragmentary phenomenon, which left only one canvas behind.60 Although, according to available information, there are no preserved paintings, it should be stressed that Surrealist paintings did exist at a certain point, and once, in 1932, the Surrealists in fact staged an exhibition in Belgrade. Thus, the view should be abandoned that Surrealism was primarily a poetic, ethical and political, and never a painting phenomenon.61 Even though today we know but of one painting, a large number of drawings, le cadavre exquis, decalcomanias and objects have been bequeathed us by Serbian Surrealism, and, it should be realized, above all, that it was precisely this movement that shifted the focus of interest from the traditional to new visual media, such as then were: collage, photomontage, and, primarily, the photograph and the photogram. In that sense, and from a completely different standpoint, can its place in the history of 20th century art be reappraised.

The first Surrealist exhibition at the Cvijeta Zuzoric Art Pavilion in Belgrade is referred to in a lengthy letter Aleksandar Vuco sent to Marko Ristic on 24 January 1932. This is what he wrote about the exhibition: “The exhibition was a resounding success. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that it was one of our most successful and most positive promotional, propagandistic and provocative events.”62 As Surrealist editions and other publications of the Belgrade group of Surrealists were primarily displayed at the exhibition, their section was marked with a large sign “Surrealism” composed of bright red cellophane letters. But, while the publications were arranged on shelves and in showcases, “an entire partition was covered with Noe’s pictures. There are over 25 of them, framed in my own and Petar’s (Popovic) frames. A startling and fine impression.”63 In addition, an inscenation, or better to put it, an assemblage had been put together for the exhibition, which Vuco ineptly sketches and describes in the following way: “At the very beginning of the section... suspended on burlap hangs a sizeable empty frame. At one end, taking up almost one fourth... of the frame, glued to the burlap hangs Noe’s picture The Wall–Woman. Comically attached to the empty part covering three fourths of the space is a small length of thread which I carried around in my pocket one day and then left it to humorously wander about my desk. It changes its mood at the slightest touch, serving as some sort of a moving humorous object. Below it is written with red pins: The Wall–Woman. All together it is quite incredible (my invention).”64 Although it is true that, in the belief that Surrealism cannot be just another new artistic style, the Surrealists did not exhibit at official exhibitions of paintings, they nevertheless did stage an exhibition in the new gallery space of the type the Cvijeta Zuzoric Art Pavilion in Belgrade was in 1932.

Still, Surrealism was, first and foremost, a frame of mind, as its protagonists were wont to stress, and by no means yet another art school, one “shallowly realistic” like all the previous ones, from Impressionism to Cubism. Like all avant–gardes, Surrealists did not strive after replacing old art norms with new ones, but, insisting on ethical principles, sought to reevaluate the world and man’s life in it. That is precisely why Surrealism operates beyond the traditional boundaries of the visual media, and towards expanding the notion of painting and art in general. The diverse works from the collection of Serbian Surrealism, although only fragments have been preserved, constitute, in that sense, an equal part of a much broader, international art phenomenon. Breton and Aragon sometimes accused painters of sacrificing the revolutionary spirit of Surrealism by cooperating with art dealers and participating in exhibitions, and at other times required of painters to “prolong life by signs and symbols”. 65 If uncovering miracles, exploring the images of dreams and abandoning oneself to the dictation of thought were only a part of the Surrealist program of research and expansion of the concept of art, then, understandably, the experiment was necessarily expected and required instead of abidance by old art procedures. Hence an abundance of techniques that had never existed in earlier art practice were employed in Serbian Surrealism: decalcomania, le cadavre exquis, photograms, photocollages, assemblages, and other combined techniques.

Refusing to accept, thus, the existing media frameworks and hierarchy among the arts, the Belgrade Surrealists took over from their Parisian friends and models some new techniques of expression as well. In effect, for them too, children’s games became legitimate “artistic” techniques or a part of collective creative experiments. Collective drawings, called le cadavre exquis, were mainly produced between 1929 and 1932, namely at a time when this type of activity was dwindling in the Paris headquarters. Their belated appearance in Serbian Surrealism is associated with the name of André Thirion, who was in Belgrade in October 1929, en route to Bulgaria, where he traveled to “find and abduct his student sweetheart, Katia Drenovska.”66 It is practically certain that he introduced Marko and Seva Ristic, Lula and Aleksandar Vuco and Vane Bor to le cadavre exquis, because the names of André Thirion and Katia Drenovska appear on the backs of some works beside the names of the Belgrade Surrealists.67 That the drawing constructed according to the rules of “blind” chance came to Belgrade from Paris, is also confirmed by a page in the almanac The Impossible, devoted to “Social Life in 1930”, where le cadavre exquis was published alongside Thirion’s poem Il fait jour, as well as instructions for that type of “pastime”, with Thirion and Drenovska again mentioned among the participants.68 Preserved documentation confirms that the Surrealists also wanted to acquaint others with unconventional playing techniques and the delight of spontaneous drawing, and, as a result, in the summer of 1930, Aleksandar Vuco’s sons, Djordje and Jovan, created a series of le cadavre exquis together with Du[an Matic.69 In effect, Ristic must have already known everything about how le cadavre exquis came into being, because Breton had written about it in the well–known text Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, in which, among other things, he said that the game was invented in 1925 by poets and painters sitting at a table: “Game of folded paper played by several people who compose a sentence or drawing without anyone seeing the preceding collaboration or collaborations. The now classic example which gave the game its name, was drawn from the first sentence obtained this way: le cadavre – exquis – boira – le vin – nouveau.”70

The other techniques, employed even in scientific disciplines, such as decalcomania, were alsopopular in the circle of Belgrade Surrealists. Marko Ristic, as a layman, who, as he himself wrote “failed to grasp purely figurative art values”,71 was prepared to venture, with the aid of decalcomania, into an exploration of the images of fancy, visions and hallucinations, such as the chance results of folding paper with inkblots. In many of its program planks, Surrealism stressed the importance of chance, i.e., as Ristic put it, a “subjective interpretation of objective chance”. This principle was particularly observed in the newly adopted techniques, but it was not disregarded in the old ones either – oil on canvas, or drawing, for instance. Writing some thirty years later, Marko Ristic explained on the example of frottage what all those experiments in visual language had actually meant to him: “The special technique of frottage, which was not invented by Max Ernst (because children who rub a piece of paper placed over a metal coin with the blunt end of a pencil have known it for years), but was uncovered by him anyhow, produced in all these drawings miraculous results, because they were combined with Ernst’s extraordinary capacity to employ his poetic fantasy to find the images of his imagination in matter and its chance forms, its structure, and to interpret with a creative force his visions originally provoked by one accidental aspect of matter.”72 On the example of Ernst’s oeuvre, Ristic, in fact, disclosed the reasons which prompted the Surrealists to set out and explore the various techniques flinging the door wide open to chance and the free play of associations. Surrealists consciously rejected artistic elements in order to keep unexpected the ensuing linear move, and understood drawing as a counterpart to writing, as yet another method of recording the dictation of thought. The drawing, i.e., the line could, like poetry, register individual exploration into the “inner model” as well as the deep layers of the subconscious. The only differences were in the actual handwriting, reflecting variations of temperament or of psychological personality traits, and, in that sense, comparisons can be made between the lyrical and softly shaded works of Noe and the robust hatchings of Djordje Kostic and Oskar Davico. Between these two poles are the drawings, or more precisely the linear experiments, of Rade Stojanovic, Du[an Matic, Vane Bor and Marko Ristic. In the visual structure of their drawings, Surrealists sought to avoid all forms of conscious involvement, resolute to forget any previous knowledge of representational clichés while probing unconscious impulses, i.e., the deeper layers of their own persons and their repressed desires. All these works on paper, sometimes of technically reduced qualities, apart from being on quite ordinary types of paper, are most often done in India ink, oil wash, pencil, and, only seldom, paint. On top of that, the Surrealists also confined themselves to a small format, as a rule not exceeding the size of standard writing paper. Such a small format fully suited this type of drawings, as they contained intimate confessions, without the ambition of being exhibited publicly. A collection of Surrealist drawings can, therefore, be likened to a diary or a collection of souvenirs rather than to a painter’s portfolio of drawings and sketches. Also, these are works that elicited no connoisseur interest in the circles of “professional” artists and critics at the time of their creation. The Surrealists themselves were, for their part, prepared to endure unpleasant critiques and public derision, as long as they consistently published their pictures, drawings and le cadavre exquis in Surrealist editions. The largest number of them is certainly to be found in the almanac The Impossible and in the magazine Surrealism Here and Now, especially in the first issue, which carries only Noe’s works, for example. The pictures and drawings of the Surrealists cannot, therefore, be evaluated on the basis of traditional aesthetic criteria, which was among the reasons for their belated inclusion in art streams. They were exhibited for the first time, together with other works of Serbian Surrealists, only in 1969, and only thanks to the systematic efforts of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and its director at the time, Miodrag Protic.