Jat Airways - Art Is an Endless and Divine Freedom

On December 7, 2005 painter Vladimir Vlada Veličković was elected to the French Academy of Arts, to the post formerly held by Bernard Buffet, the existentialist painter. Jacques Chirac's decree confirmed the election on January 31 of this year.

Text & photo by Aleksandar Manić

"There has been a ten-year campaign for me to be elected to the French Academy of Arts. The four-century-old institution is full of gray-haired heads – and since mine has also grown gray, I couldn't resist. The last wave of the campaign was so intense that it practically ensured I would be elected. The campaign also related to our country as well, as nobody from Serbia has ever had this honour", says Vlada Veličković, a painter from Serbia who now bears the title of French Academic.

After studying architecture, Veličković devoted himself to painting and in 1966 left his home city of Belgrade to move to Paris. His work, significant in the figurative narration movement, left no one indifferent. The attempt to reach the depths of the mystery of the human drama led Veličković to a great theme – the passage of the material world. The human body, weak and condemned to vanish, has always been tortured, crucified, sacrificed and sentenced to physical death. In addition to a rich career as a painter, Veličković was a professor at the Parisian Grand School of Painting from 1983 to 2000, where he educated generations of young artists. "The stay at the Parisian Academy of Painting meant a continuous process of enrichment. I worked with full energy, holding nothing back. I was engaged to the utmost and left part of myself and my experience to them. I am sure that my message remained deeply engraved in every individual with whom I contacted. In the eighteen years I worked as a professor I never had a failure in diploma dissertations".

Your paintings, like Christian frescoes, simultaneously point out the power and weakness of human beings – both the physical and moral weakness. Why does the dark and worldly side of human beings tend to prevail in your work?

- That's a choice based on my sensitivity. My interest in certain themes, as you say in the dark and worldly, was determined early on, in the 1950s. Events, information and illustrations, compiled and stored in memory, represent a sort of base from which I work with the help of precise symbols.

Images in your paintings sometimes seem as if they were taken from a forensics lecture –no event, only consequences. You are a mere witness. Who is the judge?

- In the beginning I used documents that focused on various sorts of tragic aftereffects. The prominent field is burdened with an ever present horror, while conscience and morality are a difficult, almost impassable test. I am a witness, but I call on myself and the viewer to be the judge. We should not rely on time, which works steadily to make things become forgotten; nor on history, which often ends in facts that are not, in fact, true. As an example I will mention the events of recent years.

History repeats itself

"This planet of ours neither matured with time nor left the past behind. Unfortunately, nothing has changed. History repeats itself. A man doesn't need many reasons to act aggressively, destructively, or commit genocide... For half a century I wrestled with only one theme, and information gave me the full right and a task to execute. I feel an obligation, maybe a commitment, though I don’t like the word, to endure and not to retreat. I always think of Brecht's words that only those who don't listen to the daily news can laugh. I would also call on Breton for help, as he said that art must be feverish and dramatic or there would be no art. With circumstances as they are, there is a lot to be said to our contemporaries and those after us."

There are no riddles and mysteries in your works, only the desire, in the spirit of an observer, to leave a mark. Is this your manner of asking questions or giving answers?

- A dialogue is needed between the observer and the observed. The acceptance or refusal of dialogue are equally important. Indifference is disastrous. The depth of the mark left is a measure of the effectiveness of that which was seen. Regardless of whether you refuse or accept a question, a mark exists. It is a must. I am only trying, but I don't know whether I am successful; to show what man is capable of doing to another in his madness, whether it be nationalistic, fanatic or religious. So, my task and goal is to ask questions. It is up to you to give answers or at least to try to answer.

For four decades you have been living and working in an adopted country. How did you manage to keep your personal identity and remain what you are?

- An environment like this, with all that it includes – the history, tradition and mythology – accepts you neither easily nor painlessly. If it doesn't see in you a certain difference, something new or diverse, it tries to absorb you and requests from you that you absorb what is offered and become a part of its behavior, way of life, custom and culture. When you are aware of this "danger" you have to shield yourself and allow in only those things you want to accept and refuse the rest. You have to stand straight, keep a steady attitude and defend your identity and integrity, provided you have the same. You have to believe without fear in your diversity. That is your biggest treasure. Sometimes it is linked with difficulties, but is it not true that the personality is built on difficulties? Temptations are numerous, doubts haunt you and when you see that you are standing firmly on your legs the satisfaction is great.

You have been working as a professor for two decades at the Parisian Academy of Fine Arts. In educating young people, did you advise them to adjust to their age or to create regardless of social and economical laws?

- I advised them to, before all, be what they are, listen to themselves, have confidence in what they do, but also to doubt their own work and face those who are not like-minded. They must build integrity that is at the beginning a feeble construction which is shaken by winds, tendencies and temptations. From this one should single out everything that can be applied to growing up and never leave that which is original, personal. If art and creativity functioned in compliance with society and the laws of economy, there would be nothing of them. Art is, as I take it and try to live it, endless and divine freedom. It should be consumed entirely. You must give yourself to it and live with the faith, even if it's a modest amount, that you left a small mark on those who will recognize it.

Achieved more with less

"With experienced acquired through time, one should have desire, ambition and motivation to add to already completed work, to step forward, even step into the unknown. The language of the fine arts enables it. Examples and possibilities are countless. Nothing is more disastrous for an author than to choke and choke you with the same content and fine art handwriting. In the time that is left to me, I feel that I can be more simple, efficacious, to achieve more with less as the famous architect Mies van der Roe used to say. To reduce the effect of a painting to that which is most significant and not spread and avoid the essence. To change and evolve, in a certain continuity, should be the engine to everyone who does this work."

Do present day generations of art students bear in themselves the creative fury and desire to prove and conquer something?

- Without fury, ambition and desire it is not worth doing this job. It is an adventure, before all. It is a labyrinth into which you flee in disregard of everything else, and it is only up to you whether you will discover the way out or not. Work is an important link that can start a feverish machine of creativity. At the same time, you have to count on solitude because you are terribly and divinely alone with a view directed at the world, time and yourself.

Are youth uncommitted because they lack faith in the future or are they too concerned with their own security?

- Faith in the future is, above all, faith in yourself. Nothing will fall from the sky. You have to work with your ten fingers. You should not believe in miracles, chance or stars. Sometimes these happen too, but…

You once said that it is not enough to be a painter, but that it is necessary to be one. What is your advice to young people on achieving success, standing firmly on one's feet and becoming "immortal"?

- Yes, it is important to be an excellent painter, and as time passes I firmly believe that it is necessary to be a good man, too. And if things are so, maybe "immortality" will not spare you. But we shall not deal with metaphysics now. Comfortably fly with Jat!