ABSTRACT
Marija Pušic was a well-known Serbian critic and former curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. She discusses in detail the exhibition Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, shown in Belgrade’s Cultural Center in July–September 1965, as well as the impact of previous exhibitions of Rauschenberg in Yugoslavia. Rauschenberg went against the tide of Abstract Expressionism and heralded a new direction in American art, one led by artists at either the midpoint or the very start of their careers. He later rejected the nihilism of Dadaists, interpreting their paradoxical motto (“Down with Art, Long Live Art!”) as call to action: forsaking the ruins of art and the burden of past tradition, artists must draw from fresh sources in order to grasp reality and discover an art for our time. Rauschenberg has preserved the poetic and intellectual value of the text, although his illustrations complicate the allegorical reading of certain scenes and obscure identities of figures who stand for certain symbols.
