Classic

I remain with very mixed feelings regarding a Ph.d. curriculum in a reputable university in Bulgaria. The curriculum is on my early work. Avant-garde in Bulgaria. That does not flatter me. The last years, I went through adventures exceeding substantially my experience of dissidence.

That is not the problem. It is superficial to indicate a public scandal as the start of something meaningful. I had ideas to share rather than to overthrow the authority. Even today, I am asked what happened when my exhibition was destroyed and not why I worked that way. That is the best way to ignore aspirations to examine and reflect important cultural events of the time. For example, the realization of 4'33'' and Construction of John Cage in Bulgaria Hall in 1978 by the group of Prof. Dobri Paliev.

This issue – so so. The first avant-garde exhibition, as I repeatedly and on every occasion remind, is the exhibition of works by Malevich, Kandinsky and other world avant-garde artists, inaugurated on 21^st September 1921 in the editorial offices of the “Vezni” magazine. The curator is the vanguard artist, Geo Milev. The problem there is that his work is interpreted epidermally as a political act. First-class art! The reason for getting political implications. The focus is shifted to the SUBJECT. If the subject was the most important thing in art, so that was rather journalism – reflecting public events with the means of art techniques. Actually THAT is the understanding of art in our country - as fine art.

Nikola Kozhuharov, A Dragon Loves Me, Mother 1922

"Socialist realism, colleagues, is to paint portraits of the comrades so that they could be able to identify themselves" - prof. Dechko Uzunov explained to his students what exactly they would learn and do, back in 1972. This provincial view, which belongs conceptually to the 19th century, still forms the professional mindset here.

From this perspective, the study of the esteemed by me Maya Gorcheva is dedicated to the subject of the work, and she included me in her academic study about the image of the Dragon in Bulgarian Art. That's how my Water Dragon fell on the same shelf with "A Dragon Loves Me, Mother" "Dragon wedding" etc. major works, forming Bulgarian spirit.

Veselin Dimov, Water Dragon 1983

I thanked also for the embarrassment to be in the company of P. Y. Todorov,  Petko Staynov, Geo Milev and so on. Since it became complicated, I will play you a favourite piece with ethnographic focus :) Was it the theme which formed the meaning, the sound and the composition!? And what would you get from the analysis and?! Look. It is called Voodoo Child.

The view that art simply interprets and recreates already existing reality is superficial... It forms this sensitivity, which is the basis of perceptions and Reality creation.