Miško Šuvaković, “The Californian Scene: Empire of Signifiers,” translated from Serbian by Terence McEneny, originally published as “Kalifornijski Scenario: imperija označitelja,” in Moment 13 (Belgrade, 1989): 61–67 (extract)

Abstract

Misko Suvakovic was active as a Conceptual artist in the 1970s. Since 1985 he has been a theoretician of contemporary art, and for the last twenty years a professor of aesthetics and theory of art at the University of Arts in Belgrade. While San Francisco (northern California) is associated with writers, southern California (Los Angeles) has lately become a center for the visual arts, attempting to overtake the East Coast. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) was founded in 1965, and until the opening of Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles was the largest museum complex to follow developments in contemporary art. A walk through LACMA is a clear and well-structured journey through modernism, demonstrating that the chain of signifiers, contains that which gives the chain meaning and significance. From December 1986 to January 1988, the museum hosted Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art 1945–1986.