A Yugoslav art movement that predicted the birth of digital art

Nurturing neo-abstraction, early premonitions of op-art, and the beginnings of computer art, New Tendencies represents one of Europe’s forgotten avant-gardes. From the abstract “meander” paintings churned out obsessively by New Tendencies regular Julije Knifer, to the eddying kaleidoscopic patterns of Miroslav Šutej and the computer-generated light installations of Vladimir Bonačić, New Tendencies seemed to rescue the flagging modernist tradition and provide it with a new sense of energy and power. By emphasising the role of new technologies in defining how artists saw their world and communicated to their audience, it anticipated everything from video art to bio-art and robotics. Based in a maverick communist country that was open to the west, it also emphasised the social role of the artist, and promoted the idea of collective work in an attempt to overturn the “bourgeois” myth of the artist as a lone genius.

But the role of New Tendencies in art history has been shouted out by louder, less ambiguous trends. As an ever-evolving association of like-minded artists spread over a wide geographical area, it never had a manifesto for academics and critics to decipher or dissect. By fate, it also took root in a country that, however important it might have been in the 60s, simply no longer exists today.

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/2ZqBPmM