By Suncica Perisin Tomljanovic
Recently, at an exhibition that opened in Split, an Italian representative of the Government of the Lazio Region, spoke about the important purpose and value of artists: “They ask questions, provoke thought and instigate change” the lady expressed the reasons why art and artists are important to society .
Fortunately, given the broader circumstances, she spoke in her native Italian, a language most of the present Croatian audience did not understand. Perhaps that was just as well. The local politicians standing in a semicircle around her demonstrate views almost entirely opposed to her own and were not necessarily in favour of this kind of art. They applauded out of courtesy, understanding possibly none of what she had said.
Those in the public who spoke Italian well enough, and had spent time in Italy, agreed with her and applauded because, coming from a different cultural environment, they recognised her argument as self-evident.
As someone who speaks both languages, has lived in both countries and has experienced what it means to be an artist in each society, I found the absurdity of the situation amusing: people with opposing views politely applauding a speech in defence of precisely the kind of artistic value they themselves seemed unable to recognise.
Every summer, sophisticated art collectors from around the world sail the Adriatic. I know this because I earn my living painting live portraits for people aboard their yachts. One question collectors frequently ask me is: Why can we find no Croatian art in the coastal towns we visit?
It is an interesting question, given that Split, Dubrovnik, Korčula and other coastal towns are full of galleries selling what is presented as art. The problem is not the absence of art from the marketplace, but the kind of art being sold and, ultimately, who has the authority to decide what art is.
The galleries are filled with figurative, literal depictions: fishing boats at sea, lavender fields and olive trees. I once watched an artist produce ten canvases depicting, the same generic olive tree. Whether or not these artists possess technical skill, the purpose of this work is not to ask questions, investigate ideas or contribute to cultural discourse. The purpose of this kind of art work - is survival.
Making money takes precedence over everything else. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, these paintings sell. Croatia has no deeply established culture of collecting contemporary art, but it does have a culture of giving paintings as gifts: to thank doctors, return favours or celebrate weddings. The gift is often a painting of a boat or an olive tree, and everyone is satisfied.
This kind of art suits politicians: highly realistic, with little or no consideration given to titles, meaning or anything beyond the image itself. The artists who produce it can earn money and survive within this economy. Their work fulfils predetermined expectations, reinforces a familiar image of the coast and asks nothing of the viewer beyond recognising what they already know.
There is another economy catering to tourists, in which amateur artists sell photocopied drawings that infringe the copyright of the original artists, realistic depictions of towns and watercolours coloured to simulate drawing skill. This market reinforces the belief among its participants that what they produce has value, while encouraging a sense of superiority over artists whose original work does not sell with comparable regularity.
Yet the collectors who ask me where Croatian art is are not looking for generic paintings of boats. They are knowledgeable collectors with carefully developed collections, looking for thought, invention and ideas. They are searching for the kind of work that is almost impossible to find during the few hours they spend ashore exploring the coast. Instead, they encounter shops filled with mass-produced Chinese souvenirs and the same monotonous lavender pasted over canvass in every town.
International collectors visiting Croatia often leave convinced that there are no artists here.
In a society whose people have survived three wars in a century, whose country has changed in both its political identity and geographical shape—from kingdom to multinational communist state to smaller capitalist nation—survival is deeply ingrained. State-aprooved atheism has been replaced by an enthusiastic embrace of religion as a national identity, a distinction that emerged during the war as a means of separating one’s own people from their neighbours. Families have endured genocide, as those who survied awful trauma - raise children, the instinct to survive is passed down through generations, becoming a value capable of eclipsing almost everything else.
People have experienced ruptures in continuity and prolonged uncertainty, and many have become intolerant of further change. Sameness begins to function as an identity in its own right. There is an established idea of what is “normal”, in Split and anything outside its boundaries comes under pressure to conform, among adults and children alike. Difference is not tolerated.
In such a society, art that asks questions can become tiresome, dangerous and unsettling. Sometimes it is not recognised as art.
Living in Split and Dalmatia since 2013 I have encountered a degree of ridicule directed at artists that I have not experienced elsewhere. When people want to portray someone as having mental health issues, for example, they may call them an artist, using the word as an insult. Someone regarded as unsuccessful, lazy or unwilling to work may also call themselves an artist. The word ARTIST becomes a convenient means of belittling anyone whose activity falls outside the accepted definition of productive labour.
Within this economy of survival, artists face the same question almost daily, posed by people from every social stratum as though it were an unavoidable cultural obligation: Can you make a living from your art?
The problem arises when it becomes the principal measure by which an artist and their work are judged.The question is no longer what the artist does, investigates or challenges, nor what they might contribute to the culture around them. The question is whether they can financially survive by doing it.
Art is reduced to a source of income, and the artist must justify their existence through economic productivity. Anything without immediate practical value becomes difficult to defend. In the eyes of the person asking, the artist is effectively invalidated before their work has even been considered. This is a situation one artist may encounter for the thousandth time in a single year, repeated across society, one person at a time, through the supposedly “innocent question”.
It becomes a comic, Sisyphean loop: the same question repeated endlessly, with no possibility of moving forward because the answer remains unchanged. The artist loses confidence and self-respect, subjected to continual humiliation instead of having their work recognised. Rarely does anyone ask what they think, what they are questioning or what they have to contribute. Their work becomes invisible and useless before it has even been given the opportunity to be considered.
Croatia's academies of fine arts graduate only a small number of formally trained artists each year — around eight students annually in each individual fine-art discipline — while the opportunities available after graduation remain limited. Commercial galleries independently representing artists whose work departs from familiar and accepted artistic forms are rare in the country and absent from most towns.
Many graduates end up working in tourism or other industries rather than developing their own artistic practices. For those who manage to secure financial stability through education, obtaining a teaching position can involve aligning oneself with the dominant political party, restricting the employee's freedom of expression, while providing financial security that is unavailable to artists without such protection. That security can also nurture a sense of superiority over those who remain economically precarious. Structurally scarcity and competition breeds rivalry among artists themselves -which affects the progress of the scene .
Outside education, opportunities for support are limited. Public funding is often distributed through long application processes in which projects may be selected according to whether they align with what the local political establishment considers acceptable or by secular artists circles that rarely make space for outsiders. Much work by many artists- remain unpublished, unexhibited or unsupported.
Artists who question the existing order, seem to be most susceptible to being left without money for production and life . They work in other industries: washing dishes in restaurants, delivering pizzas, selling shower drains, devising workshops or working in telephone sales. These are the actual jobs of artists in Split's art community.
The same society that ridicules these artists and their work can leave even those who have spent their lives contributing to the country's culture without the means to live with dignity. Artists, such as Zlatan Dumanić, whose work has been presented at the Venice Biennalehave nevertheless experienced such financial precarity that they resorted to collecting cigarette butts from the street to smoke in a museum, unable to afford even a coffee in their last days on earth. This illustrates the disparity between an artist’s recognised cultural contribution and the material conditions available to sustain their practice. Ironically - Dumanić received a retrospective exhibition only after his death, when remuneration for his work could no longer benefit him.
In this way, artists are erased from society: their value is diminished, they remain invisible and unsupported whenever their work fails to fit the image the establishment wishes to project. The same fishing boats that fill tourist galleries continue to determine what is bought, exhibited and accepted.
History offers disturbing examples of what happens when art is judged according to a predetermined idea of its purpose and value. Hitler himself painted conventional watercolours and depictions of buildings and landmarks. After coming to power, the Nazi regime promoted an officially sanctioned aesthetic based on classical realism and nationalist imagery. Modernist and avant-garde movements were attacked and suppressed under the label of “degenerate art”. The regime rejected art that challenged political authority, exposed social realities or departed from its prescribed aesthetic, suppressing artistic experimentation and critical expression in favour of work that supported its nationalist and racial ideology.
This comparison addresses a fundamental question: who determines what art is permitted to be, what it is expected to represent, and whether its value depends on serving an already established idea of normality. The historical example demonstrates the consequences of turning a preferred aesthetic into an instrument of exclusion: artistic value becomes inseparable from conformity, while anything outside the prescribed image is denied legitimacy.
Art does not have to be politically oppositional to be valuable, nor must every work provoke or unsettle. But a society that recognises art only when it conforms to familiar expectations deprives itself of the possibility of encountering something it has not yet learned to recognise. In doing so, it limits not only the artist but also the cultural experience available to the public.
The artists exist. The work exists. The question is whether the cultural environment allows that work to become visible, supports artistic independence and recognises value beyond what is familiar, commercially acceptable or politically sanctioned. The established conditions make certain kinds of art invisible in the very towns where artists live and work.
This produces a disturbing loop: little time remains for making work once income must be earned elsewhere; resources for materials are limited; and an endless “can you make a living from it” discourse never reaches the work itself.
Even when an artist gains access to the international art world, where their work can be seen, considered and critically analysed, the conditions in which it was produced may differ fundamentally from those of their international contemporaries. The artist may bring the same intellectual rigour, artistic vision and capacity to contribute, yet years of constraint leave their mark on both the artistic practice and the materiality of the work.
The question is not simply whether the work can be presented on equal terms internationally, but whether it can be assessed fairly without acknowledging the unequal conditions under which it was produced?
This is the context from which FUCK IT!emerges.
On 12 and 13 October, during Frieze Week, three artists from Split, Dino Grčić, Petar Grimani and Sunčica Perišin Tomljanović, will take their work into the streets of London, outside the conventional channels of the art world, through live art performances in the open air.
FUCK IT is less a title than a decision: to make a move when the existing mechanisms for movement simply do not exist.
It is the first project by #LivingCroatianArtists #TheLCAs, an artist-led experiment in creating the very structures of support that are missing. A conceptual ecosystem of contemporary artists who become a structure of support and visibility to each other. Artists become the institution they need to move forward out of the local deadlock .
What happens when waiting for infrastructure stops? A leap of faith. FUCK IT.
