Skopje’s Big Cats Draw Artistic Catcalls

16 Oct 2010 / 12:38

The erection of huge statues of lions beside a modernist bridge is reviving criticism of nationalist government’s costly revamp of the Macedonian capital, known as Skopje 2014.

Dejan Bugjevac and Sinisa Jakov Marusic
The tempo of erecting new statues and laying foundations for new buildings that will transform the face of the Macedonian capital is accelerating.

In the latest addition to the citywide revamp called “Skopje 2014”, the Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, laid the foundations of a new building for the financial police and state prosecution on October 11.

Meanwhile, controversy blazes away over four five-metre-high bronze lions installed last month on both sides of Skopje’s Goce Delcev bridge.

Many artists, architects and intellectuals see the planting of the big cats beside the late-modernist style bridge as an aesthetic crime.

The lions are positioned in a so-called guardian position. But while two are realistically depicted, the other two are more stylized.

Opponents of the lions have nicknamed the latter pair “the Transformers”, after the popular action movie franchise depicting shape-shifting alien robots.

Records from the city’s central “Centar” municipality, in which the monuments are sited, show that their casting in the Fernando Marinelli foundry in Florence, Italy, cost the government well over 2 million euro.

In defence of his work, one of the authors of the statues declared that lions “as a symbol have appeared continuously throughout Macedonian history”.

But the big cats continue to draw catcalls, and not only from well-known veteran foes of the whole Skopje 2014 project.

Unofficially, even some officials closely involved in the implementation of the Skopje 2014 project have privately expressed disappointment, questioning the lions’ aesthetic appearance and position on the bridge.

A culture ministry spokesperson declined to comment on the row over the lions, however, saying it was a matter for the Centar municipality. They also declined to talk.

But if Macedonian officials seem reticent to speak out, artists are happy to go public in their attacks on the bronze cats.

Marika Bocvarova Plavevski, of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, who specializes in sculptures and public art objects, says the lions “don’t deserve to be called monuments or to be called art.”

Plavevska told Balkan Insight that they reminded her “of oversized children’s toys”. She added: “Most worrying is that they fail to establish any relation to the modern bridge. They damage the modernistic authenticity of the bridge.”

“Skopje 2014” is the brainchild of Gruevski’s ruling nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party.

Costed at 200 million euros, it aims to sprinkle the centre of the capital with monuments that reinforce a notion that Macedonians have a glorious history.

Drawing heavily on Neoclassical styles, the monuments also lay claim to the Macedonia of Classical history – a retort to neighbouring Greece, which claims to be the exclusive heir to the Macedonia of the Antique period.

When completed, the project will comprise marble and bronze sculptures, bridges, fountains, museums, a new concert hall and an Orthodox church.

There will be new government buildings, such as a foreign ministry, constitutional court, an agency for electronic communications and a national archive. Parliament will also be upgraded.

But Plavevska argues that the Skopje 2014 project is overcrowding the city centre with monuments erected with contradictory concepts in mind.

She says it is a mistake to position so many monuments in the urban core of the city, ignoring the opportunities posed by open spaces such city parks.

One of the first errors, she says, was to plant Antique sculptures several years ago in front of a modernistic government building. Then followed the erection of an equestrian monument to the Albanian warrior hero Skanderbeg in the old bazaar, which she says “disturbed the historical and cultural ambience of that area”.

She says the concept behind the whole project remains a mystery, as it was veiled in secrecy from the start and has never been properly elaborated it in public.

“We have almost no information about the commissions that choose the artists, or about the artists themselves. The authors are in most part anonymous,” she said.

Valentino Dimitrovski, art critic and head of the department for movable cultural heritage at the Ministry of Culture, is even sterner in his criticisms.

The decision to erect the lions beside the Goce Delcev bridge was “an inadmissible crime,” he says, because the lions undermine the concept of a modern, functional bridge, imposing totally different and incompatible aesthetic concepts.

Skopje 2014 was forcing “a newly composed turbo-folk identity” on the city, he said, referring to the genre of popular Balkan music.

The whole project represented an “extraordinary [act of] political idiotism” that recalled the totalitarian atmosphere of the Communist era of the 1940s and early 1950s, he added.

“We need to learn respect for basic professional and institutional standards, nothing more, nothing less,” Dimitrovski told Balkan Insight.

While ordinary people in Skopje are also divided by the lions, they are far more enthusiastic than the art critics.

“I do find them somewhat strange, but I like the overall idea,” Dragana, an engineer, aged 32, says.

“Other countries have lions on their bridges and squares because they created own states much earlier,” she adds.

“We’re now making our history and these lions are part of it.”Zoran, 54, a businessman, applauds the project. “At last they are decorating the city with nice things,” he says.

“Maybe for art critics they’re nothing special, but they make me feel like I live in a metropolis,” he adds. “Better to build lions and other monuments than stay put and build nothing,” he concludes.

But Menduh, a craftsman, was more on the side of the critics. I’m no art expert but I think the lions could have been done better,” he said. “I find them frightening and disturbing.”
This article is funded under the BICCED project, supported by the Swiss Cultural Programme.

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