Culture shock

What is better than going to a gallery?

Going to a gallery when you are supposed to sit in the classroom.

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I must be honest, I was sincerely shocked when our philosophy teacher decided to skip our extremely exhausting logic lesson and take the whole class to a gallery to soak in some culture. However, I cannot complain because actually I am the number one person who would rather wander around some paintings than sit in the classroom like a trapped animal.

In our city, Novi Sad, we have a square called ’The square of galleries’ which can be found near the city centre in a pretty quiet neighbouhood. As its name says the square is full of all kinds of museums and galleries. I personally never thought much about visiting that part of the city as in fact I amlost forgot about its existence until now.


The gallery where we spent our philosophy lesson is called ’Spomen zbirka Pavla Beljanskog’ and the moment I set foot in the hall I knew: this is the kind of person I want to be. I want to go to museums, galleries, to visit weekly the theater, to take part in a range of  cultural manifestations. As I looked around I saw that the rest of the class was also stunned like me and I happily noticed that I must be surrounded with the right kind of people.
 

As a matter of fact, I was so enchanted that I couldn’t concentrate on what the guide was telling us, so I recollected all my knowledge in art and explored separately the gallery with a couple of my friends by my side.

We saw some paintings from Nadežda Petrović, a famous serbian artist who sacrificed her life while trying to help the sick ones in a hospital inValjevo during the World War I. Her masterpieces show nothing but blurry landscapes mostly in shades of green, occasionally highlited with one or two radiant colours. As I looked at them I saw nothing but pain and desire for peace and freedom. Her art made such a big impression on the serbian people, that she became the most famous artist in the serbian avant-garde. In her honour, we still have our 200 dinar bills printed with her caracter.

On the second floor were exhibited some of the paintings of a croatian artist called Miroslav Kraljević. Looking at his autoportraits creeped us all out, because we had to face several paintings which were showing a man who had been dying from tubercolosis. That even was not so gruesome. The fact that they were all looking back at us  from a strange perspective (well, at least the paintings where he had eyes at all) made us want to get away as quickly as possible.Unfortunately, our teacher was curiously looking at us from the corner of his eyes and since we all wanted to show off, we had no choice but to stay.

In the end we got used to the grotesque portrayal and even ended up leaving the gallery with positive impressions. Speaking for myself, this small trip has been one of my favourite things I have done so far this year and I sincerely hope that the rest of the year will be even better.