BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – Kitsch or an extraordinary work of art? It depends on who you ask.
The Serbian president attended the opening, on Wednesday night, of a grandiose monument to a medieval monk and historic ruler who was criticized by critics who consider him oversized and kitschy.
President Aleksandar Vucic’s allies say the 23-meter-tall (75-foot-tall), 70-ton bronze sculpture by the legendary Serbian state founder, Stefan Nemanja, placed on a golden egg-shaped pedestal in central Belgrade will be a new landmark for the Serbian capital.
Opponents think the monument is a megalomaniacal and expensive symbol of Vucic’s populist and autocratic government that must be removed.
Vucic told a crowd of several thousand of his supporters, who maintained no social distance in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, that “the beautiful” statue represents a “masterpiece of art” that is a symbol of Serbian state and unity.
He said that all those who “dream of removing it” will not succeed because it represents “the anchor of the entire Serbian nation”.
Social media commentators called the sculpture “Saruman on a Kinder egg” and critics said the sculpture made and designed in Russia is inconsistent with traditional Serbian architectural style and instead resembles giant-sized monuments of the era Soviet.
An independent society of Serbian art conservatives said the monument is an “ideological product of despotism” that has no connection with Serbia and Belgrade in the 21st century. Art historian Aida Corovic said it is not a monument to Stefan Nemanja, but to Vucic’s “arrogance”.
Belgrade’s deputy mayor, Goran Vesic, rejected the criticism, saying that the previously degraded part of the city “is becoming one of the most beautiful places in the capital” and a new center of the city.
The monument was placed in a renovated square in front of Belgrade’s old train station. It is part of the Belgrade Waterfront project financed by a company in the United Arab Emirates that includes shopping malls and tall buildings in the style of Dubai.
The construction of the monument was often compared by critics to a heated renovation of the Macedonian capital Skopje in the early 2000s, which included dozens of monuments and sculptures that earned it the nickname “the kitsch capital of the Balkans”.
Both projects have become synonymous with secret and reckless spending. The price paid to the Russian sculptor for the monument was proclaimed a state secret, but independent estimates range around 9 million euros ($ 11 million).