The line "God was angry with the Serbs" appears at the beginning of one of the first cantos of the "Mountain Wreath", the famous epic poem by the Serb/Montenegrin (delete according to preference) poet/ruler/metropolitan (likewise) Petar II Petrovic Njegos. This poem, which as part of its sub-heading has the nowadays not widely known word "istraga" (meaning "to exterminate without leaving a trace", and referring in this case to linguistic brethren of a different religious persuasion), places in one of its - so to say - introductory lines the Serbs in an active emotional relationship with God. Of all the peoples he has created, that famous lover of postmodern diffusion - God - has, as we see, particular reason to focus his attention on the Serbs, so long as the one who is writing is a member of the above-mentioned collectivity.

This intimate relationship with the Demiurge has been expressed, at least in recent history, in many different ways: struck on coins, embroidered on flags, printed in books... Repetition, multiplication and slight variation of this statement (God loves, God saves...) slowly convert it into a mantra, and its obsessive repetition seems to gradually bring into doubt the imperative tone of the syntagma: it is a little bit like someone walking through the woods at night, and, in order to drive off fear, repeating, for example, that he is immortal, that he is not afraid, that the forest harbours no wild beasts and supernatural entities ready, in the nature of things, to threaten his psycho-physical integrity at any moment. As if the Serbs, who ritually pronounce this famous sentence, were not quite sure that it's true, and by repeating it obsessively were tugging at God's sleeve, reminding him of their desire to be loved, cared for, pampered and elevated above all other peoples.

Those who in dead earnest bellow this syntagma would probably be surprised to learn that the same construct - a people's privileged position in God's affections - exists in all nations; to start with, in the neighbouring ones, in those with whom they fought the most frequent and bloodiest wars: "God and the Croats", "God loves the Bulgarians", and so on.

The local variant "Gott liebt die Serben", a short and curt statement with a wide metaphysical radius, was adopted by the artist Rasa Todosijevic as the title or motto of a large series of works created during the last few years. As in earlier cases, a frame "Schlaflage", "Was ist Kunst?") is filled with works in the most varied media - from performances and sound ambients, objects (loaves of bread, plates, bottles with messages in oil), to pieces in traditional media, bronze sculptures, drawings or watercolours.

However, if we are to approach the essence of these works, a look at the earlier cycle entitled "My name is Pablo Picasso" would be helpful - both in the questions of execution and conceptual basis. In brief, this was a series of drawings (later paintings, too) in which Todosijevic "entered" into the famous Spaniard's handwriting. The drawings and paintings were accompanied by a short text which made the point of the relationship of a small, enclosed and therefore self-sufficient community with the concept of "genius", in this case, artistic genius. The key to reading this is, of course, ironic, but this is not irony at first glance; this is, on the whole, a much more sophisticated position characteristic for the spirit of the postmodern, an "oscillating" approach which is always somewhere between the "direct" and the completely cynical, negating view charged with bitter humour. In the works of the cycle "Gott liebt die Serben" (as well as in some earlier ones), this position is underlined by a title in German, the language of one of the paradigmatic occupiers of these parts.

"Picassoesque" stylizations in the handwriting are evident in these works, too, along with references to Klee's rickety script. The iconographic inventory, organized in some of the watercolours within a rudimentary illusionist space feigning a sunset landscape, usually includes crosses, skulls, multiplied and stylized eyes, pipes and smoke, with the omnipresent written invocation "Gott liebt die Serben". Furthermore, on another level, these watercolours function as "illustrations" or "visual superstructures" of Todosijevic's views of art, of his texts which, metaphorically, obliquely, operate in the same space as his paintings, often taking a more clearly ironic stance.

Somewhere in between the general, historical, horizon on which the works of the cycle "Gott liebt die Serben" operate, and that localized on the problems of modern art in the series "My name is Pablo Picasso", lie the problems of the art of small communities, of geographical and cultural outbacks. Both are, in their own way, "important subjects", but Todosijevic, from his point of view and in his manner, prefers to pay attention to the draught blowing through the holes of these monumental premises. Another story could, therefore, be added to his: at one of the last Biennales in Venice, in the pavillion of one of the few south Balkan countries friendly to us, hung on display the works of an artist whose name nobody remembers any more - let him be called Vulgaropoulos for this occasion. This artist, now in the tenth decade of his life, had always worked in his half-forgotten attic in a large seaport. When, urged by friends, he finally descended from his hovel/ivory tower, he was astonished to discover that all the great avant-garde artistic movements of this century had taken place in his attellier, but that he had had no inkling of them. Vulgaropoulos was, therefore, a cubist ten years before Picasso and Braque, a surrealist before Ernst and Miro... However, the accursed destiny of living at the end of the world, along with the hatred of the "big" world towards small and smart peoples full of pride, will never permit recognition and a correct appreciation of the trailblazing role of this great anticipator.

The situation is similar on the wider, historical, plan - what takes place in art is often only a reflection of wider movements and convictions: the complexes of some ethnic communities, piled up through long centuries, lead them to monstrous exclusivist self-insertion into historical matrixes, and then, as feedback, into frustration and autism. The fact that there is nobody willing to recognize their fundamental role in world history and civilization on the basis of long-winded and often incomprehensible stories repeated instead of tangible evidence, the fact that nobody has any understanding for the "objective circumstances" which led to their absence from important history lessons, these convert them into even more rabid champions of their version, sinks them even further into psychosis, convinces them, in the end, that even God has given up on the implacable "big world" (which will soon, no doubt, fall as Sodom and Gomorra did) and can now finally devote himself to loving only them.

The distorting mirror held up by the works of Rasa Todosijevic points out all these perversions even more clearly, enlarged to proportions which make it impossible to look away, stripped to the grotesque which is, actually, their true essence.

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