The Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro is organizing an author’s evening with Aleksandar Bečanović on Thursday, March 28, 2024, at 7 PM at the House of The King’s Guard.
At the literary evening, in addition to the author, Vladimir Vujošević, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Arts at UDG in Podgorica, will speak. During this event, Aleksandar Bečanović will present his latest three books: “The Mountain Eagle,” “Contempt,” and “Three Vertebrae More.”
About Aleksandar Bečanović’s Work
“Bečanović’s work in recent years best illustrates the paths of artistic creation he follows and how he manages to unite seemingly incompatible elements in all areas of his interest: theory and narrative where everything harmonizes and complements each other. The blend of film, theater, painting, prose, and poetry is the main characteristic of his creativity.”
“Bečanović’s work certainly ranks among the most original phenomena of contemporary Montenegrin literature. There are two key outcomes of Bečanović’s poetics: metatheoretical, essayistic ‘decadent prosody’ (Disorder) in the best Barthesian tradition and a dynamic, often genre-defined, cinematic approach. In Bečanović’s work, these two registers (theory and film) are in constant tension, mutual cancellation, and complementation. Even in Bečanović’s non-fictional texts, such as ‘Three Vertebrae More,’ a work dealing with a meticulous analysis of the stylistic procedures and painting motifs of Dominique Ingres, the madness and passion of theory are periodically suspended at their peak, only to transform into a puritanically reduced, almost gothic cinematic interlude,” Vujošević emphasizes.
He notes that following Bečanović’s interpretations of Ingres, for example, one often feels as if suddenly drawn into an almost haunted greenish, liminal atmosphere of a museum from old 1970s documentaries where, through the camera’s eye, one gradually approaches a large canvas, and in close-up and dramatic music, an overlooked, astonishing detail suddenly stands out, turning the art history lesson into a tense gothic novel.
“There is probably no one in contemporary Montenegrin literature who has succeeded, like Bečanović, in imbuing theory with the dynamism of fiction and fiction with the self-understanding of theory. His work simultaneously retains something of baroque excess and iconoclastic reformation.”
About the Author
Aleksandar Bečanović (born in 1971 in Nikšić) is a Montenegrin poet, writer, translator mainly of film theory from English, literary and film critic, and screenwriter. He is the author of several books and the recipient of many awards. In 2002, he received the “Risto Ratković” award for the best book of poetry in Montenegro, and in 2017, he won the European Prize for Literature. The same year, he was also a candidate for the July 13 Award. His novel “The Mountain Eagle” was shortlisted for the “Meša Selimović” award.
The event will be open to the public.