BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – Kitsch or an extraordinary piece of art? It depends on who you ask.
The Serbian president took part in the unveiling on Wednesday night of a grand monument to a medieval monk and a historical leader, who has come under fire from critics who call him oversized and kitsch.
President Aleksandar Vucic’s allies say the 23-meter-tall (75-meter) bronze sculpture of the bronze of legendary Serbian state founder Stefan Nemanja on a gilded egg-shaped pedestal in central Belgrade will be a new landmark in the Serbian capital. .
Opponents consider the monument to be a megalomaniacal and expensive symbol of Vucic’s populist and autocratic rule, which should be removed.
Vucic told a crowd of several thousand of his supporters, who kept no social distance in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, that the “beautiful” statue is a “masterpiece of art” that is a symbol of Serbian statehood and unity.
He said that all those who “dream of removing it” will not succeed, because they represent “the anchor of the entire Serbian nation.”
Commentators on social media called the sculpture “Saruman on a Kinder Egg”, and critics said the sculpture, made and designed in Russia, is incompatible with traditional Serbian architectural style and instead resembles large Soviet-era monuments.
An independent society of Serbian art conservatives has said the monument is an “ideological product of despotism” that has nothing to do with Serbia and Belgrade in the 21st century. Art historian Aida Corovic said that it is not a monument of Stefan Nemanja, but the “arrogance” of Vucic.
Belgrade’s deputy mayor, Goran Vesic, rejected the criticism, saying that the city’s past “is becoming one of the most beautiful places in the capital” and a new city center.
The monument was placed on a renovated square in front of the old Belgrade railway station. It is part of the Belgrade Waterfront project funded by a company in the United Arab Emirates that includes Dubai-style shopping malls and tall buildings.
The monument’s building has often been compared by critics to a hotly contested 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 has been declared a state secret, but independent estimates vary around 9 million euros (11 million dollars).