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Evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist Avant-GardeArchitectureJelena BogdanovićIowa State University, jelenab@iastate.edu

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Evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist Avant-Garde Architecture

AbstractThe Byzantine legacy in modern architecture can be divided between a historicist, neo-Byzantine architecturalstyle and an active investigation of the potentials of the Byzantine for a modern, explicitly nontraditional,architecture. References to Byzantium in avantgarde Eastern European architecture of the 1920s employed amodernist interpretation of the Byzantine concept of space that evoked a mode of “medieval” experience andcreative practice rather than direct historical quotation. The avant-garde movement of Zenitism, a prominentvisionary avant-garde movement in the Balkans, provides a case study in the ways immaterial aspects ofByzantine architecture infiltrated modernism and moved it beyond an academic, reiterative formalism. Byexamining the visionary architectural design for the Zeniteum, the Zenitist center, in this article, I aim toidentify how references to Byzantium were integrated in early twentieth-century Serbian avant-gardearchitecture and to address broader questions about interwar modernism. In the 1920s, architects,architectural historians, and promoters of architecture came to understand the Byzantine concept of space inways that architects were able to use in distinctly non-Byzantine architecture. I will trace the ways Zenitismengaged the Byzantine architectural construct of total design, in which structure joins spirituality, and relatedphilosophical concepts of meaning and form derived from both Byzantine and avant-garde architecture. Thisreassessment of Zenitism, an Eastern European architectural movement often placed on the margins of thehistory of modern architecture, has broad implications for our understanding of the relationship betweentradition and modernism.

DisciplinesArchitectural History and Criticism | Byzantine and Modern Greek

CommentsThis article is from Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75 (2016): 299-317, doi:10.1525/jsah.2016.75.3.299. Posted with permission.

This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/arch_pubs/78

Evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist Avant-GardeArchitecture

jelena bogdanovicIowa State University

The Byzantine legacy in modern architecture canbe divided between a historicist, neo-Byzantinearchitectural style and an active investigation of

the potentials of the Byzantine for a modern, explicitly non-traditional, architecture. References to Byzantium in avant-garde Eastern European architecture of the 1920s employeda modernist interpretation of the Byzantine concept ofspace that evoked a mode of “medieval” experience and cre-ative practice rather than direct historical quotation. Theavant-garde movement of Zenitism, a prominent visionaryavant-garde movement in the Balkans, provides a case studyin the ways immaterial aspects of Byzantine architecture in-filtrated modernism and moved it beyond an academic, reit-erative formalism. By examining the visionary architecturaldesign for the Zeniteum, the Zenitist center, in this article,I aim to identify how references to Byzantium were inte-grated in early twentieth-century Serbian avant-garde archi-tecture and to address broader questions about interwarmodernism. In the 1920s, architects, architectural histori-ans, and promoters of architecture came to understand theByzantine concept of space in ways that architects were ableto use in distinctly non-Byzantine architecture. I will tracethe ways Zenitism engaged the Byzantine architectural con-struct of total design, in which structure joins spirituality,and related philosophical concepts of meaning and form de-rived from both Byzantine and avant-garde architecture.This reassessment of Zenitism, an Eastern European archi-tectural movement often placed on the margins of the

history of modern architecture, has broad implications forour understanding of the relationship between tradition andmodernism.1

The Byzantine Legacy in Early Twentieth-CenturySerbian Architecture

The neo-Byzantine style was one of numerous eclectic his-torical styles developed in the nineteenth century and widelyused in European architecture by the 1920s. Architects andarchitectural historians turned to Byzantine architecture asa source of inspiration out of sociopolitical and theologicalconcerns as well as aesthetic preferences.2 Religious, institu-tional, and palace buildings across Europe incorporated“typical” formal elements from Byzantine Christian Ortho-dox churches, particularly large and prominent domes andmonumental interior decoration in mosaics or frescoes withreligious figurative themes (Figure 1).3 Architects of thisperiod were inspired by Hagia Sophia and its restoration,despite the fact that many of them had not personally experi-enced the church or studied its architecture. Byzantinevaulted spaces inspired architects and engineers who devel-oped new aesthetics for modern building types.

Byzantium’s association with Greek roots, Roman imperialtraditions, the Balkans, and the Eastern Mediterranean causedWestern Europeans to see it as “Oriental,” as regressivelyprimitive and underdeveloped, hierarchically less significant,more unstable, andmore decadent than theGothic.4 Ironically,this essentially colonial attitude allowed a reevaluation of theByzantine legacy. In nineteenth-century France, a group ofradical architects and architectural historians, including HenriLabrouste and Félix Duban, promoted Byzantine architectureas a kind of avant-garde mode.5 According to their theory, theByzantine was the “new Greek” (néo-Grec) because it formeda transition between academic classical antiquity and its revival

299

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75, no. 3 (September 2016),299–317, ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2016 by the Societyof Architectural Historians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests forpermission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University ofCalifornia Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints, or via email: jpermissions@ucpress.edu. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2016.75.3.299.

during the Renaissance. They associated Byzantium’s criticalperiod of unpredictability and disjunction with modern life,similarly a period of constant change and transition.

In Central and Eastern Europe, as in other parts ofEurope, the academic revival of Byzantine architecture wasdivided between romantic, unconventional modes of creativeexpression, often lacking historical accuracy, and structuraland aesthetic qualities useful for the development of modernarchitecture.6 In the Balkans, where Byzantine medievalchurches survived, Byzantine architecture could have been atangible architectural and cultural heritage rather than aproduct of the distant and exotic East, as it was in France orGreat Britain. In the newly established Kingdom of Serbs,Croats, and Slovenes (1918–29) enthusiasm for historic andsocial rebuilding through architecture gave rise to a peculiar“Serbo-Byzantine” style that became the official nationalstyle (Figure 2).7 This style, whichWestern Europeans couldhave considered Oriental, was based on the neo-Byzantinerevival found in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in particularin Vienna.

From the mid-nineteenth century onward, a strong inter-est in Byzantine art at the University of Vienna informedacademic architecture in the Austro-Hungarian Empire,especially that of architect Baron Theophilus Edvard vonHansen (1813–91), a professor at the University of Vienna.Hansen remains best known for his neoclassical design ofthe Academy of Athens, the University of Athens, and the

National Library in Athens—the “Trilogy.” His knowledgeof Byzantine and Islamic architecture in Attica was matchedby his deep understanding of German neo-RomanesqueRundbogen and neo-Gothic Spitzbogen styles.8 These neo-medieval hybrid styles provided him with an academic routefor the development of a Viennese neo-Byzantine style,which was essentially an imaginative combination of variousByzantine and non-Byzantine elements, including some fromIslamic and Jewish architecture. Hansen had several Serbianstudents, including Svetozar Ivackovic, Jovan Ilkic, DušanŽivanovic, and Vladimir Nikolic.9 After finishing their stud-ies, these architects returned home, bringing with them theViennese academic neo-Byzantine style, which became espe-cially prominent in Serbia between 1880 and 1914. This styleprovided the foundations for the Serbo-Byzantine nationalstyle of the 1920s created by Serbian architects, some ofwhom had never left Serbia.10 As Carl Schorske has demon-strated, Byzantine architecture remained exotic and foreignin Vienna, which meant the neo-Byzantine style simulta-neously transformed and rejected its traditional cultural asso-ciations.11 Paradoxically, the ideological agenda of theViennese neo-Byzantine style inflected the Serbo-Byzantinearchitecture of the 1920s.

Following the major academic trends in Europe, Serbianarchitects included formal references to the ecclesiastical ar-chitecture of Serbia and the Byzantine Empire, combiningOrthodox Christian religiosity and culture. They claimed

Figure 1 Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus

of Miletus, Hagia Sophia, 532–37, Istanbul,

Turkey (Oscar Wulff, Altchristliche und

byzantinische Kunst [Berlin-Neubabelsberg:

Alademische Verlagsgesselschaft

Athenaion, 1914], plate XXII).

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that the Serbo-Byzantine style reflected the identity of thenew kingdom, especially its Serbian territories.12 As a result,idiosyncratic “medieval-modernist” Serbo-Byzantine solu-tions were used both for major civic projects as well as forchurches.13 The Serbo-Byzantine style, like its precedent inVienna, was essentially an imaginative construct that usedvarious Byzantine, vernacular Serbian, and academicWesternEuropean architectural elements as anachronistic decorativetools. By the 1920s, Belgrade was an important regional cen-ter for Byzantine historical studies because of the strong his-tory department at the University of Belgrade, the work ofwhich was complemented by archaeological and architecturalresearch into Byzantine heritage in the Serbian territories.14

Seminal books on Byzantine art and architecture, such asOscar Wulff’s Die Byzaninische Kunst (1914; second edition1924) circulated widely.15 Serbian architecture students wentto Italy to study Byzantine art and architecture, such as SaintMark’s Basilica in Venice.16 In 1927, the second InternationalCongress of Byzantine Studies was held in Belgrade.17Whileneo-Byzantine architecture was officially promoted in Serbia,however, academic circles in Serbia did not critically examine

it with regard to its roots in Western European sociopoliticalthought.

In 1920s Serbia, historicist Serbo-Byzantine architecturewas not universally accepted. Neo-Byzantine architecturewas belittled as one of many “archaeological” revivals andcriticized for being imitative and derivative, thus defying twoof the major imperatives of modernism—originality andauthenticity.18 As I will demonstrate, a region-wide interest inByzantine architecture also inspired avant-garde architecturein Serbia. The theoretical platform of Zenitist avant-gardethought incorporated the Byzantine past, the Balkans, andChristian Orthodoxy as part of its program.

Zenitism and Architecture

In the 1920s Zenitism was the major visionary avant-gardemovement in the Balkans.19 The name Zenitism derives fromthe word zenith—meaning the highest point in the celestialsphere directly above the observer—revealing the group’sambition to situate itself high in contemporary avant-gardediscourse of the post–World War I world. Zenitism was

Figure 2 Svetozar Ivackovic, Petrovic

Chapel, 1893, New Cemetery, Belgrade,

Serbia (photo courtesy Aleksandar Kadijevic).

EVOCAT IONS OF BYZANT IUM IN ZEN I T I S T AVANT -GARDE ARCH I T EC TURE 301

founded by poet, literary critic, and polemicist LjubomirMicic (1895–1971) in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1921 (Figure 3).20

In the same year, Micic published “Čovek i umetnost” (Manand art), which served as the Zenitist manifesto, and launchedthe international journal Zenit to promote the mission ofthe movement.21 The initial group of Zenitists was small, butits members aimed to create an international presence fromthe movement’s inception. The first Zenitist manifesto wassigned by Micic, who then lived in Zagreb; by Belgrade nov-elist, literary critic, and film artist Boško Tokin; and byFrench-German poet and writer Ivan Goll.22 Similarly, theeditorial staff of Zenit included members living in other partsof Europe: Boško Tokin in Belgrade, Micic’s brother BrankoVe Poljanski in Prague, and Rastko Petrovic in Paris.

From the beginning of Zenitism, however, Micic remainedthe central figure of themovement. Conflicts withMicic led tofrequent changes in the group’s membership and shifts in theeditorial board of the journal, which Micic edited alone afterMay 1922. In January 1923, the Zenitists were forced out ofZagreb as a result ofMicic’s critique ofCroatian culture, whichhe mocked as a pseudo-Europeanized imitative confection.23

In 1924 the group established a new center in Belgrade, where,after a hiatus of eight months, the members continued pub-lishing their journal. They remained active until 1926, whenthe group dissolved after the Serbian authorities threatened toshut it down because of its open embrace of Bolshevik Marx-ism.During the five years of its existence (1921–26), the groupattracted more than 150 members and collaborators. Amongthe collaborators were architects who would later becomeprominent in the history of modern architecture, such asWalter Gropius, El Lissitzky, Theo van Doesburg, AdolfLoos, Erich Mendelsohn, and Vladimir Tatlin.24

The Zenitists promoted their work in Serbia and interna-tionally. In April 1924, they organizedThe First Zenitist Interna-tional Exhibition of NewArt in Belgrade, and they also presentedtheir works at an international exhibition in Bucharest. In 1926,they exhibited at the Moscow show The Revolutionary Art oftheWest, organized by the State Academy of Art Studies VOKS(All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Coun-tries) (Figure 4). Zenitism was the only avant-garde movementin the Balkans with a manifesto and a journal,Zenit, which overthe course of five years was published monthly. Micic insistedthat authors for the journal should express themselves in theirchosen languages as carriers of identity and culture; thus, Zenitpublished texts by him and others in a dozen languages, includ-ing Esperanto. Zenit was distributed internationally, reachingbeyond Europe to museums and galleries in New York andSan Francisco.25

Ljubomir Micic, the major force behind Zenitism, was ahighly controversial figure.26 Born into a modest Serbianfamily in Sošice (now part of Croatia) in 1895, Micic was

interested in theater in his formative years, but he went on toreceive a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Universityof Zagreb in 1918. His early interest in theater and philoso-phy informed his interest in total design, which combinedarchitecture, visual arts, industrial and graphic design, theaterproduction, poetry, and urban planning, erasing the bound-aries between these fields.27

Micic’s personal background reveals a deep understandingof neo-Byzantine culture and architecture but also divergen-ces from these. While he was a great promoter of architec-ture, Micic was not a trained architect. He certainly knewabout Hagia Sophia, given that he made references to thechurch in his texts, but the building itself was inaccessible tohim, as it was to most Europeans from modest backgrounds.Micic was familiar with Byzantine architecture simply be-cause Byzantine tradition occupied such an important role inSerbian culture. He was born into a Serbian minority in the

Figure 3 Ljubomir Micic (1895–1971) in 1925 (Vidosava Golubovic and

Irina Subotic, eds., Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,

2008]; courtesy Irina Subotic).

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Croatia-Slavonia region of the Kingdom of Hungary, whichwas later incorporated into Croatia. In this poorest region ofthe Balkans, known as the Military Frontier, Serbs wereregularly recruited to defend the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire against the Ottoman Empire.28 In thispart of the world, theWestern European cultural elite, whichwas aligned with Roman Catholic Habsburg culture, consid-ered impoverished Serbs “a backward and inferior race” andtheir Christian Orthodox faith primitive.29 Micic’s oppositiontoWestern European norms, including neo-Byzantine archi-tecture, aligned with his attempts to reverse the negativeassociations of Byzantium, the Balkans, Orthodox Christianity,and Slavs with backwardness.30

Micic wrote the main Zenitist manifesto, “Čovek i umet-nost,” in 1921 and subsequent manifestoes in 1922 and

1926.31 These antiwar, humanist manifestoes argued for anew art centered on man and humanity, or what he called“man-art.”32 By making recurrent references to Christ as anideal man and by reversing the major Christian dogma of theIncarnation of God,Micicproclaimed Zenitism as a new faithand stated that “man-art” is a Zenitist “theophany,” of whichthe only true creator is man himself.33 In 1924, in the firstissue of Zenit published in Belgrade, Micic also wrote “Zeni-tozofija ili Energetika stvaralackog zenitizma: No made inSerbia” (Zenitosophy or energetics of creative Zenitism:No made in Serbia), which provided a kind of theory ofZenitist art.34 This radical theory is based not on scholasticphilosophy but on creative energetics, “a synthesis of allphenomena in the highest and essential forms of life andworlds.”35 In the first manifesto, Micic had emphasized that

Figure 4 Zenit displayed at the exhibition

The Revolutionary Art of the West, Moscow,

1926 (Vidosava Golubovic and Irina Subotic,

eds., Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade: Narodna

Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy Irina

Subotic).

EVOCAT IONS OF BYZANT IUM IN ZEN I T I S T AVANT -GARDE ARCH I T EC TURE 303

one “cannot ‘understand’ Zenitism unless you feel it.”36

By 1924, he defined “man-art” as the essential concept ofZenitism, as “zenit-art” devoid of superficial symbolism andaestheticism. Micic presented the ten principles of Zenitismin the form of the Ten Commandments; the Zenitist secondprinciple highlights zenith-art as everything related to whatMicic called unspoiled, pure, and vital “barbaric genius”(barbarogenije).37 In 1926, in “Manifest varvarima duha i mislina svom kontinentima” (Manifesto to the barbarians of spiritand thought on all continents), written in the language of theOctober Revolution, Micic proclaimed Zenitism a global ar-tistic movement, a revolution that would “de-civilize”Europeon the model of barbarogenije.38 Therefore, Micic rejectedany form of traditional and religious authority and pro-claimed in the Zenitist manifestoes that modern spirituality isnot based on religious faith.Micic advocated for an emotionaland expressive spirituality in Zenitism, a spirituality that wasliberated from colonialist Western European constructs ofcivilization. This spirituality could be accessed through thecollective “barbaric genius” that voiced the “new identity cat-egory [of] a confident and liberated minority culture.”39 As Iwill show, this “new primitive” Zenitist agenda related to the“neo-Byzantine” on ideological, philosophical, and architec-tural levels.40

Architecture was prominent in the forty-three issues ofthe journal Zenit. The Zenitists’ promotion of architectureevinces their experimentation in the arts and their quest forcreative innovations that facilitated avant-garde discourse.For example, in 1921, Zenitist Dragan Aleksic published aDada-inspired poetic interpretation of Vladimir Tatlin’swork.41 An article about Tatlin’s Monument to the ThirdInternational (1920) that appeared in the February 1922 issueof Zenitmay have been the first publication of the monumentoutside Soviet Russia (Figure 5).42 In 1922 an entire doubleissue of the journal edited by El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburgwas dedicated to new Russian art and architecture.43 Subse-quent issues contained articles on new types of construction,works by Adolf Loos and Erich Mendelsohn; the Pavillon del’Esprit Nouveau, by Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant,and the Russian pavilion, by Konstantin Melnikov, at the1925 Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris; the RosenbergHouse, by Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren;and Van Eesteren’s winning design for the Unter den Lindenin Berlin.44 In 1926, Zenit provided book reviews of eightBauhaus publications, including Walter Gropius’s Interna-tional Architecture, Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, andLászló Moholy-Nagy’s Painting, Photography, Film, thuspromoting a holistic approach to architecture and designnot bound by traditional artistic disciplines.45

In 1921, in the fifth issue of Zenit, Micic published a textby Zenitist Boško Tokin, who wrote from Rome about thedome of Saint Peter’s Basilica as a paradigmatic example of

historical architecture of extraordinary impact. Tokin notedhow, given its continual construction and reconstruction overprolonged periods, the dome could be viewed as simulta-neously Roman, Byzantine, and Renaissance, an argumentthat hinted at the Zenitist position that the “new Byzantine”style could dissolve traditional historical and geographic divi-sions.46 Tokin emphasized the way the Byzantine dome com-bines painting, sculpture, relief, architecture, music, poetry,and visual poetry. The dome of Saint Peter’s in Rome becamea paradigm for what Byzantine architecture meant to theZenitists.47 Micic’s interest in the Byzantine concept of spacemanifested in his focus on monumental reinterpretations ofthe dome and the wall. For him, the Byzantine dome is a pureform that should be the “head” of the building.48

In “Beograd bez arhitekture” (Belgrade without architec-ture), published in the November/December 1925 issue ofZenit, Micic wrote about the essence of architecture as ameeting of heaven and earth, referring directly to the philos-ophy and form of Byzantine architecture as the spirit of thenew architecture. He made clear references to fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Serbian Byzantine architecture andpainting as the “only monuments of true architecture” andexpanded on his positive assessment of traditional vernacularand monastic architecture in the Balkans as sources for mod-ern architecture.49 Micic highlighted what he saw to be theimportant spiritual aspects of Byzantine architecture, ideaspresented in the designs for a Zenitist center, the Zeniteum.

Zenitist Reinterpretations of the ByzantineDome and Wall

The origins of the Zeniteum cannot be determined withcertainty, but there was a greater emphasis on modern archi-tecture in the Zenitist journal after the transition to Belgradein 1924. Because Micic saw the Zeniteum as both an expres-sion of and the essence of the Zenitist movement, I would as-sert that the Zeniteumwas originallyMicic’s idea. In the spiritof the Zenitist manifesto’s declaration that “Zenitism is theidea of all arts,” “beyond dimensions,” and equal to “eter-nity,” it seems likely that the Zeniteumwas a visionary projectand never meant to be built.50 Two diagrammatic drawingsfor the Zeniteum were created by the only architect memberof the Zenitist group, Micic’s protégé Jo Klek (born JosifSeissel, 1904–87).51 Micic published the two designs for theZeniteum in Zenit in December 1924, the same year Klekstarted his architecture studies at the University of Belgrade(Figures 6 and 7).52 In architectural form and essence, theZeniteum projects relate to the Zenitist programmaticstriving for “man-art” as a “limitless circle that starts nowhereand ends nowhere” and is “centered in Zenit.”53 The use ofthe dome for the Zeniteum reflects this notion of circle andcenter and evokes Byzantine solutions. In that regard, both

304 J S A H | 7 5 . 3 | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 6

designs differed from other Zenitist architectural designs andinstallations, such as Klek’s design for a Villa Zenit, publishedin the October 1925 issue of Zenit (Figure 8).

The designs for the Zeniteum were inspired by central-ized sacred space, like that found in Byzantine architecture,but the nonimitative character of Zenitist architecture pre-cluded the use of more specific references to Byzantinestyle.54 Klek’s diagrammatic drawings show the influence ofByzantine, medieval Romanesque, and ancient Roman ar-chitecture, which relied on massive, load-bearing masonrywalls and dome structures. The concentric circular drums

crowned by a dome in the first Zeniteum drawing (seeFigure 6) suggest a reference to the hierarchy of Neopla-tonic thought, such as that of Dionysius the Areopagite,whose philosophical thought influenced medieval Europeanarchitecture.55 In his 1924 statement of Zenitosophy, Micicposited the ten principles of creative Zenitism by proclaiminga new God, “art-man,” and defined Zenitist theory in termsof hierarchy and symbolism. Zenitism is the “ordering of allhuman creation, economy of collective feelings, and synthesisof all individual forces into a big circle of the whole.”56 TheZenitist vertical dimension connects earth, sun, and man (the

Figure 5 Cover page of Zenit, no. 11,

February 1922 (Vidosava Golubovic and Irina

Subotic, eds., Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade:

Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy

Irina Subotic).

EVOCAT IONS OF BYZANT IUM IN ZEN I T I S T AVANT -GARDE ARCH I T EC TURE 305

Figure 6 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Zeniteum I,

1924 (Zenit, no. 35 [Dec. 1924], n.p., in Zenit

1921–1926, ed. Vidosava Golubovic and Irina

Subotic [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,

2008]; courtesy Irina Subotic).

Figure 7 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Zeniteum II,

1924 (Zenit, no. 35 [Dec. 1924], n.p., in Zenit

1921–1926, ed. Vidosava Golubovic and Irina

Subotic [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,

2008]; courtesy Irina Subotic).

newGod); it is “a metacosmic triangle, the only Zenitist sym-bol.”57 As I see it, the pseudo-Byzantine dome of the firstZeniteum is an expression of the “circle of the whole” thatembraces all individual forces. Its stairs, framed by roundRoman-Byzantine arches, may evoke religious intellectualand spiritual quests or the pilgrimage steps on Mount Sinai(Figure 9). The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a seminal Byzantinetext by John Klimakos, may have been another inspiration.58

According toMicic, Zenitism is a magical and electric intervalbetween the microcosmos and the metacosmos—betweenman and the zenith.59 The Zeniteum illustrates “the connec-tion between earth and heaven, heart with heart, soul withsoul.”60

The second design for the Zeniteum is another interpre-tation of Zenitist architectonic concepts. It has an axial com-position of three superimposed, vertically stacked domes of

diminishing size intersected by vertical and horizontal planes(see Figure 7). The domes are articulated by rows of arcades.In this project, a single dome on the very top, without struc-tural divisions, is superimposed on the structural frame of thebottom two segments. The cross serves as an organizing prin-ciple of the entire design, with three domes set in three differ-ent vertical layers. The attenuated domes of this seconddesign might have been inspired by Bruno Taut’s 1914Glass Pavilion (Glashaus) or his visionary architectural draw-ings for the City Crown (Die Stadtkrone) and the House ofHeaven (Haus des Himmels) in Alpine Architecture (1919)(Figures 10 and 11).61 Taut’s Glashaus and Stadtkroneconcepts highlighted the use of glass and polychromy in asearch for reconciliation between spirituality and modern ar-chitecture. Taut returned to the medieval past as a compre-hensive idealism, with the idea that the Gothic cathedral

Figure 8 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Villa Zenit,

1924–25, drawing in India ink, pencil, and

watercolor on paper, 39.3 ´ 29.4 cm

(National Museum Belgrade; also published

in Zenit, no. 36 [Oct. 1925], n.p.; photo

courtesy National Museum Belgrade).

EVOCAT IONS OF BYZANT IUM IN ZEN I T I S T AVANT -GARDE ARCH I T EC TURE 307

provided the highest architectural quality embedded in amythic “nonnational” European culture without borders andgovernments.62

Rather than modeling Zenitism on the Gothic cathe-dral, however, Micic advocated reference to a Byzantineparadigm.63 As Micic postulated in the first issue of Zenit,the Zeniteum united the immaterial microcosmic and mac-rocosmic realms and put man in the center of the macro-cosm, echoing the sequential ordering of triplets in theByzantine concept of earthly and heavenly hierarchies thatare rooted in Neoplatonic pseudo-Dionysian philosophy.64

Yet Micic despised equally the decadence of Europeanbourgeois culture and the monumental “tasteless” decora-tion of Byzantine churches, an attitude reflected in the twodesigns for the Zeniteum, which did not employ any for-mal decorative features of Byzantine churches. He la-mented, “It is quite rare that [architects] work with thepure arch of the ‘Byzantine’ dome, which could have beenvery successfully used in contemporary urbanism in recent[modern] architecture.”65

In his critique of Belgrade’s architecture, Micic wrote ofthe “Byzantine” space in an unnamed monastery in thewoods near Belgrade, on the fringes of the historical andgeographic Byzantine reach. In describing this monastery asa kind of “otherworldly town,” Micic seemed to be opposedto the prevailing Western European city and its bourgeoisand capitalist political economy. Micic claimed that themonastery church “represents a completely purified form:the zenith of architecture!”His description of its simple white

Figure 9 Pilgrimage steps, Mount Sinai, Egypt (Kurt Weitzmann Archive,

Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University).

Figure 10 Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition,

Cologne, 1914 (photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Pavilion#/

media/File:Taut_Glass_Pavilion_exterior_1914.jpg).

Figure 11 Bruno Taut, House of Heaven, 1920 (Bruno Taut, Frühlicht,

1920, p. 109).

308 J S A H | 7 5 . 3 | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 6

geometrical planes and domes, “devoid of Byzantine-Greekdecoration and tasteless ornamentation,” indicates he wasreferring to the Rakovica Monastery, a major spiritual center(Figure 12).66 This monastery, possibly built in the four-teenth century, is remarkable for its two domes on drums, a

possible inspiration for domed elements in the visionary proj-ects for the Zeniteum.

The Zeniteum may also have been inspired by RudolfSteiner’s Goetheanum, as the names and design conceptsmight suggest (Figure 13).67 Like the Zeniteum, the better-known Goetheanum borrowed from both avant-garde andByzantine architecture. Both projects used large domes and,in particular, the unusual intersection of several domes. Thefirst Goetheanum (1913–19) appeared as an axial compositionof two intersecting domes of unequal size (Figure 14).68

Their form resembled the vaulting system of Hagia Sophia,where the massive central dome is flanked by two smallersemidomes along the east–west axis, or the two unequallysized domes of the Church of Archangel Michael in thetwelfth-century monastery Pantokrator (today ZeyrekCamii) in Istanbul (Figure 15). The first Zeniteum proj-ect had a massive single, stepped dome, yet the second iter-ation revealed an experimentation with domical structuresand verticality, with its three attenuated domes stacked ontop of one another.

Jo Klek’s designs for the Zeniteum were never realized.Another of Klek’s interwar designs, the Church of SaintsCyril and Methodius in Sušak, Croatia (Figure 16), which

Figure 12 Rakovica Monastery near Belgrade, Serbia, possibly

fourteenth century, mentioned in text in the sixteenth century (photo

courtesy Ljubomir Milanovic).

Figure 13 Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum I, Dornach, Switzerland, 1913–19

(Benzinger © Rudolf Steiner Archive).

Figure 14 Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum I, Dornach, Switzerland, 1913–19,

floor plan and cross section (© Goetheanum Dokumentation).

EVOCAT IONS OF BYZANT IUM IN ZEN I T I S T AVANT -GARDE ARCH I T EC TURE 309

also was never built, followed Zenitist ideas, incorporatingthe evocative capacity of Byzantine architecture as Klek did inthe first Zeniteum project (see Figure 6). This centrallyplanned church with a massive dome combined what archi-tectural historian Vesna Mikic has identified as “Interna-tional” and “Mediterranean” architecture without explicitreferences to medieval Byzantine architecture.69 The projectincorporated topographical elements and open terraces,which also occurred in the design for the second Zeniteum(see Figure 7). Cyril andMethodius were Byzantine saints andmissionaries who devised the first alphabet for the Slavicpeople, which was crucial to their cultural development. In thisdesign, Klek combined references to the saints and a pedago-gical mission, advancing its ontological and epistemologicalqualities, which were critical to the Zenitist movement.70

In the search for a “nonstereotypical”monumentality inmodern architecture, devoid of academic and historicizedromantic references, Klek’s two designs for the Zeniteumcreate architectural monumentality through massive wallsand domes, which is typical of the Byzantine idiom. Bothschemes for the Zeniteum have an undecorated form, puri-fied of excessive exterior decoration and congruent withMicic’s appraisal of the white, clear planar surfaces of themonastery church in Serbia.71 The three-part verticalorganization of the second Zeniteum suggests the triplets(tripartite ordering) of the Middle Byzantine church,

topped by a free dome. The round-arched perforations ofthe solids suggest permeability and the dynamics of thestructure of medieval walls. What Steiner called “ethericwalls” (spiritual walls) can be seen in the best-preserved ex-amples of Middle Byzantine architecture, the Greek mon-astery churches of Hosios Loukas and Daphni.72 The walltexture of these churches resembles the “etheric walls”found in Steiner’s first Goetheanum and also in the designfor the second Zeniteum (Figure 17). All have tripartitegeometric and textural organization of surfaces, from asolid ground level through a porous, “dematerialized”middle zone crowned by a dome, which Micic highlights asa pure, spiritual form and the head of the building.73

The triple domes of the second Zeniteum evoke thethree-stepped design process itself, reflecting a Neoplatonicconcept. This concept, also used in Byzantine architecture,underlies the creation of architecture in a threefold process:first, an idea forms in the mind of an architect; second, theidea acquires its form and materialization in the materialworld through total design; and third, the idea is ultimatelydematerialized as the beholder moves toward the spiritualrealm through the experience of space. The Byzantinesexplained this process in the connection between heavenand earth; similarly, Micic wrote about a spiritual connec-tion between earth and heaven through architecture andurban design.74

Figure 15 Church of Archangel Michael in

the Pantokrator Monastery, Constantinople,

1136, cross section showing the two

intersecting domes (drawing by Heidi

Reburn, delineated after Jean Ebersolt, Les

églises de Constantinople [Paris: E. Leroux,

1913], plate XLIV).

Figure 16 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Church of

Saints Cyril and Methodius, Sušak, Croatia,

1931, ground plan (Vesna Mikic, “Zajednicki

projekti arhitekata Seissela i Picmana; uz

Seisselovu skicu ‘Putujuci grad’ iz 1932.

godine,” Prostor 18, no. 2 [Dec. 2010],

348–59).

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Structure and Spirituality in Zenitist Architecture

To understand the relationship between Zenitist modernismand Byzantine architecture, it is important to understand therole of conceptual design inZenitist architectural practices.Theunbuilt, visionaryproject for the secondZeniteumhasmemora-ble aesthetics. One of the basic features of Byzantine architec-ture, as exemplified by Hagia Sophia, is an aesthetics of

“dematerialization.” This is evident in the weightless lofti-ness of Hagia Sophia’s interior space, which is pierced bynumerous windows and topped by a dome with a lower ringof windows that make the dome appear to be floating inlight, as if suspended from high above (see Figure 1). Thiseffect is complemented by the lacelike design of visiblestructural elements such as columns, usually placed on topof arches, the most fragile structural parts of the building.75

The second Zeniteum, with its “racked” thin orthogonalplanes on which the domes are “stacked,” defies construc-tional logic but also reflects the nonmaterial, spiritual qual-ity of Zenitist architecture.

Zenitist architecture evoked the Byzantine architecturalconstructs of total design and dematerialization aesthetics indiagrammatic visionary drawings. These drawings consis-tently emphasize the “Byzantine” dichotomy of wall anddome rather than the trabeated system ofWestern Europeanarchitecture, providing opportunities for altering the prevail-ing academic architectural canons of the early twentiethcentury.76 The subtle evocations of Byzantium in Zenitistarchitecture, instead of a rigid adoption of Byzantine archi-tectural elements, suggest how Micic and Klek moved be-yond the Byzantine-medieval past in their novel solutions.

The Zenitists also discussed what they termed the “art ofstructure” (konstrukcija) and the “architecture of painting,”which were critical aspects of other modernist movements.77

El Lissitzky’s proun (an acronym from the Russian for “projectfor the affirmation of the new”) had a strong influenceon Micic’s philosophy and Klek’s work (Figure 18). Lissitzky

Figure 18 El Lissitzky, Proun Space, 1923 (reconstruction 1965; Stedelijk

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands).

Figure 17 Comparative analysis of the tripartite organization of walls. Left: Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum I, Dornach, Switzerland, 1913–19 (©

Goetheanum Dokumentation). Center: Church of the Mother of God, Hosios Loukas Monastery, Greece, tenth century (author’s photo). Right: Jo Klek

(Josif Seissel), Zeniteum II, 1924 (Zenit, no. 35 [Dec. 1924], n.p., in Zenit 1921–1926, ed. Vidosava Golubovic and Irina Subotic [Belgrade: Narodna

Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy Irina Subotic).

EVOCAT IONS OF BYZANT IUM IN ZEN I T I S T AVANT -GARDE ARCH I T EC TURE 311

and Ilya Ehrenburg published an article on proun in Zenit,“Ruska nova umetnost” (Russian new art), that was criticalto the wider avant-garde networks of the 1920s and toZenitism (Figure 19).78 In their article, Lissitzky and Ehren-burg traced the development of new Russian art from iconpainting to suprematism and constructivism, from panel paint-ing to painting in space, and addressed the potential for artto create a new society on a grand scale.79 With his concept ofarbos (from artija-boja-slika, or paper-color-painting, translated

intoGerman as PaFaMa, from Papier-Farben-Malerei) of 1922,Micic conceived of painting as constructed of paper andcolor, as opposed to romantic mimetic notions of painting(Figure 20).80 Like Lissitzky’s proun, which Lissitzky defined asa “construction” (konstrukcija), Micic’s arbos was described as aconstruction. Similarly, in the 1920s Micic’s idea of a nonmi-metic practice shifted from painting to “dematerialized” archi-tecture, expressed as a composite of all arts (literature, music,plastic arts, and painting) (see Figures 4 and 20).

Figure 19 El Lissitzky, Construction

[= Proun], 1922 (Zenit, nos. 17/18 [Sept./Oct.

1922], n.p., in Zenit 1921–1926, ed. Vidosava

Golubovic and Irina Subotic [Belgrade:

Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy

Irina Subotic).

Figure 20 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), PaFaMa

[Papier-Farben-Malerei], 1922 (Vidosava

Golubovic and Irina Subotic, eds., Zenit 1921–

1926 [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,

2008]; courtesy Irina Subotic).

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The connections among the avant-gardes in Russia andSerbia were part of the wide search for new, nonimitative,socially engaged architecture, as indicated by the member-ship of the Zenitists in the short-lived Moscow-based Asso-ciation for New Architecture (ASNOVA), founded in 1923and dissolved in 1929.81 In 1926, the founders, NikolaiLadovsky and El Lissitzky, named LjubomirMicic as the onlyASNOVA representative from Yugoslavia and the Balkansamong seven activists for the new architecture; the otherswere Adolf Behne from Germany, Le Corbusier fromFrance, Mart Stam from Holland, Lundberg Holm fromthe United States, Emil Root from Switzerland, Karel Teigefrom Czechoslovakia, and Murayama from Japan.82

Like other avant-garde architectural groups, ASNOVAwas prolific in promoting ideas and visionary architecturalprojects, but its members rarely built.83 Led by Ladovsky,ASNOVA developed a rationalist approach in architecturebased on psychoanalytic methods, emphasizing investigationsof psychological and physiological perceptions of spacethrough conceptual compositional design and application ofconceptual design to specific architectural projects.84 Forboth the Zenitists and members of ASNOVA, space ratherthan structure formed the major element in architecturaldesign. Moreover, ASNOVA insisted on team projects notbased on the traditional master-and-apprentice model ofarchitectural training, in which students followed their pro-fessors’ guidance and suppressed their own creativity. Thisorganization of ASNOVAwork paralleled the societal aspira-tions of the newly formed Soviet Union. By contrast toASNOVA’s collectivism, Micic focused on the active socialrole of those Zenitist creative accomplishments that promoted

individualism. In his view, the individualism of a Zenitist’ssocially engaged creative process arose from within, not out-side, the artist. The Zenitists sought to create a society wherehumans would be at the center of a microcosmos in which thehighest circles would be art and philosophy.85

Micic insisted that all creation results from both the mys-tical (spiritual) and the intellectual. By making recurrent andprovocative use of Christological references and employingterminology usually reserved for the liturgical services of theOrthodox church, he attempted to combine modernism andreligion within the anti-European primitivism of Zenitist artand architecture. When Micic scheduled a Zenitist publicperformance in Zagreb in January 1923, he called the eventGreat Zenitist Vespers, the poster for which featured Tatlin’sMonument to the Third International and a call for theBalkanization of Europe (Figure 21).86 By making referenceto the vespers service in Byzantine-rite churches, which glo-rifies God the creator of the world, Micic similarly glorifiedZenitism as a “new religion” and a “new mysticism.”87 TheChristological references in his polemical texts emerged fromMicic’s consciousness of his Serbian-Byzantine-Orthodoxheritage, but the meaning of his religious references shouldbe sought in the culture of the Balkans rather than in thechurch itself. As a leftist and a Serbian nationalist, Micic em-braced the spiritual framework of his cultural background,but he failed to see that Zenitism as a “new religion” was dis-cordant with modernism.88 Ultimately, his attempts to com-bine modernism and religion and to promote the Zeniteumas a kind of new temple were destined for failure. In the end,even Lissitzky dismissed Zenitism as incompatible with mod-ernism, which denied any national or religious reference.89

Figure 21 Ljubomir Micic, poster for Great

Zenitist Vespers, Zagreb, 31 January 1923

(Vidosava Golubovic and Irina Subotic, eds.,

Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade: Narodna

Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy Irina

Subotic).

EVOCAT IONS OF BYZANT IUM IN ZEN I T I S T AVANT -GARDE ARCH I T EC TURE 313

Conclusion

Micic’s modernism emerged from his context—the Balkansand their Byzantine past. In a way typical of the scholarly re-ception of Balkan culture, Steven A. Mansbach maintainsthat Micic’s philosophy of Zenitism is rooted in the nativeprimitivism of the Balkans and of the Southern Slavs, widelyconsidered mystical and irrational.90 In academic discourse,the accomplishments of the Balkans have been perceived asdevoid of culture and history, and thus marginalized in schol-arly discussions and removed from “canonical” consider-ation.91 Yet Micic’s Byzantine-modernist connections werecrucially different from those in other parts of Europe. TheByzantine “archetype” in Zenitist modern architecture wasnot an idea meant to be replicated literally; rather, it was in-tended to evoke the spiritual essence of Byzantine architec-ture. Micic’s resistance to Western European colonization ofEastern Europe—its “close other” in Piotr Piotrowski’sterms—took the form of a turn to the architecture closely as-sociated with Byzantium.92

ForMicic, Slavs were the barbarogenije (the barbaric genius)who resisted the “cultivation” imposed by others and thus pre-served an uncorrupted “self” and spirituality beyond their in-tellectual, ideological, and socioeconomic realities.93 In hisview, barbarogenije could be a vehicle of new art and spiritualityin the “sixth continent,” the Balkans.94 As explained by IgorMarjanovic, growing up on the impoverished Military Fron-tier, surviving World War I, persecuted by the authorities inthe 1920s in both Croatia and Serbia, and thus displaced fromany obvious homeland,Micic evoked barbarogenije as a creativespace removed from traditional narratives and academic crea-tive disciplines.95 At the same time, barbarogenije was theavant-garde voice of the Zenitists and Serbs, who denouncedEurope, its tyranny, its colonization, and its geographic bor-ders. In the last issue ofZenit, published in 1926, just before thejournal was shut down by the government, Micic wrote:“Down with Europe! Down with today’s tyranny; down withthe exploitation of man over man; down with state borders.”96

Europe, he stated, was the “synonym for greedy capitalism andimperialism of the West (and therefore it also includes Amer-ica).”97 Europe was provoking the collapse of humanity, whilethe barbarians represented “the entire world proletariat.”98Hedescribed barbarogenije as the “sum of eternal, brutal forces,which rejuvenates humanity.”99 In a note, Micic added that“Zenitism is a son of the awakened Serbian genius.”100 Inthis last issue of Zenit, he clearly stated that the “Balkanizationof Europe” was not a fight against culture but a fight for a“new culture.”101 Micic asserted that Zenitists recognized bar-barogenije in the vitality of the Asian andBalkan people and thatthe “Balkanization of Europe” should be understood as the“barbarization of Europe” through barbarogenije. Micic’s Zeni-tist fight for the “Balkanization of Europe” in the 1920s argued

for the equal cultural treatment of Western Europe and its“close other” in the Balkans.102

In Zenitist architecture, Byzantine tradition and modern-ist avant-garde were intertwined in a way that defied theboundaries between modernity and tradition. By combiningthe spirit of “Byzantine” essence, El Lissitzky’s proun, andKlek’s arbos, Micic and the Zenitists created a diachronic cul-tural hybridization of “true newness” where everything cametogether: space, time, and society. They intended to breakfrom historical and geographic systematization in order tocreate an architecture resulting from ontological creativeprocesses. Zenitist “neo-Byzantine” provided a platform forthe transition from Eurocentric modernism to Zenitism.Far from the historicist neo-Byzantine architectural stylethat originated in Vienna, Zenitism used evocations of theByzantine to create a unique anddynamicByzantine-modernistarchitecture.

Jelena Bogdanovicć, coeditor of Political Landscapes of Capital Cities(Colorado University Press, 2016) andOn the Very Edge: Modernismand Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia (1918–1941) (Leuven University Press, 2014), specializes in Byzantine,Slavic, Western European, and Islamic architecture in the Balkansand the Mediterranean. jelenab@iastate.edu; bogdanovicjelena@gmail.com

Notes1. This article results from my long-term interest in Byzantine architectureand its relevance to modern and contemporary architectural practices. Vari-ous versions of this research were presented at the 2012 Yale conference“Byzantium/Modernism,” at the School of Design at Iowa State Universityin fall 2012, and at the 2013 convention of the Association for Slavic, EastEuropean, and Euroasian Studies, held in Boston. I am immensely gratefulto JSAH editor Pat Morton and to the reviewers for their suggestions andquestions that helped me improve this essay. Thanks are also due to MilošR. Perovic, Aleksandar Kadijevic, Thomas Leslie, April Eisman, Kurt Forster,Ljubomir Milanovic, Marina Mihaljevic, Irina Subotic, Tanja Damljanovic-Conley, Erin Kalish, Lilien Filipovitch Robinson, Ljubica D. Popovich, ElenaKonstantinovna Murenina, Elena Boeck, Anna Sokolina, Maria Taroutina,Jane Sharp, Mikesch Muecke, Ulrike Passe, Karen Bermann, Kimberly Zar-ecor, Matthew Gordy, Heidi Reburn, Joyce Newman, Trudy Jacoby, AnnaPauli, Danielle Peltakian, Gordana Stanišic, Dragana Ćorovic, and DušanDanilovic. This research was supported by a grant from the Center for Excel-lence in Arts and Humanities at Iowa State University.

On tradition and modernism, see Leen Meganck, Linda van Santvoort,and Jan de Maeyer, eds., Regionalism and Modernity: Architecture in WesternEurope 1914–1940 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013); Richard Etlin,Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890–1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1991), 165–376; Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architec-ture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,2010), 57–127.2.On the early interest in Byzantine architecture, see Auguste Choisy, L’art debâtir chez les Byzantins (Paris: Société anonyme de publications périodiques,1883); Auguste Choisy, Histoire de l’architecture, 2 vols. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1899); Josef Strzygowski, Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1903).

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3. J. B. Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered: The Byzantine Revival in Europe andAmerica (London: Phaidon, 2003).4. Ibid., 8.5. Ibid., 58–59. See also Neil Levine, “The Romantic Idea of ArchitecturalLegibility: Henri Labrouste and the Neo-Grec,” in The Architecture of theEcole des Beaux-Arts, ed. Arthur Drexler (New York: Museum of ModernArt/Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), 332.6. From the seventeenth century in Western Europe, Byzantium was consid-ered an avatar of the Roman Empire rather than a historical reality. Jean-Michele Spieser, “Du Cange and Byzantium,” in Through the Looking Glass:Byzantium through British Eyes, ed. Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys(Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000), 199–210; Bullen, Byzantium Rediscov-ered, 11; Ludovic Bender, “Regards sur Sainte-Sophie (fin XVIIe–début XIXe

siècle): Prémices d’une histoire de l’architecture byzantine,” ByzantinischeZeitschrift 105, no. 1 (2012), 1–28.7. In 1929 this kingdom became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–45).8. Renate Wagner-Rieger, Der Architekt Theophil Hansen (Vienna: Österreichi-scheAkademiederWissenschaften,1977);SussaneKronblicher-Skacha,“Archi-tektur,” in Das Zeitalter Kaiser Franz Josephs I (Vienna: NiederösterreichischesLandesmuseum, 1984), esp. 491; ÁkosMoravánszky,Competing Visions: AestheticInvention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867–1918(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 63–70; Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered,46–49.9. Miodrag Jovanovic, “Teofil Hanzen, ‘hanzenatika’ i Hanzenovi srpskiucenici” [summary in French: “Théophile Hansen, la ‘Hansenatique’ et lesdisciples Serbes deHansen”] [Theophil Hansen, the “Hanseatic” andHansenSerbs disciples], Zbornik za likovne umetnosti matice srpske 21 (1985), 235–56.Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.10. Aleksandar Kadijevic, Jedan vek traženja nacionalnog stila u srpskoj arhitek-turi (sredina XIX–XX veka) [One century of searching for a national style inSerbian architecture (mid-nineteenth–twentieth centuries)], 2nd ed. (Bel-grade: Gradjevinska Knjiga, 2007).11.Carl Schorske, Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modern-ism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). See also Mora-vánszky, Competing Visions.12. Starting with the formation of the Serbian medieval state, the Serbs re-ceived fromByzantium theCyrillic alphabet, state organization andphilosophyof the state law, arts and literature, and Christian Orthodox religion, whileSerbian church architecture was based on Byzantine models. Serbo-Byzantinestyle hence became an official style of the new state. Kadijevic, Jedan vektrazenja; Branislav Pantelic, “Nationalism and Architecture: The Creation ofa National Style in Serbian Architecture and Its Political Implications,” JSAH56, no. 1 (Mar. 1997), 16–41. Tanja Damljanovic demonstrates that a variety ofmodernist expressions in architecture do not support a national distinctivenessof either Serbian or Yugoslav architecture. Tanja Damljanovic, “The Questionof National Architecture in Interwar Yugoslavia: Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana”(PhD diss., Cornell University, 2003). Aleksandar Ignjatovic claims that mod-ernist architecture in the interwar period was an active and constitutive part ofrepresenting and materializing the national idea of Yugoslavism. AleksandarIgnjatovic, Jugoslovenstvo u arhitekturi 1904–1941 [Yugoslavism in architecture1904–1941] (Belgrade: Gradjevinska Knjiga, 2007).13. Aleksandar Kadijevic, “Evokacije i parafraze vizantijskog graditeljstva usrpskoj arhitekturi od 1918. do 1941. godine” [summary in English: “ByzantineConstruction Evocations and Paraphrases in Serbian Architecture from 1918to 1941”], in Niš and Byzantium II, ed. Miša Rakocija (Niš: Prosveta, 2004),381–94, esp. 388, 389, 391.14. In 1883, Mihajlo Valtrovic, architect and professor of archaeology at theUniversity of Belgrade, founded the Serbian Archaeological Society, whichdocumented archaeological remains in Serbia, including medieval heritage.Tanja Damljanovic, Valtrovic i Milutinovic, 3 vols. (Belgrade: Istorijski MuzejSrbije, 2006–8).

15. Kadijevic, “Evokacije i parafraze vizantijskog,” esp. 386.16.On studies of Byzantine architecture in Serbia and trips to Saint Mark’s inVenice and other locations in Italy, see Branko Maksimovic, “Od studentskihdana do trnovitih staza urbanizma Beograda” [From students’ days to thornypaths of the Belgrade urbanism], in Beograd u secanjima 1919–1929 [Belgradein memories 1919–1929], ed. Milan Djokovic (Belgrade: Srpska KnjiževnaZadruga, 1980), 41–56, esp. 43, 47.17. The first International Congress of Byzantine Studies was held inRomania in 1924. The founders of the Association International des ÉtudesByzantines (AIEB) included French, Romanian, Russian, and British scholarsC. Diehl, H. Gregoire, N. Iorga, N. Kondakov, G.Millet, and SirW. Ramsay.18. Miloš R. Perovic, Srpska arhitektura XX veka: Od istoricisma do drugogmodernizma/Serbian 20th Century Architecture: From Historicism to SecondModernism (Belgrade: Arhitektonski Fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu, 2003),69–70.19. Janez Vrecko, Srecko Kosovel, Slovenska zgodovinska avantgarda in Zenitizem(Maribor: Založba Obzorja, 1986); Vidosava Golubovic and Irina Subotic,eds., Zenit 1921–1926 (Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, 2008).20. Vidosava Golubovic, “Časopis Zenit (1921–1926)” [The Zenit periodical(1921–1926)], in Golubovic and Subotic, Zenit 1921–1926, 15–44, esp. 15;“Biografije saradnika zenita” [Biographies of Zenitist collaborators], s.v.“Ljubomir Micic,” in Golubovic and Subotic, Zenit 1921–1926, 345–50.21. Ljubomir Micic, “Čovek i umetnost” [Man and art], Zenit, no. 1 (Feb.1921), 1–2.22. Golubovic and Subotic, Zenit 1921–1926, 11–12, English translation on469–70.23. Laurel Seely Voloder and Tyrus Miller, “Avant-Garde Periodicalsin the Yugoslavian Crucible: Zenit (Zagreb 1921–3, Belgrade 1924–6);Zagreb: Dada-Jok (1922), Dada-Tank (1922), Dada Jazz (1922); NoviSad: Út (1922–5); Ljubljana: Svetokret (1921); Rdeci pilot (1922); and Tank(1927),” in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Maga-zines, vol. 3, Europe 1880–1940, pt. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2013), 1105.24. “Biografije saradnika zenita,” 289–384.25. LjubomirMicic, “Nova umetnost” [New art],Zenit, no. 35 (Dec. 1924), n.p.26. Golubovic, “Časopis Zenit (1921–1926),” 15–44, esp. 15; “Biografije sar-adnika zenita,” s.v. “Ljubomir Micic.”27.Golubovic and Subotic, Zenit 1921–1926; IgorMarjanovic, “Zenit: Peripa-tetic Discourses of Ljubomir Micic and Branko Ve Poljanski,” in On the VeryEdge: Modernism and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia(1918–1941), ed. Jelena Bogdanovic, Lilien Filipovitch Robinson, and IgorMarjanovic (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014), 63–84.28. Marjanovic, “Zenit,” 66.29. Ibid. See also Jasminka Udovicki, “The Bonds and the Fault Lines,” in BurnThis House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, ed. Jasminka Udovicki andJames Ridgeway (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 11–42.30. Marjanovic, “Zenit,” 72.31.Micic, “Čovek i umetnost”; Ljubomir Micic, Boško Tokin, and Ivan Goll,Manifest Zenitizma [The Zenitist manifesto] (Zagreb: Biblioteka Zenit, 1921).Later, Micic published “Zenit Manifest,” Zenit, no. 11 (Feb. 1922), 1; and“Manifest varvarima duha i misli na svom kontinentima” [Manifesto to thebarbarians of spirit and thought on all continents], Zenit, no. 38 (Jan./Feb.1926), n.p. On the Zenitists’ programmatic texts—manifestoes, poems, anddramatic texts—see Voloder and Miller, “Avant-Garde Periodicals.” For theEnglish translation of the manifesto from the book Manifest Zenitisma, seeLjubomir Micic, “Zenitist Manifesto,” in Impossible Histories: Historic Avant-Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post-Avant-Gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918–1991,ed. Dubravka Djuric and Miško Šuvakovic (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,2003), 525–31.32. Micic, “Čovek i umetnost.”33. Ibid. Theophany is the manifestation of God to man.

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34. Ljubomir Micic, “Zenitozofija ili Energetika stvaralackog zenitizma: Nomade in Serbia” [Zenitosophy or energetics of creative Zenitism: No made inSerbia], Zenit, nos. 26–33 (Oct. 1924), n.p.35. Ibid.36. Micic et al., Manifest Zenitizma, 1, English translation in Micic, “ZenitistManifesto,” 525.37. Micic, “Zenitozofija,” n.p.38. Micic, “Manifest varvarima,” n.p.39. Ljubomir Micic, Barbarogenie le decivilizateur (Paris: Aux Arenes deLutece, 1938); Marjanovic, “Zenit,” 69.40.Miloš R. Perovic has demonstrated that Zenitism was the only movementin the Balkans that had all the attributes of the avant-garde as defined by phi-losopher StefanMorawski.MilošR. Perovic, “Zenitism andModernist Archi-tecture,” in Bogdanovic et al., On the Very Edge, 85–96. See Stefan Morawski,“On the Avant-Garde, Neo-Avant-Garde and the Case of Postmodernism,”Literary Studies in Poland 21 (1988), 81–106.41. Dragan Aleksic, “Tatlin. HP/s + Čovek,” Zenit, no. 9 (Nov. 1921), 8–9.42. Cover page of Zenit, no. 11 (Feb. 1922); El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg,“Ruska nova umetnost” [Russian new art],Zenit, nos. 17/18 (Sept./Oct. 1922),52. See also Perovic, “Zenitism and Modernist Architecture,” esp. 91;Marjanovic, “Zenit,” esp. 67. Svetlana Boym claims that the first publicationof Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International was in the Munich art mag-azine Der Ararat. Svetlana Boym, Architecture of the Off-Modern (New York:Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 11.43. Lissitzky and Ehrenburg, “Ruska nova umetnost.”44. Architect P.T., “Novi sistemgradjenja” [New systemof construction],Zenit,no. 34 (Nov. 1924), n.p. This issue also includes photographs of Adolf Loos’smodel of the Baker house in Paris and the Einstein tower byErichMendelsohn.Branko Ve Poljanski provides a discussion of the Pavillon de l’Esprit NouveauandMelnikov’sRussianpavilion in “ ‘Mi’nadekorativnoj izložbi uParizu” [“We”at the Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris], Zenit, no. 37 (Nov./Dec. 1925), n.p.Finally, yet another critical text on internationalmodernist architecture isWalterGropius’s “Internacionalna arhitektura” [International architecture], Zenit,no. 40 (Apr. 1926), n.p.; this article features an illustration of the RosenbergHouse, an image repeated on the issue’s cover page. The same issue alsoshows Van Eesteren’s first-prize-winning design for the Unter den Linden.See also Perovic, “Zenitism and Modernist Architecture.”45. “Knjige Bauhaus-a” [The Bauhaus books], Zenit, no. 40 (Apr. 1926), n.p.46. Boško Tokin, “Rim/Kupola Svetog Petra” [Rome/The dome of SaintPeter’s], Zenit, no. 5 (June 1921), 3–4.47. See also Kadijevic, “Evokacije i parafraze vizantijskog,” esp. 388, 389, 391.48. Ljubomir Micic, “Beograd bez arhitekture” [Belgrade without architec-ture], Zenit, no. 37 (Nov./Dec. 1925), n.p.49. Ibid. For references to primary sources that describe Hagia Sophia as themeeting of heaven and earth, see Linda Safran, “Introduction,” in Heaven onEarth: Art and the Church in Byzantium, ed. Linda Safran (University Park:Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 1, 11.50. Micic et al., Manifest Zenitizma, English translation in Micic, “ZenitistManifesto,” 529.51.On Seissel, see “Biografije saradnika zenita,” s.v. “Jo, Josif Klek,” 329–30.52. Jo Klek remained closely associated with Zenitism until its dissolution in1926. In the last issue of Zenit, Ljubomir Micic, writing under the nameDr. M. Rasinov, published “Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma” [Zenitismthrough the prism of Marxism], Zenit, no. 43 (Dec. 1926), 12.53. Micic, “Čovek i umetnost,” 1.54.Micic, “Nova umetnost”; Esther Levinger, “LjubomirMicic and the Zeni-tist Utopia,” in Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation,1910–1930, ed. Timothy O. Benson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002),260–78. Art historian Katherine Ann Carl associates the Zeniteum withEgyptian funerary architecture because of the Zeniteum’s massive circularwalls topped by a dome with tumuli-like architecture and its thick walls.

Katherine Ann Carl, “Aoristic Avant-Garde: Experimental Art in 1960s and1970s Yugoslavia” (PhD diss., Stony Brook University, 2009), 7. In my opin-ion, the lack of windows in the design does not necessarily suggest mortuaryarchitecture.55. Jelena Bogdanovic, “Rethinking the Dionysian Legacy inMedieval Archi-tecture: East andWest,” inDionysius the Areopagite between Orthodoxy and Her-esy, ed. Filip Ivanovic (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011),109–34, esp. 119–24, 130–32.56. Micic, “Zenitozofija,” n.p.57. Ibid.58. Dimitrije Bogdanovic, Jovan Lestvicnik u vizantijskoj i staroj srpskojknjizevnosti [JohnKlimakos inByzantine andmedieval Serbian literature] (BanjaLuka, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Romanov, 2008), 1–5.59. Micic et al., Manifest Zenitizma, English translation in Micic, “ZenitistManifesto,” 529.60. Micic, “Nova umetnost,” n.p.61. Bruno Taut, Alpine Architektur (Hagen: Folkwang-Verlag, 1919). I thankTanja Conley and Patricia Morton for discussing with me Taut’s architectureand the reference.62. Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art out of Time (New York: Thamesand Hudson, 2012), 7–21, 241–48, 268; Iain Boyd White, Bruno Taut and theArchitecture of Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),29–48; RichardWeston, Plans, Sections and Elevations: Key Buildings of the Twen-tieth Century (London: Laurence King, 2004), 40. On polychromy in architec-ture, see Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750–1950, 2nded. (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1998), 111–16, 274–79, 283–84.63. For the pseudo-Gothic font used on the covers of Zenit, see Zenit, no. 1(Feb. 1921) and several subsequent issues; for prominently used Cyrillic font,see Zenit, nos. 26–33 (Oct. 1924).64.Micic,“Čovek iumetnost”;Bogdanovic, “Rethinking theDionysianLegacy.”65. Micic, “Beograd bez arhitekture,” n.p.66. Ibid.67. Perovic, Srpska arhitektura XX veka, 66–70. Rudolf Steiner was thefounder of anthroposophy, which had its center at the Goetheanum. See, forexample, Anna P. Sokolina, ed., Arhitektura i antroposofiya [Architecture andanthroposophy] (Moscow: KMK, 2010), summary in English, 261–64; WillyRotzler, “Das Goetheanum in Dornach als Beispiel der Integration derKu::nste,” in Rudolf Steiner in Kunst und Architektur, ed. Walter Kugler andSimon Baus (Cologne: Dumont, 2007), 291–98; David Adams, “RudolfSteiner’s First Goetheanum as an Illustration of Organic Functionalism,”JSAH 51, no. 2 (June 1992), 182–204.68. The first Goetheanum, fully completed under Steiner, was lost to fire in1923. The still extant second Goetheanum was built posthumously. On thearchitectural idea of the Goetheanum, see Rudolf Steiner, Der Baugedanke desGoetheanum: Einleitender Vortag mit Erklärungen zu den Bildern des Baus(Dornach, Switzerland: Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag am Goe-theanum, 1932), 19–26.69.VesnaMikic, “Zajednicki projekti arhitekata Seissela i Picmana; uz Seisse-lovu skicu ‘Putujuci grad’ iz 1932. godine” [Joint projects of architects Seisseland Picman, accompanied by Seissel’s drawingTraveling City], Prostor 18, no. 2(Dec. 2010), 348–59, esp. 353. I thank Aleksandar Kadijevic for discussingwith me the church in Sušak.70. AfterWorldWar II, when Klek took a position as professor of architectureinZagreb, hebecame a practitioner of rigidly orthogonal internationalmodern-ist architecture. He did not continue to experiment with Byzantine-modernistparadigms or refer to his formative years in the Zenitist movement under thestrong influence of Micic. “Biografije saradnika zenita,” s.v. “Jo, Josif Klek.”71.On the demands for purity of form, color, and space and the first Zenitistproject, see Micic, “Nova umetnost.”On the austere monastic architecture inthe Balkans “purified” of the excessive decoration of Byzantine architecture,see Micic, “Beograd bez arhitekture.”

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72. See, for example, Slobodan Ćurcic, Architecture in the Balkans: From Dio-cletian to Su::leyman the Magnificent (NewHaven, Conn.: Yale University Press,2010), 297–300, 383–90, 435–36, 472, 478. Baron von Hansen’s drawings ofHosios Loukas had been published in Allgemeine Bauzeitung in 1853; seeWagner-Rieger, Der Architekt Theophil Hansen, 266, as cited in Jovanovic,“Teofil Hanzen,” 244. Other publications were also available by this time; forexample, Robert W. Schultz and Sidney H. Barnsley, The Monastery of SaintLuke (London: Macmillan, 1901).73. Micic, “Beograd bez arhitekture.”74. Micic, “Nova umetnost.”75. Ćurcic, Architecture in the Balkans, 196–98.76. See, for example, Fil Hearn, Ideas That Shaped Buildings (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), 97–135; Colin Davies, “Representation,” in Think-ing about Architecture: An Introduction to Architectural Theory (London:Laurence King, 2011), 12–23; Joseph Rykwert, Dancing Column: On Order inArchitecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).77. Micic wrote about the “structure of poems” and “words in space” andaddressed these comparative notions in architecture. Ljubomir Micic, “Kate-goricki imperativ zenitisticke pesnicke škole” [Categorical imperative of theZenitist poet’s school], Zenit, no. 13 (Apr. 1922), 17–18. See also Lajos Kassák,“Arhitektura slike” [Architecture of painting], trans. Ljubomir Micic, Zenit,nos. 19/20 (Nov./Dec. 1922), 67.78. Lissitzky and Ehrenburg, “Ruska nova umetnost,” 50–52.79. Ibid. See also K.Malevic, “Zakoni nove umetnosti” [The rules of new art],Zenit, nos. 17/18 (Sept./Oct. 1922), 53–54. Also in this issue of Zenit,Lissitzky’s image titled Konstrukcija (another word he used for proun) appears(see Figure 19).80. Micic, “Nova umetnost.”81. Nikolai Ladovsky and El Lissitzky, from ASNOVA: Review of the Associa-tion of New Architects (1926), in Architectural Theory, vol. 2, An Anthology from1871–2005, ed. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Christina Contandriopoulos(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008), 178–79; Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pio-neers of Soviet Architecture: The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s(London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 106–45.82. Ladovsky and Lissitzky, from ASNOVA; Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers ofSoviet Architecture. Micic’s specific role in ASNOVA remains unknown.83. Ladovsky and Lissitzky, from ASNOVA; Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers ofSoviet Architecture. See also Catherine Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde: Theories ofArt, Architecture and the City (London: Academy Editions, 1995), 25–98.84. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture, 106–45.85. Micic, “Čovek i umetnost.”86. Ljubomir Micic, poster for Velika Zenitisticka Vecernja (Great ZenitistVespers), Zagreb, 31 Jan. 1923.87. Micic, “Čovek i umetnost.”88. Micic never repudiated his Serbian identity; he initiated a nationalisticjournal, Srbijanstvo, in 1940. Ljubomir Micic, “Manifest Srbijanstva” [Mani-festo of Serbianism], Dubrovnik 1936, Srbijanstvo, Belgrade, 1940, reprinted

in Daj nam Boze municije: Srpska avangarda na braniku otadzbine, ed. NikolaMarinkovic (Belgrade: Dinex, 2013), 111–29.89. Levinger, “Ljubomir Micic.”Ultimately, Micicwas abandoned by his left-ist fellows in Tito’s Yugoslavia, where he lived on charity. “Biografije sarad-nika zenita,” s.v. “Ljubomir Micic.”90. S. A. Mansbach, Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From the Baltic to the Bal-kans, ca. 1890–1939 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999), 231. OnMansbach’s study of Zenitism see also Perovic, “Zenitism and ModernistArchitecture.”91.Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2009); Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered, 16–18, 110, 115, 168, 226–27; RobertS. Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders ofWestern Art,”Gesta 35, no. 1(1996), 3–11; Nenad Makuljevic, “The Political Reception of the ViennaSchool: Josef Strzygowski and Serbian Art History,” Journal of Art Historiog-raphy 8 (June 2013), 1–13.92. For Piotrowski, the “close other” refers to “Eastern Europe” despite thefact that the region’s architecture and arts developed in parallel to WesternEuropean traditions. In that context, the “close other” is not the “real other,”as in Southeast Asia or Africa, but its culture remains marginalized. PiotrPiotrowski, “On the Spatial Turn, or Horizontal Art History,” Umeni/Art5 (2008), 378–83, reprinted as shorter versions “Towards Horizontal ArtHistory,” in Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration, and Convergence, ed. JaynieAnderson (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2009), 82–85; and “Toward aHorizontal History of the European Avant-Garde,” in Europa! Europa? TheAvant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, ed. Sascha Bru, JanBaetens, Benedikt Hjartarson, Peter Nicholls, Tania Ørum, and Hubert vanden Berg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 49–58. See also Jelena Bogdanovic, “Onthe Very Edge: Modernisms and Modernity of Interwar Serbia,” inBogdanovic et al., On the Very Edge, 1–29.93. Micic, “Zenit Manifest,” 1.94. Ljubomir Micic, “Makroskop: Pet kontinenata” [Macroscope: Five conti-nents], Zenit, no. 24 (May 1923), n.p.; Lioubomir Mitzitch, “Avion sans appa-reil: Poème antieuropéen,” Zenit, no. 37 (Nov./Dec. 1925), n.p.95. Marjanovic, “Zenit,” esp. 80–81.96. Micic, “Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma,” 12–13.97. Ibid., 12.98. Ibid., 13.99. Ibid.100. Ibid., 12. See scanned documents from Micic’s personal archive in theBelgrade National Library online: http://monoskop.org/images/5/51/Zenit_43.pdf (accessed 7 June 2015). The documents are also available onYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToNy08rJphM (accessed 7 June2015).101. Micic, “Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma,” 13.102. Micic, poster for Velika Zenitisticka Vecernja. See also Delphine Bière-Chauvel, “La revue Zenit: Une avant-garde entre particularisme identitaire etinternationalisme,” in Bru et al., Europa! Europa?, 138–52.

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