Fantastic Metropolis

Today we will talk about Mladen Sharbinović’s self-portraits. He painted seventeen of them and returned to them throughout his life like pages in a diary. On the very first one, painted in 1921 during his school days, we note the sharp contours, clearly shaded and bordered surfaces that give the painter’s face a note of severe restraint. There we can already discern a thin, barely visible line. It begins right under the lock of blond hair, goes down the middle of the forehead, follows the crease of the pouch under the eye and ends with a slight fissure at the bottom of the cheek. On the first self-portrait it seems as though the paint has slightly cracked in those places, like a fine crack on porcelain.

On the next portrait we can already see the influence of Paris and the private school where Sharbinović spent the days of his youth between February 1925 and October 1926. His face is now radiant, turned towards the observer in an unobtrusive half-profile. This portrait does not have the clearly bordered dark surfaces as in the previous one from 1921. The coloring is optimistic, Cezannesque, with smells from the eternal city; the line is there as well, changing its course somewhat, but persistent, slightly thicker, drawn with more shading…

All self-portraits from between the war respire with thick, nubby expressionistic layers of paint. The works Self-portrait in Mushicki’s vineyards, Self-portrait next to an old Armenian church, Self-portrait with reflections from the Danube, Self-portrait with a black cat and Self-portrait at the entrance to the churchyard of the Church of the Assumption are the history of a facial line that is already thick and starting to forewarn. From this period, Self-portrait from the Almash cemetery deserves special mention. On it, a damp, bleached wooden cross from a grave is placed above the artist. The surprised observer will note that one-half of Mladen Sharbinović’s face is in shadow, while the other half is in bright morning sunlight. And the dividing line is once again that mysterious artistic scar that meanders down the middle of the pale forehead and sinks into the soft paint under the left eye. Even then many had begun to examine this curious feature on the artist’s self-portraits—for his face truly had no scars—but the real answer as to where it came from was not to be given until four decades later… At that time poet Rastko Petrovic wrote about the washed face without scars painted with a shadow over it. And many others became interested in this curious feature of Sharbinović’s self-portraits. When asked where that persistent incision on his self-portraits came from, the painter replied mysteriously: “I don’t know exactly,” he said, “all I know is that I always paint it in the same place. That might be my end, my final departure…”

And he continued to paint it. On the next four self-portraits originating before the April war of 1941, the line on painter Mladen Sharbinović’s head is no longer hidden. It resembles a serious gash, a dangerous scar like those after bloody barroom fights with broken bottles. On Self-portrait next to an open French door balcony on McKenzie Street, painted just before the war, we see the painter with swirling storm clouds behind him. His back is turned towards the lightning that flashes low over Belgrade rooftops. The line is also strange. It is painted on the artist’s pale and illuminated face in bright red paint like one of the veins from an anatomical atlas showing the course of the arteries on a man’s face. That slash on painter Sharbinovic’s face announces, without doubt, the approaching war, capitulation and collapse… The painter saw the first German soldiers on the streets of Belgrade through that same French door on the McKenzie Street balcony.

During the occupation he painted very little, not only because muses are silent while cannons roar but also because he was one of the first to joint the Chetnik movement; he fought between Stublin and Jabucje in the detachments of major Zvonko Vucković. Only one pencil drawing is noted from that time, probably originating before the dissolution of Dragoslav Mihailović’s forces. On it we see a tired Mladen Sharbinović, though it seems he is not tired from battle or the recent defeat of the fatherland’s forces, rather from the line that persecutes him and splits his face.

Right after this self-portrait, which is somewhat of a rough sketch done quickly in a state of agitation, came the collapse, capture and trial of Sharbinovic’s favorite general. The painter went abroad and nothing more was heard of him in Belgrade and Novi Sad. A lot has happened since that time and the present: examining the self-portraits, we can nonetheless speak about life and a tragic end—an end forewarned by the line probably back in the 1921 self-portrait… As an émigré, Mladen Sharbinović shared the same blood type, the same anemic and melancholic traits as other political refugees. He often changed his place of residence and wandered aimlessly, adopting the look of the persecuted who are attacked by the forces of darkness and old memories. Toledo, San Sebastian, Lisbon, London, Dauville and finally Paris: his last address was no. 92 Avenue Philippe Auguste. The painter took part in many emigrant organizations, but still called himself a “man of the twenty-fifth hour”. During those years he painted with a heavy brush and somewhat refined but dry palette. Three small canvases, painted between 1948 and 1956, show all the tragedy of his tormented, abject life with one line. Self-portrait in the midday heat of Toledo, Self-portrait with London pigeons, Self-portrait next to abandoned ships in the Dauville harbor verify his return to the technique of his youth of alternating uniform ochre surfaces. The fissure, however, is no longer just a thin line as though the paint has slightly cracked in those places. In the three self-portraits in exile, the line opens up like a festering wound. The scar progresses shamelessly across the face; the painter’s interior, his diseased thoughts and all his indistinct fears seem to protrude along it.

Mladen Sharbinović did not paint any self-portraits for ten years after this. He started his last one on the day he was killed. The mysterious visitor, undoubtedly sent through secret channels from the fatherland, surprised him as he was finishing his last portrait, this time clearly split in two halves. The visitor brutally swung an axe and hit the painter on the face as if it was not real life, but the outline for a book. After this terrible murder he turned on his heels and left without a word. The French police found a bloody body on Avenue Phillipe Auguste. They noticed an unmistakable scar on the face: it started right under the lock of gray hair, went down the middle of the forehead, followed the crease of the pouch under his left eye and ended at the bottom of his cheek. The last canvas was still on the easel. The model and the face were identical at last.