Following in the autobiographical vein of her artist’s book “Double Life”, in Tragedy of a Venus Ivekovic presents a selection of photos of Marilyn Monroe coupled with similarly composed snapshots and posed photos of the artist from throughout her life. The book provides a pointed reflection on the prescribed ideals of femininity by pop culture and the mainstream media, presaging the work of the women artists of the Pictures Generation.
This artists’ book was published on the occasion of Sanja Ivekovic’s solo show at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in December 1976. The material reprinted here was selected from the magazine Duga in November 1975 under the title “Tragedy of Venus”.
'When Iveković created Tragedy of a Venus in 1975, the twenty-six-year-old artist really was a long way from glory and popularity. Born in Croatia, which still belonged to the nonaligned Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito, the artist had to wait many years to achieve recognition in the West. A first step came with Iveković’s appearance, alongside Valie Export, Isa Genzken, and Cindy Sherman, in “Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn” (Art with Attitude) at the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna in 1985. Greater renown followed with Iveković’s participation in the second Manifesta in Luxembourg in 1998 and in Documenta 11 in Kassel in 2002—where she showed, among other works, her powerful video Osobni rezovi (Personal Cuts), 1982. Since 2000, Iveković has been featured in solo museum shows in Cologne and Barcelona as well as in Innsbruck, Austria, and Göteborg, Sweden, and this summer BAK and the Van Abbemuseum collaboratively took on the task of comprehensively presenting her work to counteract her relative obscurity in the Netherlands. In so doing, the two institutions underlined Iveković’s importance to European art over the past forty years'.
Astrid Wege- Artforum
Edition of 600 (Out of Print)
Generali Foundation / König
2001
