Louvre is My Studio, Street is My Museum

The life works of Braco Dimitrijevic can be described as conceptual art using photography as the medium.

Amazingly, he has been exhibiting art since age 10, when he showed 40 oil paintings at a local gallery in his home city of Sarajevo. When he started giving interviews and getting attention from the show, he realized that being an artist would make him different than his classmates. Due to this awareness, between the ages of 10 and 18 he didn’t think he would ever become an artist and contemplated becoming a researcher or a scientist instead.

From the beginning, Dimitrijevic has taken extreme actions in honor of his art. In his first of many brave acts, he approached the Louvre for permission to take a Picasso off the wall and photograph it next to some fruit. At that time, his work was already well-known but it still took him approximately six months to convince the museum to grant his wish. That was when his concept of the Triptychos Post Historicus was born.

Over the years, these works were criticized for taking an already famous historical piece and adding natural and manmade elements to create a new artistic composition. Not everyone understood his intentions – for instance, one of his creations shows a famous Van Gogh painting sitting on a cart full of oranges. Dimitrijevic explains that looking at these paintings from the side or at a different angle gives them an entirely different perspective.

Perhaps his most famous concept is that of passers-by. It first started in 1969 and it is currently on display at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art. During the creative process, Dimitrijevic comes up with the idea for his next installation and heads to the street with his camera. He literally asks the first person who walks by if they want to be his subject, regardless of their age, race or sex. If they are interested, he shows them some catalogs to give them an idea of the final result. This is probably an intimidating offer seeing as though some of his pieces are blown up and hung on the front of buildings on popular city streets. This is where the concept of “Louvre is My Studio, Street is My Museum” is derived.

When asked of his most unusual experiences, Dimitrijevic tells of his biggest compliment. Once, when approaching a casual passer-by, he asked if the man wanted to be one of his models and he immediately declined. Not realizing who the photographer was, he went on to say that Dimitrijevic had already used that concept twenty years ago and that his concept is not original. He then turned and walked away. Little did the man know that he was being asked by the famous artist himself.

Even though he has been creating these illustrations for years, Dimitrijevic enjoys the excitement of meeting new people and making a new subject come alive. Some of his past works include erecting monuments to passers-by that he has met giving them the same power and importance as a statue erected of a politician or other famous person.

Dimitrijevic’s works are very contemporary but at the same time very simple. There are many people out there who are intimidated by contemporary art but he says that he is just offering one option and that people are free to interpret on their own.

As both an artist and a person, Dimitrijevic is a breath of fresh air to the artistic world. His modesty is appealing and his appreciation for seeing the art in the everyday is refreshing. At the beginning, he never thought that he would be producing giant banners that would be hung on the Champs-Élyseé in Paris or the National Gallery in Budapest, and he has no ego about the fact that he has.