Tijana Koprivica

Tijana Koprivica focuses on Serbian avant-garde illustrated books of poetry as a specific composite art form that emerges from the intertwining of text with visual elements. Treating the verbal and pictorial expressions in this specific art form as two equally relevant modes of representation, she examines how these avant-garde books, produced in the 1920s and 1930s, stand in regard to the concepts of the livre d’artiste (the artist’s book), and the illustrated book in the traditional sense, where the visual aspect is understood only as a graphic paraphrase of the text. In order to determine which artistic procedures and signifying mechanisms are constitutive for this art form, Koprivica pays closer attention to the relations that are established between the text and the picture within the single book page as newly imposed graphic space in avant-garde arts, as well as to the image/picture distinction and its implications on the perception of the avant-garde illustrated book of poetry.