The Book According to Marko is the graduation work by Marko Stojanovic completed in June 2005 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad. It is a collection of poems by five mostly young Serbian poets, who had had no points of contact so far. The Book According to Marko consists of eight chapters: Belaj, ArtFood-FoodArt, Square, Sound, According to Christ, Artistic-Private, Piano and 1st May 1982. The boundaries between the chapters are moderated or even wiped out by the interlaced domination of either a series of illustrations or poems. The book is printed in seven copies.
At the graduation exhibition in the Matica Srpska Gallery on 17th June 2005, Marko Stojanovic introduced this book and received the Perspctive4 Award for the most promising student by the Art klinika jury.
http://www.ledart.org.yu/artklinika/perspektive4.htm

I have created my own book. Brand new. I have created a piece of work which is a compilation of visual and textual thoughts in the form of a book. These are collected poems by five contemporary Serbian authors mostly not published yet (except for Dejan Ilić and Vojislav Despotov), arranged in a logical order of poems linked to one another by a word, topic or image. The collection is made of two separate but tightly interrelated chains (illustrations and poems). These two interlaced threads become predominant one after the other through the chapters. The Book According to Marko contains the authors, poems, objects, materials and photographs I recommend. It is a book by me as an author. A book as a unique work of art, but also a book as a collection of many works of art and ideas contained in them. Book is a rare form of visual art which has a fourth dimension. Time. Current. The current I can dictate - when, how much and what I will present. It can be composed as a symphony or it can be directed as a play. It can present a problem gradually. The Book According to Marko is classically composed.
The collection consists of eight chapters, eight books, without clear borders of distinction between them. They are connected by a chain of poems or, if it breaks, a chain of illustrations which in that case is left unbroken. I have set the boundaries after all in the form of a table of content on page five.

1. Belaj (a chaos of whiteness). Poems about white, sugar and salt, the North Pole ... White as unburdened, as tabula rasa, as a possibility of choice. White as easy, the lack of colors in print, yet the presence of all colors in light. The photograph of white fur, school chalk, white powdered foods, lumps of sugar as a man, cobblestones, wall. A complete fusion of illustration and text achieved by inscribing poems with a stencil, in coffee on flour. I have used salt and a stencil to write the word SALT or sugar for the word SUGAR (pages 26 and 27).

On page 40, after the imitations of mosaic and ornaments, I build a wall with lumps of sugar (poem about loneliness, hiding). On the following page there is an almost identical photograph – the real wall (the facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje). The link between these two pages and the next chapter is made through poems containing the words sun, summer.

2. Art Food – Eat Art. From the chaos of whiteness with white foods arranged separately, we come to the readymade portions. Art Food –Eat Art is a concept of shaping portions of food in such a way to resemble reproductions of famous 20th century paintings. The project is aimed at popularization of the top art of 20th century. Ingesting the art directly into a human organism and using it to build a body with it. Artistically shaped excrement. For each artist one cake – for each cake one poem. On some of the pages the poem and the cake even visually correspond to each other – Daniel Buren (French artist – cheese cake) – one long and one very short word correspond to Buren’s stripes, just like the last word ’podelite’ (share), Koons – the triangular shape of the poem is identical to that of a piece of cake. Finishing with Malevich (Russian artist – the cake called Russian hat) I will further develop in the next chapter.
3. Square. Poems about squares, cubes, rhomboids. Illustrations are the photographs of small object I have made in the shape of a cube, with one side made of different materials, forming Malevich’s ’Black Square’ on the white background. The relation between the black and white and the contrasting structure of the material... On page 62: black plush as the darkest of all blacks and school white chalk as the lightest of all whites (emphasizing the contrast); on page 64: diamond and charcoal, as chemically the same yet in different forms (equalization, losing the contrast)

On page 66: sunflower and pumpkin seeds as the victory of white supported by the poem: “The black is also white. Completely”. When they are pealed, sunflower seeds are actually white! Page 68 brings the ritual magical combination of tar and feathers. On page 70: New needlepoint. I have designed a pattern for needlepoint with the motifs of Malevich’s famous square. 20th century art is ready for needlepoint. An expensive reproduction. I transfer the square into the field of folklore, heritage. A poem about square and crafts accompanies it. The next page shows three colors of needlepoint thread, one necessary for making this one, leading us further to the next chapter.

4. Sound. Golden folklore braid, which is being stretched, tortured by a blade, a rock, a lump of earth. On page 78: a knife supports braids from below like a bridge on string instruments. Page 80: earth resting on threads as on a swing (see the poem). On the following pages I have used the hands of pianist Aleksandar Gligić.

5. According to Christ. We come to the new book. A book within the book. Covers of the Bible. Then the Bible opened on the Gospel According to Mark where, instead of the original text, my poem is inserted under verse 16. Three Easter Eggs for the Easter 2005. A poem about Christmas. Black eggs. Everything is wrong. Instead of the date of Christ’s birth the eggs bear the date of my birth and the date of the Easter 2005). Everyone is given a cross; everyone counts the time from their own date of birth. A composition starts following the pattern – sacral on the left, profane on the right. Moscow – Zaječar. The icon of St. Dimitrije – the tombstone of Hajduk Veljko. The Dance of Christ done as an allusion on Matisse’s painting ’Dance’. Four Christs taken from the cross, from different historical periods, holding hands. This chain - the circle is not final, it can be as long as many crucifixes are painted (we do not mourn since Christ resurrected).

Showing sacral and profane pictures in parallel. I speak to the artist. Why is Christ depicted in the same way as ten centuries ago? What makes a soldier dressed in a uniform from the 13th century more holy than the one in a khaki uniform? What makes a painted man more of a Christ than a photographed man? The painter always portrays Christ as a man. As well as Merry and the Apostles. I want new icons in the St. Sava Church.

6. Artistic – private. A collection of private photographs. In pair, holding each other, uncorrupted people in their sealed bodies. Sociological phenomena. A poem containing quotations of new folk songs and photographs of a contemporary rural celebration. Finally the Anatomy of the SFR Yugoslavia. A bulky woman in the shape of Yugoslavia (head – Slovenia, top of the chest – Croatian coastline, breasts – mountainous Bosnia, stomach and the bowls – Serbia, legs – Macedonia. An arm across the stomach reaching the legs – the E-75 motorway. A sick country – a sick woman. The same shape is transposed on – a piano.

7. The piano. A heavy, lying piano wrapped in nylon. Poem: “The sound of plastic bags…”. I have fitted corresponding shapes into the familiar piano shape: Vladimir Lukić’s foot, a swimming body (quotation by David Hockney), a small Jesus, a penis, a self-portrait and my own dead body. The end of the book – I die.

Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje, Macedonia, 2007