Dudik, Vukovar, 1980 : Bogdan Bogdanovic

Bogdanovic often drew his architectural works as ruins, an intellectual game which later proved visionary. A lecturer in the history of urbanism, he taught his students that every city would in due time become a ruin. He envisioned the cones of Vuko­var as the peaks of a buried Gothic city. A few years before the war in the Balkans, the front page of Slovene architecture magazine Arhitektov bilten (Architect's Bul­letin) showed a montage of Bogdanovic's sketch in red ink placed on a black and white photograph of the monument. The sketch is made with stains and drops. It gives the impression that the monument is bleeding. The Vukovar monument was actually damaged during the Balkan war by the members of a Serbian militia. They did not know that this is a monument to victims killed by the Ustase. They destroyed some timber and copper on the five cones which originally measured 18 min height. For a long time, the local board would not mow the grass there for fear of landmines. When Bogdanovic talked about misery, he became somewhat despondent and recalled the idea which he kept repeating to his students. The rise and fall of civilisations is explained by the struggle between those who are able to appreciate the city, and those who, full of hatred, want to bury it in the ritualistic manner. His treatment of this idea is found in his famous essay Ritual no ubijanje mesta ("The Ritual Killing of a City"). The monument was recently reno­vated by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. Today, a sprawling suburb is advancing across the area.