Missing Link 1 2004

Sašo Vrabič painted Missing Link 1, dimensions 50 by 70 cm, with oil on canvas. The artist has depicted a pastoral scene that is unsettling, and this perhaps gestures towards a critique of institutions that promote particular kinds of landscapes over others. The image creates meaning through visual codes; we think of Constable’s landscapes or the Barbizon school. Its historical associations include the picturesque aesthetic of landscape painting. This aesthetic was tied to the Enlightenment project of categorizing and controlling nature and a newly emerging sense of national identity that was tied to specific territories. The missing link of the title may refer to a lost idyllic past. But the glaring white space that takes the shape of cattle reminds us that this pastoral image is an illusion. The artist is Slovenian, and his art may comment on the social structures of his own time in the context of Slovenia's recent history of socialism and emerging capitalism. Research into Vrabič’s background might tell us more. The meaning of art is always contingent on social and institutional context.