“Base” and “superstructure” are basic Marxist concepts representing the hierarchical relations between the relations of production (the base) and the political system, the legal system, the dominant cultural forms, the social consciousness (the superstructure). The base, according to Marxists, determines the superstructure, and the superstructure serves the base. Fundamental changes in a society always start from changes in the relations of production and lead to changes in the legal and political superstructure. Changes in the base occur when the increased productive forces come into conflict with the existing relations of production, which, from being a condition for their development, become an obstacle to it. The entire history of humanity, from a Marxist perspective, represents a series of changes in the base that lead to changes in the superstructure. Of course, these changes are aimed at one ultimate goal - the creation of a society in which the relations of production will fully correspond to the released potential of the productive forces.
Modern Bulgarian history, as well as the history of all secondarily modernized societies, does not fit into the Marxist model of the hierarchical relationship between the base and the superstructure of a society. Here, the superstructure appears before the base. In societies that have been secondarily modernized according to the Western model, such as Bulgaria, changes in the base are due to changes in the superstructure, and not vice versa. In other words, the modern superstructure (the nation-state) tries to create a modern base (capitalist relations of production). The modern Bulgarian state appears before the emergence of a modern Bulgarian economy and tries to create it secondarily, together with a modern Bulgarian culture.
The yellow paving stones are a vivid symbol of this process of secondary modernization. They are part of the effort to build a modern capital city according to the Western model, which should house in its center the buildings of the main institutions of political power, as well as those of the most important cultural, religious and educational institutions of modern Bulgarian society. The center of any modern capital is a very important symbolic space that must “guide” the pedestrian’s gaze along a certain route that will allow him to perceive certain symbolic contents in the “correct order”. The center of the capital symbolically represents the self-consciousness of the nation, which must become an individual self-consciousness for the pedestrian who walks through it. Of course, the symbolic function of the capital’s center is revealed most vividly during official holidays, when key political and religious rituals are performed there, although the political and religious in this case cannot be separated.
The yellow paving stones, even before they were laid at the beginning of the 20th century, were not just a type of road surface with which the central streets and squares of the capital should be covered, but were an expression of an obsessive longing for modernity. The “Oriental” Sofia with its muddy and crooked streets had to give way to the “Western” Sofia with its straight, paved, wide and clean boulevards and squares. The center could have been paved much cheaper and easier with stone pavers, carved from syenite, mined in the stone quarries of Vitosha, which were owned by the municipality. However, Mayor Martin Todorov was determined to cover the center of the capital with ceramic pavers, even though they were not produced in Bulgaria and were too expensive. The municipality had to take out a large cash loan of 35,000,000 gold leva for their purchase and installation, as well as to pay for the large-scale construction that had already begun in the city. The loan created long-term financial problems for the municipality and was liquidated in the late 1930s by the then mayor, Eng. Ivan Ivanov.
The yellow pavers turned out to be quite literally golden. They were imported from Austria-Hungary, made from material that is mined only in one mine near Budapest, i.e. they can never become completely Bulgarian, even when our country already has the technology for their production. The “Oriental” mud of old Sofia is covered “forever” with “Western” imperial ceramic paving stones. The yellow paving stones are a superstructure on the “Oriental” base, but they in turn were supposed to become the base of a modern European political and cultural history that marches on them.
At the center of Krasimir Terziev’s exhibition is a cycle of four, identical in size, icon paintings entitled “Central”, which depict yellow paving stones in different perspectives – with one vanishing point, with two vanishing points, “earth for sky” and without a vanishing point. The artist has sacralized the image of the yellow paving stones, revealing the true intention of their placement – not simply to create a practical road infrastructure for a metropolitan city, but to categorically declare “to the world” that Sofia is no longer an “oriental city” in an “oriental” province, but is a modern (i.e. Western) capital of a modern (i.e. Western) nation-state and to give eternity to this statement. “Modern” means subject to a rational order established “from above”, by the state and local authorities.
Perspective, invented in Antiquity, rediscovered and developed by the Renaissance and established in modern European art, is also a symbol of modernization, because it represents a rational mastery of pictorial space and the subordination of all objects in it to a single mathematical principle. Perspective is a way of creating the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane, but this illusion has nothing to do with real visual perception, but is a form of idealization. Modern cities, which are designed rationally and holistically, integrate the principles of perspective, i.e. of an ideal gaze, of a single motionless eye that rules over urban spaces. Krasimir Terziev's paintings have brought to light what is previously integrated into the central urban spaces, which turn us into ideal observers of a rational and unchanging order.
The modern city, clean and tidy, as well as modern art, subordinated to perspective, appeared almost at the same time in Bulgaria. The yellow paving stones were laid in the center of Sofia in 1906–1907, and the State Drawing School was opened a few years earlier, in 1896. Renaissance perspective is absent from the icons, i.e. from the traditional form of “high” art in our lands, as well as the pavement of the streets of the capital, and the central urban planning. Modernization must establish a rational order, subordinate to an ideal (powerful/visual) center in both the urban and the pictorial space. By covering his paintings with gold and turning them into icons of a kind, Krasimir Terziev has brought to light another hidden intention in every modernization – its claim to eternity. Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints have disappeared from his icon paintings. In their place, two symbols of modernization have appeared – the yellow paving stones and the perspective in a re-emphasized unity, even when the vanishing points are two. However, what is left of the icon is the gold, i.e. the light of eternity.
The meaning of the icon is to confirm before the eyes of the believer that God has truly become incarnate, and to present Him to him in His glory, in order to help him, contemplating the painted image, gradually rise to the contemplation of God Himself. The icon paintings of Krasimir Terziev should ironically confirm before the eyes of the believer in Bulgarian modernity that it has truly become incarnate in these lands, and to present it in its glory, thus helping him to direct his mind's eye to the contemplation of its imperishable prototype, conceived in the minds of the builders of modern Bulgaria.
In the last icon painting of the cycle, however, the order is broken, the perspective has lost its vanishing point, the gaze is left without a future, only the present remains, and it is in complete chaos. The yellow paving stones have been dug up and thrown into piles. The superstructure has collapsed, which means that the base, i.e. the “oriental” mud, has stirred again, turning the pavement into a turbulent sea. However, the chaos in this last painting is also illuminated with immortal light. Just like the Crucifixion in true icons, but in the iconography of Bulgarian modernity, the Crucifixion is not followed by Resurrection, Ascension and eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, but by a repeated return to the one vanishing point. The light of eternity in these icon paintings, representing the life of Bulgarian modernity, is the light of the "eternal return" and its four phases - unity, division, overturning, chaos and unity again.
There are several other iconic paintings in the exhibition that are related to the “Central” cycle. One is “Golden Sands” and the other is “Natural Network”. “Golden Sands” is, of course, an icon of the romantic longing, quickly transformed into a tourist one, which every advanced modernization gives birth to; an icon of the pre-calculated space of quasi-hedonistic freedom, which must provide a respite from modernization and rationalization, so that they can be continued with new strength. Inside the communist utopia, “Golden Sands” offered a seemingly ideologically neutral space for the meeting of the communist and capitalist economy, for legal and illegal currency exchange, for sexual contacts with the ideological enemy, and sometimes even for escapes through marriage. And all this under the watchful eye of the State Security, hidden behind the mustache of the waiter or bartender in the tourist complex.
The yellow cobblestones and the golden sands are only seemingly opposite symbols. In fact, they are the two sides of the same process of modernization. Is the real other of modernization the dried and cracked mud in the “Organic Network”? But in this organic network, are not the future cobblestones already visible, still untangled, with irregular shapes, but already beginning to straighten and arrange themselves? And perspective is already working and giving direction to the gaze in this wasteland. Is there a way out of the modern will to order, which once put into action leaves nothing to itself? Is there a way out of its eternity?
Let us return to the problem of the base and the superstructure. In two photo collages, Krasimir Terziev has grouped together iconic buildings from the center and residential districts of Sofia – the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the synagogue, the Banya Bashi Mosque, a typical panel block from the time of late socialism, the Party House (today the National Assembly). The message is clear – the base changes, but the superstructure remains the same. This is because the base is produced by the superstructure and changes in the base are only a way for the superstructure of political and ideological power to remain the same. The processes of modernization in secondarily modernized countries like Bulgaria, as we have already mentioned, start from the superstructure and have difficulty creating a base (i.e. developed capitalist relations), which in turn can begin to change the superstructure.
What brighter symbol of modernization than light, the light of knowledge and reason, which was supposed to illuminate all corners of human life and create a new reasonable order in the course of an endless and well-intentioned discussion with rational arguments – the dream of the Enlightenment. However, igniting the light of reason turns out to be not so easy. For unclear reasons, it resists and prefers not to be completely reasonable, to leave some of its corners in the shade, not to subject everything to criticism, to trust its old habits and prejudices. Then the apostles of Reason are forced to apply some violence to accelerate the process with the belief that the violent will be grateful to them in time. Modernization violence always gives rise to resistance, the “oriental” mud rebels, but has no strength to stop the process, and the modernization elites gradually begin to derive various benefits from the failure of modernization. They gradually realize that this way their power is guaranteed forever, as long as they successfully shift the base to periodically release the tension that comes from below, from the "oriental" mud.
The images of the extinguished lights of the bourgeois chandeliers seem to be an epitaph of the (under)failed Bulgarian modernity. The lights are extinguished, not because they are extinguished, but because the glow of gold, i.e. of the Bulgarian “eternal return”, is so strong that it swallows them up. It is as if we are not given the opportunity to see our home illuminated with ordinary light, which we can turn off when we feel like sleeping, making love or simply standing in the dark. We must constantly be in front of the spotlight of the eternal glory of the “eternal return” of unity, division, upheaval and disorder; of the unchanging party house with and without a five-pointed star; of the golden sands flowing through the fingers of the DS; of the dried-up rivers and dams; of the smoking chimneys that never let out smoke.
However, there is also a strange object in the exhibition that we might miss, staring at the icon paintings – a pile of dried seaweed, formed into cocoons the size of small potatoes, which from a distance even resemble animal feces. An ironic counterpoint to the black and gold frozen icon paintings. Feces, fruits, hollow pods, quite soft to the touch, created by sea currents and waves. Something like a Dadaist gesture of nature itself towards the piles of yellow paving stones, towards the drama of Bulgarian modernization, towards its never-ending failure.