Irwin is the third artistic group to have emerged in Yugoslavia's post-war art history. The other two - Exat 51 from Zagreb in the 1950's and OHO from Ljubljana in the seventies. These groups were using avant-garde methods to challenge the status quo within the socialist state. Irwin not only claims to be reversing such aims, but to do so with a complexity and all-pervasiveness, which is executed within the larger cultural framework of the Slovene movement Neue Slowenische Kunst. Irwin was formed in Ljubljana by the five founder members - Dusan Mandic, Roman Uranjek, Borut Vogel, Miran Mohar and Andrej Savski in 1983. They have a very clear written programme, its members were pleading for the reaffirmation of the Slovenian national culture in a monumental and spectacular way, by using extreme methods of eclecticism. They insist on returning to the conventional values and traditional institutions - bringing back the authority to institutions and conventions. They use the two basic principles, which dictate the activity of every aspect of the NSK, which are retrogardism and organic potentialised eclecticism. Irwin's use of eclecticism poses questions about Slovenia's ancient problematic relationship to the Germanic space, simultaneously constructing a broader polemic around the relationship between art and ideology. Irwin uses the mixing of images from the Slovenian history of art and the social realism and political history of Yugoslavia with carefully chosen European art historical reference - Klein's Blue, the Malevich Cross, Heartfield (John Heartfield's work was documented on the TV programme Celebration), and symbols of the Third Reich - create a provocative paradox, which hopes to raise the profile and status of the Slovenian to the eyes of the rest of Europe, where previously it had little significant. They are using Nazi-symbols, various motifs from the Socrealism, such as factories and workers. Malevich Cross, Klein's Blue, well known details from the Slovenian art tradition, military uniforms etc. Mixed and juxtaposed, all these elements with a clear political reference create a new image with a strong ideological message. Irwin say that with their paintings they are "raising the consciousness" of the people. The strongest relation between art and ideology was between the Third Reich and Social Realism. Tradition and radicalism co-exist within Irwin's work in an ironic ambivalence. The choice of European artists unashamedly re-quoted in Irwin's work - Malevich, Klein, Beuys, Heartfields - reflects a consistent preoccupation with that space between the ideological and the metaphysical. The subjugation of individual, personal expression inside the work to the use of imagery and media as a coded visual system invokes the ancient, pre-capitalist role of the artist as anonymous chronicler of events and instrument of spiritual experience. The size and appearance of the work as small icons or large altarpiece-like pictures reinforces the idea of a secular form of spiritual communication. Rather than simply borrowing the energy and power contained within Klein's blue or the Malevich Cross, Irwin in denying all claims to originality, placing their sources directly as referential components of a meta-language and restating the belief in the death of the avant-garde, have produced a new perspective on that metaphysical space. Irwin has seen that the power of early modernist avant-garde activity has been subsumed by a consumerism inside which even the most subversive cultural activity posses the possibility of becoming commercially successful. The loss potential of art as a vital force through which radical change could occur has been replaced by a return to convention and traditional values. Irwin displays their work in the form of exhibitions held throughout the world. A large selection of Irwin's work is also documented in the NSK book.   Ideology is the fuel that feeds these totalitarian systems. When fully fuelled it may obtain enormous power only perishes if met by a more powerful system (Germany '45) or fuel runs dry (Soviet Union). In a totalitarian system the art performs the function of transforming the raw materials of dry ideology into the fuel of images and myths intended for general consumption.
  There is a striking similarity of totalitarian art from different cultures for example Maoist China and Fascist Italy. The similarity is due to the political leaders guided not by personal taste but by political instinct and the demands of the ideological struggle.
  From the beginning, the totalitarian state will start constructing a new culture according to its image and totalitarian art becomes an ideological weapon. The power of this can be very great and the Third Reich demonstrated this most clearly. Germany had to be thoroughly smashed before it was able to shake off the ideological faith it was convinced with through Nazi propaganda, which totalitarian art played a large part. Hitler had stated that the art was the propaganda to the inner self revolution.
  The Nazi phenomenon was due to their ability to penetrated through the conscious and subconscious of the human mind and harness the human capacity to obey and be led.
  The NSK are also aware that it is part of the human instinct to obey commands as demonstrated in a psychological experiment where people were ordered to give someone an electric shock. The person receiving the electric shock was not wired up properly and only acting, but the people ordered to give the shock did not know. It was found that a high majority would increase the electric shock rather than disobey despite the actor's display of pain. The experiment was one of a series to show that the German in World War II were basically doing what any other race would do in the same situation.
  As well as realising that the art would be an important weapon, Hitler was also very interested in art having been an artist himself though failed to enter Vienna's School of Art and therefore hampering the original ambition to be a painter. He then intended to become an architect but events led to Hitler becoming a politcian instead. Stalin on the other hand had no real personal interest and left it to the Communist Party. Mussolini was easily bored when he accompanied Hitler in art galleries. The art of Fascist Italy came from the ideology of the Italian Futurist.

From a Laibach fanzine in 1992




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