The essay debates a link between the hermeneutic discourse of Krleža’s interpretation of visual arts and the comprehension of postmodernist activist poetics. Interrelation between the above theoretical models gets analyzed on the example of Krleža’s Foreword to “Podravian Motifs of Krsto Hegedušić’ (1933) within a context of disintegration of modernist understanding of aesthetics. This instance is then being thematized by directing – from the general hermeneutic practice of intending the certain cultural-social connotations within painting’s interpretation – towards the postmodernist art practices affi rming the interrelation between the aesthetic and ethical (as ideological and political) fields of action.

Miroslav Krleža; hermeneutics; activist poetics; postmodernism; poetization of culture; coagency