The way I see it

In the 19th century, some wealthy intellectuals decided that what the Balkans should really be was a bunch of nation-states. The problem with creating states, though, was that there weren't really nations, not in the Catalunya sense of the word. There was Serbia and Croatia and Albania, etc.; and there were Serbs and Croats and Albanians, etc. But Serbs lived in Serbia AND in Croatia and Albania, etc.; same with Croatians and Albanians, etc. It was all a mix, and everyone kind of lived everywhere. As far as a common language, the merchants and traders usually spoke lots of languages and the peasants, who were the majority of the population, were mostly illiterate. But language was what they decided to use as the basis for nationhood. The local vernaculars (is vernacular pluralizable?) didn't develop naturally into official written languages; rather, there was push to formalize the spoken Balkan languages to create the appearance of nationhood as a pre-requisite to statehood. The 'nations' then started work on a national identity, which hadn't really existed before, and a national literature, which really hadn't existed before.

Like I've been saying, this shit is confusing. I would not bet Gabe's life that everything above is 100% accurate, but it is at least an accurate description of my understanding of how things happened, based on the few books that I've read. Anyway, I only brought it up to explain why I wasn't surprised that all of the art in the National Gallery here, with the exception of two icons, is from the 20th century. There is some nice 20th century Bosnian art (paintings), though; nice enough that it seemed a shame that I had the place entirely to myself. So much to myself that I had to start fucking with the lights before a guard came and turned them all on (and then promptly disappeared again). I guess it's also not surprising that, given a fairly small population and only about 100 years, there weren't a lot of discernible periods or movements in Bosnian art. (I guess it's also possible that most of the art is in some other gallery and I'm full of shit.) Rather than by type or period, the paintings in the National Gallery are organized by color. There's a blue room, and a red room, and a purple room, and a brown room... You get the idea. I liked it. I also liked most of the paintings, so it felt like I was walking through some imaginary super rich, super cool friend's apartment, rather than a museum. Except for the icons. The imaginary super cool friend would think icons are hideous, just like I do.