Bogdanović was so well respected across Serbia, he was elected to serve as the mayor of Belgrade in 1982, a position which he held until 1986. However, after the fall of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, Bogdanović found the nationalistic direction that Serbia was taking distasteful, even going as far as openly criticizing Slobodan Milošević, which resulted in the artist receiving death threats and being the target of political smear campaigns by Serbian state media. As a result, Bogdanović went into self-imposed exile to Paris in 1993, then later relocating to Vienna. During this post-Yugoslav era, many of the spomenik complexes Bogdanović created fell into disrepair and destruction, which devastated him greatly. After the fall of Milošević, he returned briefly to Belgrade, but soon left the city again, criticizing it for becoming "overwhelming, scary, cruel and mono-national". He lived in Vienna for the rest of his days, where he passeed away in 2010. After his death, his remains were transfered back to Belgrade. Before passing, he declined offers by the city to be interred at Belgrade's "Alley of Distinguished Citizens" at the New Cemetery. Instead, he was given permission by Belgrade Jewish community to have his remains interred just across the street from the New Cemetery at the Jewish Cemetery at the base of the first monument which he built there in 1952. When Bogdanović's wife Ksenija passed as well in 2017, she was interred in the same spot next to him.