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The vast scope of contemporary artistic creation and its expressive diversity often cause confusion about its meaning, application, and goals.

And yet, the function of art in our lives remains the same as ever, even if its application is sometimes different – and let’s admit it – also more challenging. An artist who observes contemporary society and its needs naturally responds to them in his works, and that is the essential contribution of his activity, as well as the great significance of his mission.

Ivan Sedliský has been engaged in the artistic exploration of the role of paintings in modern interiors and exteriors for years. Born in 1926, he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a student of Vratislav Nechleba. His view of art is primarily focused on human beings, who are the central theme of his works. The female figure dominates, an ever-living and fascinating subject from the very beginnings of art.

Ivan Sedliský presents his latest paintings, which, while continuing his previous work, clearly show a transformation in his perception of humanity, its inner world, and social ideals.

Sedliský has always been characterized by his admiration for humanity. He was fully aware that changes in the structure of life alter not only people’s appearance but also their perspectives. His portraits of women are clear evidence of this. This is how modern women look, and this is how we perceive them.

Sedliský has abandoned idealization but has found a new, truthful expression both in universally valid reality and in intimate reality.

He delves deeper into the meaning of life (The Paths We Take, Critique of One’s Own Reason), setting greater challenges in his artistic expression.

Through its diversity of artistic expression, Sedliský’s work captivates mainly with its richness of content, communicative power, and the quality of artistic execution—elements that are often overlooked and undervalued today.

Jaroslav Hlaváček

THE PAINTER IVO SEDLISKÝ — SEARCHING FOR THE PORTRAIT OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Looking at the famous portraits of the renaissance, of Velasquez, Rembrandt, Goya or those of Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and then Modigliani and Picasso we can trace three elements answering the three basic requirements for that specific branch of painting: In the first place the painter endeavours to reach the utmost degree of likeness of the portrayed person as well as to catch the atmosphere and environment of the given period; then, of course, he wants to discern also the psychological side and inner world of the portrayed person and finally — as in every work of art — he wants to put his own conception, his conviction and general view, philosophical and social, into the painting. Even if the compass between the effort to render the expression of the person as perfectly as possible and the utmost detachment from reality should be a very marked one, still a portraitist must comprehend those three elements. Therefore the portrait as a picture is closely related to remarkably very high art discipline.

As a result of the social changes, the technical inventions and the research work in the field of physics in the middle of the last century, the above mentioned requirements underwent a change. The portrait ceased to be an order, it is losing its documentary character until it is practically abandoning the claim of resembling the portrayed person at all. The psychological and artistic side of the work is more and more becoming important and in the end the artist’s own conception and philosophical outlook is prevailing. And as the portrait painter thus had no one to buy his works he began to paint his friends and such people whose world seemed attractive to him. By this, a new form of relation between the painter and his model came into being, leading the model to probe into himself and the painter to increase his efforts of expressing himself. Hence, one could speak of a mutual individual self-reflexion. If, of course, the portraitist is choosing his models just like other subjects — landscapes or still-lives — then man is becoming an artistic object and by this the classical balance between the portrayed person and the painter is subsiding. The painter Ivo Sedliský made it his aim to reinstate the portrait as such or, in other words, to discover the portrait of the twentieth century. He tries to renew the harmony between the portrayed and the painter. He wants to give evidence of the people of our time and, through their mediation, to document the positive values of man.

The modern world, in all creative renditions, is working in abbreviations. Especially for the portraitist it is very difficult to find a concentrated expression of the objective reality of the person by his own stylisation.

Sedliský is above all a portraitist of beautiful women, often famous women — Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Monica Vitti — who interest him as human types and to whose expression he tries to give an identity according to his own idea. The faces of those women are expressed mainly by accentuating their lips and eyes. He places the woman into an environment which complements her character and by abbreviative means endeavours to express the subjective feelings of the portrayed woman. Thus, his women portraits are showing the face of our time, the new type of woman representing the triumph of beauty.

This is why he likes to come back to those faces so as to get nearer each time to the inner life of man of today and to his relation to the world. It is a new — and one could say gradually more and more profound — psychological conception. In Sedliský’s latest portraits we can see how man is changing, the calm expression of the face is becoming lively, the flatness of the background is vanishing. The big portraits of Monica Vitti, Julie Christie and Pablo Picasso are obvious landmarks in his work.

The painter Ivo Sedliský is moved by the human face in the same way as the old Roman and Egyptian artists were moved, and because he made it his aim to discover the portrait of the twentieth century his work is an incessant searching and experimenting on his own.

Bela Dunajská Laufrová

March 17, 1977

SEARCHING FOR TYPICALITY

Since its inception, art has followed two paths: it either depicts the general through the individual, unique, or even peculiar, or, on the contrary, it synthesizes these individual elements into a whole to create a type.

The work of IVAN SEDLISKÝ is, from this perspective, a unique case (perhaps even on a global scale) of a painter’s search for the second path. In his work, Ivan Sedliský systematically returns to the old values of painting and its composition, much like Cézanne once did, as did Ingres before him, or the Renaissance masters, and later in the 20th century, artists such as Matisse, Picasso (in parts of his work), and others.

Born in Ostrava in 1926, Sedliský studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1946–1952) under Professor V. Nechleba and later served as his assistant until 1955. Even in Nechleba’s work, there is a strong respect for classical principles, a deep research-like interest in reality reminiscent of the analogy between painting and science in Leonardo da Vinci’s studies.

However, Ivan Sedliský developed these influences in a distinctly different direction. Visitors to his current exhibition at the Brothers Čapek Gallery in Prague can see this for themselves.

Sedliský does not deny a certain decorative quality in his work, but this is not mere aestheticism—it is deeply meaningful and functional. It is connected to his reverence for the old master techniques, where a painting, unlike a photograph, is not a direct copy of reality but a specific reflection, a new reality that is more analogous than imitative, more generalizing than analytical.

It is no coincidence that the artist also returns to the thematic method of classical periods—allegory. As in Baroque, Renaissance, Medieval, and ancient allegories, the “measure of all things,” the protagonist of his paintings, is the human figure depicted in a typical environment—a slice of reality that can symbolize the entirety of the world. Sedliský is one of the most prominent portrait painters of today; landscapes in his work play only a supporting role, and even when he paints flowers, these paintings are intrinsically connected to the portrait aspect of his work.

Ivan Sedliský does not shy away from contemporary issues. Themes of humans and machines, humans and civilization, and the relationship between tradition and the future hold a permanent place in his work. He does not exhibit frequently in our country (his last exhibition in Prague was in 1963), which is why his current exhibition at the Brothers Čapek Gallery in Prague is attracting well-deserved attention. (AA)

One could say about Ivan Sedliský that he is seeking a way of painting that could be used to paint everything.

How he searches and what he imagines by the word “everything” can be seen in his paintings.

Sedliský’s search is in a sense factual and sober, programmatically anti-illusionist. He takes the view that a picture is a surface, and that there is no reason to consider it an illusory intersection of three-dimensional space. It rejects and excludes, or restricts to a minimum, the means by which one can give the impression that a picture is a niche space filled with voluminous plastic objects: the gradations of lights, and valences, the space-creating effects of colour chords.

He fully admits to decorativism, with a characteristic tendency for shapes that are aggregate, powerful, clearly legible, precisely and unambiguously defined, compelling and moving.

A line drawing whose expressive dynamism unembarrassedly claims the same sources and forces that shape the objects of modern technical and industrial civilisation. Often translating this morphology and with a fondness for it, he quotes ancient works of art, figures from paintings by Renaissance painters and famous works of sculpture, figures from Greek vases, Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The surface of his paintings is roughened with brush marks, but without the attempt to fix the ductus of a showy gesture, to make an ostentatious statement about the passion with which one has painted, it is a surface that is picturesquely rugged, but not expressively plastic.

The reality of the image is not the reality depicted. Rather, it is a statement of reality, a declaration in aesthetic code. Sedliský chooses from a broad range of registers.

According to his type of talent and temperament, such positions in the range of which he can communicate with the audience in the fullest and most versatile way possible.

He does not avoid the expressive effects of splashes of colour, but he maintains moderation in this. In terms of art, he expresses himself primarily through a generous rhythmisation of the surface in the area, its structures and the tectonically conceived composition of their textures, and otherwise he does not hesitate to multiply the significance of these shapes and their groupings through the deliberate use of the subject’s symbolic or even allegorical character.

Sedliský’s paintings, like all paintings in general, cannot be read only through emotion; their content must also be penetrated with fantasy and intellect, and deciphered a little in the same way as viewers of old deciphered the paintings of Botticelli or Giovanni Bellini: by analysing the factual meanings of the elements that are depicted.

In this way we come to the conclusion that Sedliský’s paintings are almost epically narrative, developed in content and thoughtful.

As far as I know, Sedliský has not painted any landscapes. He is primarily interested in figures and people’s faces. However, not in the usual sense of the portrait tradition, he is not interested in the individuality of his sitters, but rather with their type. He tries to incorporate them into a more general context, to place their individual personality in relation to the times and to social events, or he tells about them artistically by using the signs and symbols he develops around them.

In terms of the construction of the painting, various problems arise, especially in formulating the relationship between the figure and the accompanying apparatus, compositional problems that are solved individually and in each painting separately.

Sedliský is the only painter I know who is attracted by visual allegory and who is fond of it. He has painted whole groups of paintings that are conceived as explicit allegories. He recounts allegorically of his experiences of contact with ancient Greek culture, and he likes to draw meaning from Homeric mythology as can be found on Greek vases.

If there is an element taken from the immediately perceived reality in these compositions, it is fully incorporated into the structure of the allegory. This is similarly the case in a number of allegories of Prague.

In their individual sections, the painter tries to be symbolic and artistic.

He evokes images of great historical stylistic epochs without abandoning his manner of expression, flatness and distinctive drawing stylisation. Rather, he intensifies the monumentally decorative effect of his canvases, which respect the unconscious flatness of the modern architects’ view of the material elements of contemporary buildings and develop this principle organically and positively, without the intention of modifying or denying it.

Sedliský’s painting never closes itself off to modern civilisation. It could be said that these paintings are conceived as frescoes or sgraffiti, without going back to ancient techniques, practically hard to use in the modern environment and in the modern rhythm of life.

Sedliský’s work is distinctive and special, in many regards it stands out from the framework of today’s tendencies and currents in Czech painting. It has its own circle of admirers, although it is not often exhibited.

Václav Formánek

IVO SEDLISKÝ is a figurative artist and has always been one, even in times when landscape painting was the most favored genre among the Czech public. From the very beginning of his artistic career—and since he is no longer young, this means a considerable number of years—he has painted people; sometimes portraits, but mostly figures into which he strives to project the typical attitudes and mentality of his time, the archetypal representatives of certain social relationships.

He paints them in situations and scenes that he considers equally typical, whether their configurations are real, fictional, or imaginative, whether he depicts them using optically realistic methods, abstract painting, or combinations of various approaches. These principles have firmly anchored his painting throughout all the years I have known it.

Sedliský’s paintings are characterized by inventiveness in spatial composition, a sense of clear and expressive form, and a restrained use of color—a quality that, if the artist so intends, can suddenly explode into surprising color harmonies. Sedliský is capable of both austere and expressively dynamic expressions, depending on what he aims to convey; above all, he truly masters his craft.

His audience has never needed to be convinced of this aspect of his work. Since he is fascinated by human behavior in its many life situations, particularly enjoying painting works that seem historical—or rather, intelligently historicizing—he is constantly tempted to contrast the people and objects of the second half of the 20th century with their historical predecessors, making his thematic range remarkably broad. If he now exhibits mainly female figures, this is a deliberate narrowing and focusing of his thematic scope, a selection made for this occasion. Nevertheless, the artist is convinced that he can better express his views on time and social relationships through female rather than male figures; and we, the audience, certainly believe him, finding no reason to dispute it when faced with the women in his paintings.

Sedliský’s paintings do not need to be discovered; they have been here for a long time.

His artistic work is well known, with a broad circle of enthusiasts and admirers. Nor do his works need lengthy explanations—their meanings are clear and straightforward. They express the spirit of the time in a way that is accessible to contemporary aesthetic sensibilities. For modern sensibilities and within the context of a painterly work that addresses the modern world, Sedliský consciously limits his scope, considering it part of his artistic program and even a fundamental duty to his viewers.

Dr. Václav Formánek

THE BASIC STARTING POINT OF MY WORK IS LOVE AND ADMIRATION FOR REALITY.

Both for nature, perceived by our senses, and also for relationships created by man and which we understand through knowledge.

We often read in the writings of certain contemporary art theorists that this or that painter does not “describe” reality but “expresses” it, using the pejorative “describe” instead of the classical “depict”. It is the difference between the objective “depiction” and the subjective “expression” that is essentially the difference between the classical and the modern. It is a dual and mutually exclusive approach to reality. Of course, there is a piece of expression in every depiction and some depiction in every expression – because everything “depicting” is also a subject and everything “expressing” is part of an objective reality.

For me, this modern, subjective “expression” of reality is completely distant and alien. I cannot and nor do I want to identify with a subjective, distinctly individualistic approach to reality. Reality, whether historical or contemporary, seems in itself so interesting, attractive, exciting and beautiful to me that I do not feel any need to select something out of it or add something to it, much less evaluate it myself. Of course, I cannot capture the whole reality even in its partial manifestations, but I feel my personal opinion, given by my possibilities, to be a limitation rather than an advantage.

In my opinion, artistry is necessarily contained in reality itself – seen and recognised – so that I would be perfectly satisfied if I managed to objectively depict this reality, but perhaps also describe or illustrate it. I see nothing wrong for myself if I am able to complement the magnificence of reality with at least a somewhat adequate picture or illustration.

Of course, I include in the reality around me and in the reality of the contemporary world the opinions, attitudes, learning and points of view of people, especially those I know and who are close to me. I also try to draw on their thinking, knowledge and work. I have no desire and therefore probably also no ability to see in life and in everything around me something that no one else can see, and then to reveal this “knowledge” to people. On the contrary, I want to paint things as I believe they are seen or could or should be seen by most of those people who are close to me in their attitude to the world.

I would like to see the new and fast changing world through the eyes of those who are closely connected to its changes. I would like to incorporate my paintings into the collective efforts of people striving specifically for a fusion of humanism and the scientific and technological revolution and for new victorious knowledge and action.

I am equally fond of and close to the past and the present, the humanist and the technical, everything – or almost everything – from Egypt and antiquity, through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque to the nineteenth century and the current state-of-the-art technology. Whether it be cybernetic robots, space rockets or controlled thermonuclear reactions, art forms or technical forms.

Anything that allows one to look at a certain period or a certain subject from multiple sides and allows for multiple narratives seems to me to be an interesting idea for a huge series of paintings. The literariness that modern art does not foster is close to me and I would like my paintings to be “narrative”. This is also why, unlike modern art, subject matter is important and often essential to me. Many of my paintings also come into being because painting allows me – and often even forces me – to examine in more detail many of the themes that interest me.

Having painted more than thirty paintings by painters close to me, I have naturally got to know their works, their way of working and their approaches to reality in more detail than if I had just leafed through reproductions of their works.

It is possible that my love for reality is somewhat naïve, that it lacks critical thought and often leads to idealisation, but this is probably due to my temperament. Perhaps it is also a reaction to a not insignificant section of modern art that finds artistry in ugliness, depression and the distortion of reality. Hopefully it is not such a great and unforgivable offence to prefer beauty in life and in paintings to ugliness.

If almost every historical subject seems to me to be interesting and artistic in itself, I also find it extremely contemporary. After all, we also see history today, precisely thanks to new, extraordinarily scientific knowledge, new, more truthful and more complex than ever in the past. Compare, for example, the range and quality of information that a Renaissance artist had about antiquity with our current ways of learning about the ancient world. Remember how French art explored Africa; think of the Baroque depiction of Biblical themes or the historical paintings of the Romantics. These and other examples allow us to compare and see what a huge amount of concrete historical knowledge is now being combined with the new appreciation made possible by science and technology.

Like no other time in history, the entire past of humanity is also becoming the subject of contemporary interest.

That is why, for me, old and new civilisations, periods and events are absolutely present and alive. Here too, my views are contrary to modern art, which has systematically sought to rid man and art of the “sediment of old civilisations”. After all, in art the twentieth century turned away completely from the Greek-Latin tradition, in which reality and rationality were the two fundamental pillars. For me, it is this tradition, along with the ancient fusion of the rational and the sensual, that is the fundamental basis and standard by which I evaluate my personal experience.

Like the past, modern art also negates the possibility of knowing objective reality, focusing rather on irrationality, instincts and, at best, human emotions.

Of course, if we are talking about modern art, we must bear in mind that it has existed for a hundred years and not forget the enormous diversity of opinion and the changes that it has undergone. After all, there is incomparably less difference between Velázquez and Manet or between Rembrandt and van Gogh than, for example, between Monet and Kandinsky or Matisse and Pollock. It is precisely during the most recent decades that modern art has programmatically distanced itself from reality.

But to me, the tangible world around us, the world of new things, new forms and new knowledge seems incredibly interesting and exciting “in itself”. It is precisely through new thinking that it begins to be knowable again, even with all its transformations, with all its speed of development.

This knowability of the world, along with the possibilities of its transformations, gives unsuspected possibilities to the realistic representation. Realism is the representation of the typical under typical circumstances, and the scientific and technical revolution makes it possible both to grasp the typical and at the same time constantly change the typical circumstances.

On the one hand, it returns reason, logic and knowledge to life and to art and creates the conditions for realism; on the other hand, it changes its possible forms through its movement.

Nineteenth-century realism grew out of philosophical materialism and the emergence of the natural sciences. It saw reality objectively, but as given and essentially unchanging. Today, both dialectical thinking and the huge development of science and technology are changing perfect static ideas of reality. What possibilities the new dynamics give for the representation of reality!

It seems to me as if today’s world is beginning to achieve again, on a higher level, a unity that makes synthesis possible and thus gives possibilities for a new period of style.

Understandably, if the world seems to me to be more and more unified and knowable, this leads to an effort to find a way of working that would allow me to paint this whole world, as I am able to know it, with essentially the same means of painting. To paint everything that can be painted and that interests me – from a child’s portrait to paintings with such abstract themes as cybernetics and genetic engineering.

I look for forms that allow me to combine both my loves – history and the present as well as historical art forms and technology – organically in a painting.

I would also like to combine what is close to me in modern art. Especially, the colour and morphology of non-figurative art with an objective “classical” approach to reality. I would like to bring together what I see in nature and in life with what I know about people and things.

I like Velázquez just as much as Miró. To me, Manet and Picasso are just as current as Formula One drivers. I admire Homer as much as Einstein, ancient art as much as electronics. I would like my paintings with a historical theme to have something contemporary in them and my paintings with modern technology to have something classical.

I would be pleased if my paintings were accepted as an expression of love for objective reality and if they were at least a little closer to the revolutionary goals of the present – the combination of a qualitatively new humanism with the most advance science and technology.

Ivan Sedliský

Metarealism is realism that expands the classical approach to reality with the possibilities that science and technology offer for the study and depiction of humans and nature.

Humanist technocracy will bring reality and rationality back into art in a new renaissance, building on classical culture and creating new canons of truth and beauty.

Modern art gradually parted ways with reality, while postmodern art abandoned rationality.

Metarealism allows for the citation of artworks within the logical context of our perception and understanding of objective reality.

Metarealism restores reality and rationality to art, meaning a renaissance of portraiture.

It enables the depiction of the civilization in which the portrayed individual lives, as well as their intellectual and emotional world.

Metarealism allows for the depiction of historical phenomena as well as the entire visible reality of today.

ABOUT PAINTINGS OF WOMEN

In contrast to postmodern art, Metarealism builds upon rational European classical culture and unites the three foundations of society shaped by the scientific and technological revolution: humanity, civilization, and nature.

All my life, I have painted images of women.

Why has the theme of women been the central and lasting motif of my work? Primarily because a woman is the most beautiful being that exists in nature; she has always been the most attractive subject in painting and in art in general.

Nothing in the history of mankind has undergone such immense transformations, and yet, despite its constancy, has not manifested itself in such an incredible number of variations. What a great wealth of expressions is hidden in a single woman!

A woman embodies everything we encounter in our lives; she is the essence of life and its most beautiful ornament. If a man can be seen as a personification of rational civilization, then a woman is the personification of wise and omnipresent nature—a nature that we admire, perceive, and accept without ever fully understanding or influencing it.

I have always been convinced that in women and their portrayals, one can best capture the complexity of life, social relationships, contemporary thought and emotions, as well as both timeless and period-specific ideals of beauty.

I am convinced that the immense qualitative transformation of human society, which is the emancipation of women, has fully manifested not only in the lives of modern women but also in their beauty.

Never in history have so many women cared so much about their appearance; never in history have there been so many beautiful and fascinating women as today. Never before has there been such a great fusion of spiritual and physical beauty, a new modern kalokagathia.

Today’s woman is fully aware that her charm lies as much in the natural gifts of nature as in her spiritual self-awareness. She knows that her beauty fulfills a broader ideal of female beauty— one that today is not an abstract idea but a principle in which a woman freely shapes herself.

She understands that her beauty, the beauty of the sensual world, is directed not only toward the senses but also toward consciousness, which comprehends beauty. The beauty of today’s woman is an expression of the spirit and the heart; it is classical in the sense that it balances individual randomness with general laws and order. Women today seek in themselves and in their appearance the inner essence of things—external and internal aspects merge into one. That is why the beauty of a woman is also truthful in itself—for in the rarity of life, it is precisely the inner radiance that makes the beauty of women dominant.

“Life is serious, art is bright,” says the poet Schiller—and women create their image as a work of art that speaks to the world.

Therefore, in portraying today’s woman, one must free oneself from any external determinism, from everything unworthy and transient, from all morbidity, from today’s cult of successful ugliness. One cannot accept archetypal primitiveness, deliberate deformation, or contemporary absurdity. One cannot accept any limitation of the fullness of nature, because it is precisely in the fusion of natural gifts and spiritual self-awareness—arising from the understanding of nature—that the essence of the beauty of today’s women lies.

The beauty of today’s woman is full of self-confidence; it is a beauty that combines the harmony of ancient moderation with the drama of the Baroque, the Renaissance’s scholarship with the activity and pragmatism of the 1920s and 1930s.

Today’s woman unites in a new, higher synthesis all that once seemed characteristic of different historical epochs, various nations, and different societies.

The beauty of today’s women is magnificent, complex, and grand—it differs from all previous concepts of female beauty in history while simultaneously being their synthesis.

For forty years, I have painted, again and again, images of women I see in life around me, striving to capture their rich, complex, and wonderful world.

And I am happy that three generations of beautiful, wise, sensitive, and educated women have found in my paintings their new, modern ideal of beauty and have accepted my portrayal of their own absoluteness.

On Culture, Contemporary Art, and Opinion Dubbing

Last year’s major exhibitions in Venice, Kassel, Hanover, and Mannheim were essentially a global representative summary of the most acclaimed contemporary artistic tendencies.

However, they provoked skepticism and often outright rejection among many prominent European art critics. It became evident that they brought nothing fundamentally new, that the epoch of modern art had definitively closed with abstraction, and that the postmodern era is concluding with a transition from the historicism of applied art, ending either in the emptiness of content or in content-driven journalism.

It has become clear that the level of civilization increasingly diverges from the level of culture and art, which, having abandoned reality and rationality, has entirely “dislocated itself from its hinges”.

The scientific and technical revolution, in which reason is the decisive productive force and knowledge the most progressive capital, brings intelligence to the forefront. However, intelligence is increasingly divided into humanistic intellectuals, who live with words and from words, and technocratic intellectuals, who are tied to the development and management of vast industrial, financial, and commercial empires.

Intellectuals who have distanced themselves from reality and rationality—paradoxically the most influential in art and media today—verbally and substantially determine their form. When, after the collapse of ideologies, they had the opportunity to significantly influence development, they became preachers and commentators of this development. They overestimate their role and, as always, analyze their own problems, presenting their own weakness and disorientation as characteristic of society as a whole.

To document their superiority over “pragmatists”, they seek out the superficial and dark aspects of civilization, even as they exploit and demand its advantages.

Whereas in the past, an artist who sought to “know themselves” would create a self-portrait, today they photograph (and exhibit) their genitals or feces in a jar or a bra. Under the pretense of breaking all taboos, nothing is too disgusting to be displayed as a work of art—ranging from feces in a jar or a bra, to hairy anuses in aquariums and sanitary pads, to used condoms and beer cans. According to this perspective, anything anyone creates is considered a work of art, and anyone can be an artist.

Of course, even in today’s degraded postmodern era, many works by many authors are excellent and genuinely expand our perception and understanding. However, they are increasingly difficult to find amidst the flood of average and deeply subpar works, in the chaos of aggressive self-promotion by groups and individuals alike.

Yet, contemporary intellectuals form only a smaller and shrinking part of the broader intelligence. A significantly larger and more important segment is the rapidly growing new class of humanistic technocracy. This emerging class is only beginning to shape its philosophy, its culture, and its artistic taste. However, even now, it is clear that the pragmatism of technocrats will return reality and rationality to art—elements that modernism and postmodernism have expelled—thus laying the groundwork for a new renaissance. It is also undeniable that this new, historically emerging class, by combining reason and sensory perception, will unite the classical with the modern, portraying humanity in a new kalokagathia—a harmony of mental and physical beauty.

It is natural that the new humanistic technocracy will express its strength and self-confidence through art, that its new approach to reality will create new forms of realism—a new metarealism—as one of the representations of today’s complex world.

People in this country take pride in how well they can interpret foreign works, how informed they are about foreign intellectual trends, how effectively they can promote foreign work, and how skillfully they “dub” others’ opinions into their own language. This is most evident in the field of culture and art, where dependence on foreign models is presented as an advantage and is often even considered synonymous with quality.

In his poem about Bohemia, Viktor Dyk once wrote: “Your children will take thoughts from the tenth hand, And bring Europe already wornout clothes to wear.”

We are content with being seen as a province, and with a years-long delay, we construct our own self-important world—a world where an inferiority complex coexists with petty bourgeois self-overestimation. We pretend to be sovereigns among ourselves, yet we stand humbly before the wealthy world, cap in hand, ready to serve cheaply. The diligence with which we uncritically import “new foreign trends” deserves less admiration and more caution.

Certainly, we are good at many things and often better than those we compare ourselves to, but we are almost never the first—neither in our ideas nor in our opinions. We are the ones who expertly quote others but are only rarely quoted in the world.

In every era and every society, there are always people who refuse to settle for merely adopting and repeating ideas long achieved elsewhere—those who turn their dreams, thoughts, and work toward the future. And if they can unite, they might, despite our unfavorable conditions, at least in some areas, keep pace with the rapidly changing world—and perhaps, in some instances, even surpass it.

ABOUT PORTRAITURE

If we want to understand the status and significance of contemporary portraiture, we have to return to the past at least partially, in particular to the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century is an extremely important period in our European civilisation, which was significantly enriched by knowledge of human history, and at the same time it opened up avenues to our present.

In the nineteenth century, an unprecedented number of inventions, the opening up of new trade routes and the industrialisation of production created the idea among people that a golden age of prosperity was dawning for everyone. But the reality was different – machinery extended working hours, the concentration of people in cities worsened living conditions, and competition provoked predatory ruthlessness.

Artists, sensitively observing the world around them, became disillusioned with the development of civilisation and gradually began more and more to turn away, first from harmful reality, and later from reality entirely.

The impressionistic narrowing of reality into only what can be seen becomes a solution to creative problems in Cubism and an escape into dreams and fantasies in surrealism. This process concludes with abstraction as a definitive rejection of reality. This, needless to say, refuted reality as one of the two pillars of the European classical tradition and, of course, thereby also forced out portraiture, which is not possible without a sense of recognised reality.

Modern and post-modern art then overturned the second pillar, on which art had stood since antiquity: rationality. If the main cause for the rejection of reality was disillusionment with the development of civilisation, the main cause for the post-modern rejection of rationality was disillusionment with the practical effects of ideology, whether nationalist or social. People had had such high hopes for them – and then these ideas gave rise to two horrendous world wars, wars that caused the death and untold suffering of millions of people. The period after the end of the Second World War, the period of the second half of the twentieth century, was under the shadow of the threat of global catastrophe and art tried to escape from thoughts of this reality into irrationality.

Modern and particularly post-modern art has thus rejected efforts to depict life, to justify its expression and its meaning as a whole and in detail. It has rejected the grand narrative, logic, order, it has rejected ideas, reason and knowledge, it has rejected the search for truth – in the words of the philosopher Bergson, the twentieth century has become the century of the unconscious.

Artists have returned to the starting point in the development of society and artificially created a situation almost identical to primitivism and prehistory when our ancestors lived in a world they did not understand, which they were unable to control and which was a complete mystery to them.

Today’s artist also works in a world which, according to art theorists, he does not understand and which he often does not want to understand either. Indeed, today’s rich civilisation does not even require it of him and lets him entertain himself and others with his work, and prefer play to thinking. The artist has ceased to be a messenger of faith, has ceased to be a philosopher, has ceased to be an engineer of anything and has become an entertainer. Art has become a collection of inconsequential games; it has moved, figuratively speaking, from the theatre building to the arena, popularity has replaced social gravitas.

Today’s artist has freed himself from all limitations and from all taboos. He is completely free, except for being a slave to the market which moulds him into the role of showman and businessman.

Contemporary art mixes all values and dimensions, high and low, traditional and new, primitive and sublime, serious and banal – although not evenly. One can say that what has been the objective of art throughout history, namely truth and beauty, has been ousted from art and, on the contrary, what has always been on the periphery of art or outside it – ugliness, tastelessness, dilettantism – has been drawn into the centre of art.

Polarity is emphasised, but that does not apply to realism – and that does not mean portraiture either, which cannot be without reference to this classical tradition. For that reason alone it stands not only apart from, but often also against most of the tendencies of contemporary art.

The question today is: can portraiture return to the art from which it has been so brutally pushed out throughout the whole of the twentieth century? The answer must again be sought in the social situation and its new movement. As a result of the scientific and technological revolution, reason is becoming the decisive force, education and information the most progressive capital. This is returning rationality and reality to art. This is creating the prerequisites for a new renaissance and it is this renaissance that portraiture is opening the way to today.

Portraiture is not something that has been surpassed by the modern age, but, on the contrary, it is what the new age is bringing. It is portraiture that is able to build relatively quickly on the rich European cultural tradition, it is portraiture that is able to integrate the past and the present, that is able to combine the objective and the subjective into a new quality.

It is portraiture that can overcome today’s cliquishness and random chaos through its striving for form and order. Through its communicative nature, it can change today’s isolation of the artist from the public and, what is no less important, with its demands on technique and craft it can build a dam against the flood of dilettantism and artistic inadequacy.

By its exacting nature, portraiture has always been the pinnacle of artistic endeavour, it has been the most widely respected discipline and it is quite possible that it will again take a place of prominence and dignity in the new renaissance. Understandably, the deepening isolation of portraiture and the interruption of its natural development has had its consequences – only a very few artists are technically equipped enough to master it, few artists can overcome convention and lingering prejudices. Only a few artists can cope with the competition that photography offers, few can balance their own psyche and artistic personality with that of the sitter. With a portrait, the artist cannot let his imagination run wild, he cannot completely rely on intuition, he cannot elevate himself above the sitter and beyond the control of the viewer.

The extraordinary difficulty with portraiture is that it eliminates the attractiveness of chance, that with just a touch of the brush the face changes its expression, that with just a millimetre shift in the drawing and minimal changes in the valence you are looking at a different person in the painting.

It is the constant attention, the constant self-control of the painter’s own sensibility and the energy of his artistic rendition, the necessity of keeping one’s own personality in the painting while fully expressing the personality of the sitter that makes portraiture such a difficult and demanding painting discipline.

Portraiture cannot be placed in the all-encompassing category of all possible artistic games; portraiture has always been and shall remain in the category of art. That is why there are so few painters who can paint heads and portraits as part of their work.

Ivan Sedliský