Inverse Romanticism
The book represents a broader study of the term inverse romanticism in the context of modern art and philosophy. It also presents five leading figures of modern art (Ivan Pinkava, Josef Bolf, Martin Gerboc, Jiří Petrbok, Richard Štipl) representative of the medium of photography, painting, drawing and sculpture, in whose work “inversion” is palpably present and instrumental in a critique of our present times. The author is the art historian and curator Petr Vaňous. In a wider context outside the strict terminology of art history, “romanticism” is associated with various expressions of intense imagination. “Inversion” is something reversed, upended or perverted. We are faced with a phrase that requires a degree of empathy and imagination on the part of the recipient. Expressions of imagination (romance) are framed so that the “lighting of the phrase changes” and its original meaning is subverted. The phrase has a dynamic character as it relates to something and describes something that happens in and as a process.