On Ivana Lomová’s work

Viktor Pivovarov

Genres

For several centuries, there was a so-called hierarchy of genres in classic painting. Today, however, everything has changed. Nevertheless, even in contemporary art there are areas where the classic hierarchy of genres is still present in a certain sense. Which hierarchy is this? The genre of historical and mythological painting was always in first place. This was followed by the portrait, then the genre picture, then the landscape and the interior, and in last place was the still life. 

All of these genres, with the exception of the first and last ones, are present in the work of Ivana Lomová. This is important in order to understand the position that she herself selects in her art. It is always the middle position, a position that rules out the extremes. Let us look at what the author unconsciously avoids. Fantasies, expressions, various mystic speculations and similar matters. She avoids all extremes and frivolities that are a too simple and cheap manner of manipulating the viewer. Strategies like that are unacceptable for her artistic ethics. Perhaps it is for this reason that her pictures look so austere or even ascetic. 

Photography

Ivana Lomová paints based on photographs. In contemporary art, there are two main legitimate lines of the relationship between a picture and a photograph. The first is the precise and nearly mechanical transfer of the photograph to the medium of painting. We will not deal with the point of transferring one medium to another now, we are merely stating, that there is a point and that in contemporary art there are wonderful examples of pictures that came into being based on this principle. The second line is the relationship in which photography is merely an impulse for the artist’s further work, inspiration, a sort of clay from which the author can model anything.

Ivana Lomová does not belong to either of these two lines. As mentioned, she always selects the middle position. Her inner desire to avoid extremes leads her, on the one hand, to maintain the “objectivity” of the photography and on the other hand, to not treat it like a sacred object. She inserts her own changes into the photographic template, and these corrections are usually invisible to the viewer. 

Themes

Ivana Lomová works in series. This means that the content is not shut up in a single picture as if in a cage, but rather, it develops from picture to picture and has an open and dynamic character.  Some series, for example Cafes or Trains, have a beginning and end. The author also frequently returns to other topics, such as childhood memories. And it is her childhood, family, parents and her own children that constitute her most extensive thematic scope. One of the pictures is actually even called “Childhood” and in it there is a girl depicted in the water. This is a very symbolic picture: it shows childhood as a source of purification, as an initiation, as a baptism. The portraits of children, parents, relatives or girls with whom the author identifies are painted in a surprisingly austere manner, roughly, entirely devoid of sentimentality. After all, sentimentality would be a diversion from the middle road that Ivana Lomová walks along. This is also true of her self-portraits. And also of the portraits of her friends, which are another important part of her thematic scope. 

It probably won‘t be too artificial if we establish one more theme, which, though it does not have an entirely precise form, is nevertheless always present in Ivana Lomová’s work. This theme is Prague. We can see it in the pictures, outside the windows or in scenes from cafes.  Prague is too beautiful for the contemporary artist. And looking for beauty has become a thing of the past. So it is only possible to talk about the city indirectly, only through a flickering reflection on a window pane. Ivana Lomová is successful in creating this indirect contact with Prague’s beauty, perhaps precisely because of her sense of harmony and austerity. 

Finally, there is the series of pictures on the topic of travelling. It seems that the author shares the continental complex with her countrymen, the complex of the closed space from which it is necessary to escape, go off to the sea, the jungle, the mountains, to far off lands. She herself often travels and, under the influence of these travels, new pictures come into being. 

This is a simple introduction of the thematic scope. It doesn’t provide us with much. What makes Ivana Lomová’s work so valuable to us is the atmosphere of her pictures that we can share with the author and which enrich us in an emotionally. It has already been said several times that her pictures are austere. Now is the time to specify this attribute. That is, it is a special kind of austerity, which does not mean the absence of feeling, but rather, which is merely covering up feeling. In all the austerity of the interiors, landscapes and portraits, all of the author’s portraits are permeated by a sort of existential melancholy, spread though them is a feeling of time submerged in eternity. This converges her work with the pictures of Edward Hopper, which has been stated several times by critics, but also with the so-called Dutch genre paintings of the 17th century.  

Blue

One entire series of pictures by Ivana Lomová is done in shades of blue. It can even be said that this is a significant color of this artist. In world painting, there are very few pictures in blue. That is, this color is very difficult for painting. Minimally because blue only has cool shades. Warm shades of blue do not exist. Only the Mozart of painting, Pablo Picasso, was bold enough to paint blue pictures. Blue is typically used only as a precious color chord. Let us recall the blue robes in The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Ivana Lomová had the courage not only to use blue extensively, but also to paint an entire series of her own pictures only in the blue color palate.  Her blue nighttime interiors are magnificent! 

Blue is a heavenly color. It is the color of the sky, by day and at night. It is thus the color of transcendence in cultural conscience. Now the time has come again to deepen and specify some statements made earlier. It was stated that the painter does not allow herself any symbolic spiritual speculations, that she always remains in the frame of so-called real life. Nevertheless, with her blue pictures, perhaps even unconsciously and in opposition to her own principles, she provides this reality, in which we are imprisoned like in a cell, a sort of unobtrusive, non-material, transcendental dimension. 

© 2013 Viktor Pivovarov