Josef Ledvina

While Czech art of the "golden sixties" has received consistent attention since 1989, the following two decades of normalization are still waiting for this level of interest. In the more than thirty years since the Velvet Revolution, it has already been possible to present the work of individual prominent personalities or groups of so-called unofficial art. What is still noticeably lacking, however, is an appreciation and comprehensive overview of the development and tendencies of the entire period of the 1970s and 1980s, including the often despised "official" art. One of the few art historians and theoreticians who has long devoted himself to this unexplored topic is Josef Ledvina. Through his texts, he tries to look at the issue with a new perspective, unencumbered by schemes that have been repeated for years.

He made his first research attempt to grasp this politically, culturally and socially difficult period in 2010 in his master's thesis at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University entitled "Czech Art around 1980 from the perspective of cultural sociology". In this text, Ledvina views official art through the prism of Pierre Bourdieu's "field of cultural production". Thanks to the chosen approach, based on the theory of this French sociologist, he was able to ask questions and seek answers to what official normalisation art actually was and what its relationship was to the so-called unofficial art. The second thematic level of the work is the role of the artist in socialist society and in the hierarchy of state-controlled art. The author uses the theses of Bourdieu's method to come to the conviction that the experienced and often dogmatically repeated polarity of official and unofficial art is not necessarily correct. The actual consequence of the strict separation of one from the other is the simplification of the overall situation and the elimination of the fact that the two poles are intertwined. Ledvina tried to avoid the classical classification, and thus offered a different approach to the work of some artists of the 1970s and 1980s.

In 2010, he developed his interest in this period in another way, as the curator (unusual role for him) of the exhibition Normalization Gallery, which he and Pavel Vančát prepared at the Klatovy/Klenová Gallery. In the accompanying text "The Art of (Not) Engaging", the curators try to find out who the much-repeated "official artist" was at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, and then using specific examples, they show what artists trying to function within the cultural politics of the time, had to deal with.

Ledvina's interest in the period of normalisation logically led to a search for the terrain of postmodernism in Czechoslovakia of that time. It first emerged in this country as a theoretical concept in the mid-1980s, thanks to Jana and Jiří Ševčík, who were the main channel for its penetration among Czech and Slovak artists. Gradually, interest in postmodernism spread to other art historians and artists such as Egon Bondy, Josef Kroutvor, Vladimír Skrepl and Josef Hlaváček. Thus, the interpretation of the term was greatly expanded, but also blurred. Ledvina's 2013 text "Towards the Historical Truth of Postmodern Art" was not so much about finding out who was right, as it was about offering an overview of various opinions.

At the time of writing this text, he was already working on his dissertation "Postmodernism in Bohemia - Theory in Practice / Practice in Theory", which he completed in 2019. As the title suggests, Ledvina was trying to find out, against the background of theoretical texts, how postmodernism manifested itself in artistic practice in the Czech Republic and what the differences were between what the theorists wrote and what artists actually created, and how they subsequently presented their works. Here he systematically discusses the cultural influences of the time or the difference between the generation of artists of the 1960s and those who entered the scene in the 1980s. He understands postmodernism in a broad context as a contemporary climate reflecting the general change in social mood, which was manifested in the generally relaxed energy, and reflected in music, fashion, theatre and visual arts. Through the early "wild" phase and the second, conceptual phase of postmodernism, he reaches its end, when, after 1989, the paths of theorists and artists, up to that time common, suddenly diverged due to the turn of events and personal preferences.

During his studies, Ledvina became editor of Art+Antiques magazine, where he served as editor-in-chief from 2017 until the end of 2020. Since 2014 he has been leading the Theory of Photography seminar at FAMU, where he lectures in the History and Theory of Photography course. He has also applied his theoretical interest in photography in the text "Making People into Sculptures: Erwin Wurm's Minutemen" in the 2017 book Photography/Sculpture/Object.

2011–2019
Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta, doktorské studium (PhD.), práce na téma Postmoderna v Čechách – Teorie v praxi / Praxe v teorii 2003–2010
Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta, magisterské studium, práce na téma České umění kolem roku 1980 z pohledu kulturní sociologie

2017–2020
Šéfredaktor měsíčníku o výtvarném umění Art+Antiques 2014–dosud
Externí spolupráce s KF FAMU – vedení semináře Teorie fotografie, přednášky v rámci kurzu Historie a teorie fotografie 2013–2015
Redaktor měsíčníku o výtvarném umění Art+Antiques 2010–2011
Redaktor čtrnáctideníku Ateliér

2010
Normalizační galerie, Galerie Klatovy / Klenová, Janovice nad Úhlavou

Stati v odborných časopisech, monografiích a sbornících: 2017
Dělat z lidí sochy: Minutovky Erwina Wurma, in: Tomáš Dvořák (ed).: Fotografie/socha/objekt, AMU, Praha, str. 87-101 2016
Tendence, encyklopedie, rodina, in: Galerie H , Archiv výtvarného umění, Kostelec nad Černými lesy, str. 30-37 2013
K historické pravdě postmoderního umění, in: Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny, 15, s. 20-33 2010
České umění kolem roku 1980 jako pole kulturní produkce, in: Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny, 9, s. 30–54
Normalizační galerie / Akvizice 1970-1989, Galerie Klatovy
Články, média, internet: 2020
Přesýpání písku v MoMA, in: Art + Antiques, 2, s. 74-79 2019
Světové muzeum Vojty Náprstka, in: Art + Antiques, 10, s. 44-51
Brněnský Boudník, in: Art + Antiques, 6, s. 33-43 2018
Osudovky Jiřího Koláře (K výstavě v paláci Kinských), in: Art + Antiques, 7/8, s. 14-21
Český mýtus Hynka Martince (Martincova Cesta na Island ve Šternberském paláci), in: Art + Antiques, 6, s. 88-89 2017
Dvojí hra Františka Skály, in: Art + Antiques, 4, s. 52-54
Populární Kintera (Krištof Kintera v Rudolfinu), in: Art + Antiques, 10, s. 10-16
Before Picture, in: Fotograf, 17, 30, s. 106-107 2016
Normální šílenec (K retrospektivě Stana Filka v SNG), in: Art + Antiques, 2, s. 74-79
Květy zla, in: Art + Antiques, 15, s. 74-77 2015
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Cena Jindřicha Chalupeckého v Brně), in: Art + Antiques, 11, s. 97-98
Na okraji textů a obrazů (Rozhovor s Karlem Císařem), in: Art + Antiques, 4, s. 28-35
Malíři v SRN, in: Art + Antiques, 9, s. 76-79 2014
Ateliér reálné virtuality (Rozhovor s Martinem Zetem), in: Art + Antiques, 5, s. 30-37
Lyrický subjekt Kovanda (K výstavě v Domě umění města Brna), in: Art + Antiques, 3, s. 10-15 2013
Bouřlivá všehochuť (Rozhovor s Jiřím Načeradským), in: Art + Antiques, 9, s. 26-33
Stínový Mánes, in: Art + Antiques, 6, s. 8-9
Karla Black, in: Labyrint revue, 33-34, s. 121-130 2012
Co dělá umění věčným? In: Ateliér, 25, 4
Carol Bove, in: Labyrint revue, 31-32, s. 122-130 2011
Text ke čtení/tex ke koukání, in: Ateliér, 24, 4
Výtvarnost/Konceptualita, in: Ateliér, 24, 13, s. 6 2009
Hlava, in: Ateliér, 22, 1
Konečné možnosti, in: Flash Art, 3/13, s. 57
Scholastické umění, in: Ateliér, 22, 3, s. 5 2008
O aktivismu v umění – Meze tolerance a Kolektivní identita, in: Flash Art, 2, 52
Současný český kubismus?, Ateliér, 7, s. 7