International Academy of Contemporary Arts (IACA) is a professional association with members from over 80 countries worldwide – spanning literature, music, visual arts, and architecture. Andorra recently became one of the countries with an official IACA representative, allowing the Academy to coordinate and guide artists’ creative efforts through organized competitions that highlight regional artistic traditions. Nikolay Sednin, a painter, photographer, writer, and doctor of art history, is a significant figure within the IACA. He is the founder of di art and heliography, an Honorary Artist of Russia, his name is included in the international project of the Unified Art Rating ‘The World’s Greatest Artists of the XVIII-XXI Centuries.’ He is an Honorary President of IACA and Chairman of the Professional Union of Artists of Russia. We talked about art, science, and the role of the academy in the development of contemporary art.
Interview: Irina Rybalchenko
Art and science: points of convergence and interaction? From prehistory, the Renaissance, to the present, the interaction between these fields has shaped human culture, knowledge, and creativity. How can science help modern art and vice versa?
In the relationship between knowledge of the self and the world around us, art and science have been equal partners since ancient times: art cognises empirically and science theoretically. The versatile development of the author, allowing to make discoveries in art and science, is determined by the ability to combine the rational and sensual. Among the interesting examples of the relationship between art and science in the 20th Century, we can mention the Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher and the Russian scientist Boris Rauschenbach. Escher is a master of mathematically verified graphic compositions-paradoxes, in which the viewer is constantly in uncertainty about the reality of everything that transpires. Rauschenbach is an outstanding scientist-physicist, and one of the founders of Soviet cosmonautics, who in the second half of the last century, theoretically substantiated the principle of reverse perspective in Old Russian painting. Continued development of humanity’s potential in the 21st Century, in my opinion, is possible only in co-operation between representatives of science and art, or the unification of the best qualities of a scientific and creative figure in one person.
What is the role of abstract concepts in contemporary art? What subjects attract contemporary artists today most of all?
As President of the Jury of one of the world’s largest art competitions, “Art. Excellence. Awards” and the Stella Virtuoso Art Prize, I am constantly required to evaluate thousands of works of authorship by artists from many countries. Judging by the trends in the stylistics of the presented works in the contemporary art world, the interest in realistic traditions or images related to objective reality has prevailed, while the interest in abstract concepts has mostly receded into the background. As for the priority themes, these are man and nature, life and death, hatred and love – for art, they are eternal in their relevance.
Art and fashion: which art directions are the most popular today?
Impressionism is the most popular direction of fine art among the audience today. I assume that this tendency will continue for many years to come, because impressionism, like no other art direction, is characterised by the ease of visual perception. And fashion, as applied art, is always oriented on the fine arts as its elder fellow-legislator and in its turn dictates with the help of the dress certain rules of beauty.
Do you see a blind alley in the development of content and conceptuality in contemporary art?
Where the insights and discoveries of one art direction end, the realities of the next form and content begin to appear. This movement is endless and inevitable, which is repeatedly confirmed by the course of events in the history of art. For a creator to see a blind alley means recognising his own creative death and making way for others to follow.
How do you see the evolution of contemporary art? What new directions in art may appear with the exception of digital technologies?
The main trends in the development of art will follow two main directions. On the one hand, humanity will continue the evolution of mastery in depicting realistic form and traditional methods of depiction, as these traditions have the deepest and most powerful historical origins. On the other hand, art will develop modern augmented reality technologies and offer the viewer a total immersion in the realities of alternative worlds created by new creators. Every major artist in the history of art is the creator of an alternative reality that beckons the audience with its depth and beauty.
What is the role of the International Academy of Contemporary Arts in the development of contemporary art?
Every year for many years, hundreds of the best artists from different art forms learn directly or indirectly from each other at events organised by the Academy. In this way, there is an integration of ideas in the global creative process of humanity.
Art ratings and qualifications. What is the Unified Art Rating? What areas of art does it apply to?
Artists’ ratings are compiled by authoritative experts in order to create an art market and allow investors, collectors and art connoisseurs to navigate the evaluation of author’s works. The Unified Art Rating reference book was created in Russia in 1999 by the Professional Union of Artists and by now has had more than 20 printed editions, and has been available in an electronic version since 2017. The reference book contains data on Russian and international artists with price recommendations and represents about 67,000 authors as of 2024.
There are no significant differences in the evaluation of Russian and international artists within the rating principles of the Unified Art Rating reference book. However, there are some differences between the principles of rating determination. The main criteria of the Russian directory are: professionalism, exhibition activity, the presence of works in museums, public awareness and art historians, public importance of works and, last but not least, salability and price level. The inclusion of authors in the Russian rating is done on a non-commercial basis.
