Tags
Art, Artist, Artists rescue us from a life in which the wonder has leaked out, Barbora Kysilkova, Bertil weeps, Documentary by Morgan Neville, Face to Face, Fully Known, Healing out of suffering, I Corinthians 13:12, Link two lonely souls, Portraiture as a form of restorative justice, Redemption, Restoration, Restoration and transformation, Seen for the first time, The Painter and the Theif, To be fully known, Touching tale of restoration
“Desperate for answers about the theft of her 2 paintings, a Czech artist seeks out and befriends the career criminal who stole them.” (Youtube)
Restoration and Transformation
Meaghan Ritchey, Director of Marketing & Communications (Imagejournal.com) writes:
“In its obsession with the human need to see and be seen, The Painter and the Thief, a new stunning documentary by Morgan Neville, captures an idea that seems perfectly Scandinavian: hyper-realistic portraiture as a form of restorative justice. The film follows Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova as she hunts down two of her paintings, stolen from an Oslo gallery.
When she is eventually able to ask the thief why he did it, he replies: “Because they were beautiful.” After he is released from prison, she asks to paint his portrait. Reluctantly, he agrees—and becomes her muse. The film explores themes of healing out of suffering, wholeness out of self-forgetting, art out of emptiness, and friendship out of loss, but its greatest strength is the way it becomes a portrait itself—of an artist compelled to create at great personal cost. When the thief, Bertil, first sees his portrait, he weeps, trembling. It’s as if he has been seen for the first time. Though Bertil is the one we see restored, Barbora, too, is being transformed.”
Being seen for the First Time
The thief is restored to personhood by way of being searched out & searched for; by way of being seen; and by way of being captured in portraiture – the gentle power of art.
There is something transformative as, slowly before our eyes, we no longer see Bertil as a caricature of a thief, but as a person with a story – and with a new chapter of redemption and restoration.
Think of the nerve it took for artist Kysilkova to search for the person who stole her art pieces; think of the courage of the convicted thief coming out of prison to eventually meet the person from whom he stole her art.
Kysilkova says:
Since I am a painter I’d like to make a portrait of you…
[Eventually] There’s no way I could see the thief in this guy.
“After inviting her thief to sit for a portrait, the two form an improbable relationship and an inextricable bond that will forever link these lonely souls”(Youtube). Bertil comes to say,
She sees me very well… but she forgets I can see her too
He takes our Portrait
To me this is a picture of what Jesus does with us:
He seeks out our thieving selves and asks – not to take back what we’ve stolen – but to take our portrait. He is compelled to create at great personal cost till eventually we can no longer see the thief in ourselves.
Weeping washes away the damning filters from our eyes as we come to know we have been seen, truly seen.
In the process we somehow gain who we are – this masterful process of coming alive – of becoming a person restored in His image against the otherwise distorting current of our lives.
Part of the beauty of this art of restoration is when we can say: ‘the artists sees me very well – but I can see Him too’.
This is…. you know…. much more enigma than the soul can hold in our hearts…
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
More Enigma Than Dogma 
Beautiful post, Rusty! To be seen by another human being is to exist, to become a person. The poor in Brazil spoke of wanting to be regarded as “gente” (a human being).
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The poor of Brazil put into words what we all want – against the current of anything that would “de-humanize” us, that would belittle, demean, or otherwise reduce us to less than being created in the image of the One from whom every person has inherent worth. I must say that when I saw Bertil, the “thief” (a reductionistic term – short hand to de-humanize a person) see the portrait Barbora painted of him, it took my breath away. I will be sharing this story this weekend at a men’s retreat, and hope we can enter into the story of being seen, and wanting to see others as persons too. Thanks for your comment.
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Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve shared this story with my artist daughter in New Zealand and grandson in Cape Town, South Africa. I wept when first watching and reading your post. Such a graphic, biblical truth.
Every blessing with your men’s retreat, Rusty!
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Of course – everything I post is meant to be shared freely. I had the same response as you when I first saw this.
If you link on to the tag “Art” there other posts in this theme that may be of interest: https://moreenigma.com/tag/art/
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