The book “Once Upon a Time Zeuxis with Parrhasius...” brings together articles and essays written in the “aesthetic mode” (Jacques Rancière). Their focus is on the actual poetics of art, personalistic and “directional” pictures of the world, and the implementation of individual creative intentions. As a critic and interpreter, the author has a rare gift of getting used to the specifics of the artistic process. His strong point is portrait essays. The author’s “talkative gaze” (Blanden Kriegel) encourages the viewer to navigate independently in the space of contemporary art.