Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America is an international exhibition of early modern Scandinavian painting which opens on October 25th, 2011. Works by Munch, Hammershøi, and other pioneers of Nordic Modernism featured in retrospective celebrating the centennial of American-Scandinavian Foundation. The exhibition will end with an International Symposium on February 11, 2012.
Regional Modernism: New Art in Scandinavia, 1880-1912
A Symposium on Early Modern Nordic Art
Saturday, February 11, 2012
9:30 am – 5:30 pm (Registration opens @ 9 am); 2 sessions: 9:30 am – 1:30 pm & 2:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Early registration by January 15, 2012: $35 ($20 ASF Members & Students with a valid ID)
$40 ($20/session); $24 ($12/session) ASF Members & Students with a valid ID
The American-Scandinavian Foundation’s third and final centennial exhibition, Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America, 1912 will culminate in a major, all-day symposium in February 2012. The program, Regional Modernism: New Art in Scandinavia, 1880-1912, will offer audiences an in-depth look at the art, history, and cultural relations of the Scandinavian countries during the dynamic decades of the early 20th century.
The symposium is composed of two featured keynote addresses, a series of short individual presentations by experts from each participating country, and two panel conversations, followed by a light reception. Presenters will explore the ways in which the distinct, regional modernism of the Nordic countries communicated with the rest of continental Europe at the turn-of-the-century and how it came to influence North America’s own modern artists following their exposure to the 1912 Exhibition of Scandinavian Art. The engaging program will present expert insight on the careers of well-known early modern masters including Anders Zorn, Edvard Munch, and Vilhelm Hammershøi, as well as advanced research on the ways in which Scandinavian modernism relates to the work of North American artists such as Marsden Hartley, Canada’s Group of Seven, and the notorious Stieglitz Circle. It will also engage related topics including the history of taste in the United States, women artists in Scandinavia, changes in ethnic identity, and questions on the origins of modernism.
The impressive roster of participating speakers includes independent scholars, museum directors, curators, art history professors, and private collectors from Scandinavia, Canada, and the United States, including many lenders to the exhibition.
Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America, 1912, an international loan exhibition of paintings by Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Anders Zorn, and other Scandinavian pioneers of modernism, opens October 25, 2011, at Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America. The exhibition, which remains on view through February 11, 2012, brings together approximately 50 works by leading late 19th- and early 20th-century Nordic artists from more than 20 public and private collections in Europe and America.
The final of three exhibitions presented by The American-Scandinavian Foundation (ASF) in recognition of its centennial, Luminous Modernism revisits the landmark ASF-sponsored exhibition of 1912—a ground-breaking display of contemporary Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish painting that gave many in this country, including emerging modern artists, their first introduction to Scandinavian art.
While Luminous Modernism features 20 of the same artists and eight of the same works presented in the 1912 exhibition, it has been expanded in scope to encompass all five Nordic countries, including Finland and Iceland, illustrating the richness of artistic expression throughout the region during this period. Ranging from the visionary landscapes of Munch, Harald Sohlberg, and Akseli Gallen-Kallela, to the intimate domestic interiors of Hammershøi and Harriet Backer, to depictions of rural life by Carl Larsson and Lauritz Andersen Ring, the exhibition reveals the varied and original ways Scandinavian artists responded to modernist innovations at home and abroad.
Luminous Modernism has been organized by the ASF in collaboration with an international team of scholars headed by Patricia G. Berman, Professor of Art History at Wellesley College and the University of Oslo. A leading specialist in early modern Scandinavian art, Dr. Berman is the author of numerous important scholarly publications in the field. She worked closely with the late Kirk Varnedoe on the memorable exhibition Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880–1910, which toured the United States in 1982–83.
Edward P. Gallagher, President of The American-Scandinavian Foundation, states: “During the 100 years of its existence, the ASF has played a leadership role in promoting awareness in America of Nordic culture. In looking back at the 1912 exhibition of Scandinavian modernists, we pay tribute to our founders’ vision and to a pivotal event in the study and appreciation of Nordic art in this country.”
The 1912 Exhibition of Contemporary Scandinavian Art
The ASF’s historic 1912 exhibition comprised 165 works by 45 leading Scandinavian artists of the day, making it the largest display to date of Nordic art in America. Following its New York City opening, the exhibition toured to museums in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, and Toledo, attracting record crowds. A resounding critical and popular success, the event also played a significant—yet often overlooked—role in the development of North American modernism, including the work of Marsden Hartley and Canada’s Group of Seven. Indeed, the Scandinavian art exhibition helped to pave the way for the assimilation of European modernism in North America—and for the more radical offerings that the Armory Show would bring within two months of the ASF exhibition’s New York debut.
Luminous Modernism
Organized by nationality, Luminous Modernism represents the wide range of styles, subject matter, and aesthetic aims embraced by artists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden at the turn of the century—a period of artistic and social transformation in which Nordic painters, like artists elsewhere in Europe, sought to break away from the confines of academicism. Inevitably, many were drawn to the innovations of Symbolist, Impressionist, and Neo-Impressionist art, which they often studied first-hand on prolonged stays in Paris. Typically, however, foreign influences were filtered through and transformed by the culture and rich artistic traditions of their homelands. The regional modernism of Scandinavia thus became a unique idiom within international developments in modern art.
Central to much of this regional modernism was a fascination with the unique qualities of Scandinavian light. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of the great Danish modernist Vilhelm Hammershøi, whose silent, sun-filled domestic scenes, such as Interior of Woman Placing Branches in Vase on Table (1900), look back to 17th-century Dutch painting but also anticipate 20th-century explorations of abstraction. In contrast to Hammershøi’s urban focus, Ring celebrates the land and life of rural Denmark. Harvest (1886), a radiant pastel of the artist’s brother scything, owes much to the French peasant scenes of Millet; while in Fjord near Karrebæksminde (1910), included in the original 1912 exhibition, Ring masterfully captures the vastness of Denmark’s coastal plains.
Paintings by the important Finnish Expressionist Akseli Gallen-Kallela include an evocative depiction of his wife watching a sunset from the Kuhmoniemi Bridge (1890). The daring palette of mauves and yellows and the simplification of forms recall the contemporary work of Munch, but without the same disquieting psychological overtones.
Works by Ásgrímur Jónsson and Thórarinn Thorláksson, considered the founders of Icelandic landscape painting, concentrate on the distinctive light and rugged topography of their homeland. In Jónsson’s majestic Mt. Tindafjöll (1904), the glacial peaks of the famous natural landmark are dramatically illuminated by a breaking sky.
Paintings by Norwegian Expressionist Munch, Scandinavia’s most celebrated modernist, include two works that explore his favored themes of sexual awakening and nature as a vital force: In Girl Under Apple Tree (1904) a primly dressed young girl stands before the writhing, intertwined branches of an apple tree—an obvious reference to original sin. Munch’s Bathing Boys (1904–05) features a scene of nude adolescents on the beach, one of whom modestly tries to cover his nakedness.
As this exhibition makes clear, however, Munch was by no means the only Norwegian artist of talent and vision during this period. In fellow Expressionist Harald Sohlberg’s Flower Meadow in the North (1905) (see page one), a seemingly endless carpet of white daisies glows surreally in the twilight. The liberating influence of international vanguard art on Norwegian painters can be seen in works such as Harriet Backer’s Woman Sewing (1890), with its vibrant color and bold brushwork, and Ludvig Karsten’s Matisse-inspired Still Life with a Hat. The latter, as well as Jean Heiberg’s Nude Woman (1912), which owes much to the palette and technique of Cézanne, and Henrik Lund’s Gauguinesque Portrait of Hans Jæger (1906), were all featured in the original 1912 exhibition.
Read the New York Times review here.
Turn-of-the-century Sweden also boasted a vibrant, sophisticated, and varied artistic life. Anders Zorn’s Ida by the Window (1908) exemplifies the exuberant yet precise brushwork that brought that artist international acclaim as a society portraitist and enabled him to begin his extensive career in the United States. Sweden’s landscape painters were particularly noted for their innovation and experimentation during this period. In Eugene Jansson’s The Pier at Torekov (c.1896), the moonlit forms of swirling clouds, sea, and land verge on pure abstraction. Works by Prince Eugen—son of King Oscar II of Sweden and a leader of the country’s artistic avant-garde—include It Brightens Up After Rain (1904), in which fading twilight reduces nature to delicately patterned silhouettes. By contrast, Carl Larsson’s charming and richly detailed watercolor Now It’s Christmas Again (1907) typifies the happy scenes of domestic life that made him one of Sweden’s most popular artists.
Publication
Luminous Modernism will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, published by The American-Scandinavian Foundation, with essays by Dr. Berman and other leading scholars of Scandinavian art, including Tomas Bjørk, Michelle Facos, Ina Johannesen, Colleen Ritzau Leth, Charlotte Linvald, Thor Mednick, Janet Rauscher, and Øivind Storm-Bjerke.
The American-Scandinavian Foundation/Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America
Celebrating its centennial in 2011, The American-Scandinavian Foundation is the leading cultural and educational link between the U.S. and the Nordic countries. An American nonprofit organization, it works to build international understanding through an extensive program of fellowships, grants, intern/trainee sponsorship, publishing, and membership offerings. For additional information: www.amscan.org.
In 2000, the ASF opened Scandinavia House as its headquarters and the home for its cultural and educational programs, encompassing the visual arts, music, and literature, as well as business, finance, and technology. Offerings include exhibitions, films, concerts, readings, lectures, symposia, language courses, and children’s programming. Scandinavia House is located at 58 Park Avenue, at 38th Street, New York City. Hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 12–6 pm. For additional information: www.scandinaviahouse.org.