annonser her

The visual arts in Norway today


By Gunnar Sørensen


Contents:

Introduction
The break in historical continuity
The nineteenth century
Approaching our time

 

Norway is a small country situated on the fringe of Europe. This banal yet very realistic fact is not without significance for the country's artistic life. For as long as we know, Norwegian pictorial art has been characterised by having received its basis influences from abroad. Moreover, only a few of all the possible influences have tended to be assimilated.

However, these quickly came to be looked on as representing the continuation of national traditions, and likewise what did not gain a foothold was considered to be "un-Norwegian". The polarisation could be extreme, as often happens in a relatively isolated society. One could even say, exaggeratedly, that acceptance of artistic modes of expression became a moral question, too.

In the past, the country's peripheral location was given as the principal explanation. However, this could hardly be the sole cause, since Norwegians in general and Norwegian artists in particular have always turned an inquiring eye on the outside world, and, furthermore, Norwegian artists had to go abroad for their education. Besides, a gradual improvement in means of communication throughout the 19th century made it easier for them to familiarise themselves with various aspects of European cultural life.

The fact that nevertheless only some of all the impulses encountered by artists abroad took root in this country must be due to factors other than a shortage of opportunities to become informed.

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The break in historical continuity

A small and scattered population and material poverty following the Black Death in the 14th century put Norway into a position of inferiority in Scandinavia. In the ensuing 400 years under Danish sovereignty, Norway lacked both the political and economic foundation to sustain an independent artistic life of any significance. Yet folk art continued to flourish, adapting, as it always did, influences from abroad.

Not until the upheavals following the Napoleonic Wars was modern Norway established, admittedly in union with Sweden, but to a great extent built on powerful patriotic ideas. For a long time, an intrinsic part of the Norwegian interpretation of the country's history was that the period of Danish rule was a parenthesis. Thus Norway could be perceived as both an old country and a young nation. One consequence of this was the view that its cultural life by and large emerged in the nineteenth century, but that traditions could be traced far back through the centuries.

We became aware of our hunting ancestors' rock carvings, over 5000 years old but still full of life. We found decorated weapons and other artefacts dating from the Bronze Age, and examples of the animal ornamentation which evolved 400 years after Christ. Quite rightly, we were proud of the interlace patterns (500-700 AD) that formed the basis for the inventive dragon-ornament. This reached its culmination in the Oseberg style in the 9th century, and survived the introduction of Christianity to appear in the carved ornamentation of the stave churches.

The carved portal from Urnes, dating from the second half of the 11th century, was the last magnificent example of this style. The ensuing artistic upswing in the medieval society of the 12th and 13th centuries coincided with the zenith of the old Norwegian realm. To this Nidaros Cathedral and an impressive number of crucifixes and madonnas bear witness.


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The nineteenth century

Norwegians may or may not have been very conscious of their earlier artistic heritage. However, with the national awakening which followed the centuries of Danish rule, J.C. Dahl came to be acknowledged as the father of Norwegian painting and a kingpin of the country's artistic life, despite the fact that he spent the major part of his life in Germany.

After his years of school and apprenticeship, some of them as a craftsman in Bergen, Dahl studied at the Art Academy in Copenhagen, and his chosen artistic idiom was that of European Romanticism. His successful career was in the main due to this, but his claim to fame lay also in his rediscovery of the landscape and cultural traditions of his native country. Something similar may be said of the later and rather more petit-bourgeois National Romantics, centred first in Dusseldorf and then in Munich.

Not until the 1880s did the Norwegian artistic environment acquire any breadth, when the painters of the Realist school returned to Norway. They, too, had come by their ideals and techniques abroad, this time in Paris. Their admiration for the Realism exhibited in the French Salons did not place them in the avant-garde of their day, though they seemed controversial enough in Norway. Once they had become accepted - and in the event this happened surprisingly quickly - their paintings acquired status as conveying something essentially Norwegian. This was particularly true in the cases of Erik Werenskiold and Gerhard Munthe, less so of the urbane Christian Krohg, while Fritz Thaulow moved towards an international market, both in his choice of subject-matter and his virtuoso technique.

 

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Approaching our time

In Edvard Munch and Gustav Vigeland Norway had, at the end of last century, two artists who were in the forefront of the European art of their day. However, with the passing of the years, they both became rather peripheral to the Norwegian artistic environment, and it was not they who were of greatest significance for the further development of the country's art.

Those who proved more influential were the group of artists who emerged after 1910, inspired by the teaching of Henri Matisse. Axel Revold and Per Krohg, soon followed by Alf Rolfsen, their junior, evolved from what they had learnt a monumental decorative style which came to be known as the fresco style. Another Matisse pupil, Henrik Sørensen, was closely associated with them, and played an important role in the Norwegian art world by virtue of his view that the artist's role was a vocation of moral and national dimension. Thus before long these Fauvist-inspired painters attracted notice as upholders of Norwegian national traditions.

Jean Heiberg belonged to this group, and as Professor at the Academy in the 1930s it was he who invited Georg Jacobsen, the Danish Formalist, to teach there. In the immediate post-war years, the latter's students were the centre of attention with their claim that they, independent of the vagaries of Modernism, were building on the very foundation of all art.

Other influences had a harder time making themselves felt in the period between the two World Wars - particularly non-figurative art in the Cubist idiom. Ragnhild Keyser and Charlotte Wankel had to reconcile themselves to Norwegian ideals in order to succeed, whereas Thorvald Hellesen preferred to work in France. For a time he achieved notice there alongside his teacher Fernand L=ger, but he remained unknown in Norway.

It was almost equally difficult for those who came under the influence of the German-born Rolf Nesch - who settled in Norway - and thus gravitated towards an expressionistic idiom in the German tradition. Since they, moreover, used materials and techniques which were unconventional by Norwegian standards, it goes without saying that the modernists of the 1930s faced problems. Some of their works were tinged with Surrealism, and this, too, never became an important movement in Norway. There were of course some exceptions, such as works by Sigurd Winge and the youthful Erik Harry Johannessen.

Arne Ekeland, too, experienced the insularity of the Norwegian artistic environment. Despite his undoubted talent for monumental painting, he never received such commissions. Perhaps the reason was that his style and his socialist creed were too far removed from the norms set by the "fresco brethren".

 

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The post-war years

Not surprisingly, non-figurative works in particular aroused great hostility. Yet Jakob Weidemann's brooding, non-representational "forest ground" pictures produced in the 1950s met with success. The explanation might be that the Paris school's lyrical abstraction of Nature which was his point of departure struck a chord with the Norwegian love of things French. Furthermore, the works had about them a quality which touched on the Norwegian Romantic landscape tradition.

It was possible for a Norwegian non-figurative movement to arise on this foundation, but other post-war artistic trends such as the more spontaneous idioms had few followers. However, some artists, most notably Gunnar S. Gundersen, managed to move close to Constructivism. So, too, did the sculptor Aase Texmon-Rygh who consequently had to endure considerable opposition from her fellow sculptors.

The reaction against non-figurative art began in the 1960s. Working both figuratively and non-figuratively and taking Pop Art as his starting point, Per Kleiva evolved the imagery of social criticism which came to typify the 1970s. The work of Willibald Storn and Kjartan Slettemark displayed traits of Naivism and Neodadaism, while the protest against non-figurative art made by such different artists as Frans Widerberg and Odd Nerdrum took more individual and romantic forms.

 

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On the threshold of the 1980s

In the 1970s, after predominantly non-figurative periods, both Knut Rose (born 1936) and Håkon Bleken (born 1929) began to show interest in the figurative, primarily the human figure. Their works were refined, sometimes extremely skilled in technique, and yet their motifs reflected an anxious outlook on life.

This, roughly, was the starting point for several younger artists who entered the scene at about this time. They displayed varying degrees of influence by Pop Art, a Francis Bacon-style Expressionism, and a Cubist Formalism. Kjell Torriset and Ulf Nilsen (both born in 1950) concentrated on large, compositionally demanding constructions, while Leonard Rickhard (born 1945) was more restrained in format, though his subject-matter abounded in traumatic undertones. The exuberant paintings of Bjørg Holene (born 1947) alluded to the positive qualities of life and the difficult conditions they suffered in a harsh reality.

 

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After Modernism

In the 1980s Modernism as an international art movement appeared to have exhausted its possibilities. Part of the driving force behind the then over 100-year old tradition was the dynamic of continuously new and barrier-breaking idioms. Perhaps because the situation was increasingly confused, the system of ever-changing absolutes was abandoned, and the contemporaneity of several different and contradictory statements was accepted.

This could be interpreted as meaning that it was no longer necessary to take a stance. At any rate Modernism's faith in gradual development by means of new "isms" was rejected. Thus everything seemed to be permitted at once. Artistic idiom came to consist largely of combinations and revivals of elements from already existing art, while artists were free to chop and change their idiom.

This "Postmodernist" situation resulted, quite naturally, in a profusion of notions which were put forward without any attempt to conceal the lack of continuity and the inconsistencies. Regional peculiarities were rediscovered, and once again aroused broad interest. Much of Norwegian art has indeed been characterised by just this sort of trait, frequently at odds with the prevailing "isms" and styles. Thus one might expect Postmodernism to have been especially important in Norway. While it is true that the Norwegian artistic world has shown itself more receptive to various trends than before, it must be said that the country has not cut a particularly prominent figure in the Postmodernist landscape.

To some extent this is because Norway lacks the economic circumstances to support great undertakings on an international scale. For the same reason, the opportunities to show the most significant international contemporary art are limited. Moreover, the bewildering pluralism of postmodernistic artists requires the public to change attitude and approach in accordance with what they see. In other words truth and reality are transformed into relative concepts. However, this kind of "unprincipled" meandering seems ill-suited to the Norwegian character, as reflected in an egalitarian society with deeply entrenched norms.

It is possible that tradition reinforced Norwegians' scepticism towards Postmodernism. The generation of artists active here in the 1880s had received their artistic education abroad, and they depicted Norwegian life and landscape as seen through French spectacles. Gradually, as this came to be accepted as good Norwegian art, they began to use their intellectual and verbal talents to assert their influence as professionals, and to found professional bodies.

For, when Norway emerged as a nation in its own right after 1814, professional artistic expertise had not yet taken such concrete form as an academy, for instance, and the Paris-schooled Realists had to assume the role of experts themselves. They hade little time and energy left for the additional task of establishing the framework for informed debate on the arts. No great emphasis was placed on the intellectual aspects of their activity as artists, with the result that in Norway the concept of understanding art often became synonymous with the intuitive perception of art. This habit accords badly with the theoretical and philosophical thinking which permeates so much of today's visual art.

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A powerful expressive figurative art

Partly under the influence of new figurative trends in Italian and German art in the early 1980s, younger Norwegian artists also became freer in their expression. Bjørn Carlsen (born 1945) is a case in point. In his highly original paintings, refined use of colour and technique contrast sharply with naive and macabre forms. With a grim touch of gallows humour he depicts our predicament, viewed in the light of the role violence plays in our world, and bearing the stamp of ecological imbalance.

The figurative imagery of Kjell Erik Killi Olsen (born 1952) is, however, more closely akin to Postmodernism's neo-expressive form. Since 1980 he has spent periods of time in New York, where he experienced at first hand both Italian "trans-avantgarde" and American "bad painting". He often depicts human-like creatures in combination with fantastic animals rich in symbolism to convey a magical inner life.

Over the years, Killi Olsen has developed a powerful palette, and the tendency in his earlier paintings to include relief effects has become steadily more pronounced. He now also produces sculpture in the round, and at the San Paolo Biennale in 1989 he exhibited an installation of large, sombre figures defining an allusive space.

Per Inge Bjørlo (born 1952) has also acquired a reputation for both paintings and installations. He began as a printmaker, depicting in black and white groups of animals and figures which were primitive and vigorous in their effect. He worked on a much larger scale than one normally associates with woodcuts and linocuts.

His installations are characterised by a similar sense of power. He produced the first of them in 1984 in the basement of the Henie Onstad Art Centre near Oslo, and repeated it the following year at the Sao Paolo Biennale. The material he used was in the main rubber, partly shredded in thick slices on the floor and partly in the form of car tyres and conveyor belts hanging from the ceiling and placed against the walls. The whole was harshly lit, and suggested an equivocal attitude to the consumption of natural resources by industrialisation - and to the debris left in its wake.

In the installations of Bente Stokke (born 1952), not only the objects but also the articulation of the space produce a more ascetic effect. Her statement can be concentrated in one large cube on the floor; or in a ship's prow which seems to rise in order to force its way through the ceiling. These artefacts remain mysterious, because they are shrouded in thick layers of dust or ashes: they appear to be silent survivors of forgotten civilisations - perhaps our own? Stokke's theme may be dubbed the archaeology of the present.

The works of these artists are not intended to be in a literary idiom. They differ from the paintings and installations of the 1960s and 70s which were critical of society and served as backdrop to demonstrations and debate. The younger generation are concerned that their statements should themselves forge opinions, not merely serve as tools for putting across a message.



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