Research and Course Guides: Art and Design: Scandinavian Art

General Books and eBooks about Scandinavian Art

A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950 by Benedikt Hjartarson (Volume Editor); Andrea Kollnitz (Volume Editor); Per Stounbjerg (Volume Editor); Tania Ørum (Volume Editor) A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950 is the first publication to deal with the avant-garde in the Nordic countries in this period. The essays cover a wide range of avant-garde manifestations: literature, visual arts, theatre, architecture and design, film, radio, body culture and magazines. It is the first major historical work to consider the Nordic avant-garde in a transnational perspective that includes all the arts and to discuss the role of the avant-garde not only within the aesthetic field but in a broader cultural and political context: the pre-war and wartime responses to international developments, the new cultural institutions, sexual politics, the impact of refugees and the new start after the war.
ISBN: 9789004366794
Publication Date: 2019-03-21
A Mirror of Nature by Valtion taidemuseo (Finland) Staff (Contribution by); Nationalmuseum (Sweden) Staff (Contribution by); Nasjonalmuseet (Norway) Staff (Contribution by); Statens museum for kunst (Denmark) Staff (Contribution by); Minneapolis Institute of Arts Staff (Contribution by) A collaboration on a mutual exhibition between the national galleries in Scandinavia: Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki (21 April-27 August 2006), Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (30 September 2006-14 January 2007), The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (15 February-20 May 2007), Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (6 October 2007-20 January 2007), The Minneapolis Institute of Arts U.S.A., (23 June-2 September 2007)
Call Number: ND1361.5 .M57 2006
ISBN: 9788790096632
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Modernism in Scandinavia by Charlotte Ashby Scandinavia is a region associated with modernity: modern design, modern living and a modern welfare state. This new history of modernism in Scandinavia offers a picture of the complex reality that lies behind the label: a modernism made up of many different figures, impulses and visions. It places the individuals who have achieved international fame, such as Edvard Munch and Alvar Aalto in a wider context, and through a series of case studies, provides a rich analysis of the art, architecture and design history of the Nordic region, and of modernism as a concept and mode of practice.Modernism in Scandinavia addresses the decades between 1890 and 1970 and presents an intertwined history of modernism across the region. Charlotte Ashby gives a rationale for her focus on those countries which share an interrelated history and colonial past, but also stresses influences from outside the region, such as the English Arts and Crafts movement and the impact of emergent American modernism. Her richly illustrated account guides the reader through key historical periods and cultural movements, with case studies illuminating key art works, buildings, designed products and exhibitions.
ISBN: 9781474224307
Publication Date: 2017-02-23
Prehistoric Rock Art in Scandinavia by Courtney Nimura Scandinavia is home to prolific and varied rock art images among which the ship motif is prominent. Because of this, the rock art of Scandinavia has often been interpreted in terms of social ritual, cosmology, and religion associated with the maritime sphere. This comprehensive review is based on the creation of a Scandinavia-wide GIS database for prehistoric rock art and re-examines theoretical approaches and interpretations, in particular with regard to the significance of the ship and its relationship to a maritime landscape Discussion focuses on material agency as a means to understanding the role of rock art within society. Two main theories are developed. The first is that the sea was fundamental to the purpose and meaning of rock art, especially in the Bronze Age and, therefore, that sea-level/shoreline changes would have inspired a renegotiation of the relationship between the rock art sites and their intended purpose. The fundamental question posed is: would such changes to the landscape have affected the purpose and meaning of rock art for the communities that made and used these sites? Various theories from within and outside of archaeology are drawn on to examine environmental change and analyse the rock art, led to second theory: that the purpose of rock art might have been altered to have an effect on the disappearing sea. The general theory that rock art would have been affected by environmental change was discussed in tandem with existing interpretations of the meaning and purpose of rock art. Imbuing rock art with agency means that it could be intertwined in an active web of relations involving maritime landscapes, shoreline displacement and communities. Though created in stone and fixed in time and place, rock art images have propagated belief systems that would have changed over time as they were re-carved, abandoned and used by different groups of inhabitants. In the thousands of years rock art was created, it is likely that shoreline displacement would have inspired a renegotiation of the purpose and meaning of the imagery situated alongside the Scandinavian seas. This journey through a prehistoric Scandinavian landscape will lead us into a world of ancient beliefs and traditions revolving around this extraordinary art form.
ISBN: 9781785701191
Publication Date: 2015-11-30
Tracing Their Tracks by Peter Hupfauf Understanding the relation of semiology to Western iconography is essential, as it is the element that, often unconsciously, influences perception in Western society. Scholars, such as Klaus Duwel with his outstanding knowledge of runic script, sometimes reach their limits if inscriptions are complemented with abstract images that may be accidental scratches or, on the other hand, a sign or signs indicating symbolic meaning. The detailed definition of the Medieval World by Margaret Clunies Ross (University of Sydney) created the background for this book in which artefacts from Old Norse culture are considered in order to understand their often complex context, providing an insight into the development of visual communication in Western society. Artefacts from Medieval Scandinavia show techniques and principles from visual perception consciously or unconsciously adopted by artists and craftsmen more than a thousand years earlier than was initially recognised by scientists. Today, such elements are recognised by some artists and designers. However, in the relevant literature, discussion of this important aspect of visual art with respect to Medieval Scandinavia has been lacking - until now!
ISBN: 9781443866736
Publication Date: 2014-12-01
Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture by Adriana Margareta Dancus (Editor); Mats Hyvönen (Editor); Maria Karlsson (Editor) In this open access book, seventeen scholars discuss how contemporary Scandinavian art and media have become important arenas to articulate and stage various forms of vulnerability in the Scandinavian welfare states. How do discourses of privilege and vulnerability coexist and interact in Scandinavia? How do the Scandinavian countries respond to vulnerability given increased migration? How is vulnerability distributed in terms of margin and centre, normality and deviance? And how can vulnerability be used to move audiences towards each other and accomplish change? We address these questions in an interdisciplinary study that brings examples from celebrated and provocative fiction and documentary films, TV-series, reality TV, art installations, design, literature, graphic art, radio podcasts and campaigns on social media.
ISBN: 9783030373818
Publication Date: 2020-03-31

Featured Books and eBooks About Danish Art

Danish Modern by Mark Mussari Danish Modern explores the development of mid-century modernist design in Denmark from historical, analytical and theoretical perspectives. Mark Mussari explores the relationship between Danish design aesthetics and the theoretical and cultural impact of Modernism, particularly between 1930 and 1960. He considers how Danish designers responded to early Modernist currents: the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930, their rejection of Bauhaus aesthetic demands, their early fealty to wood and materials, and the tension between cabinetmaker craft and industrial production as it challenged and altered their aesthetic approach. Tracing the theoretical foundations for these developments, Mussari discusses the writings and works of such figures as Poul Henningsen, Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner, Nanna Ditzel, and Finn Juhl.
ISBN: 9781474223706
Publication Date: 2016-06-16
Faaborg Museum and the Artists' Colony by Gry Hedin; Gertrud Hvidberg Hansen; Peter Thule Christensen; Flemming Brandrup; Anders V. Munch; Flemming Branddrup Behind rolling hills, overlooking the fjord and the islands of Southern Funen in Denmark, lies the Faaborg Museum. With its boldly coloured walls and decorative tile floors made from local clay, the building has quite literally sprung from Funen's soil in a symbiosis of local nature and culture. Inside, visitors will find art by the 'Funen Painters', created during the period 1880 to 1928, when Faaborg was home to one of Denmark's pre-eminent artists' colonies. With their paintings of rural Funen, farmworkers and domestic scenes, the artists Peter Hansen, Fritz and Anna Syberg, Jens Birkholm and Johannes Larsen introduced new subject matter and new methods of painting to Danish art. Faaborg Museum and the Artists' Colony presents the history of Faaborg Museum, its architecture, collection and artists to international audiences for the first time. Lavishly illustrated, the book features architectural photographs and plans as well as pictures of the museum's art.
ISBN: 9788771847758
Publication Date: 2019-05-11
In Another Light by Patricia G. Berman In Another Light is the first comprehensive volume in English on 19th-century Danish Art, a subject that is increasingly acknowledged as an essential subject of the history of art. The extraordinary outburst of artistic energy that occurred in Denmark between 1790 and 1910 has few rivals. Within three generations Danish painters developed a national school that rivaled the artistic centers of France, Germany, and Britain. The range of outstanding works created by the Danish artists includes Classicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, and Symbolism. The book is illustrated with a comprehensive selection of more than 200 key works of art, and an important selection of comparative illustrations including period photographs and ephemera.
Call Number: ND717 .B47 2007
ISBN: 0865651817
Publication Date: 2007-12-01
Krøyer and the artists' colony at Skagen by Claus Olsen and others
Call Number: ND723.K7 K765 1998
ISBN: 0903162776
Publication Date: 1998
Peter Brandes by Ettore. Rocca Peter Brandes is one of the most significant Danish visual artists alive today. He is represented in the collections of leading museums worldwide, including the Louvre, and is featured in the most important Danish museums. Peter Brandes' monumental sculptures and jars can be seen throughout Denmark, and he has decorated a number of Danish churches along with churches in Norway and the United States. In Jerusalem, Brandes' Isaac Vase, approximately five meters tall, stands at the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. Peter Brandes' oeuvre is gigantic. It spans more than fifty years, and includes such varied forms of artistic expression as painting, sculpture, drawing, graphic art, ceramics, and not least photography and stained glass, for which he has developed new techniques. Dialogue with tradition-particularly the Jewish, Greek, and Christian traditions-runs throughout his work, marking Brandes as one of Denmark's foremost practitioners of cultural migration. Peter Brandes: Meridian of Art is the first monograph on the art of Peter Brandes. The book pursues a series of central themes that cut across Brandes' artistic production, connecting and traversing these with lines that the book's author, Ettore Rocca, calls the "meridian of art." The expression "meridian" is borrowed from the German poet Paul Celan, the author with whom Brandes has felt the greatest kinship throughout his career. For Celan, a meridian designates the indestructible, invisible line in a poetic conversation. Correspondingly, in the cultural migration that weaves throughout Brandes' art, Rocca finds a meridian that at once appears impossible and indestructible.
ISBN: 9788772190815
Publication Date: 2020-04-01

Featured Books and eBooks About Norwegian Art

1000 Masterpieces from the Great Museums of the World. The National Gallery of Norway in Oslo Summary: A series of episodes from the TV program '1000 Masterpieces from the Great Museums of the World' on The National Gallery of Norway in Oslo. The 1000 Masterpieces from the Great Museums of the World Series is one of the most successful TV series about art. The original, with improved image quality, takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of art. Comprehensively illustrated and compellingly presented - the well-known authors of five short art surveys provide a deeper insight into the masterpieces of painting.
Call Number: Kanopy streaming video
Publication Date: 2016
Communicating with the World of Beings by Knut Helskog; Tim Challman (Translator) The rock art found in the World Heritage sites in the Alta area, Arctic Norway, comprise thousands of images including reindeer and elk as well as fish, birds, boats, humans and geometric patterns. They contain information about peoples who lived in this northern area from about 5000 BC up until the birth of Christ; such as possible social organizations, hunting and trapping, beliefs, rituals,stories, legends, myths, cultural changes and continuities. Communicating with the world of beings addresses an understanding of the rock art in terms of communication with other people and other than-human beings. The figures could have been seen and experienced as symbols in rituals or as expressions of identity, position, power and rights, as depictions of real events and perhaps for use in storytelling. Through rock art, people might also have been able to communicate with other-than-human beings who ruled parts of the environment - in order to petition favors for themselves or others. These other-than-human beings may have been perceived as good and evil powers and spirits of the different worlds of the universe; the dead or souls; which also included the animals depicted or were even embodied in the stone. This communication may have been based on a belief that both living beings and inert objects and natural phenomena had souls, a belief that may have existed ever since the earliest settlements. Such an animistic belief means that everything was seen as having a consciousness and identity of its own, independent and imbued with a will. Therefore, it was essential that the different participants communicated with one another as equal partners. In this beautifully illustrated book Knut Helskog provides a lyrical and personal interpretation of the chronology, patterning and possible meanings behind this extraordinary landscape of prehistoric rock art.
ISBN: 9781782974116
Publication Date: 2014-04-16
Edvard Munch by Gary Garrels (Editor); Jon-Ove Steihaug (Editor); Sheena Wagstaff (Editor); Patricia Berman (Contribution by); Allison Morehead (Contribution by); Richard Shiff (Contribution by); Mille Stein (Contribution by); Karl Ove Knausgaard (Foreword by) A penetrating reassessment of Munch's memorable painting and profound artistic legacy  This engaging book offers a fresh look at the exceptional works of Edvard Munch (1863-1944) by examining them in the light of his precarious mental state. Following a nervous breakdown in 1908, Munch underwent electroshock therapy, which prompted a marked change in his art work. The haunting Self-Portrait between the Clock and the Bed, finished one year before his death, represents a culmination of the themes of mortality, isolation, and anxiety that he explored repeatedly, and provides, in these pages, a perfect lens through which to view the artist's entire oeuvre. Informative essays consider Munch's position in the art world, his conception of self as a means of experimentation, and the psychological content of his paintings, while a previously unpublished foreword by the celebrated Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard offers a new perspective on Munch's life and work. Featuring over 40 masterworks from throughout the painter's career, and an illustrated chronology that traces the progression of his emotional state and its influence on the images he created, this is an intimate, provocative study of an enigmatic artist and his remarkable legacy. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: SFMOMA, San Francisco (06/24/17-10/09/17) The Met Breuer, New York (11/14/17-02/04/18) Munch Museum, Oslo (05/12/18-09/09/18)
Call Number: ND773.M8 A4 2017
ISBN: 9781588396235
Publication Date: 2017-07-04
Nikolai Astrup: visions of Norway by MaryAnne Stevens (Editor); Frances Carey (Contribution by); Jay A. Clarke (Contribution by); Robert A. Ferguson (Contribution by); Kesia E. Halvorsrud (Contribution by); Karl Ove Knausgard (Prologue by) A compelling introduction to the life and artistic output of a trailblazing Norwegian painter, printmaker, and horticulturist Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928) was a highly individual Norwegian Modernist artist known for intensely colored  paintings and woodcuts of his native landscape. Astrup received a formal art education in Kristiania (now Oslo), Germany, and Paris, but he later rebelled against certain aspects of his training, such as the traditional conventions of optical perspective. He rejected metropolitan cultural centers in favor of his rural childhood home in western Norway, where he produced a remarkable body of work. This volume brings Astrup's life and work to a North American audience, situating him within the history and culture of Norway and late 19th- and early 20th-century art. Astrup's horticultural achievements in the service of his art on the farm where he lived are also explored. The book's beautiful illustrations highlight the intensity of Astrup's palette, the innovative nature of his prints, and the magical realism of his landscapes steeped in folklore and local customs. Distributed for the Clark Art Institute in cooperation with KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen, Savings Bank Foundation DNB, and Prince Eugen's Waldemarsudde Exhibition Schedule: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (June 19-September 19, 2021) KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen (October 15, 2021-January 23, 2022) Prince Eugen's Waldemarsudde, Stockholm (February 19-May 29, 2022)
Call Number: N7073.A88 A4 2021
ISBN: 0300250851
Publication Date: 2021-07-27
Peter Brandes by Ettore. Rocca Peter Brandes is one of the most significant Danish visual artists alive today. He is represented in the collections of leading museums worldwide, including the Louvre, and is featured in the most important Danish museums. Peter Brandes' monumental sculptures and jars can be seen throughout Denmark, and he has decorated a number of Danish churches along with churches in Norway and the United States. In Jerusalem, Brandes' Isaac Vase, approximately five meters tall, stands at the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. Peter Brandes' oeuvre is gigantic. It spans more than fifty years, and includes such varied forms of artistic expression as painting, sculpture, drawing, graphic art, ceramics, and not least photography and stained glass, for which he has developed new techniques. Dialogue with tradition-particularly the Jewish, Greek, and Christian traditions-runs throughout his work, marking Brandes as one of Denmark's foremost practitioners of cultural migration. Peter Brandes: Meridian of Art is the first monograph on the art of Peter Brandes. The book pursues a series of central themes that cut across Brandes' artistic production, connecting and traversing these with lines that the book's author, Ettore Rocca, calls the "meridian of art." The expression "meridian" is borrowed from the German poet Paul Celan, the author with whom Brandes has felt the greatest kinship throughout his career. For Celan, a meridian designates the indestructible, invisible line in a poetic conversation. Correspondingly, in the cultural migration that weaves throughout Brandes' art, Rocca finds a meridian that at once appears impossible and indestructible.
ISBN: 9788772190815
Publication Date: 2020-04-01

Featured Books and eBooks About Swedish Art

Carl Larsson by Klaus H. Carl Beloved Swedish artist Carl Larsson (1853-1919) emerged from poor beginnings to earn an esteemed place in the hearts and minds of his countrymen. Now known the world over for his delicate, luminous pictures of his family and their idyllic life in the Swedish countryside, he initially struggled as a painter for many years before finding international fame as a book illustrator. His delicate, charming portraits and major decorative projects in the Stockholm Opera House and the Nationalmuseum are deservedly much admired, despite the criticism he provoked from conservative art institutions. Yet it is undoubtedly his series of watercolours and pen-and-ink drawings showcasing the innovative interior design of the house he created together with his wife Karin which are cherished above all, for their vision of a happy, stylish, modern home which he offered to his millions of readers.
ISBN: 9781783105854
Publication Date: 2020-12-30
Design by IKEA by Sara Kristoffersson Sara Kristoffersson's compelling study provides the first sustained critical history of IKEA. Kristoffersson argues that the company's commercial success has been founded on a neat alignment of the brand with a particular image of Swedish national identity - one that is bound up with ideas of social democracy and egalitarianism - and its material expression in a pared-down, functional design aesthetic. Employing slogans such as "Design for everyone" and "Democratic design", IKEA signals a rejection of the stuffy, the 'chintzy', and the traditional in both design practices and social structures.Drawing on original research in the IKEA company archive and interviews with IKEA personnel, Design by IKEA traces IKEA's symbolic connection to Sweden, through its design output and its promotional materials, to examine how the company both promoted and profited from the concept of Scandinavian Design.
Call Number: HD9773.S84 I45513 2014
ISBN: 9780857858139
Publication Date: 2014-10-23
Hilma Af Klint: Paintings for the Future by Hilma af Klint (Artist); Tracey Bashkoff (Editor, Text by); Tessel M. Bauduin (Contribution by); Daniel Birnbaum (Contribution by) A groundbreaking study of visionary artist Hilma af Klint. When Swedish artist Hilma af Klint died in 1944 at the age of 81, she left behind more than a thousand paintings and works on paper that she kept largely private during her lifetime. Believing the world was not yet ready for her art, she stipulated that it should remain unseen for another 20 years. But only in recent decades has the public had a chance to reckon with af Klint's radically abstract painting practice - one which predates the work of Vasily Kandinsky and other artists widely considered trailblazers of modernist abstraction. Accompanying the first major survey exhibition of the artist's work in the United States, Hilma af Klint represents her groundbreaking painting series while expanding recent scholarship to present the fullest picture yet of the artist's life and work. Essays explore the social, intellectual, and artistic milieu of af Klint's 1906 break with figuration and her subsequent development, placing her in the context of Swedish modernism and folk art traditions, contemporary scientific discoveries, and spiritualist and occult movements. A roundtable discussion among contemporary artists, scholars, and curators considers af Klint's sources and relevance to art in the 21st century. The volume also delves into her unrealized plans for a spiral-shaped temple in which to display her art - a wish that finds a fortuitous answer in the Guggenheim Museum's rotunda, the site of the forthcoming exhibition.
Call Number: ND793.K63 A4 2018
ISBN: 9780892075430
Publication Date: 2018-10-23
Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Art of the 1890s by Michelle Facos This richly illustrated book is a lucid introduction to a largely neglected manifestation of Modernism that came out of fin-de-siècle Sweden. Michelle Facos presents the first study in English to seriously examine the movement known as Swedish National Romanticism. Her work is especially valuable in showing how the movement's primitivist tendencies were related to, but different from, similar cultural forces in Germany and other parts of Europe at that time. Facos shows how a small group of Swedish artists espoused a politically progressive, culturally conservative form of nationalism. These artists-among them Carl Larsson, Bruno Liljefors, and Hanna Hirsch Pauli-produced a specifically national Swedish art by focusing on indigenous history, legends, and folk tales as well as uniquely Swedish-Nordic values, geography, and ethnography. Their breathtaking images of the Nordic landscape shaped a communal "Folk" identity that accented regionalism, solidarity, and attachment to the past and protested against the perceived dangers of capitalist industrialism and urban expansion. By 1900 Sweden was on its way to realizing a society of social, economic, and political equality, and the National Romantic painters were no longer renegades. Facos's portrayal of their movement will attract readers in the arts, historians, folklorists, cultural anthropologists, and sociologists.
ISBN: 9780520206267
Publication Date: 1998-04-10
Swedish Design by Keith M. Murphy Swedish designers are noted for producing distinctive and elegant forms; their furniture and household goods have an especially loyal following around the world. Design in Sweden has more than just an aesthetic component, however. Since at least the late nineteenth century, Swedish politicians and social planners have viewed design as a means for advocating and enacting social change and pushing for a more egalitarian social organization. In this book, Keith M. Murphy examines the special relationship between politics and design in Sweden, revealing in particular the cultural meanings this relationship holds for Swedish society. Over the course of fourteen months of research in Stockholm and at other sites, Murphy conducted in-depth interviews with various players involved in the Swedish design industry--designers, design instructors, government officials, artists, and curators--and observed several different design collectives in action. He found that for Swedes design is never socially or politically neutral. Even for common objects like furniture and other household goods, design can be labeled "responsible," "democratic," or "ethical"-- descriptors that all neatly resonate with the traditional moral tones of Swedish social democracy. Murphy also considers the example of Ikea and its power to politicize perceptions of the everyday world. More broadly, his book serves as a model for an anthropological approach to the study of design practice, one that accounts for the various ways in which order is purposefully and meaningfully imposed by designers on the domains of human life, and the consequences those impositions have on the social worlds in which they are embedded.
ISBN: 9780801455803
Publication Date: 2015-08-11