TECNICAS, INSTRUMENTOS Y MATERIALES DE VERIFICACION 1 MATERIALES Y REACTIVOS

Since the Second World War abstract art had become the norm in Swedish art circles, and by the 1950s a sense of elitism prevailed among artists as well as critics, curators and gallery owners. Just as we will see in Norway, young artists had to complete a course of study at the Academy of Fine Arts and then undergo five to ten years of intense artistic creation before they would be granted a solo exhibition, and thereby be ‘allowed’ to be characterised as an established artist. As the former owner of Galleri Karlsson in Stockholm, Bo A. Karlsson, states: “Art at that time was something for a small cluster of experts, connoisseurs, collectors with money, and hardly something for a larger audience. […] Any unique new Swedish art hardly existed, everything was […] abstract.”1It is true that most of the artists working at the time were established and primarily concerned with abstraction and non-figuration, such as Lennart Rodhe (Fig. 3.1), Olle Bonnier, Karl-Axel Pehrsson (Fig. 3.2) and Olle Baertling. There had been, however, a development after the war around the democratic idea ofkonst för alla (art for all), which spurred the establishment of Folkrörelsernas konstfrämjande (The Popular Movement’s Art Promotion) in 1947, which aspired to offer fine art for everyone.2 By ‘art for all,’ the organisation predominantly meant printed works and from the outset organised exhibitions to tour the country as well as working “as a mail order company for prints sold through agents in the workplace and in associations.”3 The idea of art for the people was nothing new however, as at the turn of the twentieth-century figures such as Carl Larsson, Ellen Key and Carl Lauring contributed to popular education through their engagement with concepts of beauty in folkhemmet (the people’s home). The aim of these earlier practitioners was to shape better and more beautiful environments which, in turn, would lead to better and happier people. As a result, in Sweden ideas about an art for the people were, and remain, deeply rooted in egalitarian and humanist beliefs which were burgeoning at the turn of the century and again set alight after the Second World War.

1_{Karlsson, Bo A., ‘Den svenska konsten 1964-74’, Ed. Karlsson, Khilander & Astrand,Hjärtat sitter till} vänster, exhibition catalogue, Göteborgs Konstmuseum/Gothenburg Art Museum, 1998, p6-7

2_{Strandell, Monica, ‘Konstfrämjandets historia’,Konst för alla?, Konstfrämjandet 40 årandKonstfrämjandet 50} år, exhibition catalogues, Nationalmuseum/National Museum,

http://www.konstframjandet.se/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2&Itemid=22, accessed on 30 March 2010

42 Swedish interest in an egalitarian art was linked directly to prosperity. A neutral state during the war, Sweden emerged unharmed and immediately enjoyed a period of economic and social prosperity, with low unemployment and a lack of housing only an issue in urban areas as a consequence of increased urbanisation. The country benefitted greatly from retaining its industrial base intact and having the resources to expand its industry, thereby helping to supply the rebuilding of Europe. Socialdemokraterna (the Swedish Social Democrats, SD) remained in power between 1936 and 1976. Tage Erlander was the first post- war Prime Minister from 1946 until 1969, followed by Olof Palme who was the Education Minister during the infamous Kårhusockupationen (Student Union Occupation) in 1968. SD promoted culture as part of their political vision from the end of the 1930s, and to some extent succeeded in their aims for an egalitarian art world and cultural sphere. As artist and critic Leif Nylén put it in 2007: “The 1920s’ avant-garde was a heroic outsider. It was a marginal culture. The 1960s avant-garde was a lift into the centre. A sort of welfare-modernism.”4

What was it, then, that changed the Swedish art scene so dramatically during the 1960s? One major factor was the opening in May 1958 of a brand new contemporary art museum, Moderna Museet, in Stockholm, headed by K.G. Pontus Hultén. Four consecutive exhibitions at Moderna Museet changed the stalemate of Stockholm’s 1950s art scene into a vibrant and democratic art milieu. The first of these was Rörelse i konsten (Movements in Art) in 1961, which included work by Marcel Duchamp, Jean Tinguely, Man Ray, Francis Picabia and Alexander Calder, most of whom had not previously been shown in Sweden.5The following year, Jasper Johns, Alfred Leslie, Richard Stankiewicz and Robert Rauschenberg appeared in Fyra Amerikaner (Four Americans), and shocked the art milieu to its core. The exhibition, along with Moderna Museet’s acquisition policies, became part of the so-called ‘great art debate’, initiated by Rabbe Enckell in his 1962 Academy appeal, which continued until the mid-1960s.6 The debate itself, spurred by Moderna Museet’s innovative methods, focused around the concept of the artwork and, indirectly, the status of the artist, while also posing questions about the role of the critic. The debate centred around the potent and still relevant question of who decides what art is – the critic or the artist. Karlsson believed that the combines shown in the exhibition were to be “the symbol for the new art climate.”7 The

4_{Lykkeberg, Rune, ‘60ernes åbne kunst’,Information, 29 May 2007} 5_{The show attracted a record breaking audience of 70,000.}

6_{The main participants in the debate were Rabbe Enckell, Ulf Linde, Pontus Hultén, Torsten Bergmark and}

Ingmar Hedenius.

43 concept of art was definitely expanded as the 1960s saw happenings, installations, mobile sculptures, environments, combines and ready-mades all descend upon an unsuspecting Swedish audience like lightning out of a clear sky. It seemed as if, suddenly, everything was possible in art.

Amerikansk pop-konst. 106 former av kärlek och förtvivlan (American pop art. 106 forms of love and despair, Fig. 3.3-3.4) in 1964 was the first American Pop art exhibition in Scandinavia, if not in all of Europe, and displayed painting and sculpture by Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, George Segal and Tom Wesselman. Moderna hereby earned an international reputation, and through contacts, associates and friends, Hultén continued to bring new and hot trends to the museum, culminating in his donation, on the occasion of his resignation in 1974, of the ‘New York Collection for Stockholm’ to the museum. The 1966 exhibition project Hon – en katedral

(She – a cathedral, Fig. 3.5-3.6) was a gigantic sculpted woman painted in bright colours. Leif Nylén contemplates the democratic and motherly emphasis inHonas the sculpture lay on the floor and welcomed the audience to enter the swelling belly through her vagina.8 Once inside there was an exhibition of works by Nike de St Phalle, Jean Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvedt, as well as a bar, cinema and a slide show. Hon was the most remarkable and strange exhibition to be staged at Moderna in the sixties, yet by this point amusement and surprising aesthetics had lost much of their potency. The only critique was that the show represented a patriarchal view of women.9

The museum had changed and would no longer be merely a space for quiet contemplation. This new type of institution incorporated the audience, and as a consequence the artwork was created in and by the viewer. Moderna would take this idea even further in the experimental The Model for a Qualitative Society or Modellen (The Model, 1968, Fig. 3.7) by Palle Nielsen, where a room was filled with a mountain of rubber foam for spirited games and physical exercises, thereby making the individual’s experience the artwork. It also incorporated a vision for Moderna to include and be in dialogue with the museum’s youngest visitors, which it still emphasises today. From the artist’s point of view the artwork’s ultimate goal was to create a space where children could play freely by themselves within the museum. It thus encouraged freedom and creativity.

8_{Nylén, Leif,Den öppna konsten – Happenings, instrumental teater, konkret poesi och andra} gränsöverskridningar I det svenska 60-talet, Borås: Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 1998, p143

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