Tag Archives: scandinavia house

DANISH PAINTINGS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE TO THE MODERN BREAKTHROUGH: COPENHAGEN AND VANGUARD EUROPE

Harald Slott-Møller, “Summer Day,” oil on canvas, 1888 (collection of Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr.)

COPENHAGEN AND VANGUARD EUROPE
Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Monday, January 13, free, 6:30
Exhibit continues Tuesday-Saturday through January 25, free, 12 noon – 6:00
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org

More than three dozen works by two dozen artists who were part of the tremendous surge in painting in Denmark from the early eighteenth to early twentieth centuries are on view in the Scandinavia House exhibit “Danish Paintings from the Golden Age to the Modern Breakthrough: Selections from the Collection of Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr.” On January 13 at 6:30, Dr. Patricia G. Berman, who cocurated the exhibition with Dr. Thor J. Mednick and is the author of In Another Light: Danish Painting in the Nineteenth Century, will deliver the free illustrated lecture “Copenhagen and Vanguard Europe,” focusing on Denmark’s capital city as a center for avant-garde artists in the 1890s, particularly while the nation tried to redefine its identity during the social, financial, and political upheaval that followed the Napoleonic wars. Professor Berman has lectured often at Scandinavia House; her clarity and charm make the enormous amount of fascinating information she’s able to deliver all the more enlightening. The lovely show has been extended through January 25 and is highlighted by such beautiful canvases as Harald Slott-Møller’s “Summer Day,” in which two women delicately stand in shallow water on a beach; Bertha Wegmann’s “Interior with a Bunch of Wild Flowers, Tyrol,” a still-life with several surprising items; P. S. Krøyer’s “Self-Portrait, Sitting by His Easel at Skagen Beach,” with its earth-toned foreground colors set off against the blue of the sky and sea; and Vilhelm Hammershøi’s “Interior with a Woman Standing,” a stunning composition featuring open and closed doors, a shadowy woman, and a mysterious silence, as if the viewer is being invited in to something they will never learn anything more about. The show also includes works by Ludvig Find, Christen Købke, Otto Bache, Jens Juel, and husband and wife Anna Ancher and Michael Ancher, among others. The paintings are all from the collection of New York City native John Langeloth Loeb Jr., who served as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark from 1981 to 1983 and then as a delegate to the United Nations.

MUNCH / WARHOL AND THE MULTIPLE IMAGE

Andy Warhol, “The Scream (After Munch),” screenprint on Lenox Museum Board, 1984 (© 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society, New York)

Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Tuesday-Saturday through July 27, $5, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org

“Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?” Andy Warhol rhetorically asked. “I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell,” Edvard Munch explained. Shortly after a 1982 Munch exhibition, New York’s Galleri Bellman commissioned Warhol (1928-87) to create pieces based on the work of Munch (1863-1944). The pairing of the two men — one a fame-obsessed pop-culture junkie with a very particular public persona, the other a deeply personal artist who explored dark psychological themes and suffered from severe anxiety — actually makes a lot of sense, as each experimented with printing techniques for both artistic and commercial purposes. As part of Munch 150, a worldwide celebration of the Norwegian painter’s 150th birthday, Scandinavia House is hosting “Munch | Warhol and the Multiple Image,” which brings together works by the two printmakers. For the Galleri Berman commission, Warhol chose Munch’s “Madonna,” “Self-Portrait,” “The Brooch. Eva Mudocci,” and “The Scream,” tracing photographic blow-ups of the original image, breaking them down into their bare elements and then re-creating them, incorporating different colors, ghostly doubling, and other effects that give new life to Munch’s famous images. The exhibition, splendidly curated by Dr. Patricia G. Berman and Pari Stave, consists of thirty-two prints, including multiple versions of Munch’s controversial “Madonna,” in which he sexualizes his dark-haired subject, adding spermatozoa and an infant in many of the works, and a pair of self-portraits, one a trial proof never before displayed in America, in which his head and upper body seem to be floating in a dark nothingness. In a series of eight diptychs titled “Madonna and Self-Portrait with Skeleton’s Arm (After Munch),” Warhol places the images side-by-side, changing color and resolution, desexualizing and resexualizing the woman as her initial artistic creator stares blankly at the viewer. Warhol’s psychedelic versions of musician Mudocci include the tracing that has a hint of Michael Jackson in the face. In the back room is a nearly dizzying series of “The Scream (After Munch),” as Warhol and his master printmaker, Rupert Jason Smith, play with line, form, and color, altering the prominence of the background and foreground, each screenprint providing different emotional takes on Munch’s iconic, oft-reproduced image.

“Munch | Warhol” exhibit brings together two iconic printmakers (photo by Eileen Travell. Scandinavia House/The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 2013)

Ultimately, it’s that repetition, with minor or major changes, that most directly link the two artists, both of whom reworked their originals over and over again to create commercially viable multiples. As it turned out, Warhol’s Munch-based lithographs were never published as an edition, the multiples never released as a multiple of its own. “Munch | Warhol and the Multiple Image” continues at Scandinavia House through July 27; on July 23 at 6:30, Dr. Jay A. Clarke will give the lecture “Munch’s Repetition” (free but advance RSVP suggested), and there will be a docent-led tour on July 27 at 1:00.

OPENHOUSENEWYORK WEEKEND

Green-Wood Cemetery is among the many historic locations opening its doors and gates to visitors for free during openhousenewyork Weekend (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues in all five boroughs
Saturday, October 6, and Sunday, October 7
Admission: free (advance reservations required for some sites)
OHNY Passport: $150
212-991-OHNY
www.ohny.org

The fabulous openhousenewyork Weekend celebrates its tenth anniversary by once again offering people the opportunity to experience the nooks and crannies of many of New York City’s most fascinating architectural constructions. Among this year’s special programs, some of which require advance reservations even though admission is free, are Designers’ Open House, with such interior designers as Thomas Jayne, Ali Tayar, Paul Ochs, Aizaki Allie, Christopher Coleman, and Lea Ciavarra inviting guests into their private homes; the Peace Bike Ride led by Nadette Stasa of Time’s Up!; a treasure hunt for kid explorers at the Park Avenue Armory; “Dance on the Greenway,” with Dance Theatre Etcetera performing site-specific pieces by four emerging choreographers in Erie Basin Park behind the Red Hook IKEA; “Paseo,” consisting of short works by choreographer Joanna Haigood and composer Bobby Sanabria that take place on fire escapes and stoops at Casita Maria in the Bronx; “Spirits Alive,” with actors in period costumes portraying famous people buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens; “Wilderness Plan,” in which costumed dancing creatures lead people through the Elevated Acre in the Financial District; and “Frost Court,” a performance installation featuring dancers Jon Kinzel, Silas Riener, Stuart Shugg, Saul Ulerio, Enrico Wey, and Aaron Mattocks. Although some of the special tours are already booked, plenty of others have vacancies or are first come, first served (unless you buy a $150 front-of-line Passport), so you can still check out the Fading Ads of New York City with Frank Jump, the Manhole Covers of Fourteenth St. with Michele Brody, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Spaces, the Harlem Edge: 135th St. Marine Transfer Station, the Bronx River Right-of-Way, the Kings County Distillery Tour, Historic Richmond Town, the Noguchi Museum, the New York City Photo Safari for shutterbugs, the Lakeside at Prospect Park Construction Tour, the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, the Tenriko Mission New York Center, the Alice Austen House Museum, Fort Totten, the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, the Grand Lodge of Masons, the New York Marble Cemetery and the New York City Marble Cemetery, the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, Scandinavia House, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Merchant’s House Museum, the Jefferson Market Library, the Little Red Lighthouse, the High Line, the African Burial Grounds, and so many, many more. The annual opendialogue series features talks and tours at such locations as the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, Runner & Stone, UrbanGlass, the East Harlem School, the Horticultural Society of New York, the Museum of the Moving Image, New York City Center, and the TWA Flight Center at JFK. Keep watching the official website for late changes, additions, sell-outs, and other updated information.

LUMINOUS MODERNISM 1912 / 2012

Edvard Munch, “Badende gutter (Bathing Boys),” oil on canvas, 1904-1905 (private collection)

Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Thursday, January 26, $10, 6:30
Saturday, February 11, $40, 9:30 am – 6:00 pm
Exhibition continues through February 11 (Tuesday-Saturday, $5, 12 noon – 6:00 pm)
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org

One hundred years ago, the American-Scandinavian Foundation put together a survey of modernist art from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden that visited several cities in the United States, introducing America to Nordic art and the region’s vast, diverse landscape and culture. Scandinavia House is celebrating the centennial of that important, influential show with “Luminous Modernism: Scandinavian Art Comes to America, 1912,” on view through February 11. The show includes twenty artists and eight of the paintings from the original exhibition, divided into sections devoted to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden as well as Iceland and Finland, with works by such artists as Prince Eugen, Anna Boberg, Harald Sohlberg, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Thorvald Erichsen, Thórarinn Thorláksson, Karl Norstrom, Pekka Halonen, Anders Zorn, Ásgrímur Jónsson, and Edvard Munch. As part of the centennial celebration, Scandinavia House will present “Universal Truths and Local Fictions: Nordic Art on the Edge,” a lecture by curator Dr. Patricia Berman, on January 26 ($10, 6:30), and the all-day symposium “Regional Modernism: New Art in Scandinavia, 1880-1912” on February 11 ($40, 9:30 am – 6:00 pm).

NORDIC OSCAR CONTENDERS: LE HAVRE

Marcel (André Wilms) and Arletty Marx (Kati Outinen) face life with a deadpan sense of humor in Aki Kaurismäki’s LE HAVRE

LE HAVRE (Aki Kaurismäki, 2011)
Victor Borge Hall, Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
Friday, January 6, $12, 6:30
Series runs January 4-9
212-847-9746
janusfilms.com/lehavre
www.scandinaviahouse.org

For nearly thirty years, Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America, The Man Without a Past) has been making existential deadpan black comedies that are often as funny as they are dark and depressing. Has there ever been a film as bleak as 1990’s The Match Factory Girl, in which a young woman (Kati Outinen) suffers malady after malady, tragedy after tragedy, embarrassment after embarrassment, her expression never changing? In his latest film, the thoroughly engaging Le Havre, Kaurismäki moves the setting to a small port town in France, where shoeshine man Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a self-described former Bohemian, worries about his seriously ill wife (Outinen) while trying to help a young African boy (Blondin Miguel), who was smuggled into the country illegally on board a container ship, steer clear of the police, especially intrepid detective Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), who never says no to a snifter of Calvados. Adding elements of French gangster and WWII Resistance films with Godardian undercurrents — he even casts Jean-Pierre Léaud in a small but pivotal role — Kaurismäki wryly examines how individuals as well as governments deal with illegal immigrants, something that has taken on more importance than ever amid the growing international economic crisis and fears of terrorism. Through it all, Marcel remains steadfast and stalwart, quietly and humbly going about his business, deadpan every step of the way. Wouter Zoon’s set design runs the gamut from stark grays to bursts of color, while longtime Kaurismäki cinematographer Timo Salminen shoots scene after scene with a beautiful simplicity. Winner of a Fipresci critics award at Cannes this year and Finland’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Le Havre, the first of a proposed trilogy, is another marvelously unusual, charmingly offbeat tale from a master of the form. A selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival, Le Havre is screening January 6 at 6:30 as part of the “Nordic Oscar Contenders” series at Scandinavia House, which begins January 4 with Pernilla August’s Swedish entry, Svinalängorna (Beyond), and concludes January 9 with Anne Sewitsky’s Norwegian drama Sykt lykkelig (Happy, happy).

LIVE ACTION NEW YORK 10

Scandinavia House
58 Park Ave. at 38th St.
November 5-7, free
212-847-9740
www.scandinaviahouse.org
www.liveactionnewyork.org

The second annual Live Action New York series continues at Scandinavia House Friday through Sunday, following shows Wednesday and Thursday at Grace Exhibition Space, featuring performance art by emerging artists as well as established stars from Scandinavia and North America curated by critic, artist, and historian Jonah Stampe. Friday night’s program includes Mari Novotny-Jones’s “Tender,” Rita Marhaug’s “Norwegian Liquid,” Maurice Blok’s untitled piece, and Joshua Selman’s “Full Massage.” Saturday night begins with Johanna Householder’s “Verbatim 3: Moon,” followed by Kjetil Skøien’s “Still Life,” Peter Rosvik’s “Abandoned Identities,” and Jessica Higgins and Mary Averill’s “Pick Up Sticks.” The festival concludes Sunday afternoon with Birgit Salling Hansen’s “Contours (Writing in the Rain),” Magnus Logi Kristinsson’s “Understandable Not Understandable Words,” and Jörgen Svensson’s “The Wedding.” Although all events are free, advance reservations are suggested.

PUBLIC ART TALKS

Art lovers will be rushing to see a host of special talks and discussions this month, including Alexey Titarenko at Nailya Alexander

The last week of this month is filled with some intriguing, exciting public art talks all around town, offering insight into specific exhibits, artists, and movements. On March 23 (free, 6:30), photographer Barbara Probst, who takes pictures of created scenes from multiple angles at the same time, will speak at Aperture as part of the Parsons Lecture Series. Also on March 23 ($15, 6:30), architect Shigeru Ban, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, and artist Mariko Mori join moderator Stefano Tonchi at the Japan Society for “Conscious Inspiration: Juxtaposing Nature & Art Form,” a panel discussion about art and environmentalism. Béatrice Coron, who is included in the excellent “Slash” show at the Museum of Arts & Design, will participate in the latest “Rock, Paper, Scissors!” gallery talk at FIAF on March 24 ($15, 7:00), discussing “The Silhouette World of Béatrice Coron.” Also on March 24 ($15, 7:00), the Photographer Lecture Series at ICP focuses on JoAnn Verburg, who will speak with Phillip S. Block in conjunction with the opening of her latest exhibit, “Interruptions,” at Pace/MacGill, and Deborah Hay will present a Lecture on the Performance of Beauty in the Great Hall at the Cooper Union (free, 7:00). On March 25, Freedom Riders Joseph Charles Jones and George Bundy Smith will participate in a civil rights panel discussion with Blanche Wiesen Cook, Dr. Victoria Pérez-Rios, Bettina Carbonell, Lisa Farrington, and artist Charlotta Janssen at the closing of Janssen’s “Freedom Riders & Bus Boycotters” painting exhibit at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (free, 6:30). Also on March 25, Ghada Amer will speak with curator Sam Bardaouil at the Swiss Institute as part of the Across Histories series (free, 6:30), Dan Cameron will talk about Project New Orleans at the New York Academy of Art (free, 6:30), and Alfredo Jaar will screen his new short film, THE ASHES OF PASOLINI, followed by a discussion between him and David Levi Strauss at the SVA Theatre (free, 7:00). The New School will be hosting the illustration symposium “The Artist as Author” on March 27 (free, 3:00 – 8:30), featuring Ben Katchor, Patricia Mainardi, Emily Lauer, David Kurnick, and Jerry Moriarty. On March 30 (free, 5:30), photography fans can Meet the Artist at the Nailya Alexander Gallery, talking to Alexey Titarenko about his stunning series “Saint Petersburg in Four Movements.” Also on March 30 ($10, 7:00), Craig Dykers lectures on “Conditions of Architecture & Current Works” at Scandinavia House, a companion lecture to the exhibition “SNØHETTA: architecture – landscape – interior,” and Sanford Biggers and Lorraine O’Grady will speak with PERFORMA founding director and curator RoseLee Goldberg in the latest installment of MoMA’s Among Friends series, followed by a cocktail reception ($35, 7:00).