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Nordic Noir: works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson
The British Museum, London.
Until March 22
Beyond “The Scream,” Edvard Munch’s gift to art was his innovative approach to woodcuts, which involved cutting them into pieces so they could be coated in different colours and then putting them back together like a jigsaw.
His technique continues to inspire as demonstrated by this exhibition that is the culmination of a five-year project, overseen by Curator of Modern and Contemporary Nordic Graphic Art Jennifer Ramkalawon, to acquire post-war graphic works on paper from the Nordic region for the British Museum.
They range from Munch’s contemporaries, outlawed, like him, as degenerate by the occupying Nazis, to conceptual art to an AI-generated image. They tackle the human condition and the existential threat of climate change. They chill us to the bone and, for all the noir, bathe us in summer meadows and occasional domesticity. Abstract works from the 1970s also deliver a sudden blaze of colour.
Munch’ s ground-breaking skill is represented by the almost luminous “Melancholy III,” with its cold shades of green, the flesh tones of a melancholic head placed in a melancholic hand and a black backdrop.
The exhibition’s other Munch work is “Old Fisherman” – an archetype, dour beneath the protective dome of his sou’wester, more enduring than anguished.
Fishing is a recurrent theme.
Munch’s contemporary and fellow degenerate, as far as the Nazis were concerned, German-born Rolf Nesch is renowned for his printing. He recorded his experience of a trip north of the Arctic Cicle in a series of prints, but before that, he drew in situ the fishermen he met. The rare spontaneous sketch “Cod Fishing” is among the British Museum’s Nordic acquisitions.
Its dashed-off outlines stand in contrast to the woodcut “Fishermen”, with its strong physicality, by Henrik Finne. Finne learnt his craft from the exiled Nesch, who stayed with him and his family in Oslo.
Another even more muscular Finne woodcut depicts the traditional skill of “flensing” – or removing blubber from a whale carcass.
Of his time, Finne apparently does not question whaling, but for those who do, the less violent portrayals of the empty desolation of the great northern landscape have more appeal.
Norwegian Annette Kierulf turns to Munch’s jigsaw technique to create “The Birch and the Barn”, while Japanese-born, Finnish resident Yuichiro Sato, with “In the Air, III”, takes a more ethereal approach to conveying birch bark and the vein-like twists of naked, wintry branches.
Iceland’s Birgir Andresson marvels at “Moss” with an exquisitely detailed graphite drawing.
Finland’s Lea Ignatius, in serene, atmospheric prints, captures the smallness of isolated individuals in vast forests and fjords.
For others in the British Museum selection, the dark seriousness of their work is a direct response to governments and policies.
Swedish Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba’s “The Crows” reflects the close connection she has spoken of between politics and mythology.
In it, a flock of crows, which symbolise authority in Sámi law, metamorphoses into the policemen that descend on a Sámi encampment. My favourite touches are the cape-like wings and the officer in the file who retains the legs of a crow.
The Sámi, the indigenous Finno-Ugric people, inhabit northern parts of Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Kola Peninsula in Russia, and bear the brunt of rising sea temperatures and dwindling supplies of their traditional food.
Marakatt-Labba has referred to the man-made global warming that is the cause as “more of a catastrophe” than a matter of climate change.
On that theme, Danish/Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has made use of melted ice from chunks of Greenlandic glaciers to flood a watercolour in his “Don’t look to the horizon – look down and around”.
Norwegian Per Kleiva’s preoccupation is U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He takes aim at it with “American butterflies” in which the butterflies are helicopters.
If all of the above is an expression of the bleaker side of life, self-taught painter Olle Olsson provides something closer to escapism. His charming naïve paintings depict Hagalund, on the outskirts of Stockholm, where he lived and died, as the quaint, cosy place it was before massive housing projects transformed it.
Another observer of human communities, Denmark’s Jane Muus captures the feeling of Paris in the rain with “Umbrella – people are sucked into the metro”.
The exhibition on occasions even takes us into the shelter of being indoors.
Swedish artist Maria Nordin, renowned for large-scale water colours, in “Act of Comfort” depicts a woman carrying piles of laundry in soft colours, while another Swede Anna Zimmerman, whose medium is charcoal on paper, creates a very suggestive “Venus”, viewed from behind.
Staying with the art of contemporary Swedish women, Mamma Andersson provides the frontispiece of the exhibition with a fallow deer made using a similar process to that pioneered by Munch, as his artistic legacy thrives.
Munch sells for many millions.
Speaking of her experience of tracking down the Nordic works on paper for the British Museum, with the help of money from charity the AKO Foundation, curator Ramkalawon told the Financial Times collectors “can get a lot of Nordic art for very little money”.
Now the British Museum has shown its power and variety, that may cease to be the case.
Nordic Noir: works on paper from Edvard Munch to Mamma Andersson
The British Museum, London.
Until March 22
Beyond “The Scream,” Edvard Munch’s gift to art was his innovative approach to woodcuts, which involved cutting them into pieces so they could be coated in different colours and then putting them back together like a jigsaw.
His technique continues to inspire as demonstrated by this exhibition that is the culmination of a five-year project, overseen by Curator of Modern and Contemporary Nordic Graphic Art Jennifer Ramkalawon, to acquire post-war graphic works on paper from the Nordic region for the British Museum.
They range from Munch’s contemporaries, outlawed, like him, as degenerate by the occupying Nazis, to conceptual art to an AI-generated image. They tackle the human condition and the existential threat of climate change. They chill us to the bone and, for all the noir, bathe us in summer meadows and occasional domesticity. Abstract works from the 1970s also deliver a sudden blaze of colour.
Munch’ s ground-breaking skill is represented by the almost luminous “Melancholy III,” with its cold shades of green, the flesh tones of a melancholic head placed in a melancholic hand and a black backdrop.
The exhibition’s other Munch work is “Old Fisherman” – an archetype, dour beneath the protective dome of his sou’wester, more enduring than anguished.
Fishing is a recurrent theme.
Munch’s contemporary and fellow degenerate, as far as the Nazis were concerned, German-born Rolf Nesch is renowned for his printing. He recorded his experience of a trip north of the Arctic Cicle in a series of prints, but before that, he drew in situ the fishermen he met. The rare spontaneous sketch “Cod Fishing” is among the British Museum’s Nordic acquisitions.
Its dashed-off outlines stand in contrast to the woodcut “Fishermen”, with its strong physicality, by Henrik Finne. Finne learnt his craft from the exiled Nesch, who stayed with him and his family in Oslo.
Another even more muscular Finne woodcut depicts the traditional skill of “flensing” – or removing blubber from a whale carcass.
Of his time, Finne apparently does not question whaling, but for those who do, the less violent portrayals of the empty desolation of the great northern landscape have more appeal.
Norwegian Annette Kierulf turns to Munch’s jigsaw technique to create “The Birch and the Barn”, while Japanese-born, Finnish resident Yuichiro Sato, with “In the Air, III”, takes a more ethereal approach to conveying birch bark and the vein-like twists of naked, wintry branches.
Iceland’s Birgir Andresson marvels at “Moss” with an exquisitely detailed graphite drawing.
Finland’s Lea Ignatius, in serene, atmospheric prints, captures the smallness of isolated individuals in vast forests and fjords.
For others in the British Museum selection, the dark seriousness of their work is a direct response to governments and policies.
Swedish Sámi artist Britta Marakatt-Labba’s “The Crows” reflects the close connection she has spoken of between politics and mythology.
In it, a flock of crows, which symbolise authority in Sámi law, metamorphoses into the policemen that descend on a Sámi encampment. My favourite touches are the cape-like wings and the officer in the file who retains the legs of a crow.
The Sámi, the indigenous Finno-Ugric people, inhabit northern parts of Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Kola Peninsula in Russia, and bear the brunt of rising sea temperatures and dwindling supplies of their traditional food.
Marakatt-Labba has referred to the man-made global warming that is the cause as “more of a catastrophe” than a matter of climate change.
On that theme, Danish/Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has made use of melted ice from chunks of Greenlandic glaciers to flood a watercolour in his “Don’t look to the horizon – look down and around”.
Norwegian Per Kleiva’s preoccupation is U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He takes aim at it with “American butterflies” in which the butterflies are helicopters.
If all of the above is an expression of the bleaker side of life, self-taught painter Olle Olsson provides something closer to escapism. His charming naïve paintings depict Hagalund, on the outskirts of Stockholm, where he lived and died, as the quaint, cosy place it was before massive housing projects transformed it.
Another observer of human communities, Denmark’s Jane Muus captures the feeling of Paris in the rain with “Umbrella – people are sucked into the metro”.
The exhibition on occasions even takes us into the shelter of being indoors.
Swedish artist Maria Nordin, renowned for large-scale water colours, in “Act of Comfort” depicts a woman carrying piles of laundry in soft colours, while another Swede Anna Zimmerman, whose medium is charcoal on paper, creates a very suggestive “Venus”, viewed from behind.
Staying with the art of contemporary Swedish women, Mamma Andersson provides the frontispiece of the exhibition with a fallow deer made using a similar process to that pioneered by Munch, as his artistic legacy thrives.
Munch sells for many millions.
Speaking of her experience of tracking down the Nordic works on paper for the British Museum, with the help of money from charity the AKO Foundation, curator Ramkalawon told the Financial Times collectors “can get a lot of Nordic art for very little money”.
Now the British Museum has shown its power and variety, that may cease to be the case.
Barbara Lewis © 2025.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, art, drawing, exhibitions • Tags: art, Barbara Lewis, drawing, exhibitions