Pollock's Bollocks and a Bacon Cock

Pollock's Bollocks and a Bacon Cock as Crucifixion, painted in 2003, by finish artist Janne Räisenen, is a monumental piece. It’s large in size as well as in technique. Fact is, I don’t like it that much, even though Räisenen is celebrated as one of the most interesting “younger” artists coming out of Scandinavia these days. To me, Räisenens work is to deep in imagery and to shallow in thought.

So, why did I name my blog Pollock’s Bollocks then? Basically for the same reason that Räisenen must have named his painting: it sounds cool. Most art is pretty shallow in that sense. Maybe they will deny it, but the artists of the 20th century were as important as iconic figures as there work ever was. The image of the artist is, if not everything, than surely a lot – this is just as true when discussing the later iconic artists such as Serrano or Damien Hirst, as it was with Picasso or Dalí.

Hence, this blog is first and foremost about me. It’s about what I believe, think and do. It’s not everything about me, obviously. It will contain my opinions and feelings about that which we call art, and related topics.

I really haven’t come to terms with what I am trying to here yet. I’m hoping to work that out as the blog develops. I haven’t even worked out the templates quite yet. Some of the things that I will publish here are:

1. Comments on contemporary art, primarily young Scandinavian artists.
2. Introductions to pictures from the history of arts. These will be very short text, some of which have already been published in Swedish in the weekly journal Flamman.
3. Discussions on what art is, and why (or why not…) it’s important.
4. Opinions on the need for more popular – less elitist – forms of art, and how the situation could be improved.

Now on to a personal introduction, and a few disclaimers:

I’m in way over my head here, folks. I have no real education in art, besides what I’ve managed to learn on my own. English is not my mother tongue… that is probably obvious by now.

I am 33 years old, living in Stockholm, Sweden. I am a journalist. My daytime job is as web editor for Vänsterpartiet, but I also do art critics and editorial comments for Flamman. I’m married to the coolest woman alive, Jenny Lindahl, and together we have a sincerely disturbed, but highly loved dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Coco.