Beware of the dark side...
The weirdest story in the Swedish art world today must surely be this article in Dagens Nyheter (Sweden’s largest morning daily). Renowned artist Marianne Lindberg de Geer - with a little backup from on of Sweden’s best selling artists of all time, Ernst Billgren - accuses the paper’s art critic Bo Madestrand of being part of a conspiracy. Lindberg de Geer claims that a committé made up of people from the art elite “decide who gets to live and who must die in the art life of Sweden”.
And it’s all because of Johan Nobell. Well, actually, it’s because of him getting good reviews from Madestrand (who might, or might not, be part of the conspiracy that Lindberg de Geer is talking about). It’s all very bizarre.
Nobell’s art isn’t really my cup of tea, but nobody can deny his ability to paint. According to his gallery Andrehn-Shiptjenko (that is basically the “death star” of the art conspiracy…) he is "considered to be one of Scandinavia’s most original painters to have emerged in recent years and has indeed developed a pictorial language all of his own. His small to medium size canvases are ambiguous, quasi-narrative and oscillating between the figurative and the abstract. Being to a large extent influenced by the aesthetics as well as the economic geography of the American landscape his paintings are at once mysterious and stark."
That maybe so, but it’s hard not to wonder if this is what the stuff Dalí scribbled down while talking on the phone would look like…
posted by Emil Lindahl Persson at 1:41 PM
5 Comments:
You totally missed the point, mister. First: Madestrand is not an art critic at DN. He is a cultural journalist and an occasional design critic. Second: he did not write a critical review but a preview article in the cultural section claiming, with some certainty, that Nobells coming exhibition would be his big breakthrough in the art world. Lindberg de Geer´s question is actually quite to the point: why would there now be need for a critical review? But I´m looking forward to see if any of DN´s real art critics will actually write something. Probably not, I would guess, but if they do, how will the critic in question relate to the "PR-piece" by Madestrand? And which one of the articles would cary most weight, considering that Madestrand has already stated that Nobell will have his big breakthroug and made it into a kind of "media-truth."
You should also note that DN has made a habit out of publishing exactly this kind of article about emerging painters (previously about painters like Anna Finney, Gunnel Wåhlstrand et c). As a reader one can´t help to wonder about what agenda they are actually pushing.
4:35 AM
Peter Cornell writes at http://www.expressen.se/index.jsp?a=508172
5:52 AM
No, the point is that Lindberg de Geer's article is full of rather bizarre conspiracy theories.
An interesting point would be to analyze how members of the art elite are so afraid of saying something different from eachother that they often form a consensus about an artist at an early stage and then stick to it.
To claim the existence of "a committé" that decide "who should live and who must die" is just a conspiracy theory.
And you do ask an intersting question at the end of your post: what agenda ARE they pushing? My theory is that they push the same old agenda as always: an elitist defintion of "good taste". What's your theory?
6:23 AM
You are right about MLdG´s conspiracy theory, it is bizarre and not very interesting. But despite herself she did make an interesting point about the relationship between criticism and the kind of preview article that Madestrand wrote: after that, who needs critism and for what? In the present media climate it is not so hard to imagine art criticism to be almost completely marginalised in a paper like DN in a couple of years.
And the consensus-bit in your comment is only true to a certain extent. With Johan Nobell, for example, I doubt there would be a consensus about the quality of his work.
About your last question: if it was indeed only about pushing an agenda for taste I would not be so worried. This is actually the purpose of publishing criticism in the cultural section of a newspaper. My worry is that the editorial agenda is n o t set on pushing an independent agenda on taste when it comes to contemporary art, as in this case. That criticism is marginalized in favour of market driven cultural journalism, or ultimately itself reduced to a similar position. In short, a scenario where the editorial agenda of Swedens largest daily is subsumed under market demands.
7:49 AM
Also: if you are looking for "the point" in MLdGs article you are looking in the wrong place. "The point" is in Madestrands article, and one theory would be that DN somehow feels obliged to compensate the commercial galleries in Stockholm, since the art critics write less about them (less space, more to cover, interesting things happening elsewhere being some of the potential reasons).
8:01 AM
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