Picasso in Iceland

October 5 – December 14, 2008

It is said that the development of modern art wouldn’t have been what it was without Picasso and, according to the Taschen issue on Picasso, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” marked its beginning. Of course, Cézanne is mentioned too, as is his important influence on the Modernists, Impressionists, Fauvists and others, but whereas their work had largely been bound to the academy, the “Demoiselles d’Avignon” marked a breakthrough by achieving a new formal idiom in twentieth century art. People can have different opinions on this assertion, since nothing stems from nothing, except perhaps in the case of a “Big Bang” or the “Word” in Genesis or something along those lines. The descriptions of how Picasso’s contemporaries reacted to the freshly painted “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” in 1907, however, suggest its reception was somewhat of a “Big Bang.” Georges Braque, for example, is said to have compared the work to a “fairground fire-eater who drank kerosene to spit flames”. Picasso and Braque then when on to develop Cubism together in what seems to me to have been a positive interaction, although I think Picasso was the most daring of the two in his approach, since these were very different men.

When I was invited to put together an exhibition under the heading of “Picasso in Iceland”, I felt drawn to the idea. I’ve always been interested in art history, both Icelandic and in general, and apart from anything else, this was an interesting subject. I had no interest in presenting works that resemble Picasso’s in any visual sense and, least of all, imitations, although I could think of a few, but rather to show interesting works that echoed that great master of the twentieth century, as he is often positively called. I also looked into some of the aesthetic and poetic parallels that could be drawn between the ideas of art scholars to see if they might offer us potential alternative perspectives. I agree with the author of the aforementioned book on Picasso when he says that Picasso had considerably more influence on the history of 20th century art than he is generally given credit for. Thanks to the work of the art collector Sergei Shchukin, the most recent Cubist works were exhibited in Moscow immediately in 1908 and Suprematism clearly developed on from that. In 1911 Piet Mondrian exhibited with the Cubists, and accused Picasso and Braque of failing to develop the Cubist objectives of precision and order. Marcel Duchamp added movement to Cubism with his “Nude descending a staircase” and, similarly, the Futurists in Italy contributed movement, politics and speed. Picasso and Braque had also placed real objects in their works, such as pieces of tablecloth, wallpaper, rope or string, as well as words and sentences, thus becoming the pioneers of collage paintings. It was in fact in these collages that Picasso first started to develop three-dimensional works, e.g. guitars out of paper and other materials which developed into sculptures made out of a combination of found objects.

“Geometrical Composition” is a realistic painting painted from a collage sketch made out of what seems to be haphazard slips of paper. The painting therefore looks like a slapdash glued ensemble of sketches at first sight, i.e. a painting of an idea of a painting.

“Glass of Absinthe” is a sculpture modelled out of, among other things, glass, sugar and a pastry spoon from 1914. When this sculpture was placed on the cover of an art magazine of its time, all its readers but one cancelled their subscriptions. Other examples include the “bull’s head” fashioned out of a bicycle saddle and handle bars from 1942. The “Baboon and young” of 1951, made out of toy cars etc. I mention these examples to show how eager research into the potential of objects can sometimes materialise in works of art. This can also be seen in the paintings and drawings in a more subtle and invisible way from a contemporary perspective.

We mustn’t forget that Picasso used everything he could lay his hands on, when painting seemed to be moving in another direction. The influences are multilayered complex and the links are not always direct ones, but rather complex interactions, as is so often the case in art, and it is easy to speculate on this from an endless variety of angles.

Initially this exhibition was supposed to cover Iceland between 1930 and 1950, but when I started to think about it further, I decided to broaden this somewhat. I didn’t want to exclude one of my favourite paintings in the history of Icelandic art “Rumanian girl” by Jón Stefánsson and his “Thorgeirsbola”, nor did I want to neglect the complex influences in Kjarval’s work and the paintings of Finnur Jónsson from around 1920. One could argue that the Cubist influence was most pronounced in the period between 1930-1950, and this was the first time that a group of strong Icelandic artists was to emerge simultaneously. Circulation in society was also expanding. This is also a time of complex influences, because there was an interflow of ideas about paintings between artists and the connections between them became intertwined many times over. Links were fostered with the “Nordic Cubist school” which in turn had been influenced by Paris and so forth. When I speak to older artists in Iceland about this period they invariably say they were fonder of Braque and that it had all started with Cézanne etc. And they say this almost evasively. Kristján Davídsson told me he never felt any particular affinity to Picasso. Nevertheless he pulled out paintings which were obviously influenced by him, although I hadn’t been thinking about him particularly in that connection. Picasso was said to be a genius and he certainly has that image. Everything he touched seemed to turn to gold by some alchemical means. Genius is a term that was often applied to masters in the past, but perhaps used less today and it has always been difficult for Icelanders to acknowledge masters. I think this partly explains why people say they are more for Braque, Matisse or Gris than Picasso. Many also feel that Picasso consumed his periods so fast, hopping from one thing to the next, that he was unreliable.

I have always been wary of the idea that someone is the “first” or “the best” and the more I see and read about art, the more that fear seems to be justified. The artists who works from the idea of another originator might be able to endow it with a visual life and elevate it to another level, which the initiator failed to reach. The politics of art are sometimes such that parts are distributed unevenly. It’s so easy to see in contemporary art that so-called Post-modernism uses history as its language. Perhaps Picasso was like that too. He flew over everything like a whirlwind, using everything he could find on his path. There are some strange contradictions here. “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” was painted in 1907, but only a handful of artists and curators saw it before 1920, when it was first shown officially, and it was first reproduced in print in 1924 through the intermediary of Andre Breton who selected Picasso for the first four Surrealist exhibitions. Then Picasso’s works were viewed from new perspectives in other settings. As I write this I have just recently returned from Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary and have seen many paintings by Kupka. It seems to me that he was one of the first abstract painters, if not “the first” as he must have undoubtedly claimed himself. He painted pictures in 1900 that conveyed movement very much as Duchamp did later in his “Nude descending a staircase” and developed painting that evolved into geometry between 1910 and 1920. There isn’t an awful lot said about him in art history books so I’ve developed the theory, which of course I present here tongue-in-cheek, that his signatures were too curved and elongated to be able to fit into this chapter of art history.

I allow myself these digressions to emphasise the importance of the time factor in these works and make this debate on art a more interesting and exciting one. The Icelandic artists from this period between 1930-1950 seemed to have, on the whole, worked from similar basic ideas and mostly tended towards geometrical form. It is probably the small size of this country that has determined that, instead of having a multitude of equally valid but different groups of artists, there is often just one predominant class of artists of the same school in Iceland. This makes many things a lot easier I would imagine, although it probably isn’t planned that way, and it can have an isolating effect, both domestically and internationally, on the development of art. I often hear contemporary artists speak dismissively of the 1930-1950 generation. For some it has the reputation of being the group of followers that was many steps behind what was going on elsewhere in the art world. This is a view I have heard echoed by both art lovers and critics alike. But if one looks at the group as a whole, it certainly holds its own. There were many artists around the globe between the two wars who were in the exact same shoes. I once brought this up in a conversation with Hördur Ágústsson when I was younger. He gave a memorable answer: “We weren’t trying to be original, that wasn’t what our times were about, but rather we were in a conscious academic dialogue with art.”

Many foreign friends and acquaintances that I hold in high esteem and regard as fine artists with a good knowledge of art, and who were unaware of the existence of these artists before, have been enthusiastic about their work. Obviously to varying degrees, but little or nothing is made of whose footsteps they might have been following. Instead they viewed these works in the context in which they found themselves. That is how I would like to try to present this exhibition, with respect for these artists and their generosity in art. They have therefore contributed a great deal to the history of Icelandic art and the cultural debate. I also wanted to look beyond 1950 to see if there were still traces of Picasso in Iceland. I think the approach has perhaps changed and Picasso is more likely to appear in art today as a kind of idea. The idea of Picasso. I therefore chose a painting by Erró from before 1960 that shows Picasso’s structural influence and a picture from after 1960 that expresses Picasso as an idea.

Helgi Þorgils Friðjónsson, April 2008.