Throughout my time in Copenhagen, I’ve heard the term ‘Scandinavia’ thrown around every which way. On the one hand, Danes consider themsleves a part of a greater Scandinavia, while at the same time insist on their own individual identity. This concept has been confusing—how can the Scandinavian countries be the same and different at the same time? My recent trip to a “Monet, Twombly, and Turner” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm highlighted the ways in which the Scandinavian worldview does indeed vary between these countries that are often understood to be interchangeable.
Before visiting Stockholm I, too, was guilty of lumping Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. I assumed by what I heard that all of the countries were more or less similar. Upon arriving in Stockholm, I was expecting the same, modestly-sized, Dutch Renaissance buildings to line the cobblestone streets and to see the same tall blondes filling the streets. This entire view was shattered almost immediately after walking into a Metro station, where I saw swarms of people of all ethnicities busily trying to get from one end of the city to another. It was clear at that moment that Stockholm is different from its Danish neighbor in that it seems to have opened up its doors to the globe in a way that perhaps Denmark is not ready for. Nowhere was this more evident to me than in the Museum of Modern Art, where the more impressionistic, refined works of Monet were effortlessly combined with the far more abstract, modern Turner and Twombly paintings. The artwork present in this particular exhibit spoke to the ways in which Stockholm represents a progressive Scandinavia—a city that simultaneously recognizes its roots to the past and the need to open itself to the demands of an increasingly globalized world.
The artists present in this exhibit are not ones that I would normally place together when talking about contemporary art. Sure on their own they communicate sophisticated artistic views, but can they actually work together to formulate an entirely new message altogether? Like the city that surrounds it, the exhibit combined these aesthetically quite different artists and created a message that spoke to the changing face of Sweden. Upon walking into the exhibit, it was clear that it was supposed to resemble a labyrinth of sorts—the viewer was to navigate through the exhibit by identifying the ways in which the art moved either by the theme or the dates of the artwork. The first thing that caught my eye was a Turner painting in the rightmost part of the exhibit. An abstract painting making use of different shades of green, it prepared me to begin looking at the Monet’s that followed it in a different way than I had before. Monet’s many paintings of French architecture lined the first wall, with a mix of Turner paintings representing the vastness of the ocean placed in between. The paintings flowed from one to the next, almost creating the illusion of viewing the paintings from the water, seeing the distant landscapes as if from a boat.
The second part of the exhibit was focused on the changing seasons, which not only represented the individual artists’ interpretations of the actual seasons, but also represented the transitions that each artist faced throughout their own lifetimes. The Twombly paintings of each of the seasons made a bold and breathtaking impression when first walking into the room. He differentiated between the seasons with clear use of color and line, a much more blatant statement than in the paintings of Monet and Turner that lined the opposite wall. The Monet paintings transitioned from the shades of green and blue that had been present in the first part of the exhibit to bright pinks, oranges, and lavenders. The seasonal representations led the viewer to the next part of the exhibit, where it became most obvious that change had occurred in each of the artists’ lives.
When I walked into the leftmost part of the exhibit I was quite taken with a Twombly painting of red peonies that took up the entire back wall of the exhibit. Although the painting had originally generated lighthearted feelings, when I looked around and saw the more morose Monet paintings, I began to look at the entire exhibit in a different way. The Monet paintings were several depictions of the same lily pad scene. However, there was a noticeable transition in the way the lily pads were presented. The lily pads went from a more refined representation with intricate detail, to much more abstract interpretations, so much so that the painting would be hard to understand if it weren’t in reference to the other paintings. This all made sense after remembering that Monet started to go blind in the later years of his career. It’s clear that as his vision got worse, his artistic style changed as his view of the outside world changed. When I looked at the Twombly painting amidst the lily pad paintings I realized that this part of the exhibit was supposed to evoke a bittersweet happiness—a remembrance of the way things used to be, while adapting to the changing landscape of the future.
After leaving the exhibit and once again walking the lighted, romantic streets of the far more regal city of Stockholm, I realized that the combination of impressionism and abstract art had really been, if subconscious, a reflection of the transitions that Stockholm has and is continuing to face. Sweden, and Scandinavia in general, face a time of change in which decisions have to be made about the ways in which they will respond to the influx of global influences. Particularly in Denmark, where I would argue homogeneity is more present than in Stockholm, opening up the country’s borders to outside influence is, in many ways, like the extreme transitions that artists like Monet faced throughout the changing seasons of their lives. Stockholm stands as an example of how Scandinavia can adapt to the changing world landscape while still maintaining its strong cultural heritage. Representations and styles may change through the transitions that an international society will inevitably bring, but, in the same way that Monet changed his art to represent what he was seeing, Denmark, and Scandinavia in general, has the potential to embrace these changes to make highlight its beautiful past and look forward to a bright future.
After coming back to Copenhagen I realized that Scandinavia isn’t just one collection of several homogenous countries. Stockholm was a multicultural city, the international hub of the Nordic countries. It was clear that Stockholm has started to address the issue of a changing human landscape within the city, and through exhibits such as the one at the Museum of Modern Art, has demonstrated that it is prepared to change its interpretations of itself to both remember its past and remain open and optimistic about the future. I think that Denmark is in a similar state of transition, and will inevitably have to start similarly painting its future as one that holds onto its own culture while adapting to the changes that confront it with the influx of international influence. It is the great artist who interprets the old in a new way. Denmark, and Scandinavia in general, are starting to paint new pictures.
