Boka föredrag om ”En humanistisk klassicism”

Vad är klassisk arkitektur? Hur särskiljer sig kooperationens humanistiska klassicism i 1920-talets Stockholm från annan klassicism? Varför övergavs ornamentet när funkisen slog igenom? Hur kunde den helt nyetablerade bostadskooperationen i Stockholm på 1920-talet, i form av HSB och SKB, på så kort tid gå från idé till förverkligande och bygga så många bostäder med både hög teknisk standard och höga konstnärliga ambitioner? Det är några frågor jag diskuterar i min nya bok En humanistisk klassicism – Ornament, färg och materialitet i kooperativa bostadsområden i Stockholm 1915-1930

Vill du ha ett inspirerande och tankeväckande föredrag som grund för en diskussion om dessa eller närliggande frågor, så kommer jag gärna på besök till din organisation, ditt företag, skola eller högskola – eller ditt lokala bibliotek. Ni kan välja något av följande fyra inriktningar, eller föreslå en egen. Kontakta mig på e-post för mer information jan@janryden.com

Sven Wallander håller tal 9 augusti 1925 vid hörnet Falugatan och Rödabergsgatan.
Sven Wallander håller tal 9 augusti 1925 vid hörnet Falugatan och Rödabergsgatan. Ur HSBs arkiv hos CfN.

1. Idéhistoria, estetik och bostadspolitik

Klassicism och progressiv bostadspolitik. Se där en kombination som sätter myror i huvudet på dagens debattörer. Vad var den idéhistoriska bakgrunden till att de mest progressiva arkitekterna, stadsplanerarna och reformivrarna skapade idylliska, tillbakablickande stadsdelar? Varför ville de se bakåt, för att röra sig framåt? Hur hängde koloniträdgårdsrörelsen och trädgårdsstaden ihop med dessa kooperativa stadsdelar? Vi ser hur bostadskooperationens framväxt på 1910- och 1920-talet var ett svar på ett spekulativt, marknadsstyrt byggande av hyresrätter. I detta föredrag förklarar jag kopplingarna mellan bostadspolitik, sociala reformer och estetiska ideal.

2. Arkitektur och designmönster

Under perioden 1915-1930 skapades en rad småskaliga och pittoreska stadsdelar i Stockholm. I dessa kooperativa bostadsområde byggs överkomliga bostäder för arbetare med alla moderniteter, nytänkande produktion och högsta standard. Slående är hur snabbt utbyggnaden går, och att billiga bostäder byggs med både hög teknisk standard och höga konstnärliga ambitioner. Arkitekterna lägger stor vikt vid att skapa trivsel genom färgsättning, ornament, materialitet, stora planterade gårdar och vindlande gator. Det är en klassicism i mänsklig skala. I föredraget berättar jag hur husens arkitektur utformas i växelverkan med Per Hallmans stadsplaner, inspirerade av Camillo Sitte, och hur fasader, gårdar och planlösningar influeras av förändringar i samhället och tidens idéer. Två arkitekter som lyfts fram är Sven Wallander och Cyrillus Johansson.

Ornament, färger och materialitet på ett HSB-hus i Röda bergen.

3. Ornamentets roll. Varför försvann ornamentet, och är det på väg tillbaka?

Ornamentet är kanske den mest intressanta arkitekturfrågan att diskutera. Ornament har alltsedan Stockholmsutställningen 1930 legat långt ifrån dagens arkitekturpraktik. I föreläsningen går jag in på gränsdragningen mellan ornament och fasad, vilka olika arkitektoniska funktioner ornament har, och visar olika exempel från de kooperativa stadsdelarna. Jag gör också en närläsning av den dåtida svenske arkitekten Uno Åhréns argumentation mot ornament. Åhrén var ett viktigt namn, både som praktiker och inflytelserik skribent. I föreläsningen uppmärksammas också de kvinnliga konstnärer som smyckade HSBs fasader och entréer: Dagny Bohlin och Brita Hörlin.

Stockholms arbetarehems hus åt ensamstående kvinnor. Arkitekt: Theodor Kellgren. Foto: Jan Rydén Bonmot.

4. En introduktion till klassisk arkitektur och den humanistiska klassicismen.

De flesta har idag en ganska vaga kunskaper i klassiska arkitektur. I föredraget ger jag en översiktligt introduktion till klassisk arkitektur och ger därmed en referensram till den svenska tjugotalsklassicismen i allmänhet och till kooperationens humanistiska klassicism i synnerhet.

En humanistisk klassicism – Ornament, färg och materialitet i kooperativa bostadsområden i Stockholm 1915-1930 är på 288 sidor med ritningar, illustrationer och fotografier, både nytagna och arkivmaterial. Texten ger en historisk introduktion till 1920-talets progressiva bostadskooperation i Stockholm och till den estetik som formade dess arkitektur.

En humanistisk klassicism

Bokrelease. Stockholm 1 december. Jan Rydén Bonmots nya bok En humanistisk klassicism – Ornament, färg och materialitet i kooperativa bostadsområden i Stockholm 1915-1930 ger en historisk introduktion till 1920-talets progressiva bostadskooperation i Stockholm och till den estetik som formade dess arkitektur.

Under perioden 1915-1930 skapades en rad småskaliga och pittoreska stadsdelar i Stockholm. I dessa kooperativa bostadsområde byggs överkomliga bostäder för arbetare med alla moderniteter, nytänkande produktion och högsta standard. Slående är hur snabbt utbyggnaden går, och att billiga bostäder byggs med både hög teknisk standard och höga konstnärliga ambitioner. 

Arkitekterna lägger stor vikt vid att skapa trivsel genom färgsättning, ornament, materialitet, stora planterade gårdar och vindlande gator. Det är en klassicism i mänsklig skala.

I En humanistisk klassicism får läsaren både den idéhistoriska bakgrunden och en genomgång av arkitektur och designmönster.

Bokens appendix ger en översiktlig introduktion till klassisk arkitektur, som en referens för att förstå den svenska tjugotalsklassicismens särart, i synnerhet dess tillämpning i de kooperativa stadsdelarna som boken behandlar.

288 sidor. Rikt illustrerad med foton, ritningar och arkivmaterial.

Text och foto: Jan Rydén Bonmot. Arvinius + Orfeus

Painting in the gravitational field

[Note to the reader: This text was originally published in the now out-of-print book ”Studio Talks: Thinking Through Painting” published in 2014.]

In this text Jan Rydén [Bonmot] explores how to find a useful way of talking about painting’s medium specificity without being normative or limiting, and how that medium-specificity explains painting’s remarkable perseverence in contemporary art. He puts forward the idea that painting should be regarded as a field, or a nebulous entity with a strong nucleus and very diffuse boundaries. However, to pinpoint an essence might be impossible. The exact centre of gravity, the core of the matter, could well hover in the empty space between the different central parts. There are resemblances to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Family resemblance theory. These are discussed in the text, as well as the theories of embodied cognition (George Lakoff) , prototype theory (Eleanor Rosch ) and affordances (James J. Gibson) in conjunction to painting.

You find the text below as a downloadable PDF and as a blog post.

Overture

If you are a painter, why bother with contemporary painting

theory? It will in itself not make you paint better paintings. This can

only be achieved by the doing: honing your skills again and again. But

contemporary painting theory might have other advantages. It could

make it easier to discuss painting with your fellow painters. Like all

nerds, many painters take pleasure in delving in to the minute subtleties

of their medium. It might also make it easier to talk about your work

with the outside world, the non-painters.

* * *

Above all, I see an advantage with the practice and theory of painting

being discussed, re-defined and re-distributed, among painters themselves.

This will free them of the burden of having to react to theories

coming from the outside, or as it might feel, from above. Choosing not

to discuss painting’s role in contemporary art is also an active choice.

You run the risk of somebody else formulating the question, for lack of a

better word, that good art is supposed to answer.

I think few painters originally have discourse-driven practices. The

love of paint and painting most often comes before the words. But the

reception and evaluation of what we do can be discourse-driven. And

thoughts, ideas and concepts are of course of great importance to

many painters’ practices, and these ideas and concepts live in a discursive

ecology.

However interesting I might ind it to discuss why one paints, there

is a type of normative statement that has always irritated me a lot.

Someone might write: ‘after that article, argument, artwork, it was impossible

to continue painting… ’. These types of statements are all about

mistaking the map for the terrain. Of course, it was, and is, and will

always be possible to paint. The theory of painting might run into different

dead ends, but the practice of painting remains remarkably vital

over time, and if anything the number of painters in the world keep

increasing especially with the continuous addition of new art schools

around the globe.

What they are actually saying is something along the lines of: ‘according

to our theory of what makes painting important, it would seem

impossible, or at least completely unnecessary to make any more paintings

after that article, argument, artwork’. In such a situation, is it the

theories of painting that need to change, or the practice of painting?

In the case of painting, for some reason, normative statements on

painting often refer to Clement Greenberg. At least the reasoning starts

with Clement Greenberg, if only to emphatically refute his ideas on the

essence of painting. As if he were the year zero in painting theory. He

published his infamous essay Modernist painting in 1960. For the sake of

argument, or a good debate, these discussions are often reduced to an

either-or position. As André Rottman notes in his text Remarks on

Contemporary Painting’s Perseverance:

“For the longest time, the theory and practice of painting has been

organized, contained and propelled by a series of closely related antagonisms

– colour and contour, transparency and opacity, gesture and

facture, illusion and latness, semblance and objecthood, chroma and

contrast, chance and composition, mark making and the monochrome,

ostentatious virtuosity and anonymous execution, figuration and abstraction

– to name just a few.”1

* * *

A similar antagonism is whether painting is medium-specific or not,

an idea that seems closely related to Greenberg’s essentialist view on

painting. Without hesitation, I would argue that the notion of painting

being medium specific has been thoroughly discredited amongst art

theorists. Most critics and writers would not fail to mention Rosalind

Krauss’ text Sculpture in the expanded ield and the reasoning about other

art genres, painting included, which follow. Painting is also thought to

function in an expanded ield. Other texts that argue along the same

lines, only to mention a few recent ones, are Painting beside itself by David

Joselit, and our namesake Thinking Through Painting: Agency and Relexivity

beyond the Canvas by Isabelle Graw.

Clement Greenberg’s aesthetic understanding of art and especially

painting has come to represent Modernism with a capital M, even

though in reality there were many contradictory isms within modernism:

dada, surrealism, futurism, to name only a few. It seems that

Greenberg its nicely as a perfect monolithic counterpart to post-modernism.

Greenberg claimed that an artwork could be qualitatively good

only if it was autonomous, which was achieved by remaining true to

its medium, i.e. being medium specific. However, Clement Greenberg’s

definition of medium specificity is rather particular. He maintains

that within the Modernist project artists created artworks that were

more and more ‘about’ their own medium, one by one excluding traits

from the other arts. Painters emphasized latness, excluding perspective

(the domain of sculpture) and narrative (literature). This process also

showed that these elements were not essential to painting.3 By excluding

narration, figuration and perspective, you ended up with abstract

painting.

Critique of Greenberg has had two main ingredients. Firstly, the

aesthetic definition of art was considered having come to an end and

no longer being useful to understand the art of the time: e.g. minimalism,

happenings or conceptual pieces. Secondly, the aesthetic notion

of art was a part of a bourgeois ideology that many artists and theorists

wanted to question or attack. Conceptual art was among other things

a way to counteract the commodiication of art. By taking away the

material basis of an art piece, there was no object to sell. In some sense

post-modernism and conceptual art was also a direct extension of the

modernist idea of the avant-garde. To take art even further you had to

critique the institution of art itself. In the post-modernist context being

avant-garde equals performing institutional critique, whereas Greenberg’s

conception of avant-garde is linked to the idea of developing art,

in this case painting, within the limits of its medium. In his view, any

political power is rather a side effect of aesthetic innovation.

Today nobody would be caught dead saying the art of our time is

post-modern, however multiple the art scene might be. Instead, the

discourse has morphed into an even more vague notion: contemporary

art. The foundation of this notion is still very much based in the

post-Greenbergian shift to conceptualism in the late sixties. The value

of painting is still not considered to be linked to the actual medium.

“However, painting has long since left its ancestral home – that is, the

picture on the canvas – and is now omnipresent, as it were, and at work

in other art forms as well”.

If painting is omnipresent, everywhere, thus everything, is it

anything in particular? Clearly, this type of reasoning; that you cannot

define painting because its boundaries are diffuse, is untenable. At the

time, the post-modernist theorists argued that Greenberg’s notion of

medium specificity wasn’t useful as a way to understand contemporary

painting. Today one could argue that the post-modernist/conceptual/

contemporary art stance isn’t that useful to explain contemporary painting’s

continuous allure and perseverance within the world of contemporary

art.

To me as a painter the crux is the idea that painting shouldn’t be

thought of as medium specific has never rung quite true. I can follow

the reasoning in the essays mentioned above, but my experience

from my own physical reality tells another story. Especially, it tells me

another story of why painting as a practice continues to exist, and why

paintings continue to enthral us as viewers. In this case the medium is

certainly a large part of the message.

* * *

Defining without defining

It is pretty obvious that in the way we use the word painting

every day, it is medium specific. Of course, it is a tautology, since it is

the name of a medium. What we seem to need is a useful way of talking

about medium specificity that is neither normative nor limiting

and to avoid the cul-de-sac of Clement Greenberg, as well as some of

the more Orwellian versions of post-modernism. What annoys me with

the existing discussion is irst and foremost the disciplinarian ring that

statements based in Aristotelian definitions tend to have: if and only if

you accept that all Brillo Boxes are also paintings can we accept your

argument… Secondly, I am also annoyed by some of the nonsensical

and counter-intuitive conclusions this rigid reasoning leads to.

In the publication with the same name as our project Isabelle Graw

raises two interesting questions: “How do we explain painting’s remarkable

perseverance in the expanding ield of contemporary art? […]

How to determine a practice that renders impossible the rigorous distinction

between what is intrinsic and what is extrinsic to it?”5 Both

questions are interesting, but we come up with quite different answers.

I will offer her answers, and elaborate a bit on my reasons for coming

to a different conclusion. The last question of how to define painting

is dependent on the view that one cannot rigorously distinguish what is

intrinsic to painting, and what is extrinsic to it. Painting, she says, is

omnipresent and at work in other art forms as well. But, is it anything

in particular? I think it is. So does Graw, intuitively I guess, but she

has to go out of her way to ind a definition that is acceptable. Graw’s

solution to the problem is to propose “that we conceive of painting not

as a medium, but as a production of signs that is perceived as highly

personalized.

Painting is indeed a nebulous ield, a practice that in every direction

vanishes into the hazy distance and blends into all surrounding ields of

visual communication. My point is that expanding a notion or making

its boundaries diffuse doesn’t necessarily make its core any less dense.

Lets play with the analogy that the idea of painting is some kind of

luffy, permeable entity with a strong nucleus. It is whatever is in the

nucleus that exerts the strongest gravitational pull on us. Not the luffy

stuff on the rim.

Defining literally means to ‘show the limits of something’, the

extent, the outline, where something ends, to follow it al ine. The avantgarde

has often looked for the limits of a scientiic or artistic ield.

Tongue in cheek one would be tempted to say that this way of defining

the ield of art or the ield of painting has ‘reached its limits’. What I

suggest is to look the other way, instead of looking for the outer limits

search for the inner nucleus.

I came up with an idea of a sort of connected or webbed thinking as

an image. I drew something like a mind map, but where the exact centre

of gravity, the core of the matter could hover in the empty space between

the different central parts. It is a visual way of defining something. In

this case, I wanted to define painting, but in a new way: inside out,

rather than the other way around. I was also looking for a way to say

something meaningful about a concept, or a genre, without being normative.

There would be no definite right or wrong, there would be a

centre, there would be more central and less central, but no rigorous distinction;

intrinsic or extrinsic.

There seem to be certain recurrent qualities that keep painting interesting

in an age when it had been discredited over and over again.

In and by themselves none of these would do as definitions of painting

as a genre, or as a full-blooded explanation of painting’s essence, in the

Greenbergian sense, but they nevertheless seemed closely related to our

common fascination for painting.

I had been toying around with this idea for quite a while and decided

to put it into words. At that time, I stumbled upon an article about an

exhibition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s photos and realized that he had

put forth a very similar idea with the notion of family resemblances, apparently

crucial to his later philosophy.7 Wittgenstein suggested that we

understand words

“…like members of the same family, they might have a series of similarities

and dissimilarities that overlap and criss-cross in various complicated

ways. Some Wittgensteins (such as Ludwig and his sisters) might

have the same nose, the same mouth, the same eyes but, say, different

foreheads. There need not be one thing that all members of the family

have in common.

* * *

The exhibition contained a composite photograph made up of four

portraits of Wittgenstein and his three sisters, enabling the viewer to see

their strong family resemblance. However, Wittgenstein’s most famous

example is games. He tries different features that could be common

to all practices we call games: winning and losing, amusing, competition, skill

and luck. But he dismisses them one by one since they are true to some

games but not to other games. Similarities crop up and disappear.

Instead he sees a “complicated network of similarities overlapping and

criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of

detail”. Interestingly Wittgenstein encourages us to “look, not think”.9

What he says is that even though it is impossible to define games in the

conventional way, we don’t need such a strict definition. We already use

the word successfully. The same would of course be true for a concept

such as painting. For every individual painting a list of features or qualities

would of course differ slightly. A tentative list of painting’s family

resemblances could look something like this: colour, pigment, binding

medium, surface, form, image, texture, body of paint, perspective, concept,

content etc. Wittgenstein’s family resemblances were introduced

to the discussion of art by Morris Weitz’s claim that art should be considered

an open concept.

The argument goes that art cannot be defined

in a conventional manner, because there is always the possibility that a

new entity will appear on the art scene. There is no one common property

to all art, only strands of similarities. An act of judgement will be

needed to decide if this new entity has enough similarities with what we

call art to be included in the family of art.

An idea that is similar to Wittgenstein’s family resemblance and

my metaphor of the gravitational ield is Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory,

equally applicable to our discussion. Instead of using a model based

on definition, (necessary and suficient conditions), Rosch claimed that

each category consisted of elements of differing status. This led her to a

graded notion of categories; in the category bird, a robin would be more

central than for example a penguin. A traditional definition might

have gone along the lines of a bird fulilling the conditions of having

wings, a beak, feathers and the ability to fly.

In our discussion, painting could be seen as a prototype. Colours

could also be seen as prototypes. Coming from a professional background

as an editor and writer before going to art school, the relation

between words and colour has always held a special tension to me. If

we substitute the questions, ‘What is art?’ or ‘What is painting?’ with

the question ‘What is red?’ we would be able to make a number of observations.

First of all, red is just as abstract an idea as art or painting.

We would be hard pressed to suggest the exact point where red ends

and orange begins. We would define, or name, certain colours as red

or orange depending on what we compare them with. Pure spectral

colours form a continuous spectrum. Another take on the relation

between colour and language would be Isaac Newton’s. By using a

prism, he showed it was possible to disperse seemingly colourless light

into separate colours. He originally divided the rainbow into ive colours:

red, yellow, green, blue and violet. He later added orange and

indigo to make the number of colours seven, out of a belief that there

was a connection between the number of colours and the number of

musical notes. Today, scientists do not see more than six main colours.

Orange is still there, but indigo has vanished from the rainbow. Or is

it cyan? Apparently, in Newton’s day blue was closer to what we today

might call cyan. It has been suggested that what we define as blue today

was then seen as two colours: blue and indigo. It certainly has a poetic

ring to it that the blues we see in the sky have drifted and shifted through

the centuries. The rainbow isn’t the same these days. Or is it?

If we transfer this reasoning to painting, we would be hard pressed to

draw a line where painting ends. Individual works of art would be possible

to define as belonging to painting or not, depending on; on the one

hand what we compare them to, on the other hand our everyday use of

language, in Newton’s case the word blue, in this case the word painting.

* * *

An endnote: Painting as embodied cognition

So, if i were to return to the question of why painting has such

remarkable allure and perseverance within the world of contemporary

art I would not end up outside the canvas or painted surface, I would

end up in the actual body of paint itself. I believe paintings get a lot

of their magic from the fact that we go back and forth between seeing

them as images, windows into another world, and as objects and surfaces

with a bodily, leshy presence in the room. Like Wittgenstein’s famous

and ambiguous image of the duck-rabbit. We licker between the

different aspects not only of the image, but also between the painting

as body or as pure content.

The reason that this attracts us might be that painting is closely

related to how we think: in metaphors and images that arise from our

bodily experiences. Cartesian dualism has given western thought two

basic ideas: reason is disembodied because the mind is disembodied

and reason is transcendent and universal. As if by chance, if we look for

an alternative to this idea we again ind ourselves among Eleanor Rosch

and her colleagues. Her graded notion of categories is central to many

models of cognitive science and cognitive semantics, most famously in

the work of George Lakoff. As a proponent of the idea of embodied cognition

he has shown that not only is the mind connected to the body, but

that the mind arises from the nature of our brains, bodies and bodily

experiences.

To understand reason we must understand our visual system

and our sensorimotor system. Sensory inputs and motor outputs,

movement, gesture, are integral to cognitive processes. This also entails

that reason itself isn’t passionless and conscious but emotional, embodied

and mostly unconscious.

Semantics arise from the nature of the

body. If reason isn’t based on abstract laws, because cognition is grounded

in bodily experience, this puts a new twist to the relation between

language and painting, and why paintings seem so meaningful to us.

If we do not have a faculty of reason that is separate from our faculties

of perception and bodily movement, the split between perception and

conception is less clear.

A painting, or any other external representation, provides affordances

that internal representations, and concepts lack. Affordance is a term

coined by psychologist James J. Gibson. He defined it as ‘action possibilities’

latent in a specific object, in our case a painting, and our in the

environment. Affordances are measurable and independent of an individual’s

ability to recognize them, but always in relation to an agent’s

capabilities. A typical example would be a child’s reaction to a light of

stairs versus an adult’s. An extended notion of perceived affordances also

includes an agent’s goals, plans, values, beliefs, and past experiences.

This idea of affordances provided by external representations seems related

to Wittgenstein’s emphasis on seeing. A core feature of Wittgenstein’s

philosophy is what he calls the understanding, which consists in seeing

connections. And seeing is not meant metaphorically, but literally.17

External representations help us think thoughts we couldn’t come

up with by pure thinking. I believe that is what Wittgenstein meant

by telling us not to think but to look. Any kind of external representation

of an idea, such as a teapot, would of course provide affordances.

However, since our internal representations are images and metaphors,

images form a very special category of external representation.

The typical approach in cognition literature is that an agent is confronted

with a pre-existing environment or an object, which provides

the affordances. For me as a painter in the act of painting, the notion of

affordances would be different. At the same time as the painter places

another brushstroke on the painting’s surface he or she does two things:

creates an external representation of an internal one, and also creates

new affordances to be recognized, laying down new latent ‘action possibilities’.

It’s like a dance with two partners taking turns leading. By

observing the changes in the painting, new possibilities arise. We can

see anew.

Jan Rydén is an artist who lives and works in Stockholm . [He took the name Jan Rydén Bonmot in 2022]

Footnotes:

1. André Rottmann. “Introduction. Remarks on Contemporary Painting’s

Perseverence”, in Thinking Through Painting, Eds. Isabelle Graw, Daniel Birnbaum,

Nikolaus Hirsch. Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2012, p.9

2. Håkan Nilsson, Clement Greenberg och hans kritiker, Stockholm: Stockholms

universitet, 2000, pp.193-197.

3. Ibid. p.95

4. Isabelle Graw, “Agency and Relexivity beyond the Canvas” Thinking Through

Painting: Agency and Relexivity beyond the Canvas eds. Isabelle Graw, Daniel Birnbaum,

Nikolaus Hirsch. Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2012.

5. Ibid

6. Loc. cit

7. Ray Monk, “Ludwig Wittgenstein’s passion for looking, not thinking: Ray Monk

decodes the philosophy in the philosopher’s photographs”, New Statesman 15 August,

2012.

8. Loc. cit

9. “For if you look at them you will not see something common to all, but similarities,

relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953, § 66

10. The Role of Theory in Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 15 1956,

pp. 27-35; reprinted in P. Lamarque and S. H. Olsen (eds), Aesthetics and the Philosophy of

Art: The Analytic Tradition, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004

11. Daniel A. Kaufman “Family resemblances, relationalism and the meaning of ‘art’”,

British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol 47, No 3, July 2007

12. Prototype theory Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype(linguistics).

Date of access 2014-04-03

13. Georg Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its

,Challenge to Western Thought. New York, Basic Books, 1999, p. 5

14. Loc. cit

15. Ibid. p. 37

16. “Affordance” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance#cite_note-1,

2014-04-03

17. Ray Monk, “Ludwig Wittgenstein’s passion for looking, not thinking: Ray Monk

decodes the philosophy in the philosopher’s photographs”, New Statesman 15 August

2012 or Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell Publishing, 1953,

2001, p. 122

Supporting act to Thierfelder

Magnus Thierfelder Den kultiverade kajan Kulturhuset Örebro. Foto: Magnus Thierfelder

If there ever was such a thing as being a ”supporting act” in fine art – as there is in music – this would be it. Magnus Thierfelder used Allborgarrätten, and a number of other classics to support his art piece ”Den kultiverade kajan” (The Cultivated Jackdaw, Corvus menedula) for the new cultural house in Örebro. Always great work from Magnus Thierfelder, check out his other pieces. I’m honored to be included as support along Rachel Carson, Thoreau and Harry Martinsson among others.

Målning på Manifestation Lövholmen

Jag deltar med en ny, aldrig tidigare visad målning i grupputställningen Manifestation Lövholmen på Färgfabriken 20 augusti – 30 augusti 2020.

Målningen har fått namnet Grödorna, Färgerna, Fälten och är den första i en ny serie. Den målad under våren och sommaren 2020.

Ett sextital konstnärer och kulturutövare deltar i Manifestation Lövholmen, ett initiativ som sätter ljus på Lövholmen som en unik kulturell nod i Stockholm – en plats som alstrar kreativitet och bär på en rik historia.

Salon! ”Sprezzatura” Jan Rydén, painting

 

On popular demand; a second chance. Welcome to an art salon in Jenny Bergström’s apartment gallery at Kolbäcksgränd 22 on Sunday February 9, 2020, 13h-16h.  You will find a selection of Jan Rydén’s enigmatic and colorful paintings on display. Some of them visible above, even though they are notoriously hard to photograph since the camera registers color in another way than the eye.

At 14 h we will have a talk on Jan’s painting and its central role in an artistic practice that spans from installations, sound pieces and urbanism to essays.

Welcome! Refreshments will be served. Please RSVP

”Sprezzatura”

I will be showing a selection of paintings, many not exhibited before, at the lovely Jenny Bergström’s apartment gallery on Kolbäckgränd 22. She will be hosting a salon on January 25, 2020 from noon until 4 PM.  At 2 PM we will have a talk about my work. Otherwise viewing only by special appointment.

The title ”sprezzatura” is an Italian term used in men’s clothing, another interest of mine, where it denotes the art of being well dressed with apparent effortlessness, even carelessness. It can also encompass a breaking of the rules, in a way that still looks good. It is the opposite of the type of nervous perfection of perfect symmetry, spotless surfaces and immaculate straight lines. The term sprezzatura first appears in Baldessare Castiglione’s Il Libro del CortegianoThe Book of the Courtier, (1528). Sprezzatura is defined by Castiglione as ”a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”.

It all connected when again I came across the concept of ”sprezzatura” in a very in-depth book on Rembrandt (Ernst Wan De Wetering. Rembrandt: The Painter at Work. ). Apparently the first Dutch edition of Baldessare Castiglione’s Il Libro del Cortegiano appeared in 1662 and was dedicated to Jan Six, of whom Rembrandt made a famous portrait. Rembrandt and his contemporary painters were involved in a debate on painting in a smooth or rough manner. In his book Castiglioni draws a parallell between the demeanour of the courtier and the loose, seemingly careless manner with which the artist wields his brush.

In an interesting way this apparent effortlessness of style aligns with the kind of painters I have always enjoyed most. Figurative painters like Velázquez or Rembrandt who’s brushstrokes are loose and free, and whose paintings at close examination can look like blotches of paint or geological samples. Or someone like the contemporary American Mary Heilmann. When we met the painter David Reed for the Thinking Through Painting-project, he told us his friend Mary Heilmann had been called a ”sloppy minimalist”. To me that sounds quite wonderful. Like ”sprezzatura”.

 

 

 

Allborgarrätten in Monocle guide

Allborgarrätten i Monocle 2

Recently a friend visiting from abroad made me aware of the fact that my artist book ”Allborgarrätten: The Right to the City As a Swedish Tradition” was featured in Monocle’s guide to Stockholm under the subject line ”things we’d buy”! Slowly the concept of allborgarrätten is seeping into Swedish identity, among with Dalahästar, perfumes from Byredo and books on Olle Eksell graphic design. I am really happy with this placement since the whole idea with the cover typo was a discreet hint to Absolut vodka and the rest of the book should be something in between a bible and a manifesto – but pink. The main idea with the art project is to make allborgarrätten as self-evident as allemansrätten when we talk about Swedish identity.

The Stockholm: The Monocle Travel Guide Series was published in 2017. Apparently the editors had picked up Allborgarrätten at Färgfabriken’s shop. It is also available at e.g. Moderna museet/ArkDes shop, or from online booksellers.