The “Aurora Lights” at the Buffalo Akg Art Museum proposed a new artistic geographical location determined by ecozones rather than ethnic boundaries. The exhibition debuted at Beyeler, Switzerland, and produced pictures of northern forests in Scandinavia and Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “North” means “North”, indicating that these are mainly high latitudes of coniferous forests. From November to March, dense, cold and dark, the area needs a particularly brave artist, and the traits gathered in this show reveal a profound personal relationship with the harsh climate.
For example, Swedish artist Anna Boberg wore a ski, sealed fur and portable easel, painting outdoors in the Norwegian Profen Islands. Her work is one of the few examples of Aurora North in the exhibition, and her small study captures the most marvelous of the most natural phenomena in jewelry-toned oils. Canadian artist Tom Thomson is known to be on a painting trip in his canoe. He was later drowned, which added to his mystery about his grand and desolate nature.
The seeds of the show were planted in Buffalo 100 years ago, when Boberg’s work and the works of several other featured artists, including Edvard Munch, were on display in the “Contemporary Scandinavian Art Exhibition” of the then so-called Albright Art Gallery. Two Canadian artists, Lawren Harris and Jeh MacDonald, went to see it and were so shocked by what they saw that they established a movement called “Seven Groups” dedicated to capturing the same expressed view of nature. Showcased seven groups of works and Scandinavian artists who inspired them, “The Northern Lights” reveal a research connection and further promotes the narrative of modern art in the landscape.
The forest is beautiful, and the forest is a challenging subject for painters, and their concentrations of trees are common. Artists all perform this between surface and depth in different ways, from the overhead vision of Helmi Biesse (often open to the fjords, to Thomson) emphasis on the surface of painting, turning snow-covered branches into a kind of lace. It snows in October (1916–17). Munch Yellow log (1912). Cut down trees stripped off the bark reminds people of human existence in these landscapes, although none of the visual artworks recognize the indigenous peoples who have long lived in the north.
Anna Katarina Boberg: Northern Lights. Research in Northern Norway,nd
Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum
One of the tensions in the “Aurora Light” is the relationship between personal experience and a larger socio-historical force, including emerging nationalism in a country that has just been acquired or is still fighting for independence. Landscapes can provide a rich and flexible source of national identity, and these paintings often become nationalistic idols, appear on stamps, and rarely leave the motherland. Several artists on the show were actively involved in the nationalization of nature, including Akseli Gallen-Kallat, who was born in the Russian Empire, before financing his name and advocating Finnish independence born in 1917.
The “Contemporary Art Exhibition” of the 1913 “Contemporary Scandinavian Art Exhibition” exhibition is already obvious. In the introduction to the exhibition’s catalogue, art critic Art Cranter Brinton describes the struggle between universality and nationalism as “a constant struggle throughout the era.” Nevertheless, today, the desire to establish a unified Nordic nature clashes with current political forces: the largest region of the northern forest is Russia, but none of the Russian works in the “Aurora Lights” include. (Beyeler’s version of Foodation does include the work of a Russian artist, in the catalogue, curator Ulf Küster admits that the political situation has affected more Russian paintings.)
As the world’s largest land biome, the northern forest is a crucial carbohydrate tank, and unification around is a lofty goal. These gifts of art are represented as a vibrant, vital place, cold and blowing place, but also beautiful and full of life if anyone knows how to look at it. A compelling example is the snow cliff scene of Gallen-Kalla, soft and seemingly completely still, until one reads the title –ly (1908) – and realize everything that might lurk out of sight. This painting is an animation of invisible by the bobcats, and is terrifying to everything threatened in the rugged but fragile northern forests.
