Max Hjelm: The right dreams of pillow art – the Swedes love the divisive
Culture Minister Parisa Liljestrand (M) went to the war -affected Ukraine and came home with a new insight: art can be unified (Quarter 24/4). She has previously expressed similar thoughts in Svd. Culture has previously had the task of being « uncomfortable for challenging », she then said, but now it can rather « have a power to unite ».
And of course it can. But is it the task of art?
The Swedish Democrats have long thought that contemporary art should stop tax financed because it is « divisive ». When the Christian Democrats presented a new cultural policy program last winter, they placed emphasis on culture that protects ”The beautiful« . What is neat you can have different views on, but it is not a quest for challenging art, directly.
The new conservative front Seems most like quiet Carl Larsson-Parafraser on idyllic home and beautiful nature. Such as a hundred years after being created is unpredictable, historically, beautiful – but meaningless, reassuring: pillow art.
Such paintings, of course, have a place, for example in hotel rooms and in advertising for the Dalarna Region.
Such paintings, of course, have a place, for example in hotel rooms and in advertising for the Dalarna Region.
The Minister of Culture concludes his quarter-en that demand « forum to be able to turn and turn on the question of what and who we want to be, today and tomorrow ». Absolutely, but the search for « unifying » culture will not give it. At all.
In the book « All Fast Entertaining » From 1982, Marxist Marshall Berman deals with the difficulty of relate to a changing world: « All forms of modernist art and thought have a double character: they are at one time expressed and protests against the modernization process, » he writes. So it is with many of our important Swedish works. They may not be Swedish hostile, but definitely critical.
Just think of these genuine Swedish classics:
Vilhelm Moberg’s emigrant series is not a declaration of love for Swedish culture, but a painful settlement between the tradition and the hope of something new and better. Per Anders Fogelström’s city series illustrates the misery that followed in the tracks of modernization. Selma Lagerlöf’s « Emperor of Portugal » is anything but a picturesque pastoral. Klas Östergren’s « Gentlemen » settled with the belief in the rational projects that permeated Folkhemssverige – the two latter parts of the series try to understand what remained when it disappeared.
It is critical literature that has become unified, as we have found community in the cleavage. And in the collective experience.
Another popular person, Kristina Lugn (like the publicist Per Svensson Standing Listed it had « revolted against the rust freedom in the world’s most modern country ») explains in a poem that she likes to stand outside the Nordic Company and looks like a crazy kiss. She continues with: « The work usually likes just right -handed pets that have learned not to glare … »
Sure they sound The pets that the cushion art that the Minister of Culture and her likes long for? The one who is so harmless in his pacification, soothing beauty.
It is not so easy to meet in national creation.
But what is even harmless longer? If something should be counted as unifying art, it is probably an unforgiving, warm quilt in bronze, as the memorial for the terrorist act at Drottninggatan. But the conservatives became crazy then too, criticized That it was embracing instead of hateful.
It is not so easy to meet in national creation.
Thus, split art units often, unifying art can prove to split. Therefore, one cannot order community art, the people gather around what feels genuine – often it is something that scratches. And it is not possible to plan.
Not even for a Minister of Culture who dreams of artists who cannot be glazing.
Read more:
Max Hjelm: The Big Kebab Break was just the beginning – I realize I’ve lost
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