Let’s start in Copenhagen, itself a non-blockbuster, but very attractive city. It’s civil, scenic and fairly overrun with–what a pleasant change!–bicycles. And Copenhagen possesses three shows at three museums that exemplify the pleasures of looking beyond the obvious. A short train ride north of town, in the spotless suburb of Humlebaek, the stunning Louisiana Museum shows the early paintings on Masonite of Per Kirkeby (through Sept. 1). Easily Denmark’s most renowned contemporary painter, the 63-year-old Kirkeby just paints–and paints and paints–energetic, subtly colorful abstract landscapes. Back in the 1960s, when he was trying to find this style, he threw images of everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into his pictures: fashion models, picket fences, Mongolian tents, Danish myths, cowboys, you name it. Perhaps the Louisiana puts too many (108) raucous Kirkebys on its walls, but the artist’s joy in painting shines through the excess.
Scandinavian modern artists aren’t generally well known outside their own countries. (Maybe that’s what Edvard Munch’s screamer is screaming about.) Some of the best had a hard time even on their own turf. Take the star-crossed couple Sigrid Hjerten and Isaac Grunewald, the stars of “Family Life and Avant-Garde, 1910-1919” at the Arken Museum through Sept. 1. (The museum is another easy train ride from Copenhagen, only south.) Both artists were born in Sweden, studied in Paris with Matisse and exhibited their expressionist paintings in avant-garde shows all over Scandinavia. But because he came from a Jewish immigrant family and she was a woman, they were perceived even by their fellow bohemians as, respectively, threatening and undeserving, and neither had an easy time of it. Eventually, their art-and-life idyll with their beloved child, Ivan, collapsed. In 1946, Grunewald–who had divorced Hjerten and married a student at the Stockholm academy where he taught–perished in a plane crash. Two years later, Hjerten, who had been institutionalized, died following a lobotomy. The couple’s story may be wrenching, but their art–personal, succinct and surprisingly upbeat–is decidedly not.
Art in cold climates can, however, be a little severe. Late in his renaissance career, Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) became best buddies with Martin Luther, the man who founded Protestantism. Luther was under pressure from hard-liners to do away with graven images, but he knew that many potential converts would be loath to give them up. So he promoted a compromise: religious art was OK, as long as it didn’t have a Catholic tour de force quality. Under Luther’s influence, Cranach pulled back from his accomplished, rounded realism. and made his portraits a little cartoony, becoming one of the first deliberately retro artists in history. The exhibition of late work reflecting Luther’s hovering presence (but titled simply “Cranach”) is at Copenhagen’s State Art Museum through Sept. 8.
Cranach was German, and so is painter Neo Rauch, winner of the 2002 biannual Vincent Award, which goes to a European artist between 35 and 45. Beyond nationality, you might think there’s no connection between the two. But you could make a case that Warhol is Rauch’s Luther, pop art his Protestantism. His paintings–on view thorough Oct. 6 at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht, the Netherlands–are as retro as Cranach’s. It’s just that in Rauch’s case, taking a knowing step back toward the medieval means in the direction of sour, clumsy East German propaganda murals. If visual sarcasm is your thing, Rauch is your artist.
If, on the other hand, you–like most people–prefer your paintings sincere, then there’s nothing like the old masters. Aelbert Cuyp (circa 1620-91), one of the best landscape painters during the “golden age” of Dutch paintings, might be considered an old master if it weren’t for the fact that Rubens, Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer were all daubing in the vicinity at roughly the same time. Cuyp’s outdoor pictures are sunnier and breezier than the competition’s (and probably than the reality of Dutch weather). For many, he’ll be a genuine discovery, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (through Sept. 1).
Contemporary German photographer Thomas Ruff makes Dutch realist painting look positively blurry by comparison. His large, hyperdetailed color prints of what the catalog calls “the startlingly alien faces of our fellow human beings” are on the walls of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Aug. 2 to Oct. 6. Ruff came along, though, after such pioneers as American William Eggleston–born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, and still working there–made color photography acceptable in art galleries and not just in advertising. His subtly odd-angled shots of small-town main streets and regular folks are ingeniously stuffed with fascinating juxtapositions of color. Eggleston particularly loves variations of red. The quality of his work takes some time to sink in, but it’s worth the wait, at London’s Hayward Gallery in the South Bank complex, July 11 to Sept. 22.
Photographers may work with film, but hardly any are ever accused of “really wanting to direct.” Not so, of course, with artists who make films, such as Eija-Liisa Ahtila from Finland. (It’s “astonishing,” said one critic on seeing her work in the current Documenta 11, in Kassel, Germany, that she isn’t already in Hollywood, sitting in a canvas chair with her name on the back.) Ahtila’s films have a slickness–but, as in “Consolation Service” (1999) and “Anne, Aki and God” (1998), they have a slightly fractured structure that demands a little work to follow. Even so, she is enjoying two big shows simultaneously (at the Tate Modern in London, through July 28, and at Zurich’s Kunsthalle, through Aug. 11).
If Ahtila does want to make it big in the movies, she should consider switching to Japanese anime, the sexy, sci-fi animation that seems to make the hearts of curators and cineplex managers beat faster. From June 26 to Sept. 29 at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, painter Takashi Murakami gets major exposure for his art-gallery version of anime. Whatever you think of it, you have to admit it dazzles the eye. So does the jewelry of Cartier itself, especially when ensconced in custom-made display cases by a big-time designer like Ettore Sottsass, the Italian architect who helped found the Memphis design collective in the 1980s. This sparkling show is at the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin, through Sept. 15.
We’re totally in favor, incidentally, of design’s getting the museum treatment, but if we have our way, we’ll go with Ernst Deutsch (1887-1938) at the MAK museum in Vienna, through July 14. Deutsch was a “universal designer”–posters, clothes, logos, movie costumes, magazine covers–in a time when print technology was primitive enough that a designer had to get absolutely everything he could out of every separate, expensive color plate. Deutsch did just that. In fact, Deutsch’s work is a nice reminder that the best art isn’t always found in the most obvious places. Like blockbusters.
