I cannot be assed to edit this post so it’s here warts and all with spellings and dead end sentences. We have a big event to coordinate and I am slightly distracted. This post may not make any sense but I publish it out of the goodness of my heart and because I think it may help you.
Drive through any rural area in Denmark and you will notice two major attractions by the roadsides: 1. Little stalls selling cottage crafts and home grown vegetables and fruit (idea being you stop your car and buy strawberries/peas etc for 20kroner a bundle and go home congratulating yourself on how quaint life is in the country and 2. signs saying: ‘GALLERI’.
It is a well known fact that every fifty meters in Denmark someone has created a ‘Galleri’.
“What is a ‘Galleri’?” You might ask, and overwhelmed by curiosity turn your car off the road up and up the beaten track into the courtyard of someone’s home, following the signs to the ‘Galleri’. “What could be in store?” You might ask, your pulse racing a little in expectation.
You will enter into part of a converted barn, or you will stoop to take steps into someone’s garage with a rug on the floor. On the wall will be framed …erm…framed…..ah…erm…we’ll come back to that bit. You will enter an interior and in the corner will be a person, sat on a camping chair, waiting in the gloom. And on the walls will be…erm…
I can’t bring myself to say it.
They aren’t paintings, it is not art, for art is human skill as opposed to nature, it is….what is it? What in the name of God and all things holy is it?
You probably thought you were entering a gallery and you are as such, and Danes are very very fond of Galleries. But it’s not art, and while many Danes will pay thousands and thousands of kroners to have what they call ‘art’ (kunst) if you’ve ever seen a true original, you know…you know in yourself, this isn’t art..it’s a HOBBY.
A hobby that sells in Denmark, for people love to get their hands on an original daubing. Think about it. Where you work, isn’t there a bit of something splashed on a square in a frame? Isn’t it made in Denmark? Isn’t it ‘kunst’ as far as they know? Do you realise that the only reason that is there is because someone decided to go to a ‘Galleri’ and pick it out?
Think about it. At your Danish friends, at your mother in laws, at your neighbours…don’t they also have an ‘original’ piece of Danish ‘art’ work on their walls? They usually put two or three framed..*ahem* pieces above the sofa. Or in the hall in a line. Think about it and try not to scream and claw at your face in suffocating wildness!
Yes.
In Denmark we have Galleri. It is where they sell the ubiquitous pieces of paint plastered on a square that must adorn every parcel hus and apartment lofty and humble. It is the law in Denmark that to be art savvy you have to have an original.
And of course, not being really art savvy and not really having any proper proper art world money, the Danes don’t want to miss out because it is important to them that part of what they are is arty. And able to appreciate ‘form’.
Advice: resist the urge to do the same. It is terribly embarrassing for your friends. Just because everybody else has those tacky little non art squares at strategic points in their identical homes doesn’t mean you have to join in.
More advice: don’t do as I did and blurt out: “What the F!#% is THAT?” and point derisively at a painted square of insipid nothingness in someone’s home. Never question what goes on as far as art goes here. Firstly, you will really hurt people’s feelings, secondly a Dane will come straight back at ya with some pompous and well thought out argument about what art is. You will end up really stupid and your assertion that the daubings that pass for art here are nothing of the sort will make you look well silly. Not only speech is ‘free’ here, but so is ‘art’.
For the record, the word ‘free’ in Denmark (as in freespeech and freedom and freedom in art) will mean freedom to scrape the barrel and not freedom in true sense of liberty.
See, the Danes do act under compulsion and restraint, in matters of speech and art they act in a box.
Here are some links:
I can’t go on, but check out the prices man! A real case of the emporer’s new clothes.
Anyway, you are going to be seeing a lot of signs for ‘Galleri’. When you follow the signs you will find a room full of someone’s paintings. Most of the people who are making these paintings are on sick leave from their jobs because they are suffering from stress. I think.
What is worse is when someone close to you here, or rather, yet one more person, suddenly begins confiding in you that they would like to follow their real path, and it turns out they mean daubing random blurry stripes on little squares to be framed and mounted in the garden shed and putting a sign out by the road saying ‘Galleri’.
I have a plan. Tommorrow I am going to drive around the countryside and visit each and every Galleri I pass (at last count there were twenty such Galleri within easy driving distance) and see how many times I can bear walking into a room with yet more samey homogenised crap in it. I think I probably have to get over the pain threshold so I am not reacting in a knee jerking way and being so dreadfully outspoken “Look, I am sorry, but how on earth can you justify charging 6,800 kroner for THAT? What kind of skill did it take to DO that?”
The Danes seem very happy with what they call art, so I really don’t want to hurt any feelings face to face, but that is precisely why I write down my observations here, I sense that I am not the only one who has noticed the strange habit the Danes have with opening little Gallerier in their back yards and selling their little daubings that only a mother could love.
I also sense that people are not being straight with one another and I suggest that we stop making fake impressed noises when people show us what they have ‘created’. I suggest a blunt: “Well, that’s not very good is it? You are surely not planning on having it on view?” or “Oh dear.” will suffice to begin a revolution.
I’ll let you know how it goes tommorrow. I reckon I’ll be able to manage three of those Galleri without wanting to run screaming into the sea. And don’t even get me started on the overabundance of samey ceramics shops and little workshops here.
Once you’ve seen one, you have seen them all. Below is an typical example of Danish art. It may not be Danish but you get what I mean. And by ‘Danish’ I do not mean ‘Danish born’ or ‘Danish blooded’ or ‘ethnic Dane’ I mean educated for many years within the system of education and culture so popular during this time here. You can be black as the ace of spades and still be a thorough Dane, it’s not about ethnicity or skin colour, it’s about what happened to your brain.
Blah blah blah. oooo, someone's been busy.
But basically, this is what is common on the walls of Danes. Is it art?
I don’t think so. I’d call it mass production. Any boffins want to tell me what they think art is?
LOL I thought it was just me being ‘foreign’. Never could understand these messes that they called art here. Maybe my tastes are pedestrian, but I love artists like Claude Monet, Julio Ducuron, Lena Liu, Thomas Kinkade, Kim Jacobs. At least you can recognize what’s in the picture lol Danish art is a bit scary – I once worked in an office that had a 6 foot square mess of conflicting paint scribbles right in the reception area – gave one a headache every time you saw it.
Hilarious! And of course, we have a similar piece given by Kenneth’s parents. No way in hell is it going on our wall!
If you’re ever in Western Sweden you might want to check out Uno’s Djur, which is perhaps our equivalent to “galleri”.
I’m afraid I also got “art” as a wedding present. From the in-laws, no less. But since it looked like a seagull has swallowed a bunch of sand and then downed a bottle of prune juice (yes, it was in fact made of sand and had streaks of green in it and looked as if it had been squeezed out of a tube) my husband up and returned it and said, thanks, but we’d rather have a vacuum.
I have a Danish friend who decided that while she wanted art on her walls, there was no way she was going to pay that much for it and asked one year as a birthday gift a little 25×25 (I think) canvas painted by each of her friends. Most of them suck as they aren’t artists, but since each picture is more of an association with a friend than a piece d’art, it’s not so important that they are gobs of paint on canvas.
Meanwhile, I’m really into medieval art at the moment, so there is no way in hell I’m putting that modern crap on my walls. However, I do have a weakness for brightly colored ceramic bowls…. http://www.palestinianpottery.com/
Ho ho about ‘kunst’ as wedding present. It does happen, and we will get over it.
I strongly urge expats marrying a Denish to print carefully the words: ‘Please, no ‘kunst’ as gift’ at the bottom of their wedding invos.
You will thank me one day.
I made a bonfire with mine (wedding kunst gift), the original artist was so offended by my attempt to return them, and I was so offended that he wouldn’t give me a refund that I figured the best way to get shot would be to make a merry blaze.
Honestly, there was a whole series of them, like they had some sort of MEANING. I would no more put those stinkers on my wall than nail up a row of dirty socks.
Mind you, that WOULD be art wouldn’t it?
I must admit to being a little disapointed that I haven’t drawn in a pompous arty farty type who will tell me I don’t know nuthin about kunst.
Well, I am a boffin AND I know what art is.
Art is a painting which was
a) hard to do
and
b) contains some well depicted hands.
Everything else is either photography, fiction, cinematography, design, sculpture etc.
Landscapes and abstracts are therefore DESIGN.