Tania Ørum: Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries
Mittwoch, 22. April 2015 - 18:00 Uhr
Campus der Universität Wien, Altes AKH
The Scandinavian countries had a pre-avant-garde generation of artists – Ibsen, Munch, Strindberg et al. – who were well-known in Europe and thus paved the way for the avant-garde that followed in the first quarter of the 20th century. In the early period there were no indigenous avant-garde movements in the Scandinavian countries. Artists travelled from the Nordic countries to the European centres to join avant-garde groups - one example is the Paris based Ballets Suédois. The interwar period saw the establishment of avant-garde groups in the Nordic countries. And one significant transnational group, the Cobra group, survived World War II and had a very active member, the Danish artist Asger Jorn, who in the 1950s went on to start the Situationist movement in collaboration with Guy Debord. After World War II lively avant-garde movements appeared in the Nordic countries as part of the 1960s wave of revolt.
Respondentin: Noit Banai
Tania Ørum is professor of comparative literature and cultural studies at the University of Copenhagen, director of the Nordic Network of Avant-Garde Studies and editor of the four volumes of Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries.
Noit Banai is Professor for contemporary art at the Institute for Art History of the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna.