Norway continues to astound me, especially since spring is erupting in this part of the world and there’s colours everywhere.
Winding through the streets in the surprisingly warm weather, we had intended to visit the aquarium, but it was too expensive, so we ambled back the other direction and ended up at the art gallery – where I apparently look enough like a student that I was given a half price ticket (score!)
The first building of the museum was modern art, which I really can’t say much to since I’ve never been a huge fan of modern art (I just…don’t get it), but the second building, is dedicated to the golden age of Norwegian artists. Walking into it feels like walking into a church, the same hushed and somehow comforting silence. The floor of the old building creak underfoot and the only modern sound is the hum of the electric lights overhead.
The paintings are so real that it looks like you could reach out and touch the ice on the glaciers.
One of the reasons I love art history so much is that it seems to me that a painting can be…warm in a very different way than a point and click photo (and that’s not remotely saying anything against photography! I love photography). It may not be as realistic, or as instant as a camera, but it’s…got something else. The endless hours that went into creating a painting, they leave a mark, a painter’s soul goes into his brush, just as much as a photographers goes into his lens.
The museum doesn’t just house art, there are rooms of beautiful examples of baroque furniture, including a hauntingly breathtaking antique harpsichord that so begged to be played that Megara had to keep her hands solidly behind her back.
Don’t touch don’t touch…
And don’t think about how looong it’s been since anyone played it, and how lonely it must be just sitting here.
You’re not helping Shaughnessy!
I know!
Megara in an art museum is…amusing.
The museum doesn’t allow photography, so I count myself lucky I can write and walk at the same time.
Walking through this place I was swept back to early morning classes staring at slides on a screen. The names, tiny footnotes at the back of my mind, start to slowly come back to me. Flemish school, french influences. It’s all in there somewhere. If only I could find the door to unlock, or the right key to unlock it
Village Street in Normandy, Krong, 1882
One painting gene generically called ‘Village Street In Normandy (Krong, 1882), grips me because of the one person who challenges the viewers gaze in the sea of umbrellas. Definitely looking out at the world, I find myself trying to get in her head, t wondering what she’s thinking. Not that there’s any way to ever tell. But there was something about her face, her eyes…she looks as though she’s seen something, or hasn’t seen something. It’s not the most common thing to have a subject looking directly at the viewer, perhaps that’s why it grabs me so much…
But all there is about it is the title, that’s it, no names, not even a proper location…just her eyes, following me through the door to the next room…I wish I could tell her what she wanted to know…whoever she was, so long ago.
Eventually we reach the galleries most famous resident – Edvard Munch, most well known for screaming into the voids. But it’s easy to forget he was classically trained, and also created things like Morning (1884).
Munch, “Morning” 1884
There will be no more pictures of interiors, of people reading and women knitting. There
will be pictures of real people who lived ,breathed, suffered, felt loved, I will paint such pictures. People would understand the significance of it, and remove their hats like they do in church.”
So he did, and even if they aren’t necessarily to my taste, they are beautiful.
And the museum does indeed posses a sketch of the most famous of them all, barely larger than a post-card, the scream still resonates as loudly as the famous coloured finished version.
Nikolai Johannes Astrup (1880-1928) “Weekend”
The museum’s final building is dedicated in large part to Nikolav Astrup, who’s bright colors and enchanted landscapes I had never seen before but was more than happy to be introduced to. Bright and simplistic to some extent, but there’s something about it that draws you in, I could almost feel the breeze from the window. Again, I still wonder what she’s thinking…
Upstairs the exhibit shows scenes of Bergen as painted by Johan Dahl, paintings so huge that they look like doorways to another world, s though you could step thorough the spiderweb of their centuries old brush strokes and find yourself on the fields of Norway of yesterday.
Some of the images are so amazing you wonder why they didn’t get more press, but as Megara and I eventually remembered, these works were created in the late 1800s, when the impressionist movement was already well established, realism – no matter how beautiful it was – would not have gotten much attention.
Emerging from the dim reverent silence of the museum out into the bright Norwegian sunshine, I am reminded again, just how great a place I am in my life right now.
And that is a very good thing indeed.