- Denmark was a small kingdom with an ambitious king.
- A history of broken dreams, precarious survival and catastrophic adventures.
- Art was powerful and haunting.
- Denmark was the ugly duckling that longed to be a swan.
- The vast majority of danes were farmers. The king had nobody to build his castle.
- He imported builders and an architect who were Dutch. A dutchman painted the king's portraits too.
- Denmark supposedly 'went to sleep' for a very long time, to be woken up by Hans Christian Anderson who was the son of a shoemaker.
- Anderson was from a very low class but still played with the future king. Low and high classed were not separated.
- This probably led to his social satire and sharp eye for social inequality.
- Paper cut of golden swan is representative of what Denmark wants to become.
- His paper cuts are his stories reduced to 'ultimate simplicity'.
- Grecian sculpture was brought into the realm of Scandinavian art.
- Christoffer Eckersberg painted nudes but not related to religion or myth.
- Female nudes were more risqué than male because it was illegal for some time for a woman to pose nude for a male painter.
- Scandinavians are open about sexual matters.
- Non-erotic, straight forward paintings of most likely working women.
- Eckersberg aimed to find the core of what a danish person is.
- 'We are who we are' - there's no need for material goods or an expression of status to show their identity as a nation.
- Mother Denmark was a nordic heroine, a symbol of patriotism, war and military victories.
- Until 1864 when Denmark's history as war heroes was shattered in a bloody war where they suffered huge loss.
- This was a big turning point. They became a non-assertive country.
- More thought was put into how to develop a small country. They had to consider who Denmark was as a nation.
- Anxious reflection.
- Vilhelm Hammershøi painted drained, empty, bleak interior scenes.
- He envisioned what the world would look like in silence, an urban alienation. A whisper.
- His paintings were a reflection of the Danish mentality through interiors - fearful and introverted.
- Danish nostalgia - a museum in the form of a village set in the past is an ideal of a model Denmark.
- Symbol of the modern danish mindset, ordinary, peaceful, domestic life, the beauty of small.
- LEGO represents the opposite of modern play, it brings people together and is the most famous global export of Scandinavia.
- The ethos is to play well and play together. The small and the safe.
- Hygge is intimacy, cosiness and comfort.
- Danes redesigned objects for the ordinary home so the become works of art.
- They adopted modernism in a way that didn't express misery or tragedy like other nations.
- Furniture was comfortable, affordable and useful.
- Using fine materials, they made sculptural yet practical objects that were beautiful and distinctive.
- Danish modernism made the most of ordinary life.
- It was inclusive, it was affordable and it was for the people.
- A system of modular construction, a principle which exists in LEGO as well.
Summary
It sounds like Denmark had this great desire to be strong, powerful and heroic. However, their massive defeat in 1864 changed the direction of their focus dramatically. After going through a period of depression where the art was quite melancholy, the Danes seemed to have make something beautiful from this bleakness. Making the most of the ordinary day to day life they lead is what I find inspiring about Denmark. I like the idea that living can be an art form - this is truly represented in Danish design for the home. I also like that this design was classless, this was not design just for the elite, its purpose was to serve and suit everybody, therefore leading to a more equal and harmonious society.
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