Nordic Journal of Art & Research

Edvard Munch and Plato – mutual philosophy of life?

Knut Ove Æsøy — 2024-10-23

In this article, I present an intellectual-historical perspective on Edvard Munch's art, based on the hypothesis that Munch was inspired by Plato's philosophy. The sources I use to give a coherent understanding of my hypothesis are Ravenberg's diary, Munch's book collection, his own texts, paintings and illustrations, and letters between Munch and others. Other researchers have previously mentioned Plato in connection with Munch's work, but inspiration from Plato is commonly unknown. The purpose is to highlight and provide a deeper insight into part of Munch's philosophical ideas. This applies to both his view of cosmos and man, and his view of art and the artist. Munch's expressionistic art expresses an essential reality behind the physical that he captures with his soul or inner eye.

Cover image © Nasjonalmuseet/ Børre Høstland. Edvard Munch (1919) Høstpløying

Artists and Art Programmes in School

Marit Ulvund — 2024-05-06

White Paper 18 (Meld. St. 18 2020-2021) as well as public reports and evaluations call for pupils' participation and long-term art/school collaboration in The Cultural Schoolbag. This article examines opportunities and challenges in five long-term and student-active art programs carried out at five schools in Norway. It examines a) what experiences the artists gain through their long-term and student-active art practice in school, and b) whether and how the models Art Program and The Teaching Artist’s Competence are useful for the artists in implementing the art programs.

The research material refers to the artists' own reflection and final reports, and art practice documented through the researcher's log associated with observation, mentoring, practice visits, and joint gatherings with the ten artists. Reference is also made to contextual theory studies related to arts in education, The Cultural Schoolbag and teaching artists.

The study finds that the art programs were well received and appreciated by students and teachers. At the same time, there seems to be untapped potential in partnerships between artists, teachers, and schools. There is a need for clarification of roles and a closer collaboration between the artists and teachers, and to link the art programs closer to the school context and the school's other content. Conversations and reflection associated with the Art Program and The Teaching Artist models were experienced as useful for the development and implementation of the five art programs. It contributed to a common vocabulary and strengthened the conversations about roles and challenges associated with the form and content of the work.

Cover photo: Marit Ulvund

The arts of attention and Oslo Architecture Triennale

Cecilie Sachs Olsen — 2024-01-31

This paper starts from a two-fold observation: firstly, that attention rests at the core of our environmental challenges; and secondly, that by becoming (more) attentive to the modified, transformed, and controlled urban environments in which we dwell, we may be better equipped to attend to these challenges. The paper therefore develops and introduces “an urban attention ecology” that seeks to expand our ability to attend to urban form in ways that open possibilities to critically address and creatively negotiate the ways in which cities are built and inhabited. The potentials and challenges of the urban attention ecology are thought through in a practice-based account of a broad range of critical spatial practices centring around the theme of degrowth. These practices took the form of performances, installations, and other artistic projects that the author gathered, developed and presented as curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019.

Cover photo: The Factory of the Future at the Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture. OAT / Istvan Virag.

The Sculptor as Rhythm Analyst

Errol Fyrileiv — 2024-06-24

A sculptor is a practitioner, and in this study, the sculptor's practice as a process is focused. Through this study, the practitioner as a rhythm analyst also becomes a researcher of his own practice. The work process is linked to a sculpture of the football trainer Nils Arne Eggen. The study's analytical question is: How can a sculptor's process with form, movement, material, and timespace be understood in a rhythm-analytical perspective? The term rhythm is understood as the philosopher Henri Lefebvre has described the term as a tool in rhythm analysis. An analysis is carried out by intertwining extracts from the sculptor's thinking texts, conversations, image collages, and theoretical-philosophical reading of concepts related to rhythm as well as to agential realism. There is rhythm in form, movement, and material, rhythm in the sculptor's bodily intra-action with the sculpture, as well as the site-specific rhythm and the timespace created by placing the sculpture on a plinth outdoors. By reading the rhythmic aspects of the sculptor's thinking texts and in conversations with him, through concepts from agential realism, choices in the work process are analysed. The analytical points are collected in four braids. Rhythm as 'meta-sense' makes visible performative potentials articulated as intertwinings comprising the sculptor's thinking, bodily affects, and energy, as well as the materiality of the timespace of the working process.

Cover photo: Ole Martin Wold/ NTB