The Nordics (Norden) are often conceived as a region united by social, cultural, and linguistic affinities, sharing a history not only of alliances but also of geopolitical conflicts. This special issue of Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History interrogates the understanding of modern and contemporary Nordic art and architecture in light of historically shifting cultural exchanges and contexts, as well as in relation to broader contemporary debates concerned with diversifying and globalising art’s histories – whether through methods of decentring, horizontalising, provincialising, or decolonising.Footnote1

The issue seeks to explore transregional exchanges and connections across, and beyond, the Nordic region, while also critically engaging with artistic practices that challenge or resist notions of regional connectivity and cultural coherence. Moreover, it aims to problematise the assumption that theoretical, methodological, and historiographical models of Western art history offer a universally applicable template for regional or ostensibly peripheral art histories – a historiographical domain to which Nordic art history arguably belongs.

The conceptualisation of the theme for this special issue is indebted to the growing research interest in cultural transfer, cross-border studies, and critical art geography as well as to the recurring calls for a global(ised) art history in recent decades. These developments have, with painful clarity, revealed the extent to which modern(ist) art historiography must be deconstructed and structurally reconfigured, having long served to homogenise the narratives and understanding of modern and contemporary art.Footnote2 These debates form the backdrop for both the use of the term transregional and the understanding of the Nordics as a potentially productive point of departure for studies of cross-border connections – or their absence – that may challenge established narratives. In this introduction, I briefly outline some of the strands of thought within this field of research that appear particularly pertinent to a transregional approach to the study of art and architecture across (and beyond) the Nordic countries.

This special issue aims to explore the understanding of Nordic art and architecture in the light of historically shifting cultural exchanges and geopolitical boundaries, as well as current debates about the globalization and decolonization of art history. It critically explores transregional exchanges, networks, and connections across the Nordic region, and examines artistic practices that challenge and/or oppose ideas of regional connectivity and cultural coherence. A further objective of this issue is to contribute to the differentiation of the homogenising notion of “Western” or “European” art by highlighting historically and geopolitically situated case studies related to the Nordic region.

Already from its foundation in 1912, Herwarth Walden's Sturm gallery in Berlin marketed picture-postcards, Künstlerpostkarten, reproducing artworks by avant-garde artists that had exhibited in the Sturm gallery. Given Herwarth Walden's talent for “propaganda,” the production and dissemination of postcards were part of a promotion strategy. The turn of the twentieth century had seen a new vogue for photographic postcards which were produced in large numbers and collected and distributed. Postcards were used as an advertising medium on a large scale by all types of businesses. The postcards translated the original artworks into commonplace objects of everyday life, a process that turned the singular fetish into multiple commodities on paper. In this paper, it is argued that this translation of material was of importance for the dissemination and reception of avant-garde art. Due to the postcards' essential function to be openly circulated, the images they offered were fundamentally intended for widespread dissemination and both public and private display. Reproductions on postcards enabled the public to form their own avant-garde collections. Moreover, the size and materiality of the postcard opened up for a more intimate, but also more mundane, experience of the art object through its reproduction.

This article explores sculptures by Swedish artists Britt-Ingrid Persson (BIP) and Barbro Bäckström in relation to the historiography of feminist art. It argues that the artworks both belong to and transcend the feminist 1970s and that their anachronistic agency allows for transtemporal narratives that challenge linear conceptualisations of time. 

It goes without saying that the discourse of modernity in the western world has been strongly shaped by notions of mobility. Being a modern artist implied being on the move, whether literally through transnational travel or figuratively through transgressive aesthetic practices. Travelling abroad was internalised as a compulsory part of the professional identity of an artist and habitualised in par-ticular travelling patterns and ways of practising movement.

Since the nineteenth century, European art centres such as Rome, Munich, and Paris had attracted innumerable Scandinavian artists. In the interwar period, Swedish artists increasingly extended their journeys to the North African coun-tries that were dominated by the French colonial empire: Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.1 This essay focuses on a number of artworks by three of these artists: the painters Agnes Cleve (1876–1951), Tora Vega Holmström (1880–1967), and Einar Jolin (1890–1976).2 All of them established themselves in the Scandinavian art world as modernist painters in close contact with the European avant-garde. Be-fore the outbreak of the First World War, Cleve had studied with Henri Le Fau-connier in Paris, Holmström with Adolf Hölzel in Dachau, and Jolin with Henri Matisse in Paris. During the First World War, they were mainly confined to the Scandinavian art world, where they made their first attempts to seek professional recognition. When the borders opened up after the war, all three artists travelled to the Maghrib region of North Africa.

År 1937 instiftades Statens konstråd, den statliga myndighet som än i dag har ansvar för att tillgängliggöra konst i offentliga miljöer över hela landet. Statens konstråds tillkomst fungerar ofta som en given utgångspunkt då den offentliga konsten och konstpolitiken i 1900-talets svenska välfärdsstat diskuteras. De ideologiska premisserna för denna institutionaliserade relation mellan konsten och politiken återfinns dock hos en rad olikartade aktörer och idéer i det sena 1800-talet och det tidiga 1900-talet.

I denna artikel utgör Statens konstråd därför snarare en slutpunkt än en utgångspunkt. Jag diskuterar tankegods hos tongivande intellektuella, offentlig konst tillkommen genom privata initiativ och donationsfonder samt ställningstaganden från konstnärskåren i syfte att visa hur politiska aktörer, genom att tillägna sig existerande praktiker och idéprogram, etablerade hörnstenarna i den diskurs som kom att prägla den offentliga konstens politik i välfärdsstaten Sverige.