Trip to Louisiana

Yesterday my Mom and I took a trip out to Louisiana, not the state but the modern art gallery located just up the coast north of Copenhagen. It had been highly recommended both by the guide books and by my friend Thomas, who had just stopped there with his girlfriend while on a holiday sailing back and forth between the Danish and Swedish coasts. The last couple days the weather had been somewhat erratic, so we figured it was the perfect day for a short train ride out to an art gallery.

The trip did not disappoint. It was really nice to get out of the city for a little bit and get even just the slightest glimpse of life outside the city. One thing that I noticed right off the bat was that there are bike lanes all over Denmark, not just in the central city, which makes the bicycle the preferred method of transportation throughout the country. Once we arrived at Humlebæk station, it was a short 10 minute walk down the road to Louisiana. The museum is located on a beautiful set of grounds that look out onto the Øresund, the narrow body of water separating Denmark from Sweden.

My Mom and I were starving by the time we made it to the museum. Thomas had mentioned that there was a very nice buffet lunch in the cafe, so we headed straight for the food first. Again, it did not disappoint. We had a beautiful spread of cured salmon, pickled herring, prosciutto with herbed potatoes, "chicken rissole" as it was labeled, and a salad of tomato, cucumber and watermelon with basil, which also turned out to be delicious. It proved to be exactly what we needed - a wonderful meal spent while looking out over the watery landscape across to Sweden.

Once we finished eating, we made our way through the exhibits. There are two exhibits of note going on right now. The first that we saw was by the French photographer/journalist/anthropologist Sophie Calle. Several of her installments were thought provoking. For one, she asked random residents of the Bronx to take her to their favorite local places and explain why. She then photographed the subjects at these places. For another, she visited East Germany to photograph spaces that had once hosted objects related to the Communist regime and had either been removed, toppled or defaced. She then sought out images of the objects that had once filled those spaces and the stories of Berliners recounting their experiences with those objects. The last, and most controversial, of the installments was inspired by a letter the artist had received from a lover in which he ends their relationship. She made copies of the letter available for each museum-goer, with the author's name replaced by an "X". She then shared the letter with more than 100 women of varying ages, professions and backgrounds, asking each of them to interpret what it meant. The artist photographed these women, often with their faces hidden, and the women's responses were often presented in artistic manner. For instance, a professional proofreader examined the letter for how often the author used specific verb tenses and marked each tense with a different color. The installation included a color diagram of how often and where the author used each particular tense. A composer translated the letter into rhythmic notation and phrasing. Overall, I found it to be fascinating. My Mother was not quite as taken to it. She thought it raised important issues regarding the ethics of using private correspondence for very public art and we debated its merits for the majority of our train ride back to Copenhagen, which if you ask me is what the artist probably intended from the very beginning. The whole thing took me back to my intro class in hermeneutics last fall. Just goes to show that you can take the boy out of divinity school...

The other remarkable exhibit was one devoted to the intersection of the work of Edvard Munch and Andy Warhol. The two make for remarkably strange bedfellows, as it were, but it turns out their work did intersect. Munch very much got into print making, which Warhol then took up to make his own version of Munch's prints, including Munch's most famous work, "The Scream." The exhibit first showed Munch's prints, followed by Warhol's interpretation of those prints, then followed by examples of Warhol's work after the Munch prints, which included interpretations of Mao Tze Tung, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and a matchbook with the Coca Cola logo on it. Again, I absolutely loved the exhibit and found it completely innovative. It was made all the more interesting by the fact that we had visited the national gallery of Norway earlier on in the trip and had seen the original "Scream" and several other of Munch's works featured at Louisiana. As Americans traveling through Scandinavia, it made for an exciting experience to see an exhibit dedicated to an American artist's engagement with the work of a Scandinavian predecessor.

So, I guess you could say that a good (and thoughtful) time was had by all. The weather has improved today and we're about to emark on our penultimate day in Scandinavia before we head back to the States on Saturday. On the agenda for the day is smørrebrød at Ida Davidsen's, a trip to the Danish National Gallery and then off to explore the Nørrebro neighborhood. More to come on that later on!