Give us back our Paradise lost!

Claes Britton | Apr 5, 2008 | 0 comments

During my dire and longstreching labour with plowing through our Modern Muuseum’s entire photographic archive, for our mammuth ongoing project with the museum’s 50-year anniversary book, I’ve of course come across pictures from several decades of the magnificent ”Paradise” sculpture group by artists Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely — the two perhaps most dsitinguishing artists of this museum’s gloriuous sixtes — which during my childhood was a spectacular landmark near the bridgehead to the old naval Skeppsholmen island in the centre of Stockholm where the museum sits, but was subesequently moved to a more discreet and anonymous location in the knolls below the courtyard in front of the museum entrance.

These pictures brought back memories of the flaming controversies which these irresistably life-evoking sculptures provoked throughout my childhood (I spend most every weekend of my youngest years in the museum’s playroom and cinema, where my aunt worked). Today, when ”modern art” has become established and mainstream to a point when even our very own King, and no other, eagerly stresses his own personal interest in it, it’s easy to forget the debate, yes battle which raged a quarter century ago. To younger folks, it would be worth reminding that as recently as a couple of decades ago, the entire phenomen ”modern art” was considered by our conservative and reactionary fellow men in the bourgoisie as one great humbug — the Emperor’s new clothes. Picasso was actually viewed as a perverse charlatan, etcetera, etcetera. More than anything, modern art was associad with rebellion, communism, decadence, frivolity and all those other evils of the sixty-eight leftist movement. From the outset, ”Paradise” became the utter symbol of all the wild-bearded, dope-smoking, red wine-sipping bolshevik hippies and faggots who dwelled at that museum, plotting out their revolutionary plans. To claim that the sculptures were a poke in h in the eye of the Stockholm bourgoisie is phrasing it all too mildly. A conservative contra-revolutionary protest movement was instantly launched, couragously commanded by a certain Erik Trädgårdh, a local conservative politician and former army reservist, with the simple quest of having ”Paradise” moved. The chief argument was that this brightly colorful and blatantly ugly sculpture group, located right across the bay from no less than our Royal Castel, marked a deadly insult on the righteous honor of our Royal Capital — yes, of everything that is just, orderly and proper here in this world.

After more than a decade of relentless struggle, this protest movement sure enough bore its primitive fruit. The political decision to relocate ”Paradise” to its present, more discreet location was made in 1983 and executed in 1986, after a few years of inevitable bureauocratic delays.

Some twenty years later, when works of artists of the dignity of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely fetch mounting numbers if millions — a languade which our bourgoisie has always understood — these sculptures are hardly the least controversial any longer. So wouldn`t the time therefore be right now to move the group back to its rightful original position, for which it was once donated by the artists back in 1971? While at it, why not complete a chess castling and move Picasso’s wonderful ”Breakfast in the Greenery” from its even more obscure present position in the bushes on the museum’s western flank to the nolls where ”Paradise” now sits. These two world famous sculpure groups, made a complete glorious trio by Calder’s ”The four Elements” in the center of the entrence court yard, would make an even more splendid and worthy prelude to a visit to one of the world’s most oustanding museums of modern art.

PS. To hear the peerless story the story of this great museum from its legendary, recently diseased founding director Pontus Hultén, see my text archive. DS.

Give us back our Paradise lost!

Comments

Recent blog entries