REVIEW : “Marsden Hartley” (2019-2020) - Art exhibition at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

Louisiana is my favorite museum of art in Denmark, and also one of a limited number of modern art museums

The main reason for my liking is the “humility” the facility has towards exhibiting art and their philosophy of a complete experience. The museum itself is placed in a lovely set of architechturally interesting buildings near the ocean, inside a garden that is springled with sculptures. It is not just an art museum but an organic total artistic experience, yet very approachable and welcoming. Nature, architechture and art come together in an organic way.

At the moment they are exhibiting a huge selection of paintings by the american painter Marsden Hartley. Hartley was a product of the postimpressionist era and as the early works clearly shows, was fumbling around trying to find his own format among the emerging modern art styles.

There are literally “copies” of Cezanne landscapes. Cubist paintings heavily “inspired” by Picasso / Braque. These are of a decent professional quality but completely lack originality.

The obvious first impression after watching the first third or so of the exhibition is how strangely varied his putput is. He really had his “periods”, which is also sharply delineated in the exhibition which puts them together in certain periods or places that he lived.

He obviously was deeply influenced by the modernist wave post world war one but never truly ventured into the abstract realm. Instead he manages to create a personal expression in his later years, mostly regarding subjects of religiousity vs homosexuality.

One of my favorites is the one with the pinkish gay looking men standing with one sitting and holding a pale and sickly looking jesus, who has disproportionate head to body ratio. I am rather puzzled by its meaning and that is what sets it apart. The symbolic paintings that he otherwise made have no personal expression in them and are uninteresting to me.

There are many great landscapes which are basically simplistic modern postimpressionist styles. He does find a particular styleim most of them which make them particularly stand out.

The exhibition had gone to great lengths to introduce each period with letters, articles and poetry of his own. It really was a well rounded and complete life story of the artist. And as it has been 60 years since the last exhibit of Hartley in Europe, it would be advisable to take the opportunity to visit if you are in any way interested in this artist or the period in general. Hartley is somewhat an overlooked artist who has been hard to label since his output is so diverse in both style and expression.

The physical side of the facility was good. Fine variation in the room structure even if there were many visitors to crowd it all up. I did miss some places to sit andmaybe a copy of the catalog to look at inside the area.

But in total it gets my very good recommendation

8/10

Louisiana exhibition web
https://www.louisiana.dk/en/exhibition/marsden-hartley