GEORG GUDNI

THE MOUNTAIN
1
GEORG GUDNI

THE MOUNTAIN

The Akureyri Art Museums retrospective on Georg Gudni, one of

Icelands most important visual artists today, considers in depth the im-

pressive oeuvre of an artist who almost single-handedly reinvented the

genre of Icelandic landscape painting. While a growing number of artists

in Iceland have embraced the school of painting that Gudni essentially

created, the repercussions of his work are increasingly international, as it

has captivated the attention of audiences and critics far and wide.

Whereas the exhibition treats Gudnis paintings thematically, highlight-

ing his approach to mountains, valleys, and horizons, this catalogue is

essentially constructed in a chronological order with the aim of providing

an accessible overview of Gudnis evolution as an artist. In addition to re-

productions of his work and installation photographs representing Gudnis

exhibitions over the past two decades, the catalogue includes an intro-

duction and detailed analysis of Gudnis early career written by Hannes

Sigurdsson, Director of the Akureyri Art Museum, and a discussion of

Gudnis paintings in relation to the Icelandic landscape tradition written

by art historian Adalsteinn Inglfsson.

Cover: Untitled, 1999. Oil on canvas, 208 x 224 cm

Back: Untitled,22002. Oil on canvas, 244 x 205 cm
GEORG GUDNI

THE MOUNTAIN

3
Pl. 1: Untitled, 1989, 23,5 x 121 cm
5
7 MIRRORING MIRRORS
HANNES SIGURDSSON

23 WHERE THE EARTH MEETS THE SKY

HANNES SIGURDSSON

109 EARTH, AIR AND WATER

ADALSTEINN INGLFSSON

139 GRIP SLENSKU

SYNOPSIS IN ICELANDIC

162 LIST OF PLATES

166 EXHIBITION HISTORY & BIBLIOGRAPHY
174 ABOUT THE AUTHORS
GEORG GUDNI

THE MOUNTAIN EDITED BY HANNES SIGURDSSON

7
PREFACE

MIRRORING MIRRORS
The Akureyri Art Museums summer 2007 retrospective on contemporary Icelandic land-
scape painter Georg Gudni offers a rare approach to the oeuvre and development of one
of the most outstanding artists of his generation. Rather than presenting Gudnis work
chronologically, three galleries in the museum are devoted thematically to the artists
main subjects: mountains, valleys, and horizons. This approach by theme rather than
chronology can afford audiences and artists themselves the opportunity to see one
painters maturation, so often considered as a linear development, through a new critical
and aesthetic lens.

In hindsight, Gudni did not spontaneously become a landscape painter as much as he con-
sciously chose to become one, very much against the prevailing fashion of the time. The
decision was made almost overnight, and as it happens I was an eyewitness to this decisive
and lasting shift of interest. Since the early 60s, the avant-garde SM-movement had ef-
fectively banished painting and formalism, and especially landscape representation, as a
subject for serious contemplation. As a movement, SM cultivated adherents and mission-
aries of minimalism, Fluxus and the conceptual all artistic fashions which, in his early
development, Gudni explored in his approach to the canvas.

Gudni and I commenced our studies together in 1980 at the Icelandic College of Arts and
Crafts, where we studied in the Department of Painting from 1981 to 1984. We were part of
a new trend in art studies that saw a sharp rise in enrollment in the painting department and
marked a veritable renaissance in Iceland of paint on canvas as a viable medium for novel
and progressive artistic expression. Painting had just come back into vogue with drips,
drizzles and splatters of the kind that once launched Abstract Expressionism into orbit with
its peculiar resistance to form and pictorial narrative. Gudni began as a dripper, covering his
art school canvases with splattered paint, but he did not take his cue from Jackson Pollock;
rather his style derived from the so-called Neo-Expressionism of the early 1980s laced with

9 2: Mt.Brfell, 1986, diameter 36,5 cm

Pl. 9
the transcultural and transhistorical currents that formally put an end to the era of Modern-
ism. And whereas Pollock found his voice in the inchoate void, Gudnis initially fumbling
random droplets gradually took shape as a colossal, reflective lagoon, a curious mirror that
at times appears as hard as glass and yet so fluid that we could walk right through it. To
our astonishment, in 1983 an unassuming landscape appeared abruptly out of the chaos of
primary forms and experimental dabbles. The landscapes emerged on the artists canvases,
and then the artist himself emerged: Georg Gudni, landscape painter.

Gudni was suddenly an old-fashioned painter in a land of conceptual abstraction, when

artists and their public had become blas about visual representation of nature and paint-
ing landscapes was regarded as altogether an obsolete idiom. But when Gudni unveiled his
canvases, he was met with a spellbound audience, an art world struck not only by the artists
skill and the visual and emotive power of his work but also ready to reconsider, with criti-
cal appreciation, the genre of Icelandic landscape painting a genre Gudni would quickly
resurrect and reinvent.

Gudnis 1985 solo exhibition at The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik marked a break-
through and brought him instant recognition. Gudni was not only confronted with the
promising beginnings of his personal success, but with the opportunity to use this recog-
nition to usher in a whole new school of Icelandic landscape painting. Gudni had broken
the ice and cleared the way into the painted landscape that had for over two decades been
virtually sealed off as an intellectual no-mans land by the SM-movement.

During our time together as students at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, Gudni and
I became close friends. Looking back, the unwavering strength of Gudnis vision as an artist
was probably one of the main reasons why I decided in 1985 to abandon the idea of becom-
ing a painter for other pursuits. Our ways parted; I left for London, he went to Holland for
further studies at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, and for the next decade we met
only during brief vacations. Gudnis farewell gift to me, so that I might always keep an eye
on Iceland, was a small painting, 34 x 28 cm, executed on an old weather-beaten, heavy-
handed window frame he had salvaged from the renovations of his father-in-laws house.
On the glass he painted in grey washes the lone promontory of Mt. Inglfshfdi (1984), seen
from a distance through rain and an overcast, murky sky. (Pl.3) For a whole winter this was
the only personal item to adorn my flat in Notting Hill, providing a soothing outlet when I
was deluged with homesickness and nostalgia in the big city. As contradictory as it might
appear, this is a reminder that such yearnings need not be attached to sun-drenched, opu-

10
lent memories Baudelaires longing for luxe, calme et volupt that inspired the Matisse
painting of that name in order to be profoundly (and even universally) effective.

I moved from London to San Francisco for my post-graduate studies and then in 1990 to
New York, where I began independently curating exhibitions at Reykjaviks Caf Mokka,
as zealously as if I had been given the task of directing a major art institute. Founded in
1958, Caf Mokka has a venerable and unbroken tradition of showing art, and Gudni
had become a volunteer in mounting many of the exhibitions. He participated in the
Mokka Tapestry in 1992, a live performance by 35 contemporary Icelandic artists work-
ing sequentially on a 50 cm x 37 m canvas, one artist each day. And in April 1993, prior
to Sally Manns unnerving show Immediate Family, he presented a solo exhibition of
drawings. Two years later, in July 1995, Gudni again exhibited a selection of sketches
under the title Terra Virgo. For this occasion, a pamphlet was issued containing original
reflections on Gudnis work by some of the most important poets in Iceland of several
generations, including Sigurdur Plsson, Matthas Johannessen and Elsabet Jkulsdttir.
The association of Gudni with such literary figures testifies to the status he had already
reached as a cultural icon.

In the late 1980s Gudni had been taken on by the Lars Bohman Gallery in Sweden and
Bohman planned a solo exhibition of Gudnis work in 1991. Gudni approached me to write
an essay for the catalogue. This task was all the more daunting because at that time, interna-
tional phone calls were a rare luxury, the latest technology was the fax machine and air mail
was the primary means of long-distance communication. Gudni recently found a US-sized
envelope containing faded sketches on fax paper and memos along with snapshots of works
in progress and suggestions for reference material, testimony to the countless hours Gudni
and I spent discussing his art. However, due to the economic recession of the early 1990s
and numerous other reasons, the catalogue of Gudnis paintings (along with my essay)
was never published. An abbreviated version appeared in the Icelandic literary magazine
Skrnir in 1994 but the essay for the catalogue drifted into oblivion.

In anticipation of this summers retrospective on Gudni at the Akureyri Art Museum,

my original hope was that the eminent historian, critic, curator and expert on Northern
Romanticism Professor Robert Rosenblum of New York University would write an
introduction to the catalogue. Rosenblum had previously written an essay for the museum
on my request about Peter McGough and David McDermott when they exhibited Hitler
and the Homosexuals in January 2003. I thought Rosenblums examination through a wider

11
contextual lens of the Northern tradition would provide the proper artistic genealogy for
Gudnis painting. He agreed, and I mailed him the latest published monograph on Gudni.
But I was never to hear from him again. Rosenblum had been battling cancer and died in
December 2006, a great loss to the world of art and academia.

At this point I accidentally stumbled on a copy of my old and quite forgotten essay, which
I had entitled Where the Earth Meets the Sky more than fifteen years earlier. No digital
copy, not even the outdated floppy disk on which it had once been saved, existed, only one
paper copy that had to be scanned and manually corrected. But what of this essay was it,
like the lost floppy disk, obsolete? Rereading the text, I concluded that it still had its merits
and decided to publish it verbatim.

How to justify using this old essay remained nevertheless a bit of a quandary: while Gudnis
work has many of the qualities of timeless art, a text about art can only aspire to be a convinc-
ing interpretation that carries the date stamp of its authorship. It struck me that, unlike living
oraganisms whose molecular structures are said to renew themselves every seven years, both
art and text remain locked as fixed constellations. Rereading my essay so many years after it
was written, I felt that however completely I had changed physically, the text like the works
of art it spoke of remained the same. From that perspective, my own text reads to cite
the title of Viggo Mortensens 2005 monograph on Gudni as Strange Familiar.

Apart from serving the remnants of my vanity, publishing the essay now can be regarded as
unveiling a time piece borne of historical circumstances. As such it says perhaps even more
about the Zeitgeist than about the artist, or about this particular author. The essay is not
so much defined by a nationalistic tenor as it is indicative of a need to carve out a territory
of understanding for the reception of this type of art. In the early 1990s, Icelandic art was
beginning to break out of its isolation, increasingly accessible to audiences on both sides of
the Atlantic, and escalating as aesthetically competitive within the international art scene.
Because Icelandic art was a relatively new commodity and concept to the world beyond
the island, this approach was in a way unavoidable: while it is possible to take for granted a
certain degree of historical, political and cultural knowledge of, for instance, France, Ger-
many, or the United States, this is not the case for Iceland, a nation still penciled into the
margins of our cultural textbooks. Background information on Iceland was and still is
necessary in my essay because Gudnis art, like that of many artists from this country, is
very much rooted in the specific evolution of Icelandic landscape painting, as well as in the
land itself.

12
Georg Gudni on the isle of Flatey in Breidafjrdur, July 2005. Photo by Hannes Sigurdsson

The time capsule effect of the essay is therefore valuable in its own right, since to many
non-Icelanders this is new information, critical to an understanding of Iceland at the start of
the 21st century. And though Where the Earth Meets the Sky does not address Gudnis
career after 1992, it does trace his development from the earliest beginnings in some detail,
contextualizing the artist and his work within the young history of Icelandic art (which, in
terms of art as a profession, only dates back to 1900), as well as within the contemporary
international art scene and the artists biography.

Adalsteinn Inglfsson, in his essay Earth, Air and Water: Georg Gudni and the Icelandic
Landscape Tradition, carries the discussion of Gudnis art forward from where my essay
leaves off in 1992. Inglfsson, undoubtedly the most prolific writer on Icelandic art and
the editor of more collections than any other Icelandic art historian, has written on Gudni
on a number of previous occasions. Focusing here on a select group of Gudnis works, he
explores their relation to the Icelandic landscape tradition that informs much of Gudnis
art, and about which Gudni is also very well informed. The interesting point to note here is
the fact that Iceland, within a mere century, has established its own art historical tradition to

13
the extent that it can be quoted by subsequent generations of artists. Among the best known
Icelandic landscape painters working today are Hbert Ni, Eggert Ptursson, Arngunnur r,
Gudrn Kristjnsdttir, Gudbjrg Lind, Tolli and Jnas Vidar, though many others follow
in Gudnis aesthetic footsteps. Photographer Pll Stefnsson, whose images of Icelands
diverse landscape are now reaching audiences worldwide, began his career around the same
time as Gudni when he started working for Atlantica and Iceland Review in 1982.

The explication of Gudnis technique and the formal analysis of his work in Where the
Earth Meets the Sky strike a balance between a discussion of the landscape subjects on his
canvases and an inquiry into the nature of perception that those subjects raise in other
words, how Gudni imbues his paintings with a subtle optical power of illusion that has
made him the admired artist he is today. And the essay also speaks to the political role of
landscape painting, so often passed over as devoid of any such content. Thus the catalogue,
unlike the exhibition, is essentially constructed in a traditional chronological order with the
aim of providing an accessible overview of Gudnis evolution as an artist. The book focuses
on his works on canvas, leaving out the plethora of watercolors, pencil drawings, charcoal
sketches and photographs he has done over the years, which number in the thousands. Be-
tween the various chapters of the catalogue are also installation photos from Gudnis many
exhibitions that now span over two decades.

What has changed in these fifteen years since the essay was originally written? Perhaps most
importantly for our discussion of landscape, we should note that environmental concerns
hardly existed in Iceland in the early 1990s. The economy, formerly almost exclusively
reliant on the fishing industry to keep afloat, has become much more diversified today,
and Icelands fishing quotas have been sold to private enterprise. A massive harnessing of
energy and exhaustible natural resources has been taking place. There were no factories to
speak of fifteen years ago, but now the countryside has been encroached upon by industry,
with drastic changes to the landscape and the environment brought about by the construc-
tion of aluminum plants and the dams that provide them with hydroelectric energy.

Tourism was also just taking off fifteen years ago, and with it grew internal, more self-con-
scious nationalistic sentiments then projected to the outside world to attract visitors to what
is special and unique about Iceland. Those sentiments became, and are still to some
extent, grounded in Icelands language but increasingly more so in its landscape. Though
the country is far from being a provincial, pollution-free Edenic state, the fast-growing tour-
ist industry has a vested interest in keeping this image intact as emblematic of the nation.

153: Mt. Inglfshfdi, 1984, 34 x 28 cm

Pl.
From abroad the country may seem a virgin territory of pure, unspoiled and sublime nature.
In reality, large chunks of land have been sold to proponents of free enterprise since Where
the Earth Meets the Sky was written. Not only the fishing grounds and vast tracts of land
but also the banks, the national phone company and national television are now privately
owned; public service, too, is commonly outsourced to various corporations.

Besides attesting to the general influence of globalization, this widespread privatization has
mentally programmed the way Icelanders view their landscape. The Icelandic landscape
tradition is rooted in the early 20th century, spurred on by the struggle for political and
economic independence. The main repositories for the sense of national unity and shared
values and heritage were, on the one hand, the Icelandic language and on the other, the
landscape. The land was the Icelanders common ground, both literally and figuratively.
Most importantly, the land was the property of the people, and as such, an ideal visual sym-
bol of nationalistic sentiments. Although Gudnis art can be interpreted in more universal
terms, these feelings still inform much of his output, as well as how his work is received and
understood in Iceland. The discrepancy between these traditional values and the recent
changes to how the land is owned, exploited and transformed do not seem to have dawned
on the population at large, which has become more receptive to a supra-national interpreta-
tion of the land as a well-spring of economic prosperity for some and spiritual reunion with
Mother Earth for others. This illustrates the artificiality of the notions we devise for our
understanding of nature that fluctuate with the political and social climate of each epoch.

In addition, the concept of Icelandic nationalism based on the long-cultivated mystique

of an island inhabited by a united tribal family has become obsolete. Today, the nations
demographics have been transformed by immigration, which was negligible two decades
ago. The once strictly homogenous culture has become a full-blown heterogeneous society.
Immigrants are indispensable in many sectors of the labor force and have contributed in
positive ways to the social and cultural milieu of present day Iceland as well. But while so
much national pride is intertwined with the Icelandic language, it is a very difficult language
for new immigrants to master; on any given day in Reykjavik, native Icelanders dining at
restaurants or buying a cup of coffee will be obliged to order in English.

Thus it is the landscape that has remained the most resilient vestige of national identity and
unity, a double mirror we hold both to ourselves and to the outside world, notwithstanding
the irony that today, most Icelanders view the landscape through television and computer
screens or car windows more than through direct immersion in nature.

16
Iceland has taken in much from abroad, but so too, Icelandic culture is being disseminated
internationally, with the success of Icelandic musicians and artists, aspiring filmmakers, nov-
elists, playwrights, and designers. Because Iceland has remained on the margins of the map
for so long and has been, in a sense, an Other the country now must speak up for itself
in the name of Icelandic art and Icelandic artists. But underlying this is a palpable cur-
rent of self-awareness that does not necessarily want to be seen as nationalism. It is rather an
introspective self-definition that is challenging what it means to be Icelandic, and whether
Icelandicness has any intrinsic sociological or even Darwinian value to begin with. These
questions have been underscored again and again during the past two decades.

In the last fifteen years there have been more books and articles published in English on
Icelandic artists than in all the time before. Those artists are exhibiting more frequently
while receiving greater international acceptance, holding their ground as they paint, sculpt,
direct, film, compose and they have been increasingly gaining ground in the art market.
The country is geographically isolated and still emerging from its resultant cultural isola-
tion; in fact, the population of the entire country is small enough to hold in a few sky-
scrapers. Yet everything that is happening in Iceland politically, socially, artistically, and
otherwise is relevant to and intertwined with the rest of the world.

Big countries and established, ruling cultures can appreciate and evaluate themselves on
their own terms. But a minority misguidedly feels it must continue to seek acceptance. Hav-
ing been subjected as a colony to foreign rule and marginalized for centuries, Iceland can-
not help but have retained such a minority complex, though the nation has now come into
its own politically, economically, socially, and culturally precisely when old values have
rapidly begun to disintegrate into the new world order. Keeping this in mind, we are invited
on a journey through each of Gudnis landscapes, our own mental landscapes, and with him
we see our reflections reflected time and again.

Beijing in April 2007

Hannes Sigurdsson, Director
Akureyri Art Museum

17
18
19
 Georg Gudni at his first one-person exhibition
at The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik 1985

Previous spread: Georg Gudnis work photographed

at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht 1987

21
Right: A hologramatic poem by artist Haraldur Jnsson, dedicated to Georg Gudni in 1991 and published by Bjartur in Haraldurs book stundum
alltaf (sometimes always), 1995. All the poems are presented in a rectangular format, as three-dimensional images. Translation: Hannes Sigurdsson.
 The brightness comes from
within he pastes it with
a brush onto the canvas
it takes the shape of air
with time in a light that
is neither vertical nor
horizontal but multidirectional
23
WHERE THE EARTH
MEETS THE SKY
For me, photographs of landscape (urban or country) must be habitable, not visitable.
This longing to inhabit... is fantasmatic, deriving from a kind of second sight which seems
to bear me forward to a utopian time, or to carry me back to somewhere in myself... Look-
ing at these landscapes of predilection, it is as if I were certain of having been there or of
going there. Now Freud says of the maternal body that there is no other place of which
one can say with so much certainty that one has already been there. Such then would be
the essence of the landscape (chosen by desire): heimlich, awakening in me the Mother
(and never the disturbing Mother).
Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. R. Howard (New York: Hill & Wang, 1981)

Im outside, standing or sitting on a stone. I look around, toward the horizon, at the
amplitudes and the mountains. Some stand close by, others further away. Automatically,
the mind starts roaming or perhaps gliding around. I go into the distance, into eternity,
where the mountains have impenetrable tranquillity, where they cease being mountains
and become aeriform. I enter and pass through them. What exists in the mountain exists
also outside of it, and in the surrounding quietude both dread and gloom reside. And in
the air all the thoughts of the world can be accommodated.
Georg Gudni: from his sketchbook, dated January 8, 1989

As we face impending ecological collapse the wholesale destruction of rainforests, accel-

erated depletion of the ozone layer, proliferation of nuclear waste sites, explosive increase
in the amount of daily refuse from our throwaway society, and a general toxic erosion
of the environment artists on both sides of the Atlantic have come to embrace nature
once again. And despite the great variety of work produced under this rubric, the way
in which those issues have generally been tackled seems to indicate a common ground.
Starting around the mid-80s and spurred on by the battle slogans of the Save the Earth
movement, a large group of artists have taken to the so-called green approach, as dem-
onstrated by such shows as A Natural Order, About Nature, and The (Un)Making

Page 20: Pl. 4: Untitled, 1995, 185 x 200 cm

255: Untitled, 2002, 244 x 205 cm
Pl.
Fig. 1: Thingvellir (1900) by Thrarinn B. Thorlksson. Oil on canvas, 57 x 81 cm
Courtesy of The National Gallery of Iceland

of Nature. More recent is Allocations, a Dutch exhibition of commissioned site works from
Canadian, American and European artists questioning the relationship between nature and cul-
ture in a manner that underscores the international currency of this new revisionist outlook. As
artists insist on directly confronting social and ecological problems, their work is clearly meant
to alert us to the looming disaster the prospect has unmistakably come to replace the dread
of the A-bomb that defined the Cold War era. It is characterized by a strong sense of mission;
a didactic stance apparently aimed at shocking the world to its senses through the use of images
suggesting imminent future destruction.2 Whatever the means, these graphic sermons on the
industrial abuse of nature, which run the gamut from the hysterical and nostalgic to the factu-
ally impassive, tend to flatten out the content into a single ethical punch line. The cause is just,
no doubt. But by radically deflating the possibilities of meaning for the sake of explicitness, the
artists rob the spectator of the democratic privilege of interpretation, and risk reducing the work
to the level of propaganda.

It is ironic, given the fight for animal rights and the crusade against pollution that has gone
hand in hand with this defence, that environmentally correct art should have its roots in the
early 60s namely the Earthworks of artists like Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer and Robert
Smithson. Sharing a similar attitude toward the landscape as Picasso, who declared that nature

26 Pl. 6: Leira, 1983, 35 x 50 cm

27
 Fig. 2: Georg Gudni holds one of his triangle paintings
which he exhibited at The Living Art Museum in 1983

[existed] to be raped,3 these artists invaded the fragile ecosystem of the American wasteland
with bulldozers, explosives and pneumatic drills in an effort to broaden the canon of Minimal-
ism and sap the myth of Nature. Smithsons Spiral Jetty (1970), composed of more than 6000
tons of limestone and black basalt, gives an indication of the scale of some of these assaults.
They reach a climax in the work of Heizer, who aggressively inquired: Where the hell are all
the artists? I mean we live in an age of obligation. We live in an age of 747 aircraft [and] the
moon rocket.4 In keeping with this proclamation, he repeatedly displaced thousands of tons
of earth, of which the most notorious example is his Double Negative (1969-71), a work so vast
that it can only properly be appreciated in its entirety from the vantage point of a helicopter.

There were, of course, some notable exceptions to those monumental works, exemplified in
the more humble and poetic environmental sculptures of Michael Singer and Alan Sonfist.
But by and large, American artists in the late 60s and early 70s showed little reverence for the
ecological sanctuaries of the rural landscape when it came to making their sweeping, attention-
grabbing statements.5 By contrast, it was sufficient for their European counterparts, such as
David Nash, Hamish Fulton and Richard Long, to merely touch the earth lightly6 and make
photo-graphic records of it.7 The striking difference between European and American Land
Art, before it gave birth to a more unanimous concern, has usually been ascribed to geographi-
cal circumstances, since such massive undertakings would have been almost impossible on

297: Mt. Orrustuhll, 1983, 36 x 43 cm

Pl.
Fig. 3: Mt. Keilir and the Sun, 1984. Pencil on paper, 10 x 10 cm

the far more densely populated Continent. Despite its rather obscure relationship with the
commodity market, American Earthworks were clearly connected to the gallery system by
an umbilical cord of gold, prompting Long later to remark that it was a true capitalist art.8

This unduly condensed (and overtly truncated) overview of the history of environmental art
should prove helpful as we turn our attention to the works of Georg Gudni. As it happens,
Gudnis interest in the Icelandic wilderness coincides with a renewed enthusiasm on the
part of artists from the other Nordic countries for their own respective landscapes a view
of nature that diverges significantly from environmentally-informed art elsewhere in Europe
and America.9 The way in which the Scandinavians have generally chosen to approach the
matter is not through installations, sculptures, or conceptual works of art, but through that
most resilient of mediums, which has been so repeatedly declared dead: painting. This
holds true, for example, for Silja Rantanen and Marika Mkel of Finland; Jon Arne Mogs-
tad, Bjrn Sigurd Tufta and Olav Christopher Jenssen of Norway; Berit Jensen of Denmark;
and Martin Engstrm, Rolf Hanson, Max M. Book, Hakan Rehnberg and Bjrn Wessmans
of Sweden. It is to this generation that Georg Gudni belongs.10

318: Ferningsskjaldbreidur, 1987, 80 x 80 cm

Pl.
 Fig. 4: Georg Gudni standing by Mt. Vestrahorn, 1984
Acrylic on paper, 190 x 200 cm

A couple of other things set it apart as well. Not having the requisite financial resources, or
the desire to punch gigantic holes into their landscape, the Scandinavians never properly
joined the Land Art movement of the 60s and 70s. Moreover, because Scandinavia and
Iceland in particular is sparsely populated, with large tracts of uninhabitable land, the
dark Satanic mills (to borrow a phrase from William Blakes poem Jerusalem) have
not yet managed to stain the rural areas to any significant extent. The ascent of landscape
painting in Scandinavia does not therefore seem a response to the threatening contamina-
tion of the environment as it is for artists whose environment is actually threatened but
is more probably a reaction against the hasty lifestyle of the urban milieu and the alienating
effects of the mass media. Responding to the problem in the only way they can relate to, the
Scandinavian landscapists share a Romantic vision and a sense of yearning after a kind of
fusion of self and nature. 11

Because of this somewhat mystical longing to be united with nature, this aspiration to
transcend the physical limitations of the canvas to become one with the landscape, much
of contemporary Scandinavian painting comes across as apolitical. Or to put it differently:
having sustained heavy blows from the conceptual art of the 60s and 70s as well as from

32 Pl. 9: Mt. Hganga, 1985, 50 x 60 cm

33
the popular Marxist school of thought, which tends to regard all abstraction with suspicion
Nordic painters appear to have taken the position that the only true politics available to-
day are self-politics; i.e. the best one can do is to stake out ones own personal viewpoint
and try to avoid joining the moralizing chorus.

This admittedly may sound self-serving, a poor justification for disregarding social respon-
sibility and indulging hedonistically in the enterprise of painting, until we consider how this
may have come about. For both cultural and political reasons, it is rare to find nature and
humanity treated as opposite terms in the history of Nordic art, contrary to examples from
many other traditions. It could be argued that contemporary painting in Scandinavia thus
looks nostalgically back to its own peculiar tradition in a fin-de-sicle spirit, as many of the
artists seem preoccupied with the theme of synthesization. (American Earthworks and eco-
system-art has at least this in common: they construe Man and Nature as antitheses, forces
that threaten one another. And much the same could be maintained about the rural prom-
enades of Long and Fulton: the very act alludes strongly to the concept of the picturesque
that has its origin in a period when gentry and peasantry, or culture and land were viewed as
rigidly separate categories.)12

But there is more to it. While Nordic artists are generally well-versed in the latest inter-
national styles and currents (not the least Icelanders, who usually have studies from both
home and abroad to their credit), there is a sense in which their stylistic patriotism can
also be seen as a response to a disillusionment with the cultural and intellectual hegemony
of America, France, Italy, Germany and England. As they become more steeped in the
conventional wisdom of Postmodernism, these artists have seen less and less reason to fol-
low the self-appointed leadership of those nations, which in any case has always excluded
the Scandinavians provincial point of view. This is not a naive protest against the high
priests of criticism and the policies of foreign museums, where Nordic art is usually badly
presented,13 but a realisation that (art) history has always been contrived to suit certain
interests, and that ones own home turf may after all be just as fertile. It is also worth noting
in this connection that in comparison to, say, Germany, France and America, the Scandina-
vian art market is rudimentary, and in Iceland virtually nonexistent, making the artists all the
more insulated from the temptations of moral and political compromise.

With this in mind, we may openly ask what it means to question the structural and function-
al aspects of industrial society in a work of art, and then to display it in a commercial gallery.
(At least we should try to distinguish between artists who actually pose a serious challenge

3510: Glacier Snaefellsjkull, 1985-86, 140 x 200 cm

Pl.
Pl. 11: Mt. Hestfjall, 1984, 30 x 150 cm

to accepted norms and those who profess to be dealing with corruption and depravity, whose
work looks like social critique, when for all intents and purposes they are taking a luxurious
ride along with and at the expense of the very consumer culture supposedly under attack.)
Immersed in the fund-raising ideologies of the environmental protection business, one may
moreover ask whether ecosystem-art is not riding on the coat-tails of capitalism.14 With-
out wanting to debunk the complex and important issues that have been raised by Marxist
theory, feminism and the advocates of various advocacy groups (like the Save the Earth
movement), we must question the utility of voicing opinions and preaching salvation in the
name of some invisible other?

Completely divested of the utopian values to which they have sworn allegiance, the politi-
cal theories concocted by the intelligentsia have repeatedly failed to come up with workable
solutions to the social and ecological dilemmas confronting us today, and are likely doomed
to fail yet again. Apprehending that at the rock bottom of all politics lies selfhood (i.e. the
biological individual or unity), Nordic painters appear to be begging that painting be left free
from obligation to illustrate theories of deconstruction, structuralism and semiotics, and have
refused to speak on behalf of others. Instead, they wish only to speak for themselves.

Since Gudnis landscape paintings follow an unusually tight and logical development, the
genesis of which can be traced back to the time when he was a student at the Icelandic Col-
lege of Arts and Crafts, it is probably best to approach his work in a fairly chronological man-
ner. Art school is where one is initiated into the tricks of the trade, so to speak, and is encour-

36
aged to experiment with various idioms and techniques. And so it was with Gudni. Yet many
of his earliest experiments appear in retrospect to tie almost uncannily into his mature work.

Organized along the lines of the German Bauhaus, the curriculum of the College of Arts and
Crafts is divided into one year of preparatory classes, including traditional instruction in
drawing and perspective, and three years of specialized studies. Among the classes on offer
when Gudni entered the school in 1980 was a seminar in morphology, entitled Elementary
Forms and Design, taught by painter and scholar Hrdur gstsson (b. 1922), a powerful
spokesman for Concrete Art. At the time, the subject matter did not hold a particular attrac-
tion for Gudni, seeming to him yet another compulsory course where one was obliged to
arrange squares, triangles and circles in an endless variety of configurations. But Hrdur15
was not the sort to give up too easily on recalcitrant students. For him, art was not a matter of
wanton pattern-making or doodling; it was a very serious business. Hrdur encouraged his
pupils to rid their works of the dust of historiography, as he called it, and focus on the act of
looking. He also insisted that they restrict their palette exclusively to the use of black-white
and the various tonal permutations thereof. Searching for that minimum which expresses
everything,16 Hrdur maintained that it is possible to imagine the world without colour, but
not without some sort of form. These lessons, even if they did not make a great impression
on Gudni at first, would soon find their place in his work.

As elsewhere in Europe and the United States, painting was decidedly not a fashionable
pursuit in Iceland during the 70s. The enrolment figures in the Department of Fine Art

37
Pl. 12: Mt. Inglfshfdi, 1985-86, 23 x 120 cm

bore testimony to this state of affairs. At the beginning of the 80s, however, the practice
of applying pigment to a piece of canvas suddenly came back into vogue, due to the inter-
national promotion of Neo-Expressionism. In fact, Gudni belonged to the largest group
that the department had seen for more than a decade. The atmosphere was laissez faire,
and the students were permitted to experiment freely with different materials and methods,
and encouraged to be uninhibited. Boldness of design and execution was the order of the
day. The younger generation of teachers, who had taken the New Wave to heart most
notably Sigurdur rlygsson, Helgi Thorgils Fridjnsson, rni Pll Jhannsson and Kjartan
Magnsson were instrumental in introducing the latest trends. Through art magazines,
the class became acquainted with a whole constellation of painters, from the art icons of the
60s (Rauschenberg, Johns, Close et al.) to the new superstars of the 80s (Baselitz, Immen-
dorf, Salle, Kirkeby and Kiefer, the latter of whom Gudni held in high esteem), as well as the
Italian Transavantgardia, particularly Sandro Chia and Mimmo Palladino. The students
work reflected this multitude of influences, revealed in a chaotic but very stylish blend of

38
dripping, splashing, spattering, smearing and other species of expressionist mark-making.
A photograph taken of Gudni at work in the department in December 1982 shows him jok-
ingly applying a very fine line to a huge piece of coarse sack-cloth that contains a veritable
lexicon of expressionist brush strokes. (Fig. 14) As it turned out, this frolicsome gesture
hints forebodingly at things to come.

In 1983, Gudni participated in his first group exhibitions, entitled Ungir myndlistar-
menn (Young Artists), and Gullstrndin Andar (Breaths of the Golden Coast ), held
at the Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir. Organized by a loose association of artists,
these exhibitions mark the formal comeback of painting in Iceland. The works Gudni dis-
played were all more or less done in the let-it-all-fly mode that characterized the department
as a group. What this new breed of painters had in common was a certain swiftness of ex-
ecution (a kind of Postmodern sprezzatura), agitated brush work, brilliant colour, frequent
use of commercial lacquers and an avoidance of anything that smacked even vaguely of the
beautiful. Although Gudni was no exception, he was quickly growing dissatisfied with the
trend, finding it superficial, insincere and empty.

It was in reaction to his own action-painting, to the arty-smarty repertoire of painterly

tricks, which he was beginning to feel amounted to little more than nifty dabbling, that
Gudni furtively executed his first landscape in February, 1983: a small conventional oil
painting depicting a calm stream at the bottom of a fjord in the north-western part of Ice-
land called Vestfirdir. (Pl. 6) Compared to his previous drip work, this painting marks a
quantum leap from contemporary baroque to mid-19th century academic painting, a move
that prompted Gudnis wife to think he had taken leave of his senses! The difference could
hardly have been greater: the softly undulating forms of the landscape are rendered in finely

Pl. 13: The Eminence of skjuhlid, 1986, 24 x 120 cm

39
Fig. 5: Glacier Eirksjkull (1920) by Jn Stefnsson. Oil on canvas, 94 x 114 cm
Courtesy of The National Gallery of Iceland

subdued colours, while the brook, smooth as a mirror, frictionlessly reflects the sky and the
adjacent environment, thus integrating sky and earth into its watery surface. The whole
scene, almost otherworldly in its eerie solitude (perhaps this could be dubbed landscape
solipsism), bespeaks a profound tranquillity and an intense, disconcerting quietude.

Despite being spellbound and strangely satisfied by the humble act of copying the land-
scape, Gudni immediately recoiled from it, humorously alluding to Robert Hughes popu-
lar TV series and explaining away his aversion as The Shock of the New. In the months
that ensued, he continued along the same path, with the exception of a few paintings he ex-
ecuted during the summer, of Mt. Keilir (it literally means cone), Mt. Skjaldbreidur, Mt.
Orrustuhll (Pl. 7), and Glacier Snfellsjkull (Pl. 10) mountains which are all roughly
triangular in form. By the autumn, he had returned to his previous occupation, adding
circles and triangles to the mixture. Having thus retreated from the landscape for the sec-
ond time, Gudni went on to show his new paintings together with the works of five other
class-mates at the Living Art Museum. (Fig. 2) Shortly after the exhibition, while taking a
seminar in watercolour, he started to paint a huge triangle that he intended to inscribe with

40 Pl. 14: Glacier Eirksjkull, 1986, 140 x 150 cm

41
 Fig. 6: Mt. Vestrahorn. Photo by Georg Gudni 1984

hundreds of smaller ones. But he lost heart and proceeded to rework the picture, planning
to weld it together with Mt. Esja, which he could see from his studio window across the bay
of Faxafli. The project was a flop and Gudni abandoned it, but henceforward the moun-
tain would predominate.

This may all appear unnecessarily detailed. Yet as we are perhaps beginning to realize,
Gudni was grappling with two seemingly contradictory artistic ethics the geometrical (in-
tellectual, rational, cognitive, relational, structural), which he adopted under the influence
of Hrdur, and the painterly (emotional, dreamy, organic, nonrelational, unstable), which
can be traced to the impact of his younger teachers. What he did next was to subdue his
brushwork and superimpose the primary geometrical forms he picked up from Hrdurs
morphological seminar onto the underlying structure of the landscape; that is, he mapped a
geometrical form onto the mountain and pruned it, as it were, to a correspondingly primary
form). This is the constant, albeit elusive theme in his work, the structural threads of which
as we shall see become gradually identified with the material fibre of the canvas itself.

A pencil drawing from 1984, titled Mt. Keilir and the Sun, graphically brings home the
point; a circle for the sun, a triangle presenting the mountain and a square betokening the
frame of the picture. (Fig. 3) This kind of simplification, whereby the landscape is reduced
to its essential geometry, typifies Gudnis approach to the mountain and locates the for-

4315: Mt. Thrihyrningur, 1986, 330 x 290 cm

Pl.
 Fig. 7: Mt. Hafursey, 1983, 80 x 60 cm. No longer extant

mal origins of his paintings not in Minimalism (as has sometimes been suggested in spite of
the painterly figuration of his work18) but in the synthetic spatiality of Concretism.19 Never-
theless, circles, curves and triangles isosceles, equilateral, obtuse proliferate almost to
the point of obsession.

In the beginning, however, the mountains were less sharply delineated and the brush tex-
ture was more open, as can be seen in his ominous Kiefer-like rendering of Mt. Vestrahorn
(1984). (Fig. 4) Compared to a photograph he took of it, Gudni has smoothed out the con-
tours of this sinister-looking mountain and eliminated the details, thereby transforming it
into a soft vibrating mass. (Fig. 6) The Swiss painter Helmut Federle, who was a guest lec-
turer in the department late in 1983, had a formative influence on Gudni in this regard by
advocating a more systematic approach to subject matter, to compositional balance and to
nuances of colour. Although it took Gudni some time to heed the advice, Federles distaste
for everything he felt to be spurious, including accidental dripping and artfully discordant
colour, left a lasting impression on the younger painter. Art should be a clear alternative to
the velocity of modern life, Federle expounded to the class, insisting that it not focus ex-

44
Fig. 8: Upptyppingar. Photo by Georg Gudni, 1982
45
clusively on the transient qualities of stylistic appearances, but rather that it emphasize what
he called the spirituality of the work.15 Impressed by what he saw as an uncompromising
standard of integrity, Gudni also learned from Federle to observe carefully the way in which
two forms or colours come together in the plane a problem that has preoccupied him ever
since.

However, it would be misleading to imply that Gudnis landscape paintings were limited to
or derived from formalistic concerns alone. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around.
Based on a close scrutiny of natural phenomena, his art springs from an intimate experience
of the wilderness and as such is fundamentally empirical. In other words, the formal appear-
ance of his paintings only function to the degree that it helps him address certain aspects
of the actual landscape, such that the dichotomy between the geometrical and the painterly
gradually becomes identified with the line separating the sky from the earth. That line can
never be ruled out, nor is it ever there merely for its own sake.

II
Since his early youth, Gudni has travelled extensively in his truck around the Icelandic coun-
tryside and climbed numerous glaciers with teams of scientists. This wanderlust is hardly
surprising, as his father, a geologist, was in the habit of taking his family with him on his ex-
plorations to remote places in the wilderness from the time Gudni was about two years of age.
Those journeys linger strongly in his childhood memories, always sunny and enveloped in
calm and tranquillity. Gudni spent most of his adolescence, by contrast, in the city of Reykja-
vik. But the year before he was accepted into the College of Arts and Crafts, he held a part-
time job doing river-flow measurements, usually in inaccessible regions, and regularly made
short excursions to the countryside throughout his college years. In contrast to the sunny
memories of his childhood, Gudni remembers the weather as almost invariably rainy when-
ever he was summoned to duty pouring, drizzling or just foggy. This is hardly a romantic
figment of his imagination. Iceland, like Ireland, is known for its percolating climate, and
around glaciers like Vatnajkull and Mrdalsjkull, where the artist made many of his flow
measurements, annual rainfall can exceed over 4000 mm.21 His father had taken the family
along on his expeditions only in the summer. Now Gudni got the opportunity to experience
the country in all seasons and in nearly all conceivable weather conditions. This gave him a
strong feeling for its true character and an opportunity to directly confront the elements.

Standing up to his waist in a roaring river, in Wellington boots and a rain coat, Gudni was
captivated by the strange sensation of being isolated, swallowed up by the tremendous din of

Pl.47
16: Dalur in Kjs, 1985, 110 x 200 cm
the powerful currents, a complex sound that would modulate between a soothing roar and
then, like a stereo switched off at full blast, a deafening silence. Equally fascinating to him
was the way the ubiquitous fog, which has an isolating effect similar to that of the ear-split-
ting torrents, integrates various features of the environment under its grey veil and makes it
difficult to determine where the contour of a mountain ends and the sky takes over. Con-
current with those circumstances is a loss of feeling for depth, such that one perceives the
landscape as building up rather than receding into space.

An early landscape painting depicting Mt. Hafursey (1983; no longer extant) reflects his
preoccupation with this state of weather and hints at what he has primarily been trying to
accomplish in his work from the outset: the marriage of mind and matter. (Fig. 7) The pic-
ture, constructed of the trapezoid-like mountain and a semi-circular cloud overlapping it,
describes a heavy rainfall. The shower, indicated by long vertical strips of colour, creates a
perfunctory grid that serves to cement the fore-, middle-, and backgrounds together. What
Gudni seems to have had in mind can better be understood by examining a photograph he
took in the Upptyppingar mountain district, wherein a dark nimbus creates a translucent
grey band of rain across the entire vista. (Fig. 8) The drizzle diminishes the tonal contrasts
between the formal components of the scene and, consequently, ones feeling for conven-
tional depth. It has the effect of minimizing the particulars of the landscape by combining
the different ruptures and layers into a single unity.

Although Gudni has taken a plethora of slides and b/w prints of the Icelandic landscape
since the early 80s, he does not use them as mimetic models for his paintings, but applies
the camera instead to survey his surroundings and commits the image to memory. The
many pencil and watercolour sketches he has made on his journeys also serve him toward
similar ends. Swiftly executed to capture the ambience of a scene or to jot down a visual
idea, the sketches function first and foremost as reminders which is not to rob them of
their status as independent works of art.22 A haunting apothegm, written by Gudni in 1987
for the Borealis 3 catalogue, casts his approach to nature into relief: I paint the mountain
with myself. I paint myself into the mountain. I paint the mountain from my mind.23 The
statement requires further elucidation.

Among the intriguing perceptual consequences of rain and fog (the blurring of contours
and the obliteration of details), is the way in which they de-territorialize the object in
our case a mountain and render it insubstantial. Thus dematerialized, a mountain ap-
pears to abandon its own corporeal existence and, seemingly no longer subject to the laws

48 Pl. 17: Mt. Ernir, 1987, 220 x 240 cm

49
50
51 Pl. 18: Untitled, 1999, 135 x 165 cm
Pl. 19: Mt. Akrafjall and Skardsheidi, 1987, 10 x 50 cm

of gravity, metamorphoses into a kind of hovering phantom. Since those conditions also
influence ones ability to measure depth, it is almost impossible to judge the distance of an
object, whether it is ten miles or several yards away; just in front of ones nose or not an
uncommon hallucinatory experience inside ones head. By the same token, rain and fog
constitute a tangible material bridge between oneself and the object, the mind and what it
beholds; whereas in clear weather an intermediary space, a kind of vacuum or rift, is formed
between the mental process of looking and the physically unknowable physicality of the
object seen. In broad daylight and high visibility, ones contemplation of an external body
could thus be said to evaporate into air too thin. Nebulous ambiguity, on the other hand,
allows the physical object and the mind or rather, the thought that has been triggered by
the vision thrust upon it to meet on equal footing. For Gudni, it follows that the differ-
ence between thought and matter is one of degree rather than kind, that mental activity is

Pl. 20: Mt. Hestfjall, 1987-88, 53 x 371 cm

52
not a hollow, insubstantial sort of thing, a spirit or a ghost, but a transformative power, and
therefore potentially concrete. We need only to contemplate our man-made environment to
get the gist of what he is driving at, since it is easy to argue that a building is essentially an urge
or desire that has been translated into thought, which in return, via an architectural design,
has been translated again into solid matter. Seen in this light, fog is a mediatory substance that
links brute matter to mind, into which the mountain has entered and become intermixed with
thought in an instantaneous merger of perception, reflection, emotion, and memory.24

Because Iceland is extremely barren, devoid of large forests, and with wide stretches of
black desert sands, it is well suited for this kind of meditation. Mt. Inglfshfdi (1984), ex-
ecuted on an old bedroom window, reveals Gudnis desire to paint himself into a distant
mountain through an ocean of fog. (Pl. 3) The promontory, which lies on the sandy coast
of southern Iceland, is not easily accessible, and it was not until 1989 that Gudni managed
to make the ascent. Less rain-soaked and more in line with the series of paintings he did
during the next couple of years are Mt. Hganga (1985) and the slope skjuhld (1986),
which are rendered in subtle tints of blue, green and yellow that glow softly behind a
sombre veil of greys and blacks. (Pls. 9,13) These colours may hint at the sunny moments
of his childhood memories, a rapturous echo from the past surreptitiously awakening in
[him] the Mother and never the disturbing Mother, as Barthes puts it in his Reflections
on Photography quoted at the beginning of the essay. Significantly, Gudni invariably
focuses on a solitary mountain, cliff, or hill, surrounded by a desolate tract of land.25 In this
way the painting, a pigmented membrane testifying to the reciprocal interchangeability of
thought and substance, is transformed into a reflective mirror onto which the artist projects

53
Pl. 21: Untitled,1989, No I, 3 x 170 x 170 cm

his awareness. Given the deeply personal nature of Gudnis art, one sometimes has the feel-
ing when confronting his paintings of being stared at, calmly and contemplatively, as if one
were looking at a conventional self-portrait; the mountain the site of Gudnis alter ego
looks at the viewer and into itself simultaneously.

Another natural phenomenon to which Gudni became increasingly attracted is the blue-
ness of the distant mountain (referred to in Icelandic as blmda or blue-haze), as can
be seen, for instance, in Mt. Hestfjall (1984) and Glacier Snfellsjkull (1985-86). (Pls.
20,10) This phenomenon is distinctive to the northern hemisphere, becoming more
pronounced the closer one gets to the Arctic Circle, a result of the angle at which sunlight
enters the atmosphere. During mid-winter, when the phenomenon is most noticeable, the
sun barely rises above the horizon around eleven, where it remains suspended for as few

54
as three hours before slowly descending in the early afternoon, leaving one with the pecu-
liar sensation of having woken up to a prolonged period of dusk. In the absence of bright
daylight, everything seems wrapped in an icy, transparent blanket of azure, as if an infinite
number of ultra-fine blue glazes, ranging from pale to deep cobalt, had been applied over
the environment.

Perceptually, the effects are similar to those generated by fog, although the contours of the
landscape may be somewhat easier to distinguish. It was this atmospheric peculiarity that
now caught Gudnis undivided attention. Shortly before entering the Akademie Jan van
Eyck in Holland, where he studied from 1985 to 87, he started to shift his palette from
primarily blacks and greys to dominant blues. Concomitant with this shift, his picto-
rial structures became more geometrical. He began to apply the paint systematically in

55
Fig. 9: A view across the fjord safjardardjp. Photo by Georg Gudni 1983

long, unbroken brush stokes, thereby creating a tight and measured weave of intertwining
horizontal and vertical lines that replicate the weave of the fibre canvas. To get an idea of
these changes, it is informative to compare Mt. Inglfshfdi of 1984 with a painting of the
same mountain executed only a year later. Relatively loose brush work has given way to
an organized, web-like structure and a clearly defined silhouette. (Pls. 3, 12) The formal
adjustments he made during the time abroad can be even better appreciated by juxtapos-
ing Mt. Hestfjall of 1984 with another painting he did of that subject in 1987-88, the
unusual format of which (ca. 0.5 x 5.00 meters) is reminiscent of the Viking tapestry style
called refilsaumur (laid and couched work). (Pls. 11, 20) Rather than depicting the whole
mountain, Gudni has selected its most characteristic feature the long, gentle declivity
and exaggerated it by drawing a sharp diagonal line between the corners, thus dividing
the picture into two isosceles triangles.

A number of other important alterations took place while he resided abroad. Wanting his
work to be soothing and comforting, not unlike Matisse who dreamed of an art of balance,
of purity and serenity,26 Gudni radically slowed down the pace of his execution. Instead
of applying the colours in a few layers, he unhurriedly and patiently built up hundreds of
thin glazes, thus producing only about 6-8 large canvases a year, working full time as an
artist. (In 1992, his production went down to four.) This was the price he felt he had to
pay in order to capture something more permanent than the fleeting moment, something

56 Pl. 22: Edge, 1988-89, 230 x 140 cm

57
that had a sense of timelessness and immutability, capable of evoking whispered rhythms
of eternity. His resolution to work against the Zeitgeist against the frantic speed of
modern society, against the manipulated and fractured version of the world served up by
the media, against anxiety, pretentiousness and trivia had little to do with trying to be
original, which has in any case become an obsolete criterion of virtue. It does, however,
have a good deal to do with such ideas as harmony and healing words that admittedly
sound a bit hollow because of the way in which they have been distorted through gratuitous
repetition and the wish to soothe the emotional forces that clash within the troubled
Postmodern psyche.

In striving to attain this goal, Gudni would ponder over each work for months on end,
repainting them again and again until he felt that the mountain itself and the thoughts,
feelings and memories he had of it were reconciled and firmly bonded together. Since he
was away from home, he was forced to rely solely on his visual recollections of the sites
he was painting, so that his work became in effect a compilation of jumbled memories
of sun, fog, rain and snow, each layer, as it were, representing a different encounter with
the mountain.27 What we are left with, then, are images of mountains that do not convey
a particular time of day or state of weather, but the sum total of all the experience the
artist has had of them, including the thoughts that were triggered in his mind during the
long process of production. This might explain why the overall colour of his works is so
indeterminate and sombre, their luminosity being a kind of mean value of day, night and
the seasons of the year. Some of the paintings are so subtle as to seem monochromatic,
like Mt. Hestfjall of 1987. This is not simply a single grey tone, but alternating layers of
translucent washes of white and black, each one modifying the layers above and beneath
it. Careful examination of areas in other paintings that are apparently black is rewarded
with the discovery that they are in fact composed of innumerable coloured glazes. In a
pamphlet issued on the occasion of a solo show at the Academy in 1986, Gudni succinctly
summarized his working procedure:

For some time now I have been painting landscapes, gradually limiting myself to moun-
tains. Each painting focuses on a single mountain, the one whose name it bears, but I
think in the final image a particular view of that mountain will become mixed with several
others or with impressions of other mountains, and with my feelings and thinking about a
mountain. I dont make very complicated paintings. I like simplicity of form and colour,
but I find it takes a long time for the painting to grow towards that simplicity and for me
to build it up with many layers of paint. The image reaches maturity as my own thoughts
and feelings grow; I dont want my paintings to get ahead of me.28

5923: Slope, 1988, diameter 200 cm

Pl.
Fig. 10: The inlet Berufjrdur. Photo by Georg Gudni 1983

While the mountain has not yet begun to lose the singularity of its identity to the extent that
it would later, the old-fashioned nature of the handiwork, the many glazes and simple rela-
tions of colours, endow his paintings with an aura of archaism, making them seem as if they
belonged to a different era. Indeed, Gudni greatly admires such masters as the 19th-century
Dane Vilhelm Hammershi (the lucid architectural structure and unassuming simplicity of
means), William Turner (especially the atmospheric nuances of his watercolour works), and
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, whose finesse and loving care strike a strong chord in Gudni. But
even more than the rich, jewel-like texture and unshakeable compositional unity of which
Bruegel is such a master, it was the unobtrusive, slightly obscure detail in the distant back-
grounds of the paintings miniature landscapes of mountains, woodlands and meadows,
dotted with church spires, animals and toiling peasants which mostly excited Gudni.

The desire to think himself into the mountains, to enter and pass through them, led Gudni
to close in on Bruegels macrocosmic vistas step by step until, as in Mt. Ernir (1987), he
had so immersed himself into the landscape that a single mountain consumed his entire
field of vista. (Pl. 17) A Hogarthian Line of Beauty snakes about the picture plane, sug-
gesting what might be seen as a sloping mountainside and a steel-blue sky, each component
rendered equally dense and substantial as its counterpart (earth and air, mind and matter,
are given the same degree of presence). Yet, because of the disintegration of particulars, the
image is highly ambiguous and could just as easily pass for a wavy coast line seen from a
great height. Despite the structural equilibrium of the two shapes, this duality of proximity
and distance, of figure and ground, create a tension which Gudni felt had to be resolved.
Hence, he began searching for a pictorial solution to the standard antitheses of near and far,

60 Pl. 24: Untitled, 1989, No II, 4 x 190 x 136 cm

61
63 Pl. 25: Untitled, 1989, No. V, 240 x 260 cm
inside and outside, subjectivity and objectivity, emotion and rationality, memory and vision,
hoping to integrate painter, painted and painting in a single plane where those binaries col-
lapse as merely artificial linguistic oppositions.

III
As Slope (1988) and Mt. Akrafjall and Skardsheidi (1987) indicate, Gudnis art remained in this
state of telescopic fluctuation for the next year and a half. (Pls. 23,19) In Edge (1989), while
focusing on yet another side of a mountain, he lowered the inclination of the slope bit by bit
until it was completely levelled into a straight horizontal line, and he was left to face the unmiti-
gated horror of the fearful symmetry (cf. a photograph taken across the inlet Isafjrdur,
Fig. 9). (Pl. 22) Incidentally, Edge is the last work to bear a (topographical) nametag. No longer
dealing with a specific site, he began referring to his works generically as The Mountain, label-
ling them only with the year in which they were made followed by a Roman numeral.

Still, the problem of how to shun the intersecting line and heal the cut remained. The idea
of how this might be accomplished came to him when working on a large painting of Mt.
Hjrleifshfdi in 1988, which had to be divided into two equal parts in order to get it out of
the studio: what Gudni did was to let the vertical edge of the cliff, depicted on the left side
panel with a thin skyline above, coincide with the juncture of the two stretchers. In the early
stages of the work, a low horizontal strip of land in the foreground ran across the two panels
tying them visually together, but as the painting progressed, the promontory took over the
entire field of the canvas, leaving the earth and the sky as two emphatically separate entities.
The outcome is akin to the triptych Untitled 1989, No. I, which consists of blue, black and
grey panels respectively. (Pl. 21) Another, more developed, example of this line of thought is
Untitled 1989, No. II, which is graduated over the length of four door-size stretchers from a
pale blue to a resonant indigo, nearly black. (Pl. 24)

At this stage, one might think that the artist has relinquished his inspection of nature and
settled for a purely abstracted version of it. But, as can be inferred from comparing No. II
to a photograph Gudni took with a telescopic lens of the belt crags in the inlet Berufjrdur,
he was still very much occupied with translating visual facts about the landscape into his
work. (Fig. 10) Looking into or out of a fjord, where the mountains erupt abruptly from the
sea, one can observe how they become increasingly ethereal as they recede into the distance;
that is to say, the further away the mountain is, the more it is obscured by the intervening air.
Seen in this way, the panel on the far left in Untitled 1989, No. II could be viewed as contain-
ing matter and atmosphere (or anti-matter) in measured proportions, those in the centre being

64
Pl. 26: Untitled,1989, No. VI, 80 x 180 cm

an equal mixture of the two, whereas the one on the right presents an infinite material conden-
sation and total darkness, a sort of black hole, if you will. More generally, the picture seems to
be divided into dark (right) and light (left) halves. Rather than abstracting The Mountain,
Gudni has zoomed in on it, cropping out the external contours that would otherwise have
endowed it with a specific identity.

The full implications of the intertwining vertical and horizontal brush strokes now come to
the fore, as they constitute the binding structure that keeps air and matter locked together.
Perhaps the most durable and emblematic icon of the Modernist tradition, the grid has
repeatedly surfaced in 20th century art since pre-WW II Cubist painting, iterated by such
venerable artists as Braque, Picasso, Mondrian, Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, Brice Marden
and Sol LeWitt. From the outset, as Rosalind Krauss has convincingly argued in her
seminal essay on the history of the grid, the lattice has been the tool that painting has used
to carve out a zone of exclusive visuality that literature and narrative cannot impinge upon.
Continuing to generate iterations of itself, in what frequently amounts to little more than a
formulaic rehashing of the pattern, this form, according to Krauss, functions to declare the
modernity of modern art, Krauss propounds:

65
 In the spatial sense [the temporal one being simply an emblem of modernity], the grid
states the autonomy of the realm of art. Flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is antinatural,
antimimetic, antireal. It is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature. In the flat-
ness that results from its coordinates, the grid is the means of crowding out the dimensions
of the real and replacing them with the lateral spread of a single surface. In the overall
regularity of its organization, it is the result of not imitation, but of aesthetic decree... the
relationships in the aesthetic field are shown by the grid to be in a world far apart and,
with respect to natural objects, to be both prior and final.29

But this definition of the grid as resistant to discourse and development, besides being
antimimetic and antinatural, stands in contradiction to the very existence of Gudnis work,
embedded as it is in representation, description, narrative and memory. Is he, then, the ex-
ception that proves the rule, or has he actually broken the rational silence of the grid? Now,
obviously Gudni does not replicate the landscape in the strictest sense of that word, but his
paintings are certainly not antireal either (if Realism can be said to possess a special claim
to reality), and by no means can they be qualified as having turned their back on nature.
While the vertical and horizontal strokes, spreading in all four cardinal directions ad infini-
tum, do not have a corresponding value as such in the world of physical objects, they can be
identified in Gudnis work with natural phenomena to a degree that appears unprecedented
for this seemingly inflexible structure. On the more traditional level, the coordinates of the
matrix are multiplied instances of the mountain, or the (edge of the) cliff, and the surround-
ing plains. But Gudni goes further by correlating the vertical axes with in addition to
the forms of the earth the falling rain, which connects him, as we discussed earlier, both
visually and physically (or psychophysically) to the mountain. To make this relationship
more palpable, not merely symbolic, he increasingly diluted the paint with varnish, as if
painting with watercolours, thereby merging, at yet another level, painted subject and the
medium of painting itself.

With the possible exception of Jasper Johns technique, normally the modular grid is
mapped onto the canvas with a ruler. It is mechanical, anti-painterly, severe, authorita-
tive, cool and eminently materialistic. In the works of all the painters listed above, the grid
compartmentalizes and flattens the homogenous surface, crowding out the dimensions of
the real. To inject into it a feeling of the organic and steer clear of these spatially reduc-
tive consequences, Gudni, by contrast, renders the vertical and horizontal lines by hand in
extremely fine glazes so that they overlap in a way which makes it virtually impossible to
separate them, or determine which ones are superimposed on the others. In declining to
chop the space into measured sequences of vacuumized chambers, he manages to create

66 Pl. 27: Untitled,1990, No. IV, 200 x 140 cm

67
an illusion of tremendous depth while still honouring the Modernist canon of exclusive
visuality. Looking at Gudnis works, the spectator feels himself empowered with an X-ray
ability to penetrate even the most solid of substances. At the same time, the heavy gloss
resulting from the thick layers of varnish causes the internal dimensions of the painting to
undergo a reversal in the surface layer, projecting them into the viewers space. The viewer,
in turn, is the surface and thereby becomes an integral part of the works spatial breathing.
As with the mountain enshrouded in mist, the image appears to abandon the stretcher and
float towards the onlooker, colliding with his gaze at an indeterminate point between the
actual painting and viewers position.

While the problem of the primordial split would seem to have been solved by this
new technique (erasing or concealing it through proliferation), Gudni nevertheless felt
he needed to look the divisive line straight in the eye once again. Having relegated it to
the edge of the canvas, he continued to paint diptychs, resurrecting the physical void
between the two panels. But not wanting to leave the wound open, as in Untitled
1989, Nos. I and II (Pls. 21,24), he tried to bridge the interstices with his webbed brush
texture, as if it were a magic carpet capable of transporting him to the other side, or a
putty with which he could cover up the Nietzschean Abyss. In Untitled 1989, No. IV,
he attempted to accomplish this by intensifying the saturation of the colours towards the
juncture of the two paintings, letting the brown washes on the left panel glide into the
translucent blanket of greens on the other side. In Untitled 1989, No. VI, the unmixed
red and blue at the far ends of the work coalesce in the centre, locking the two panels
together like fingers clasped in prayer. (Pl. 26) In an interview conducted on the occa-
sion of a retrospective of his drawings in 1992, Gudni underlined this desire to link and
coordinate every element of the picture:

I strive very hard to unify things; verticals and horizontals, earth and sky, simplicity and
complexity. The same can be said about my use of colour; I will perhaps try to make a
colour dark but still keep it somehow bright or paint a blue which is also perhaps a yellow.
Im trying to weave all of this together so that it can never be unravelled, and that is part of
the reason, I think, why I work so slowly.30

Because of his preoccupation with the bisecting line, Gudnis work may remind one of
some of the New York School painters, specifically Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko,
and even Ad Reinhardt to some extent. The similarity, however, could be misleading if one
forgets the profound differences in intention and point of departure. Newmans slender
vertical stripe is a dramatic symbol for the lone, Giacomettian figure crying out in the vast

6928: Untitled,1991, No. I,150 x 150 cm

Pl.
void of a single unmodulated color.31 Like the figure in Caspar David Friedrichs celebrat-
ed Monk by the Sea (1809), Newmans zip is more accurately a substitute for the viewer who
is hopelessly separated from the (rest of the) universe and patently awestruck by the powers
of the elements. And much the same could be said of Rothko; the disjointed, free-floating
blocks of colour with their dissolving edges conjure up a comparable mood. In fact, the
whole history of the sublime, from Friedrich to Newman, depends on this figure/ground re-
lationship for its effects, on placing the human being in the form of a line or a figure against
the backdrop of nature, of the world out there.

Far from revelling in the existential crisis of separation, Gudni wants to do away with the
notion of disjunction between himself and the landscape. The mountain as a visual and
physical entity is territorialized in the painting, where the distinction between the signifier
and the signified starts to break down. Moreover, it is primarily due to the refulgent cover of
varnish that this dislocation of the mountain takes place. Despite the frequent claim about
self-effacing experience in Rothko and Newman, the matte texture of their work constantly
reminds the viewer of the gap that exists between him and the image, just as a mountain is
separated from us on a clear, sunny day.32 Eschewing anything that might hint at drama
or tragedy, the surface of Gudnis paintings disembodies the spectator, and then re-embod-
ies him in the ubiquitous aura of the painting, which appears to have left its place on the
wall to meet us.

But perhaps more importantly, neither Rothko nor Newman was occupied with nature
per se, and as for Reinhardt, he was only interested in Art-as-Art. As Irving Sandler has
pointed out, Rothko came to believe that any reference to art or nature, because they were
known, finite and limiting, conflicted with the idea of a universal, supernatural Spirit of
Myth.33 The philosophical premises of Color Field painting, which was born of his work,
lay in the psychology of sensory experience, the visual interpretation of concepts, and not in
sensory experience itself.34 Newman put his finger on something when he said:

American artists are at home in the world of pure idea, in the meaning of abstract con-
cepts, just as the European painter is at home in the world of cognitive objects and materi-
als. And just as the European painter can transcend his objects to build a spiritual world,
so the American transcends his abstract world to make that world real.35

To sum up, one might say that whereas the art of Rothko, Newman and Reinhardt stems
from thinking and looking, with Gudni it is the other way around, it results from looking
and thinking.36

70 Pl. 29: Untitled,1990, No. V, 200 x 140 cm

71
 Fig. 11: Outside and Inside (1934) by Jhannes S. Kjarval
Oil on canvas, 83 x 103 cm. Private Collection

By the end of the 80s, Gudni returned to the single canvas. In Untitled 1990, No. V, we
see dark vertical stripes, reddened with ruddy gore, rise up from the netherworld
like columns of smoke and fire in a volcanic eruption, fusing gently with the soft verdures
above in a splendid Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1990, No. IV is a variation of this
theme). (Pls. 29, 27) As a result of these experiments, embodied in the triptych 1990,
No. II (A, B, C), Gudni embarked on a new voyage in Untitled 1990, No. VII. (Pl. 30)
The afterimage of the former panels, it seems, rather than the image as such, has been
transposed into the latter. The grid, while still present, has become an ephemeral, kinetic
structure replicating a heavy rainfall, and if it were not for the sense of fixity emanating from
the paintings themselves, one might actually look for an umbrella.

The large monolithic form slightly to the right throws the picture a bit off balance. Wanting
greater stability, he tapered the cliff of Untitled 1990, No. VIII into a stout central pillar.
(Pl. 31) On either side of the glassy pillar, overlapping the white horizontal bands, one can
just barely make out the angulated, greenish forms between them something even more
vaporous is present of disembodied mountains. Given enough time to view it, one has
the feeling of being enveloped by the glistening membrane. (Like Reinhardts black can-
vases, which require a significant amount of time from the viewer, these painting strongly resist
reproduction and have to be experienced first-hand. They do not cry out for attention, but se-
duce the spectator with their eerie repose into a visual bog that gradually swallows him up.37)

7330: Untitled, 1990, No. VII, 200 x 140 cm

Pl.
Fig. 12: Dawn at Hornbjarg (1958-60) by Jn Stefnsson. Oil on canvas, 101 x 131 cm
Courtesy of the Labour Unions Art Gallery

To get an idea of the distance Gudni has travelled since he began painting the landscape, it
is instructive to compare and contrast Mt. Orrustuhll of 1983 with the sensuous Untitled
1991, No. I. (Pls. 7, 28) Formally, of course, they have little in common, but the colour
scheme is nevertheless remarkably similar. Whereas in Mt. Orrustuhll the tonalities are
left relatively unmixed, each colour signifying in the manner of Realism the different natural
elements of which the scene is composed, in Untitled 1991, No. I everything sky, grass,
snow, cliff, moss and lava has dissolved and melted together. (This is not to imply that
the latter painting is simply an abstract realization of the former). And yet, far from being
an amorphous puddle, the picture is highly composed. First, Gudni painted the whole
canvas in the colours of cliff, grass, moss and lava and then, on the left half of the canvas,
he superimposed subtle glazes of white, alluding to snow and an overcast sky, which form a
delicate edge. To combine the two halves, another transparent band of white runs horizon-
tally across the canvas. The composition recalls the lovers blissfully caressing each other in
Constantin Brancusis The Kiss (ca. 1911): heaven and earth, male and female, embrace har-
moniously across the abominable void, not as separate entities but as two bodies of equal
stature capable of penetrating the inner shells of one another and so are interchangeable.
(The painting can be turned up side down without any harm being done to the pictorial
organization or its balance.)

74 Pl. 31: Untitled, 1990, No. VIII, 200 x 140 cm

75
IV
Even if Gudni was not particularly enthusiastic about Icelandic landscape painting when
he began to draw on nature, some noteworthy parallels to it can be found in his work, as
became evident later. In 1988, after receiving a favourable review at his first private show
at the Living Art Museum three years earlier, Gudni was awarded the cultural prize of the
Daily DV for having revitalized the tradition. Curiously, in spite of a massive literary her-
itage, Icelands visual arts culture did not properly take off as an academic discipline until
around the beginning of the 20th century. When it did, painting was nearly exclusively
geared towards depicting the landscape for the first four decades. The reason for those
unusual circumstances seems clear; there were no institutions in the country that could
breed or maintain this sort of artistic activity, nor was there any appreciation for the need
of such support. However, by the late-19th century, things had begun to change for the
better, as the nation desperately sought to sever colonial ties with Denmark and establish
independence. Although the literature provided a suitable index for identity, the found-
ing fathers had to cope with the problem of how to reconcile the inhabitants with their
land, which had plagued the country with volcanic eruptions, unfruitful harvests and
hard winters throughout the centuries, and confer on it the status befitting the locus of
national pride and freedom. In this respect, the so-called National Poems proved indis-
pensable for the cause by providing a highly edited image of the land. They described
nature dressed up in its Sunday best, in terms of shining white glaciers, bountiful fields,
golden fjords and majestic mountains of distant blue, a vision that the painters tuned into
when they began to preach the virtues of Icelands scenery.

Judging from the work produced in the first three decades by such pioneers as Thrarinn
B. Thorlksson (1867-1924) and sgrmur Jnsson (1876-1958), one would never sus-
pect that this landscape was prone to serious mood swings or that the wind speed could
ever surpass three degrees on the Beaufort scale. To quell the nations animosity and fear
of nature and introduce it to the landscape on new, less hostile grounds, these artists con-
ciliated the environment and, rather than showing the volcanic eruptions, grey skies, rain,
sleet and snow of actuality, they constructed a veritable Arcadia, a decidedly false one. In
this land of liberty and uncompromising parliamentary rights, the painters depopulated
their works in order to underline the notion that the country belonged to everyone, not
merely a handful of landowners.38 Nor are there any fences or enclosures to be seen that
would promulgate such a property relationship as, for instance, is frequently the case
with 17th and 18th century English landscape painting, where the subtext of the works
reads as a ratification of territorial ownership. Immersed in the perpetual quietude of

7732: Untitled, 1991, 220 x 120 cm

Pl.
a cloudless mid-summers night, the landscapes of Thrarinn and sgrmur are usually
devoid of any human traces and coated with the warm hues of a setting sun. (Aside from
sgrmurs illustrations to the Icelandic folk tales, there are a few noteworthy exceptions to
this rule.)

During the Great Depression, the theme of virgin nature continued to dominate Icelands
artistic output, but by this time it had acquired a graver appearance in accordance with the
economic hardship oppressing the nation. While Thrarinn and sgrmur seldom ven-
tured outside the immediate vicinity of habitation, the chief representatives of this period,
Jn Stefnsson (1881-1963) and Jhannes S. Kjarval (1885-1972), began to explore the
wilderness in all its raw glory. Acknowledging some of its fundamental characteristics, these
artists left the soft meadows and copses to paint grim and desolate places and a more faith-
ful rendering of the climate.39 Kjarval, in particular, who liked to work around Thingvellir
(the site of the parliament of the ancient Republic) as Thrarinn and sgrmur before him,
brilliantly managed to reinforce the homogeneous reality by relocating the national self-
identity, not in cosy settlements beside still rivers and blue majestic mountains under be-
nevolent sunny skies, but in moss and lava-fields, and in the more menacing aspects of the
Icelandic landscape. These works, which opened the nations eyes to the strange beauty of
lava just as Gudni seems to have introduced it to the aesthetics of rain and fog, have an un-
canny ability to appear both abstract/symbolic and realistic, depending on how one wishes
to see them. By virtue of this dualism, where the latter idiom came to signify the old social
order and the former the rise of a new regime, the unprecedented popularity of Kjarvals
work, cutting across boundaries of class and lineage, helped to pave the way for Icelands
transformation from a peasant community to an almost wholly developed heterogeneous
bourgeois society.

Finally, landscape painting broke off into wholesale abstraction after the Second World War,
slowly fading into other concerns thereafter. Between 1965, the year in which the SM-
movement (an affiliation of young artists) was established, and the early 80s, when Gudni
took up painting the landscape, artists took little or no interest in their native scenery and
it was mostly left to hobby painters to maintain the tradition. It is therefore perhaps under-
standable that Gudni, as an ambitious young artist, should have been hesitant in the begin-
ning about the genre, since it had come to be regarded as obsolete among committed artists,
more than a little beneath their dignity. But his activity proved to be contagious and shortly
after the mid-80s, a large group of painters had followed suit, either concentrating exclu-
sively on the landscape or incorporating it into their work as a means of broadening their

78 Pl. 33: Untitled, 1991, No. II. 30 x 30 cm

79
Pl. 34: Untitled, 1992, No. II, 130 x 230 cm

range of expression.40 Even if the subject does not monopolize the field of painting as it
once did, it is still commands a vital and a healthy position in the Icelandic art scene today.

Among the more interesting aspects of the Icelandic landscape tradition is the peculiar fact
that the Romantic concept of the sublime, as defined in Edmund Burkes Inquiry into the
Origin of our ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), never caught on and can argu-
ably be demonstrated to be virtually absent from the tradition this in a country where
nature is at its most savage and awe-inspiring! There are no works to be found in the entire
repertoire of this convention even remotely on a par, for instance, with Turners Hannibal
and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812), Friedrichs The Polar Sea (ca. 1824), Asher Brown
Durands Kindred Spirits, (1849), John Martins The Great Day of His Wrath (1851-54),
Albert Bierstadts Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point Trail (1875-80) or even Friedrich Edwin
Churchs Cotopaxi, Ecuador (1862). Living in close combat with the pitiless elements of

80
nature for over a millennium, the pioneers evidently felt the need to suppress the dismal
aspects of the environment in order to recolonise the country on an emotional level and re-
claim it from the oppressive governance of the Danish Crown. In the process, the landscape
was emptied of all references to the sublime the terror, fear, gloom, solitude, vastness,
and intimations of infinity and was injected instead with its antithesis, the beautiful
smoothness, gentle curves, proximity and a homely, assuaging intimacy.

This is in stark contrast, for example, to the cosmoramas of the Hudson River School that
set about expanding the new frontiers to the west with truly operatic landscapes,41 where
the human figure is utterly dwarfed by the vastness of its surrounding space. And yet the
works of Church, Bierstadt and Thomas Cole bespeak a certain boldness and assurance in
the face of the formidable power of God reincarnated in nature, the stick-figure used to
measure his omnipotence having its roots as much in military map-making as any conven-
tions that the school might innocently have adopted from the European offshoot of Roman-
ticism.42 When art started to part ways with the church in the 18th century, the traditional
dwelling place of the Deity was relocated to the wilderness, and the Icelandic pioneers par-
ticipated in this cosmic change of address. Icelands deity was not a vengeful Supreme Be-
ing leading a Great Nation to ever larger and more lucrative conquests of land in the name
of law, order and cultural superiority, but a benign and forgiving Father slipping under the
outward appearance of nature to pacify the elements and protect his people against extrin-
sic forces. The disparity between the Hudson River School and early Icelandic landscape
painting, in terms of ambience, scale and manner of execution, could be likened to that be-
tween a Book of Hours, which the devotee contemplates in the privacy of his home, and the
High Mass of the Roman Catholic Church. In that respect, the only real affinities between
American and Icelandic painting of the period lie in the small-scale, intimate works of the
Luminists Fitz Hugh Lane, John F. Kensett and Martin Johnson Heade.43

When the time came for the image of the landscape to be updated during the Great Depres-
sion, its countenance took on an earnest, yet reassuringly emphatic grimace, without the
signifying content of the referent being modified or altered in any fundamental way. Indeed,
the persistent absence of the sublime from the Icelandic landscape tradition the fact
that it does not show up where we would expect it to reach its most exuberant dimensions
prompts one to speculate whether there is some grain of truth to be found, after all, in
Wilhelm Worringers dubious and once much-celebrated essay Abstraktion und Einfh-
lung (1908), in which he attempts, with some measure of nationalistic fervour, to draw a
basic distinction between Northern and Southern art as it expresses itself in the outlook

81
on nature. Worringer holds that the South, blessed with mild climate and fertile soil, has
generated an artistic volition that fearlessly explores the features of the external world and
the ontological relationship of things in a nonreductive, mimetic fashion. The primitive
people of the North, by comparison, subjected to harsh and turbulent weather, retreat in-
stinctively into codified and elementary abstraction, tending toward exclusive rendering of
single forms in an effort to suppress spatial representation:

Whereas the precondition for the urge to empathy is a happy pantheistic relationship of
confidence between man and the phenomena of the external world, the urge to abstraction
is the outcome of a great inner unrest inspired in man by the phenomena of the outside
world; in religious respect it corresponds to a strongly transcendental tinge to all notions.
We might describe this state as an immense spiritual dread of space.44

This strict regulation of the landscape results, Worringer would seem to claim, in a kind of
internalization of the environment, whereby the exterior world is turned outside in and
viewed through a psychic device designed to alleviate agoraphobia, and to create out of the
external confusion a manageable, knowable and a perfectly holistic entity. The outward,
haphazard appearance of things, then, becomes regimented and rearranged according to
the demands of an inner necessity that takes place a priori to any aesthetic considerations
and can only be swayed, inflected or toned down, not radically altered, by the historical
and political parameters within which the production of the work of art is inscribed.

How those notions might impinge on the Icelandic landscape tradition can be inferred from
Thrarinns picture of Thingvellir (1900), to which Gudnis first landscape painting bears
a strong resemblance, on both formal and affective levels. (Fig. 1, Pl. 6) In Thrarinns
work, the ponies, farmstead and church a token of common property operate as sur-
rogates for human presence, and the paintings reflective enamelled surface encourages a
certain diffusion of the viewer, almost nullifying his presence along with that of the artist.
The mirroring lake, in which nature, man and God have been joined together in holy matri-
mony, echoes this dissolution of identity.

Gudnis painting has a similar impact on the spectator in all aspects save one: rather than
being nullified, the artist/viewer becomes dispersed, because of the lack of any focal point
in the work, over the field of the canvas through the active engagement of looking. Yet the
meandering river, disappearing from sight behind a hill, indicates a wellspring somewhere
beyond the mountain range on which the dispersed viewer can mentally focus and thereby

82
Pl. 35: Untitled, 1992, No. I. 130 x 230 cm

dream himself, so to speak, back together. More important, however, in connection

to Worringers theories, is the feeling that Thrarinns painting almost abstract in its
simplicity45 does not really function as a (Renaissance) window onto the external world,
but rather onto the soul of the nation. Thrarinn would often simplify the topography
in order to capture the aspirations of the people, inviting the viewer to bring the picture
together, as it were, through his or her nationalistic sentiments. Although these emotions
have largely faded away, the unity of Gudnis painting depends similarly on the spectators
participation.

Presaging the spiritual doldrums that accompanied the Depression era, Jn Stefnssons
painting of the Glacier Eirksjkull (1920) opens upon a merciless and desolate scene. (Fig.5)
An agglomeration of stones in the foreground, like a heap of mutilated bodies, is set against
a bleak and cloudy sky, but in order to increase the tension and drama, the glacier has been
positioned slightly off centre. The work, however, could hardly be categorized as sublime.

83
Pl. 36: Untitled, 1991, No. VII, 20 x 80 cm
85
First, the sculptural quality of the painting (the clouds are rendered equally palpable as the
land) gives it a sense of calmness and stability not normally associated with the concept,
undermining the allusion to the fragility of human the life that is central to the sublime.
And secondly, it is confined to a narrow vista of land, which severely diminishes the notion
of infinitude.

Again we can find a correlative in Gudnis oeuvre and again it diverges relatively little from
its predecessor, as regards the basic pictorial structure. Instead of relegating it to the side,
Gudni shows Glacier Eirksjkull (1986) in the centre of the picture, the slopes of the
glacier commencing their climb where they touch the sides of the frame. (Pl. 14) Highly
geometricized and, in the spirit of Jn, giving the same amount of weight to the sky and
ground, the image of the jkull, which is equipped with a resplendent cupola and looms
mysteriously over the scene, looks like an alien spacecraft that has landed on the horizon
line of the desert floor for an indeterminate period of residency. 46 Much of his recent
output where he seems temporarily to have reverted to the theme of Edge, though now
sewing the partition tightly together with a multiplicity of horizontal brushstrokes as fine
as any embroidery stitch, and bridging the colour from one side to the other also pos-
sesses this eeriness. (e.g. Pls. 34, 35)

There is an even a more intriguing parallel to be found between Gudnis work and the sym-
bolic lava paintings of Kjarval, although the correspondence may not be as evident as in the
comparisons above. Like Jn, Kjarval avoided the panoramic by concentrating his vision
microscopically into the immediate foreground, reducing the skyline to a thin stripe at the top
of the canvas. The native legends are filled with tales about trolls that dwell high up in the
mountains, ghosts roaming the countryside and hidden people called hulduflk who inhabit
rocks, knolls and cliffs into which ordinary humans may occasionally be invited or taken by
force, as the case may be. (Some Icelanders still believe in this legend, though Gudni is not
among them.) Fascinated by those stories and always ready to please his countrymen with
his idiosyncratic contrivances, Kjarval often included phantoms and hulduflk in his paint-
ings, which was seen as a sign of their quintessential Icelandic-ness. Outside and Inside
(1934) is a prime example when examined, one can detect the shapes of at least three be-
ings that have been thoroughly camouflaged to merge with their surroundings. (Fig. 11)

The point here is that the distinction between man and nature, which may be regarded as a
necessary condition for the idea of the sublime, has been evaded and the metaphysical bar-
rier separating the outside from the inside has been removed. As with, say, Untitled 1990,

8737: Untitled, 1990, 200 x 200 cm

Pl.
Pl. 38: Untitled, 1997, 135 x 165 cm

No. VIII, the viewer is thus invited to identify with the landscape and become a part of it
(the only difference being that in Gudnis case, this identification is communicated through
the oily skin of the painting reflecting the beholder; instead of identifying himself with
nature by means of surrogates, he is able to do so through his own shadowy image, thereby
becoming yet another ephemeral component of the work. However, it might be possible to
maintain that Gudni is still stuck with one foot in the sublime, since, unlike Thrarinn, Jn
and Kjarval, his abstract work elicits a feeling of boundlessness, which according to Kant
forms the very essence of the sublime:

For when apprehension has gone so far that the partial representations of sensuous intui-
tion at first apprehended begin to vanish in the imagination, while this ever proceeds to
the imagination of others, then it loses as much on one side as it gains on the other; and in
comprehension there is a maximum beyond which it cannot go.47

Kant is referring, of course, to the discrepancy that arises from the ability to perceive the
idea of totality on the one hand and the impossibility of ever coming to grips with it on the
other, the contradiction between apprehension and comprehension which, for him, not even
the imagination can overcome. Whether one agrees with Kants argument or not, Gudni has
persisted in solving this dilemma by attempting to fuse thought and nature so that it is no long-
er necessary for the imagination to lose on one side as it gains on the other, whereby it reaches

88
its maximum distension and recoils with a psychological snap, by which, however, a kind of
emotional satisfaction is produced. Nowhere is his longing to usurp the role of the sub-
lime more evident than in Untitled 1991, No. II. Measuring 30 x 30 cm, it is roughly the
size of a human skull. (It may be noted here that the scale of many of the paintings Gudni
has done in the last three years is within a half a square meter). (Pl. 33) Seen from the
standpoint of the hulduflk, through what appears to be a cave opening, the viewer could
awaken to the discovery that he has been mentally abducted and placed inside a mountain,
inside the God-Head itself, for the walls are translucent and there are no bounds to the
vision. And the instant it is realized, he is wholly on the other side, in the heart of the
solitary and all-encompassing domain of the self-thinking thought. This sensation may
not last for long, but for a brief moment, the viewer has become the landscape.

With each work Gudni has made, he has taken one step closer to the mountain, incorporating
and consolidating his previous experience as if conducting some, great scientific experiment,
until finally he seems to have come to inhabit it. In a sense, he has always been painting the
same canvas, for each piece undergoes endless transformations which remain permanently
visible in the multitudinous variety of pentimenti before he feels the time has arrived to move
on to the next one, at the point where nothing more can be added. As he has walked right up
to the mountain and passed into it, metaphorically speaking, we should not be surprised to
find him looking at the landscape in a reversed perspective, perhaps even through reversed
time, like some being able to see simultaneously out of both the front and back of its head.
1991 marked a watershed in this respect, when suddenly a wide prospect appearedblack
desert sands with undulating dunes in infinite succession and desolate valleys closed on both
sides by mountain slopes that create a sort of tubular form that extends into the immense dis-
tance as if, after millennia of dormancy, the Mountain had decided to open up its eyes.

Untitled 1992, No. VII, showing what could be the mouth of a valley and a long vista, does
not announce a change of subject, though it does mark a turning-point and new beginning,
but rather it seems to sum up and condense all his previous efforts the odd mountain has
exploded into a plurality of others in a syncopated rhythm with the bisecting lines in a
single image. (Pl. 40) Indeed, this is not a painting of a particular valley as much as it is a
retrospective view over the road that led him into the mountain, a purely cerebral picture,
something like a brain scan indexing every picture he has done from the time he started
on his journey. And as with brain scans, or the holographic charts of subglacial surfaces
constructed by geologists to provide a birds eye view of the terrain, we seem to float within
a tank of liquid and infinitely mutable sensations, where every notion and reflection has

89
become utterly transparent. (Gudni has said of this work that he was not attempting to
paint a valley but an image of the air that fills it). (Fig. 13) Transparent could be compared
to reflecting is a phrase belonging to Ludwig Wittgenstein, which Gudnis painting might
almost appear to illustrate. As one focuses on it, the various details of the scene successively
melt away to the discovery of new ones, binding the notions that have been triggered into
complex constellations of thought and meaning which, decomposing yet again, coalesce
into an increased awareness of the whole. Untitled 1992, No. VII is only the first in the line
of such reflections Untitled 1992, No. XI is another example (Pl. 41) and it is tempt-
ing, but questionable, to single it out as his best work to date.

The Norwegian painter Christian Krogh (1852-1925) was of the opinion that while all na-
tional art [was intrinsically] bad, all good art [was unavoidably] national. In spite of some
affinities with the Icelandic landscape tradition, Gudni has not made a conscious effort to
cultivate those ties, and sharing Kroghs aversion to parochialism, he would most certainly
loathe the idea of his art being associated with any form of nationalism.48 His paintings are
not so much of (Icelandic) mountains as they are about mountains (in general), about our
elusive and ambivalent connection with nature. Like Czanne, who advocated treating na-
ture as a system based on the cylinder, the sphere and the cone,49 Gudnis work, notwith-
standing the stigma of apparent abstraction, locates the careful observation of the landscape
within elemental geometry. Yet in his straightforward, matter-of-fact handling of the subject,
the boundaries between image and symbol, theme and mode of expression appear to have
been erased, or at any rate they have become extremely slippery and hard to define.

Gudni is not interested in playing stylistic hard-ball and bouncing it against the walls of art
history and the unique character of his paintings does not depend on a regime of negations
and dogmatic conceptual closures, or on an erudite pictorial navigation through the shal-
low waters of subtle distinctions of meanings.50 In the same way that the external world
constantly seems to elude our epistemological understanding, his images strongly resist
conventional categorisation. What makes Gudnis art so intriguing, as Gertrud Sandqvist
has compellingly pointed out, is that he turns common notions of abstract painting upside
down.51 Rather than defining its singularity by means of a grammar of binary oppositions,
as being neither this nor that but something in between, he has managed to create a sort of
visual Esperanto whereby the image can be comprehended as both abstract and realistic,
geometric and painterly, specific and universal. This openness, along with the reflective
nature of the support addressing the limitations of the body, has the effect of subduing the
monadological presence of the artist as the author and producer of the work, while catering

90 Pl. 39: Untitled, 1992, 195 x 195 cm

91
Fig. 13: A three dimensional view of a subglacial
Courtesy of Helgi Bjrnsson, Finnur Plsson & Magns T. Gudmundsson, 2000

to the individual desires of the viewer, and in so doing it strives, as Gudni wrote in his diary,
to accommodate all the thoughts of the world (which is not to say that they float in a sea
of meanings in which the spectators [can] fish at random52).

Perhaps there is no such thing as absolute objectivity, but if there were, Gudni has attempt-
ed to reach those aspects of the human condition common to all53 through the back door
of profound subjectivity. Though he may be dealing with the truths of corporeal exist-
ence, one can scarcely fail to notice the quasi-religious and very personal nature of his art.
Yet, while circumventing a purely materialistic view of the world, it does not endorse any
supposition about the separation between mind and body/matter. Rejecting both transcen-
dentalism and Cartesian dualism, it entails a philosophy of a third kind, for in it he appears
to be advancing the idea that spirit equals substance, which is different from having a
ghost in the machine, or saying that everything can be reduced to an arbitrary interplay of
sub-atomic particles. Suffice it to iterate that the line separating the sky from the earth has
been identified with a series of fissures in the internal landscape of our psychic make-up,
the void between memory and reflection, sight and desire, and that for Gudni, painting has
been a way of exorcising this beast who knows, maybe there is chemical formula for it
lodged within us and a way of bridging the gap. To this purpose, he has riveted his gaze
on the mountain, a traditional site of sacrifice and a prospective stairway to Heaven in all

92
religions, as he has endeavoured to purge away the appearances of contradiction. On a final
note, let me briefly elaborate on some of the issues brought up in the introduction, namely
about social responsibility and the function of art in the Postmodern era. Painting, particularly
if it is abstract and courts the universal, has come to be regarded as stultifying, regressive and
conservative, as an enemy of the future and its people, by those who lead the discussion and
purport to uphold the true mission of the (Russian) vanguard.54 There is much to warrant
this resentment. The auratic work of art, flirting with the biological mechanics of sensory
experience, looks unrepentantly escapist and deplorably out of tune with the dire problems
social, economic, political, ecological that harass the world today, and it is impossible not
to associate the financial art boom of the 80s with the re-emergence of painting as the decades
dominant art form. This frivolity in the face of a crisis has led to a widespread iconophobia
inside the camp of the neo-left, which has deemed painting to be unable to cope with the situ-
ation and has denounced what it sees as the cult of the pictorial field. In the war it has waged
against the medium of slow art, it has thrown everything smacking of spirituality, of introspec-
tion and catharsis, overboard, dismissing it as vague, unrealistic and mystifying, and focused
instead on dismantling the institutions so it claims that nurse the enterprise.

As much as Gudnis mode of expression diverges from the brash and spontaneous paintings
of the New Wave that were fast-cooked and made to order, I am not suggesting that he
exists in a state of innocence because of the primitive market to which his works belong
though that, too, ties into the general thrust of this essay. The contemporary art scene
is more complex and elusive than that. Determined to break up the solidified language of
Modernism and create a new forum for deliberation, the anti-institutional left has simulta-
neously legitimated itself and fossilized into an institution of its own making. In place of
the pedantic policies of the neo-conservatives, we have endless theorizing about language,
power, duplication and gender, all carried out under the banner of moral rectitude. This is
all very well, up to a point. However, such are the influences of Marxist theory, which used
to be an underground force of resistance, that it has completely taken over the curriculum
of art schools and Humanities departments, and has already proceeded to infiltrate the
museum world.55 No less elitist and dogmatic than the ideology of the opposition, Marxist
theory has in effect come to signal the other side of the coin in late capitalistic society, an
exclusive club adhering to the cult of the code and the practice of demystification.

What I am driving at, then, is this: there is something curious about a position that excludes
certain media and entire fields of investigation because they do not conform to a pre-de-
signed cultural agenda. Painting is neither inherently bad nor irresponsible, any more

93
than it is sterile and exhausted. Accountability, moreover, has nothing to do with following
authoritarian dictates on what can be said or done, but rather it hinges on monitoring what
becomes of ones production: where does it go, how is it manipulated, what does it cost,
who can use it? And besides, all art that receives critical attention not only painting is
processed through the gallery system, or similar venues, where it is promoted, sold and
bargained for, as Hans Haacke has so perceptively discussed.56 To paraphrase the contents
of Meyer Schapiros well-known paper on the Social Bases of Art (1936), if we honestly
wanted to liberate society and make everyone equal, we might as well begin by liberating
the art scene by totally demolishing the hierarchy of quality that has helped to sustain the
domination of those in power, intellectually no less than economically, throughout the his-
tory of humanity, and allow everyone to display their work in the Museum (which would
then, naturally, cease to exist as we know it).

Art, however, is said to reflect life. Quite apart from being an object of enlightenment and
pleasure, it is a weapon of power, a tool of intimidation, a symbol of prestige. Provided that
the global human condition can be ameliorated, we must be willing to sacrifice our profes-
sional careers, lay aside the pen and the brush if necessary, and concentrate on revolution-
izing the social bases proper, through direct interaction (the arts, accordingly, should then
spontaneously transform with it) because a text about art is primarily a text about art, and
art criticizing society in a gallery or a museum is first and foremost art criticizing society
in a gallery or a museum. (One should also keep in mind that analysis is a form of control
knowledge is power and not merely a method of deconstruction and subversion.
Cultural criticism today is big business: it is an institution within the institution, a vocation
which specializes in and revolves around the perpetual censuring of the system without ever
posing any real challenge to it). Meanwhile, there is need for a more flexible and open type
of art criticism that does not deem certain genres unworthy of consideration landscape
painting has continued to be ranked at the bottom in the international hierarchy of reputa-
ble subject matter or regard spirituality as irrelevant and out of tune with reality.57

As we entered the 90s, new considerations and art forms (most notably installation, appro-
priation and photography) have come to predominate. Replacing the narcissistic self-ex-
ploration of the previous decade, the art currently most applauded proposes to unravel the
falsehood of advertising and dispel the illusion of genius, even as it becomes itself trans-
formed in the process into yet another consumer item with an unmistakable signature-style
trademark. Yet for all the difference between angst-ridden Neo-Expressionism and the art
of impersonal social dissection, both genres have in common an emphasis on infinite par-

94 Pl. 40: Untitled, 1992, No. VII, 170 x 180 cm

95
ticularization and therefore disintegration the former dealing in individual emotions and
the latter professing to dissect specific social relations. True spirituality, on the other hand,
which at its most profound level approaches the anarchistic, aims for nothing less than a
total unification. It threatens to destroy the hierarchy and merge everything harmoniously
together, and the fact that it is regarded as a taboo by those who preside over the debate
makes one wonder whether such propositions can only be taken seriously where the market
does not have a stranglehold on artistic production. At any rate, both communism (before
its downfall) and capitalism have found reasons to disclaim spiritual art as an intrinsic part
of their secular systems.

Even though Gudni belongs to an artistic third-world country, it does not mean that his
work is independent of the laws of the marketplace. After all, it exists in a state of object-
hood and as such is no better or worse than any other tradable merchandise. It differs,
however, from painting produced in the international headquarters of art in at least one
important respect. Coming from a region that is not embroiled in deadly disputes about
race and gender, Gudni has resolved to ponder the possibility of integration to think
about how the binary dualism between nature and culture, male and female, private and
communal can be annihilated and joined together into a single entity. Contrary to Neo-Ex-
pressionism, the apparent painterliness of his work, does not signify the artists individu-
ality. Avoiding the gesture of the (autobiographical) sign, the kind of formlessness associ-
ated with personal feelings, Gudni seems to have managed to liquidate his own presence
by rigidly systematizing the brush work, thus elevating the personal to the supra-personal.
And this not privileging the inside as preferential, or the soul as being over and above
the body is one of the main strengths of his work.

The tremendous sparseness of means with which Gudni has tackled his subject, the aspira-
tion to fuse these oppositions in a single image, led some critics to think that he had already
reached the end of the road of formal possibilities shortly after he began his career. Not
only has he repeatedly proven them wrong, but his art has continued grow and deepen.
Anti-heroic and far from having anything to do with pure formalism, Gudnis art describes a
silent and a humble visual quest for ultimate harmony and balance. And up to the present,
it looks to be an auspicious journey.

New York, February-May 1992

Hannes Sigurdsson

96 Pl. 41: Untitled, 1992, No. XI, 195 x 195 cm

97
NOTES
1
A Natural Order was held at the Hudson River Museum of
Worchester, Yonkers, N.Y., 27 May-12 August 1990, while About
Nature took place at the Barbara Toll Gallery, New York, 20
January 10-February 1990. The (Un)Making of Nature was at
the Whitney Museum, from 31 May-27 July, 1990. Allocations
was presented at Zoetermeer near The Hague in the spring of
1992.
2
As an example of such politically correct moralism one could
name Vincent Shines Untitled (9/29/, 9/30, 10/1), 1990, Mark
Dions and William Schefferines Wheelbarrows of Progress, 1990,
and Peter Fends News Room, also from 1990. For an illuminating
discussion of ecosystem art, techno-sublime and eco-agitprop,
see Jan Avgikos Green Piece, Art Forum, April 1991, pp. 104-
110 (the works cited above are reproduced in that issue).
3
Andr Malraux. Picassos Mask, trans. June Guicharnaud and
Jacques Guicharnaud (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston,
1976), p. 55.
4
John Gruen: Michael Heizer: You might say that Im in the
Construction Business. ARTnews 76, no. 10 (December 1977),
p. 98.
5
It is fair to note that Smithson had begun to demonstrate a keen
environmental concern in the last Earthworks he made shortly
before his death in a plane crash in 1973. Contacting several
mining companies, including Minerals Engineering Company of
Denver and Hanna Coal Company, he offered a visual facelift to
their reclamation activities. The project never came to fruition. See
John Beardsley, Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary art in the
Landscape (New York: Abeville Press, 1989).
6
See Carol Hall: Environmental Artists: Sources and Directions
in Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art,
edited by Alan Sonfist. (New York: E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1983), p. 51.
7
It may be noted here that Long has been attracted to the desolate
aspects of the Icelandic wilderness, trekking around the country to
create sculptures.
8
Quoted from Suzi Gabliks Has Modernism Failed? (New York:
Thames and Hudson, Inc., 1984), p. 44. See furthermore Graham
Beals Richard Long: The Simplicity of Walking, the Simplicity
of Stones in A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture since 1965
(London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1987), pp. 110-114.
9
This commonality can be attributed to several factors, among the
most important of which is a series of exhibitions surveying the
history of late 19th and 20th century Scandinavian artconsisting
primarily of landscape paintings that toured around Europe
and America in the 80s: Scandinavia Today (1982), The
Mystic North (1984), Dreams of a Summer Night (1986) and
Northern Light: Northern Art at the Turn of the Century (1988).
In addition to attracting attention abroad, these exhibitions did
much to inspire a renewed interest among Nordic artists in their
own visual heritage and brought to light the artistic affinities of the
98
five nations. (stein Hjort adumbrates the importance of those
shows in his essay Att tjna konsten, att tjna sitt levebrd, and sees
them as having created a Nordic consciousness. See Transparencia
Azul: nordisk samtidskonst p vg till Latinamerika (a travelling
exhibition that opened up in Sweden and toured to five South-
American countries), February 23, 1991-February 5, 1992, p. 59).
This collaboration may be traced to the support and scholarly
guidance of the Nordic Arts Center in Sveaborg, Finland, which
has done much to introduce Scandinavian artists amongst
themselves in the last decade through various group projects,
as well as promoting their work outside the member countries.
After the Second World War, when the barriers between the
nations were removed, Scandinavian artists felt the time had
come to band together and break out of the isolation that had
prevented them from entering the mainstream. Pledging to write
a chapter in foreign relations, they founded The Association of
Nordic Artists (NKF) in 1945. But because of lack of funding
and common exhibition facilities, they accomplished little and
the union was kept afloat by the voluntary work of a few idealists.
All this changed when the Finnish state decided to donate a castle
on the tiny island of Sveaborg, just outside Helsingfors, to the
organization in 1973, although the Arts Center did not formally
open until five years later. Since then, the NKF has primarily
focused on hosting symposia, regulating the wage terms of its
members, guarding them against copyright infringements and so
forth, while the Arts Center has taken care of planning exhibitions
and distributing information. The 80s has therefore been a
decade of unprecedented communication between Nordic artists,
and it is probable that few Icelanders of the younger generation
have engaged more actively in it than Gudni. He has participated
in Ung Nordisk Konst (1985), Borealis (1987), Aurora
(1989), Transparencia Azul (1991-92) and Il Paesaggio
Culturale (1992), a survey of Scandinavian landscape art from
18901990 to name but a few of his joint Nordic shows. (For
a complete listing of his group exhibitions, see back of the
catalogue.)
10
All of these artists are directly or indirectly preoccupied with
the landscape, and most of them paint in a purely abstract idiom.
By comparison, newer figures working within this stylistic terrain
outside Scandinavia like Fiona Rae, Stephen Ellis, Richard
Kalina, Jonathan Lasker, Moira Dryer and Cary Smith from
America; Ian Davenport and Callum Tunes from Great Britain,
and Stefan Mattes from Germany have opted not to deal with
unspoiled nature but with the claustrophobic confines of the
metropolis. In all of their art, a natural, open sense of space
is replaced by the kind of flattened-out, compressed space you
see when you look at television or a computer monitor. Its a
fundamentally urban vision a man-made, crammed, artificial
landscape in which things seem a little more charged up, but
somehow a little more desolate. Stephen Henry Madoff: A New
Lost Generation. ARTnews, April, 1992, p. 76.
11
In the U.S. we no longer engage in a dialogue of how nature
constructs us, Ashley Bickerton has noted, but rather how
we construct nature. A conversation with Mark Dion, Galeries
Magazine, Paris, October-November, 1989, p. 149.
12
John House, presenting An Outside View of Scandinavian
painting around the turn of the century, seems to be right on the
mark when he observes: This enriched version of naturea form
of nature mysticismruns through Scandinavian painting at this
period. Nature and the countryside are seen as the expression of
the life-force and as the repository of essential values, in contrast
to the shallowness and artificiality of urban civilization [...] The
preoccupations of the earlier twentieth century have largely erased
the Scandinavian painters from international view; and the criteria
by which late nineteenth-century painting has been discussed are
particularly inapplicable to it. Scandinavian painting cannot be
treated in terms of polarities between academic and avant-garde;
between nature and culture, between free brush and drawing.
Indeed, the total inadequacy of these categories in this context
should make us look again at many rooted assumptions about
French art. It would appear that Nordic art was becoming more
relevant by the minute. See Dreams of a Summer Night, Arts Council
of Great Britain, Hayward Gallery, London. 10 July - 5 October,
1986, p. 22 and p. 28.
13
It must be conceded that Nordic art has not been easily accessible
and many of the best works belonging to the tradition are locked
up in museums and small private collections. (The general public,
not only millionaires, have long been the principal patrons.) All
the same, foreign institutions have made few attempts to acquire
examples of it.
14
In a thought-provoking article in the New York Times, entitled
Selling Out?: Pushed and Pulled, Environment Inc. is on the
Defense, Keith Schneider observes that the National Wildlife
Federation, the Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace
have all issued layoffs in the last two years even if the directors are
still commanding six-figure salaries. More gravely: The financial
problems have caused some of the organizations to turn for help
to the same industrial polluters they have long criticized. The
chairman of Waste Management Inc., which has racked up millions
of dollars in environmental fines at its landfills and hazardous waste
dumps, is a major contributor and sits on the board of the Wildlife
Federation. The National Audubon Societys acclaimed World
of Audubon television documentaries are financed by the General
Electric Company, which has been at the top of the Environmental
Protection Agencys list of companies with the most toxic waste
sites. (March 29, 1992, Section 4, pp.1 and 3). Jan Avgikos closes
the circle when he remarks: Ecosystem art aspires to reconcile the
arcadian dream of the garden with the materialism of natural history
but falls short of recuperative synthesis; more plausibly, it manages
a liaison between corporate atrium greenhouse and museological
display of natural habitats. Art Forum, ibid, note 2, p. 106.
15
Icelanders are usually called by their first names, since their
surname simply refers to their father. Gudni, however, uses his
middle name.
16
Hrdur [was] an admirer of Victor Vasarely and once took an
interview with him in his studio in Paris. See Vasarely by Victor
Vasarely. Trans. by I. Mark Paris, (Great Britain: Phaidon Press
Ltd., 1981), p, 5.
99
17
When Gudni began attracting attention in Iceland, many of
those who were keeping a watchful eye on him, myself included,
wondered how he had arrived at painting mountains. It was as if the
subject had suddenly sprung out of his head in a highly developed
state. I have thus wanted to be scrupulous about his beginning to
quench this curiosity but also to demonstrate how those early works
bear upon his career as a whole.
18
A critic of The Daily DV, for instance, confounds Minimalism
with the minimum conditions of Gudnis work in a caustic review of
a group show in which Gudni participated at the National Gallery
of Iceland in 1988, accusing him of having stagnated into a routine
run-of-the-mill production. See The Daily DV, Oct. 1988.
19
It is worth keeping in mind the following comment by Maaretta
Jaukkuri: [...] Concrete art reflects a desire to integrate art and the
environment, art and the surrounding world. A comprehensive
approach to the improvement of the world was the mark of both
Soviet post-revolutionary art and the Concretists efforts during the
post-war period. It is decidedly ironic that this mode of expression
is often considered remote from reality. Konkret i Norden, ibid.,
note 18, p. 7.
20
An interview by Theadora Vischer with Federle in the April
issue of Flash Art, 1988 (pp. 68-71) provides an introduction to his
theories.
21
Iceland 1986. Handbook published by the Central Bank of
Iceland, Reykjavik 1987, p. 8.
22
As it would have taken up too much space, his pencil and
watercolour sketches have been left out of the discussion altogether.
The concepts embedded in those works normally precede those
found in the oil paintings, and they have a special force of their
own. Perhaps more than his canvases, they are based on a first-
hand inspection of the environment, even those that appear to
have nothing to do with looking at the landscape. In the earliest
sketches, Gudni often indicated on the drawings the location,
date and timesometimes to the minuteand in some cases the
weather conditions, recalling Constables cloud studies. He soon
gave up this practice, but the scrutiny continued. An equilateral
triangle turned up-side-down with a line down the centre could,
for instance, be taken as a river flowing down a mountain gulch. A
sequence of watercolour brush strokes, starting off in a light blue
at and ending in a darker colour, seems to be a meditation on the
nature of the fetters which hold earth and sky in a reciprocal
relationship. The result resembles Buddhist calligraphy, which the
devotee creates as a part of a spiritual meditation.
23
Borealis 3: Painting and the Metaphysical Landscape (a joint
project between Nordic Arts Centre and Malm Konsthall), Malm
Konsthall, 1987, p. 64
24
In one of the greatest works of speculative philosophy, Die
Phnomenologie des Geistes (1807), Hegel charts what he regards
as the three successive stages of self-awareness: consciousness
(Bewusstsein), self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein) and
Reason (Vernuft). The first of these phases addresses sensory
apprehension of particular things; the sensible object as
something external and heterogeneous unto itself. The intellect
tries to come to terms with the hidden forces behind external
appearances and resorts to the idea of laws. Yet they are not truly
explicative since they are only a way of ordering and describing a
phenomenon, not explaining it. The mind enters the next stage,
that of self-consciousness, when it realizes that the explanation
of sense-phenomena is the product of understanding itself,
and this, in turn, involves the recognition of selfhood in oneself
and others through desire. Ultimately the subject enters the
level of pure Reason which is a synthesis of the two previous
phases, consciousness and self-consciousness, objectivity and
subjectivity: The true self is no longer seen as an ideal from
which the actual self is hopelessly alienated, but rather as the
living core, so to speak, of the actual self, which expresses itself
in and through its infinite manifestations... it sees Nature as
the objective expression of infinite Spirit with which it is itself
united. (Friedrich Copleston, S.J. A History of Philosophy, Book
Three, Volume VII. An Image Book, 1985, p. 185). It is this final
phase with which Gudni has gradually been trying to come to
terms in his work.
25
Since Gudni began painting the landscape, he has only
concentrated on a few mountains, the most prominent ones
being Mt. Kgunarhll, Mt. Hekla, Mt. Hganga, Mt. Keilir, Mt.
Orrustuhll, Mt. Hestfjall, Mt. Ernir, Mt. Brfell, Mt. Esja, Mt.
Hvalfell, Mt. Skjaldbreidur, Mt. Akrafjall, Mt. Systrastapi, Mt.
Thrhyrningur, Mt. Lodmundur, Mt. Ptursey, Mt. Helgafell, Mt.
Stri Dmon, Mt. Herdubreid, Glacier Eirksjkull and Glacier
Snaefellsjkull.
Herchel Chipp: Theories of Modern Art. (Berkeley: University of
26
California Press, 1968), p. 135.
27
In an article by Adalsteinn Inglfsson, Gudni is quoted as saying
this about his stay in Holland: Being away from Iceland, I had to
use my minds eye to see the mountains I wanted to paint, and I
discovered that I actually wanted to paint them from memory, not
from direct observation... The mountains had become a means
to an end. I suppose I am really trying to come to terms with
concepts like stillness, awe, even memory itself. (Iceland Review:
Mountains of the Mind 1-1989, Vol.25, p. 66). As soon as he
returned to Iceland, he began to travel around the countryside
again in his mountain truck.
The brochure, which was issued only in a few copies, is
28
unpaginated.
29
Grids, published in Rosalind Krauss collection of her essays:
The Originality of the AvantGarde and Other Modernist Myths.
(Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 9-10.
30
g veit hvaan g kem, en g veit ekki hvert g er a fara. (I 37
know where Im coming from but I dont know where Im going.)
The Daily Morgunbladid, May 16, 1992.
31
The analogy between Newmans zips and Giacomettis sculptures
is brought up in an article by Thomas Hess: Barnett Newman and
Alberto Giacometti, Issue, New York, Spring 1985, p. 39.
100
32
Take this, for example, from Irving Sandler: The passivity
and impersonality of Rothkos brush and reductive design are,
on the one hand, ironic, as is all self-effacement. On the other
hand, they suggest a desire on his part that the viewer vacate his
active self. This can lead to cosmic identification, but that has a
tragic dimension, for it evokes the ultimate loss of selfdeath. The
Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism,
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970, p. 183. (See also the letter
Rothko and Gottlieb wrote to the New York Times on June 7,
1943, in which they articulated their position on art and tragic
myth. Republished in part in Mark Rothko by Diane Waldman.
Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1978, p. 39). It is also worth
here to keep in mind Max Kozloff s analysis of the cultural politics
practised in America during the Cold War: [...] In choosing
primitive icons from many cultures, Southwest India or Imperial
Roman, for example, they attempted to find universal symbols
for their own alienation. Their art was suffused with totems of
atavistic faith raised in protection of man against unknowable,
afflicting nature [sic.]. (See note 12) (Max Kozloff: American
Painting during the Cold War, reprinted in Pollock and After: The
Critical Debate, edited by Francis Frascina. (London: Harper &
Row Publishers, 1985), p.110.
33
Sandler, op. cit., p. 179.
34
Some critics and art historians, it should be mentioned, see
Abstract Expressionist painting as developing in concert with the
propositions that can be found in Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology
of Perception (1945); e.g. Michael Auping (Beyond the Sublime,
published in Abstract Expressionism, London: Thames and Hudson
Ltd., 1985, p. 148) and Donald Kuspit (A Phenomenological
Approach to Artistic Intention, Art Forum, January, 1974).
35
Barnett Newman, The Sublime is Now Tigers Eye, 1.6. (Dec.
15 1948), p. 37.
36
Just how misleading it can be to take things at a face value
is demonstrated by the fact that Gudni was not even aware of
Reinhardts work until the summer of 1991 after the similarity
was pointed out to him following the great retrospective of his work
at MoMA (May 30-Sept. 2, 1991). Some critics have furthermore
pointed to a relationship with the German artist Gnter Frg,
although it is difficult to find a resemblance beyond the fact that
both artists occasionally make polyptychs. (Cf. Pls. 19, 20) (see e.g.
Gnter Frg: Painting/Sculpture/Installation, Newport Harbor Art
Museum, January 20 - April 2, 1989). Much more relevant than a
comparison to Frg, whose surfaces are often sheets of unpainted
lead or copper, is one with the early work of Brice Marden.
Mardens rich and subtle monochrome polyptychs are inspired,
as are Gudnis, by the spiritual contemplation of the natural
world, and are carefully crafted. (See Klaus Kertess, Brice Marden:
Paintings and Drawings, Abrams, New York, 1992).
The speed of contemporary life makes it difficult for most
people to spend the time that is required to come to terms with a
complex work of art. Listen to Peter Schjeldahl on The Dearth
of Painting: The problem with painting now as a living art is that
fewer and fewer people know how to look at it and, more gravely,
why to look at it, with what appetites. Infinitely subtle painting is
over-qualified for present gross visual uses. The recently educated
dont look at anything with slow absorption; they read everything
with cynical speed. Painting threatens to become another sign in
a global empire of signs, signifying in its case old ideals of leisured
cultivation. (The Village Voice, March 31, 1992, p. 97.)
38
The relatively small size of the work and absence of people is
characteristic of the Icelandic landscape tradition, and in Gudnis
paintings no living thing, not so much as a blade of grass, is
permitted to infringe upon the pictorial field. As if seen from
the days of yore, when the country was untouched by the traces
of men and livestock, Gudni has emptied the land of all human
associations. The eminence skjuhld is a case in point. (Pl. 13)
Some of the mountains Gudni has painted, like Mt. Esja and Mt.
Keilir, are in the close vicinity of Reykjavik. But skjuhld, though
one would never suspect it, is actually located in the heart of the
city, crowned by four big water tanks that have recently been
changed into a fancy revolving restaurant. Gudni has helped us to
imagine what it must have looked like to the earliest Norwegian
settlers, who arrived in Reykjavik around 874 A.D.
39
During the Depression, sgrmur began to loosen up his
academic style. Confessing a great admiration for van Gogh,
which he apparently felt he had to suppress because of the political
climate at the time, he first ventured to describe the true climate of
the country in the early 30s (e.g. The Road to Hafnarfjrdur 1931:
The Museum of sgrmur). He apparently decided, however,
to wait another 15 years before he thought it safe to divulge his
secret passion for volcanic eruptions. Those works are perhaps
the closest we have to the idea of the sublime within the Icelandic
landscape tradition.
40
In a symbolic gesture, which says much about the influence
Gudni has had on his Icelandic colleagues, a former teacher at the
Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, Sigurdur rlygsson, wrote
Hommage Georg Gudni on the invitation card he sent him on
the occasion of a private exhibition at the Gallery Svart hvtu in
1988. It must also be said that Gudni has had more than his share
of emulators since the mid-1980s.
Barbara Novak, Nature and Culture: American Landscape and
41
Painting, 1825-1875. (Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 32.
42
The material that these army excavations for increased
Lebensraum yielded was to stimulate the entire profession of art
makers, from the most conservative academicians, wanting to
provide their history paintings with an added flair of reality, to the
latest in avant-garde invention. Faced with the enormity of the
American landscape, Thomas Pownall and other early military
landscapists had found it necessary to reduce the figure almost
to the level of surface incidents in order to get the scale correct.
Similarly, R. Hood and G. Heriot introduced human figures to
provide scale and focus. Those lessons were later assimilated in
the works of better known artists. Consider, for instance, Coles
solitary Indian figure in Kaaterskill Falls (1826) that occupies
less than half a percentage of the picture. The viewer is at pains
to empathize with this noble savage, at least without the aid of
a powerful magnifying glass. Or Thomas Morans The Grand
Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872), or even Bierstadts famous The
Rocky Mountains, Landers Peak (1863). Those artists were situated
on the borderline of the inaccessible, stretching the premises of
101
civilization further out into the wilderness. Moreover, as much
as those paintings suggested to the urbanites what to admire in
nature, they also posited ways of how to go about harnessing it.
The process of mapping the land inevitably involves the notion
of possession and domination, and thus transposes the role of the
menacing agent from nature to humanity. This process is still at
work in America, although in a different and subtler form.
43
In a section on Germany and Scandinavia (pp. 255-273),
Novak notes this resemblance: It has long seemed to me that
the similarities between Scandinavian and American art in the
nineteenth century are rooted in the importance of each countrys
vigorous folk art. The conceptual focus and impersonal hand
of a strong folk tradition runs parallel to, and tempers, the more
sophisticated tradition, in both America and Scandinavia. (op. cit.,
p. 261.)
44
Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy, trans. M. Bullock
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963, pp. 3-25). The quote is taken
from Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, edited by F.
Frascina and C. Harrison. (London: Harper and Row Publishers,
1982), p. 161.
45
Selma Jnsdttir in Dreams of a Summer Night, op. cit., p. 281.
46
A certain formal affinity can also be found between Untitled,
1990, No. VII and Jns Dawn at Mt. Hornbjarg (1958-60), which
depicts two ravens, their wings fully stretched in mid-air, and a
cliff rising out of the sea, penetrating through layers of scuds and
disappearing into the cloud coverage (compare Fig. 12 to Pl. 31).
47
Emmanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. J.H. Bernard.
Book II, New York: Analytic of the Sublime, p. 90. Another
angle on the sublime that might need to be reckoned with is the
implication of nothing further happening as Jean-Franois
Lyotard has postulated. Discussing Burkes treatise, he finds that
the fundamental task of the sublime is to bear expressive witness
to the inexpressible. Rather than actually showing nothing, the
artist, in his attempt to assert everything, is forced to imply that
the sublime is like this, and that, Lyotard suggests, is the real
meaning of the concept (see The Sublime and the Avant-Garde,
in The Lyotard Reader, ed. A. Benjamin, Cambridge, Mass.: Basil
Blackwell, 1989, pp. 199-204). Lyotard seems to be working
with Hegels category of pure being (Sein), which is wholly
indeterminate, and thus the idea necessarily passes into the concept
of not-being. Yet when we try to encompass this state in its totality,
he argues, we find we are thinking of nothing at all. In other words,
the mind passes from being to not-being and from not-being back
to being again in much the same way as Kant defines the sublime.
This dialectical antithesis, however, is only the first step on the
road to pure being, according to Hegel, which is the synthesis of
the two stages through the movement of becoming. The triad of
Hegels logic, then, is made up of being, not-being, or nothing,
and becoming. By not displaying a significant development or
movement, repeatedly depicting the sublime in more or less the
same formal terms with little variation, the Abstract Expressionists
can hence be seen, as indeed Lyotard sees them, as stuck between
being and not-being; i.e. with the symbol. For Gudni, by
comparison, no single painting signifies the sublime in and of itself.
Rather, it is always the next work that entails the ultimate reunion
(cf. his remark that [he] knew where [he] was coming from but
did not know where [he] was going; The Daily Morgunbladid, op.
cit., note 30). More precisely, the sublime, for Gudni, could be
regarded the sum total of all his oeuvre, from the first landscape he
painted to last one he will ever execute.
48
I have noticed that some people misunderstand what Im doing,
perhaps intentionally, says Gudni. Im not knitting a new chapter
to the Icelandic landscape tradition or underlining national values
because I happen to be painting Icelandic mountains. I regard
myself as a modern artist in the widest sense, not particularity as an
Icelandic artist. The Daily DV, March 5, 1988.
49
See H. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, op. cit., p.19.
50
Taking it out of the context of the moment, those presently
in charge of the welfare of High Art seem to have replaced
the idea of formalism with the idea of play in an effort to update
Greenbergs theory of art. In his book A Fine Disregard: What
makes Modern Art Modern (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990),
MoMAs curator Kirk Varnedoe describes the avant-garde artist
from the view-point of the inventor of rugby, who with a fine
disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first
took the ball in his hands and ran with it. (p. 9) Yves-Alain
Bois is also caught up with the notion of art-as-game, despite
his associations with the Marxist circle. Writing the text that
accompanied the Reinhardt retrospective in 1991, he notes that
[Reinhardts] chess playing is entirely directed against painting-
as-chess-playing, against painting-as-struggle, against the
against, which is, of course, simply a way of tightening the rules
of artistic chess playing (Ad Reinhardt, Rizzoli, New York, p. 14).
Obfuscating and opaque, Bois does not deal with Reinhardts
paintings per se at any length, nor does he attempt to put them
into a social context, but focuses instead on seemingly endless
conceptual differentiations. What we have here, in fact, is an
instance of theoretical formalism par excellence, whereby the
formal beauty of the critical argument is offered as a correlative
for that of the art being discussed.
51
Gertrud Sandqvist: Borderlines, Tema Celeste, 1992, p. 82.
Sandqvist nicely couches her experience as a viewer, writing:
Gudnis paintings have the same poetic qualities as the intervals
between words. The simple curve, the shining gray traces of
the brush, the blue night sky are all markers of the low-voiced
understanding you can feel when walking with a friend in a
landscape where the eye and the body become part of the unity of
sky and mountain and water and grass, when the tone means much
more than the word. (trans. G. Florby)
52
Serge Guilbaut, in a response to a comment made by Jeff Wall,
mistakenly supposing that his work might not be an attempt
to eradicate the love affair with the floating signifier as he had
previously thought. (See Representation, Suspicions and Critical
Transparency: An interview with Jeff Wall by T.J. Clark, Serge
Fig. 14: Georg Gudni working on a canvas in the Department of Painting at the
102 Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in December 1982
Guilbaut and Anne Wagner. Parachute (59), July-Sept. 1990, pp.
4-10). I was impressed with many of Walls replies, particularly
as they pertain to the position of the spectator, and some of his
concerns are obliquely reflected in this essay.
Sandqvist, op.cit., p. 83.
53
54
This kind of aversion to recent painting comes across clearly
in some of the essays by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Hal Foster
and Douglas Crimp, which is not to detract from their often
powerful and persuasive arguments. See e.g. Crimps The Art of
Exhibition republished in October: The First Decade, 1976-1986.
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, , 1987), pp. 223-255.
Or Fosters Recodings: Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics, (Seattle/
Washington: Bay Press, 1985).
55
I speak here from my own experience of English and American
universities. A similar shift of emphasis took place inside the art
academy during last decade. In 1991 David Ross, the director
of the Whitney Museum of American Art, hired one of the most
prominent and adamant defenders of the Marxist position,
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, to head the curatorial studies program at
the museum. A thorough inquiry into the intellectual camaraderie
and mutual safeguarding of interests of those who make it their
business to criticize art and society should therefore be in order.
(A preliminary study has been made by Edward W. Said. See
Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community in Post
Modern Culture, edited by Hal Foster. Pluto Press, 1983).
56
As you know, more often than not it is by way of commercial
galleries that one eventually gets invited to shows that attract larger
audiences. Documenta, museum exhibitions, and so forth rarely
present works that have not been, at least marginally, sanctioned by
the art trading posts. The same is true for the art press. I am sure
we would not be discussing this here today if I had not shown in
commercial galleries. You would probably not know my work, and
it might be very different or nonexistent... So, all in all, it is a messy
situation, full of compromises. See A Conversation with Hans
Haacke by YvesAlain Bois, Douglas Crimp and Rosalind Krauss.
Reprinted in October: The First Decade, op, cit., p. 195.
57
In Critical Reflections, Thomas Crow referring to the texts
of Buchloh and Charles Harrison as being distinguished by a
thoroughly appropriate elevation of tone and impersonal precision
of language would seem to accede to this requirement to some
degree when he observes: But where art demands translation into
a more vernacular idiom, refined vocabularies can suddenly appear
ill-adapted to the job. This can even be the case with the home
territory of high criticism. Some of the most successful work in
an impeccably conceptual mode... has depended upon reference
to specific, local histories and experience. A full account of their
achievements will require a more demotic style of paraphrase than
serious art writing has generally been able to accommodate (Art
Forum, May, 1992, p. 105).
103
105
Pl. 42: Untitled, 1996, 110 x 150
Previous spread: Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm 1991
107
 Pl. 43: Untitled, 1997, 135 x 165 cm

109
EARTH, AIR AND WATER
Georg Gudni and The Icelandic Landscape Tradition

Nature may be right in front of us, and beyond. It is above and below, even within us. But
most of all it is found in time, always changeable and continuous. Never the same. And it
will never be found in square frames.
Halldr Laxness The Atom Station, 1948

At the beginning of the 1990s painter Georg Gudni, by his own admission, found himself
in something of a cul-de-sac, artistically speaking. In spite of a relatively short profes-
sional career his work was first seen publicly in a 1983 group show Gudni was by
the early 90s repeatedly credited with having single-handedly revitalized the century-old
and ailing tradition of Icelandic landscape painting.

Hannes Sigurdsson has thoroughly documented Gudnis early progress, which we might
sum up here by saying that it was fuelled by two main impulses. The first was the desire
common to every young artist to make it new, coupled with a dissatisfaction with the
new options available to him. (I found myself becoming increasingly bored looking at
art magazines, reading critical texts... simply keeping up with and following... the latest
trends)1. The second was his deep love of the Icelandic landscape, nurtured through
regular exposure to it from an early age. This went hand in hand with a dislike of the way
this landscape had been exhausted and over-exploited2 by traditional painters.

As a young art student Gudni was attracted to the earliest, virtually apprentice works
by the countrys first professional landscape painters, Thrarinn B. Thorlksson and
sgrmur Jnsson small and unassuming pastoral scenes or softly painted studies of
distant horizons as well as primitive landscapes by amateur painters or itinerant natu-
ralists such as Sveinn Plsson. Significantly, Gudni was also impressed with the artless
19th-century watercolour renderings of the Icelandic landscape by outsiders untainted
by local tradition, such as the Englishman Collingwood.

111
Pl. 44: Untitled, 2003, 280 x 200 cm
It is this strand of landscape painting that lies behind Mt. Orrustuhll, Gudnis seminal
painting of 1983, executed while he was still in art school.(Pl. 7) It goes a long way towards
the stark and monumental geometry of his later paintings, yet retains some of the details
that we find in what we might call traditional landscapes, details that were to be relentlessly
pruned from subsequent works.

To arrive at a personal vision of the world through his beloved Icelandic landscape,
Gudni needed to get away from it. It was during his two years of study in the Netherlands,
at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, that the artist fully realized the implications of
what he was doing. As early as 1987 he said in an interview with the present writer:

Being away from Iceland, I had to use my minds eye to see the mountains I wanted to
paint, and I discovered that I actually wanted to paint them from memory, not from direct
observation. By the time I settled on a mountain, I had already decided on the look of
the final picture, the shape of the canvas and so on. And in thinking about a particular
mountain, I also found that it became mixed with impressions of other mountains and my
felings about mountains in general. The mountains had become a means to an end. I sup-
pose that I am really coming to terms with concepts like stillness, awe, even memory itself.3

I think it is fair to say that during those first heady years of his career, Gudnis approach
to the landscape of his native country was primarily conceptual; it was about ideas such
as stillness, awe, memory and empathy rather than about natural landmarks with
hallowed names such as Thingvellir or Mt. Skjaldbreidur. The main thrust of the Icelandic
landscape tradition grounded as it was on a combination of topography (an old Icelandic
saying goes: Worthless is the nameless landscape), Czannesque formalism and a dazzling
(and to many unrealistic) chromaticism was of little or no use to a painter wanting to go
beyond the visible, except as something to rebel against.

By 1990, Gudnis idea-based approach to landscape had led him towards a radical realign-
ment of its elements. In an astonishing painting such as Untitled of 1990 he would devote a
whole canvas to the blueness of a given natural scene Gudni himself referred to it as a
painting of air. (Pl. 30) In a second Untitled of the same year he would divide the different
colouristic attributes of a mountain into separate panels, which would then be yoked together
as an abstraction or concretization of the mountain in question, depending on ones point
of view. (Pls. 30, 31, 33, 34) Unsurprisingly, when Gudni showed a number of these paintings
at the Artek Gallery in Helsinki in 1992, the catalogue introduction by Michael Casey focused
almost entirely on their place within the canon of contemporary abstract art.

112 Pl. 45: Untitled, 1995, 170 x 180 cm

113
In itself, the increasing abstraction of the natural motif in Gudnis art was a logical develop-
ment, given his idealizing cast of mind. Or, as he cogently explains to Kevin Power in a re-
cent book on his work: I think that landscape paintings and abstract paintings come from
the same source its a matter of forms and colors rather than telling stories. In my case,
the works have always been very close to abstract or simple geometric forms.4 Later on in
the same interview Gudni goes into more detail:

The move from landscape to geometry was something that just happened step by step,
very naturally. I was painting these mountains, and little by little I got very interested in
how one color touched the other or how the sky met the earth or the mountain. I was start-
ing to look more closely at things and focusing on how earth (solid) and sky (air) came
together; it started with some paintings of slopes and ended with a vertical line or two
parts of the same size.5

There is no doubt that these paintings served their purpose, as far as Gudni was concerned.
But, as he confessed to the present writer, they had brought him further than he was com-
fortable with from the landscape motifs that continued to invade his sketchbooks. In the
wake of his numerous treks and travels in the Icelandic interior, Gudni discovered within
himself a need to come to terms with landscapes qua landscapes, recollect what he felt
when sketching and photographing them and

Pl. 46: Untitled, 1995, 75 x 200 cm

114
Pl. 47: Untitled, 1996, 135 x 165 cm

[to] understand and discover how things were, what kind of light was present there at the time, or
even if it is possible to see things like that... Its not a path towards abstraction I want to paint
lyrically, but I also want to retain the rational element. It is a landscape, but I do not want you to
connect to it in any way as something specific.6

Gudnis return to actual landscape sources at the beginning of the 1990s also led him
towards a re-evaluation of the Icelandic landscape tradition and eventually to a dialogue
with it which has continued to the present day. It was a move that might even have been
triggered, directly or indirectly, by two important exhibitions of Icelandic landscape paint-
ing that took place in 1989-90. One of them was the National Gallerys retrospective of the
work of Jn Stefnsson (1881-1962), who was to become increasingly important to Gudni
as time went by. The other was a large exhibition of Icelandic art entitled Landscapes from a

115
High Latitude, which travelled to five galleries throughout Britain in 1989-90. Though
the exhibition was never shown in Iceland, Gudni, as the youngest artist included in it,
would have been familiar with its premises. What distinguished this exhibition from all
previous surveys of Icelandic landscape art was the conceptual or idea-based approach of
the British curators and writers. For the first time the Icelandic landscape tradition was
not presented in the form of an all-too-familiar Modernist litany: Paul Czanne who begot
Jn Stefnsson who begot Kristn Jnsdttir etc., but rather as a species of Symbolism,
as evidenced by the titles of the main essays in the catalogue John Russell Taylors
Symbolism: The Constant Strain in Icelandic Art, and Michael Tuckers Not the land, but
an Idea of a Land.

In their essays both Taylor and Tucker make a strong case for considering the early work
of Thorlksson, sgrmur Jnsson and even Jn Stefnsson in terms of its metaphysical as-
pect, its striving to come to terms with something supra naturam within Icelands extraor-
dinary landscape. Until then earlier discussions of the Symbolist strain in Icelandic art had
been limited to the early paintings of Jhannes Kjarval and sculpture of Einar Jnsson.

Three years earlier, Dreams of a Summer Night, an exhibition of largely Symbolist Scandi-
navian painting at the turn of the 20th century had been organized for the Hayward Gallery
in London. Of Icelandic work, it included four paintings by Thorlksson, which were
introduced only in the most general terms. And in the scholarly surveys of Scandinavian
Symbolist art which accompanied the exhibition, there was no mention of Icelandic art or
artists. In short, by 1990 Georg Gudni would have been encouraged to take a fresh look at
the work of Thorlksson, sgrmur Jnsson, Jn Stefnsson and their followers, who domi-
nated Icelandic art until the onset of World War II.

It has been said that, by and large, theirs is a landscape without weather: it is as if rain, fog,
frost and fierce winds were never a part of the Icelandic climate. In an essay on nature-based
art in Iceland art historian Audur lafsdttir maintains that: The idealization of nature
in the works of the pioneers of Icelandic art derives from the ideology of the nationalist,
romantic campaign for independence.7 More specifically, it served to remind Icelanders,
with their deeply ingrained utilitarian view of nature, of the aesthetic separateness of their
soon-to-be-independent country, on par with its cultural, historical and linguistic separate-
ness. This idealization has parallels in the visions of nature propagated by the Icelandic
Romantic poets during the early part of the 19th century. John Russell Taylor sees in this
idealization of the Icelandic landscape a wishful thinking of sorts:

117
Pl. 48: Untitled, 2001, 200 x 180 cm
 Icelandic colourists often maintain that there is nothing unrealistic about their colours, and
it is just the ignorance of outsiders to suppose that the Icelandic scene is grim and uniform-
ly dark-toned. There is of course a lot to that, but all the same, it is difficult not to conclude
that the Icelanders penchant for brilliant colour-schemes is also partially a compensation
and partially a symbolic device for imbuing what they see in front of them with the feeling
they experience while seeing it the light that never was on land or sea, indeed.8

It is instructive to compare the Icelandic school of landscape painting to the Canadian

Group of Seven, which also sought to define itself in nationalist terms at a similar point in
time, c. 1910-30. For the Canadians, the separate identity of their country was best served
by an honest appraisal of its natural aspect under all circumstances. Like their ancestors,
the French and English explorers who had traversed their vast country, they sallied forth to
distant parts to bring back to civilization views of verdant valleys as well as boulder-strewn
riverbeds, sunsets as well as thunderclouds and storms. The opposition the Canadian art-
ists encountered centered on their honesty, as their landscapes were simply too harsh and
chaotic for cultured tastes in Toronto or Ottawa.9

This charge was never levied against the Icelandic landscape pioneers with good reason.
If, as suggested at the outset, Georg Gudni revitalized the Icelandic landscape tradition, it
was chiefly by transcending it, turn it into what art historian Martica Sawin has called the
vehicle for intimations of immortality in the Wordsworthian sense, adding that to look
into his light-suffused distances is to be led beyond nature towards a vision of eternity.10

Paradoxically, this process involved not further idealization of the landscape, but rather a
more pragmatic attitude towards it. In their nationalist fervor, most Icelandic landscape
painters had concentrated on what Halldr Laxness called the blessed summerland, a few
beauty spots with a European appeal in the southern and western part of Iceland, ignor-
ing the countrys generally hostile climate, the desolate highlands, the barren lava fields, the
impassable glacial rivers, the breakers incessantly pounding the shores.

For Gudni, these were the essential aspects of the Icelandic landscape and defined the
countrys otherness, what Roland Barthes might have called its islandicit. The artist
was not the only one to hold this view, for the 1990s also saw the beginning of an ecological
debate in Iceland that centered on government plans to locate hydroelectric stations in what
its spokesmen called the bleak and barren and, by implication, disposable parts of the
highlands. Critics of these plans argued that by so doing, heavy industry was encroaching
on the countrys heartland. By now this has become an ongoing debate.

118 Pl. 49: Untitled, 1996, 135 x 150 cm

119
It should be mentioned that Gudni was not the first artist to rebel against the idealistic
interpretation of the Icelandic landscape depicted by the pioneers of the genre. In the
1920s and early 1930s, shortly after Iceland gained commonwealth status within the
Danish state, a few painters, led by Gudmundur Einarsson of Middal (1895-1963) pro-
tested against what they termed the misappropriation of the Icelandic landscape by
their immediate predecessors. They felt the earlier style was too European and too soft,
that it failed to do justice to the harsh vitality of the Icelandic natural scenery. They
claimed that this harshness had, more than anything, shaped the breed of Icelanders
and enabled them to survive centuries of inclement climate and natural disasters, presum-
ably on the principle that what doesnt kill you makes you stronger. The artistic response
of this new generation of painters (which included Finnur Jnsson, Sveinn Thrarinsson
and sgeir Bjarnthrsson) to theideal landscape was to seek out and paint little-known
and frankly unappealing places, scenes of natural disasters and views of Iceland in deep-
est winter. If Gudni can be said to belong to an Icelandic painterly tradition, however
tangentially, this is probably it.

In his search for essences Gudni went beyond topography and geological facts. His sketch-
books from the 1990s onwards continue to bear witness to his interest in the particular
aspects of well-known mountains and promontories such as Ernir, Dmon, Lodmundur,
Lmagnpur, Ptursey, Botnsslur, Vfilsfell, Mosfell et. al. But translated to canvas, these
motifs lost their identifying details and names and reverted to archetypes.

Gudni reduces the Icelandic landscape to three archetypes: the horizon, the vale and the
mountain. At the same time he enters into a dialogue with those painters who laid the foun-
dations of the prevailing vision of the Icelandic landscape: Thorlksson, sgrmur Jnsson,
Jhannes Kjarval and Jn Stefnsson. Gudnis large paintings of horizons from the mid-
1990s onwards may be seen as a gloss on Thorlkssons and sgrmur Jnssons early
landscape panoramas, for instance Thorlkssons Hekla picture of 1912 or Jnssons
many watercolours from the Hornafjrdur region. These paintings document the meet-
ing of dramatic landscapes, outlined in pristine detail, and an equally dramatic cloudland,
views made possible by Icelands unusual atmospheric conditions. Gudnis paintings
are more about what happens in the space between the viewer and the horizon, different
degrees of transparency and different types of weather: winds, fog and rain. Moreover,
emphasizing that these paintings are to be experienced by the whole body, not just the
optical nerves, Gudni paints his natural scenes on the vertical scale, the human scale,
rather than the horizontal.

121
Pl. 50: Untitled, 1997, 193 x 223 cm
 Fig. 15: Curtains of Rain (1925-1964) by Jhannes S. Kjarval
Oil on canvas, 140 x 145 cm. Courtesy of Reykjavk Art Museum

Gudni was well aware that these paintings were a significant departure from the work of his
predecessors, claiming that painting rain and fog was a way of breaking with the landscape
tradition.11 Actually, there is one Icelandic landscape artist who does, on occasion, incor-
porate weather into his paintings, namely Kjarval. For most of his life Kjarval worked on an
extraordinary painting entitled Curtains of Rain (1925-1964), which shows a semi-trans-
parent veil of rain being drawn halfway across a lava landscape in the manner of a stage cur-
tain. (Fig. 15) An untitled painting of Gudnis from 1990 showing the remnants of vertical
rain being swept across one half of the canvas, is surely a veiled tribute to Kjarval. (Pl. 51)
But unlike Kjarval and his followers, Gudni has never been loath to explain his motives:

Rain radically changes the landscape and the way in which we see it. First of all, I think
that the rain materializes the air: in other words, a valley that appears empty is full when
it starts to rain. The rain, in fact, isolates forms from the background so that you notice
different landscapes in the rain than you do in clear weather. It simplifies everything, both
color and forms. The rainy weather... provided me with something totally different from
the sunny, pleasant weather conditions that one tends to see in landscape paintings. And
even more to the point, the rain obscures and never tells the whole story so that you have
to use your imagination to construct what is potentially there.12

Another important aspect of these paintings of the 1990s, fitting in with Gudnis avoidance
of specific details, is the anonymity of the motifs. They are inspired by places

122 Pl. 51: Untitled, 1990, 50 x 61 cm

123
 Fig. 16: Lava (1949) by Jhannes S. Kjarval. Oil on canvas, 121 x 120 cm
Courtesy of Reykjavk Art Musuem

that are so unimportant that people hardly even bother to give them names. These are
the places that you might well pass when you go from one destination to another, places
that dont have anything dramatic or beautiful about them. I think it is very interesting to
work with something very ordinary and try to turn it into the opposite. Thus the viewer
has nothing to focus on, but it remains a landscape. You find it familiar, but... you have to
build the final picture in your head.13

This fits in with Gudnis liking for other works by Kjarval. In his conversations with Kevin
Powers he explains the attraction, for him, of a popular Kjarval painting such as the 1949
Lava: It is not specific as far as any precise definition of where it is but it is more a matter of
what it is, what type of landscape it is, and that is something which has always been of inter-
est to me.14 (Fig. 16) Of another Kjarval painting, Bleikdals (ca. 1950-60) he says:

I have started to like [it] in the last few years, I think mainly because it hardly has a subject
at all: it is more like a snapshot of a light-colored or almost white stone in the middle of
the canvas, with a river on one side and land on the other. And there is no sky, nothing at
all. I feel that it is akin to my paintings of a landscape that can be found or seen in between
places, in-between places of no interest.15 (Fig. 17)

125
Pl. 52: Untitled, 2004, 190 x 200 cm
Fig. 17: Bleikdals (1966) by Jhannes S. Kjarval. Oil on canvas, 100 x 155 cm
Courtesy of Reykjavk Art Musuem

If Gudnis paintings of anonymous, in-between places set up a straightforward confronta-

tion between man and unbounded space that we may choose to experience either physically
or intellectually, his series of paintings of vales are altogether more complicated, structur-
ally as well as intellectually. Yet they appear simple enough at first, and even second glance.
They are either constructed as light-filled spaces between two mountainsides or as a series
of intersecting valleys as intricate as a cross-section through the clinker-built keel of long-
ships, to quote Jane Johnston.16

In both cases their effect is hypnotic. Gazing into the former, the spectators are slowly
drawn towards their luminous centres, offering the infinite comfort of the womb and the
possibility of a higher state of being. The viewer is reminded of that almost primordial first
known landscape painting by an Icelandic artist, a composite construct like Gudnis paint-
ings, namely Sigurdur Gudmundssons 1872-3 backdrop of a valley landscape for Matthas
Jochumsons Romantic play about Icelandic outlaws. Like Gudnis works, Gudmundssons
painting speaks of the possibility of a safe haven, the Edenic state. (Fig. 18)

This is probably why most people who see these paintings automatically think they recog-
nize them. Or in the words of the artist: [They] speak to something inside them. 17 The
experience can be catharthic; the present writer once witnessed a spectator breaking down
in tears before one of Gudnis vale paintings. With the intersecting valleys the viewing ex-
perience is more ordered, though the end result tends to be the same. Instead of being swal-
lowed up in an instant, the spectator is brought in gradually, following the inwards-receding
valleys, penetrating one layer of semi-transparent paint after another, ultimately reaching,
not exactly a vanishing point, but a point of no return somewhere in the faraway mist.

126 Pl. 53: Untitled, 2006, 240 x 220 cm

127
Fig. 18: Backdrop for The Outlaws (1872-73) by Sigurdur Gudmundsson
Courtesy of the National Museum of Iceland

But whereas the former category of vale painting is essentially about space and light and the
way they come together to create transcendental experiences that liberate us from our hum-
drum lives, Gudni has greater ambitions for his paintings of intersecting valleys. In interviews
he frequently talks about them as rooms: I was interested in... how the mountain slopes
on each side were like walls in a room. 18 But to him these rooms were not only full of air
and rain and fog, they became spaces for thoughts and imagination and emotion, and in that
space the waves of sound travel and thoughts are expressed and our imagination is free. And
it is also a space for solitude.19 The painting technique itself becomes instrumental in effect-
ing this fusion between subject and painting: When I returned to landscapes specifically,
valleys I painted with horizontal and vertical brushstrokes... The brushstrokes, painted ac-
cording to the shape of the canvas, were... rational and concentrated, weaving [together] the
subject matter, the emotion, the time, the light, the memory and so on.20

In his journey towards the centre of these paintings, the spectator thus travels through
a space impregnated with feelings, memories and imagined sounds, not unlike Sigurdur
Gudmundssons backdrop with its absent outlaws. Today we have become the outlaws,
in need of a safe haven where our imagination can roam at will. For Gudni landscape is
defined by the human presence, our possession of it, our presence in it and our thoughts
about it. Everything else is topography, or dead matter, to quote his view of the painting
of Ad Reinhardt.

128 Pl. 54: Untitled, 1998, 70 x 80 cm

129
Here he finds common ground with Kjarval, yet again. Though the latter was never ob-
livious to topography for Kjarval place-names were part of the poetry of landscape
he regarded the meaning of a particular landscape as the sum of everything that had
happened in or around it: the lives of the people who had lived in it from time immemo-
rial and had colonized it through the fabrication of poetry and folktales about it as much
as through land cultivation, the historical events that had taken place there, and finally
the presence of the artist himself. Which is why we find familiar landscapes by Kjarval
teeming with the unfamiliar: faces or men and women, ethereal beings flitting in and out
of rock faces, stylized harps or boats, signifying perhaps poetry or the power of the imagi-
nation and finally reminders of the artists part in the colonization of the landscape in the
form of painted palettes. In a discussion about his early work, Gudni says: It all started
with the mountain for me the mountain was a symbol not only of landscape, but also, I
think, of Iceland and the history of Icelandic art.21

As Hannes Sigurdsson makes clear in his essay on the artist, these mountain paintings are
about many things: not least history, myth and pathetic fallacy the trope of depicting
an empathetic resonance of nature with subjective human emotion. As for the archetypal
paintings of single mountains that Gudni has produced since 1990 (until the present),
they are characterized by a greater self-consciousness than before, as well as a greater
consciousness of the image of the mountain in the history of Icelandic art.

We find Gudni picking up on one of his early images of a mountain, for example the 1985
Ernir, but now the emblematic and enigmatic flatness has given way to a fuller,
more three-dimensional depiction, as in the Untitled of 1999. This adds more reality
to the painting, but paradoxically, it also adds to the mysterious aura of the mountain.
Whereas Ernir or Thrdrangar (1986) loomed large in the form of huge backdrops or
flat shadows, suggesting that what we saw was what we saw, to appropriate a famous
saying of Frank Stella, a later painting like Untitled and others of the same ilk seem to
suggest that something unexpected might be happening at the point where the flatlands
meet the mountain, or along the edges of the mountain or even behind it, out of sight.

These paintings tie in with an intriguing dialogue which Gudni has conducted with
the paintings of one of his illustrious predecessors, Jn Stefnsson. Though Gudni was
more drawn to the work of Thorlksson and sgrmur Jnsson during the early part
of his career, he always had grudging respect for Stefnsson. In the wake of the above-
mentioned reappraisal of Stefnssons work in the early 1990s, whereby his numerous

131
Pl. 55: Untitled, 1994, 150 x 170 cm
 Pl. 57: Untitled, 1998, 193 x 223.5 cm

studies of dark and gloomy mountains in barren landscapes were found to carry a strong
symbolist charge, Gudni began to address Stefnssons paintings with his own. One par-
ticular painting of Stefnssons took Gudnis fancy, namely the 1920 Eirksjkull (Erics
Glacier):

I found myself becoming very intrigued by the way in which he [Stefnsson] opens up a
path for us to go from one space into another. The mountains are no longer the most im-
portant element in the painting: what matters is the way he takes you from the lower part
into what lies beyond, whether it be the middle section or the background.22 (Fig. 5)

This interest in the spatial progression within Stefnssons paintings is probably behind
a number of pairings that Gudni started to experiment with in the 1990s. They would
feature either the interlinking of two mountainsides, essentially offshoots of important
mountainside-paintings like the 1987 Ernir, where the spectator would be encouraged
to make the mental effort to continue inwards, to pass from one intersection to another,
or alternatively Gudni would paint a pair of free-standing mountains, as in the Untitled of
1998. (Pl. 56)

133
Pl. 56: Untitled, 1988, 70 x 85 cm
The latter look like the sort of mountains that Stefnsson might paint: dark, bleak and omi-
nous, silhouetted against a leaden sky. But whereas Stefnsson generally makes his mountains
into single iconic presences that demand our awe from a respectful distance, Gudnis softly-
painted mountains, huddling close to each other, draw us towards the conjunction of their
contours. Like so many of Gudnis earlier and indeed later works, this painting urges us
to believe in the deep significance of the seemingly insignificant places that lie beyond those
contours.

In his essay on Icelandic art Michael Tucker invokes the writing of philosopher Gaston
Bachelard and studies of Shamanism in order to explain the poetically charged Icelandic
response to a landscape of awesome, magnetic power and pastoral charm.23 To him, this
response is partly a process of healing, whereby the artist, as leader of his tribe, must pass
through initiatory terrors of desolation and loneliness, with an actual or symbolic wilderness
providing the crucial terrain wherein psychic abstraction is eventually transmuted to emphatic
solitude, a prelude to worthwhile social interaction.24

Is there not in Gudnis celebrations of insignificant, wild places somewhere in between the
distant mountains an echo of the Shamanistic theme of removing oneself to the wilderness,
dispensing with the distracting clutter of everyday life in order to attain an inner level of tran-
scendent energy and affirmation? This is perhaps fanciful conjecture, athough it is beyond
doubt that Georg Gudni has had a more profound effect on our awareness of the Icelandic
landscape than any other living artist. Whereas Kjarval brought us up close to both the geo-
logical and mythic centre of this landscape, Gudni has turned it into a vehicle of extraordinary
physical and metaphysical complexity, which has by no means exhausted its appeal.

Reykjavik in May 2007

Adalsteinn Inglfsson

134 Pl. 58: Untitled, 2004, 170 x 110 cm

135
NOTES
1
Ed. Viggo Mortensen & Pilar Perez, Strange Familiar: the Work of Georg
Gudni, Perceval Press 2005, p. 23.
2
Ibid.
3
Iceland Review, 11.9.1987.
4
Mortensen & Perez, p. 26.
5
Ibid. p. 30.
6
Mortensen & Perez, p. 41.
7
Audur lafsdttir, Visions of Nature in Icelandic Art, in Confronting
Nature: Icelandic Art of the Twentieth Century (Washington D.C.:
Corcoran Gallery, 2001), p. 23.
8
John Russell Taylor, Symbolism: The Constant Strain in Icelandic
Art, in Landscapes from a High Latitude: Icelandic Art 1909-1989 (The
Barbican Art Centre et al., 1989), p. 104. See for instance Charles C. Hill,
The Group of Seven, Art for a Nation, National Gallery of Canada, 1995.
9
Martica Sawin, Updating the Nordic Sublime in Confronting Nature:
Icelandic Art of the Twentieth Century, p. 20.
10
Mortensen & Perez, p. 42.
11
Ibid. pp. 41-42.
12
Ibid. p. 38.
13
Ibid. p. 25.
14
Ibid. pp. 25-26.
15
Ibid. p. 16.
16
Ibid. p. 17.
17
Ibid. p.30.
18
Ibid. p.30.
19
Ibid. pp. 30-31.
20
Ibid. p. 35.
21
Ibid. p. 49.
22
Michael Tucker, Not the Land, but an Idea of a Land, in Landscapes
from a High Latitude:Icelandic Art 1909-1989 (The Barbican Art Centre
et al. 1989), p. 107.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid, p. 114.

136
137
138
Pnultil er hn til hrri upplausn??? Annars f Odda til a stkka hana og
hn 139
verur svolti grf
140
GRIP

SPEGLANDI SPEGLAR
Sumarsning Listasafnsins Akureyri 2007 er helgu verkum Georgs Guna landslagsml-
ara, en ar gefur a lta hfundarverk eins helsta listamanns sinnar kynslar. sta ess
a sna verk Guna rttri tmar er hver hinna riggja sningarsala safnsins tileinkaur
kvenu minni sem oft bregur fyrir ferli Guna: fjll, dalir og sjndeildarhringur. run
er sjaldnast beint lnulegt ferli. Me v a nlgast verkin t fr ema fremur en tmar geta
horfendur og listamaurinn sjlfur s hvernig au hafa rast gegnum nja fagurfrilega
og gagnrna linsu.

Vi Guni hfum bir nm vi Myndlista- og handasklann ri 1980, ar sem vi vor-

um myndlistardeild fr 19811984. Mlverki var nlega aftur komi tsku me skvettum
og slettum af v taginu sem hafi komi abstrakt expressjnisma korti me tilheyrandi
mtvgi vi raunsi og myndrna frsgn. sklarunum gusai Guni mlningunni
strigann, lt hana leka dropatali ea bkstaflega rigna lrefti. Stll hans tti rtur a rekja
til nja expressjnismans sem fram kom upp r 1980 og tengdist eim menningarlegu og
sgulegu straumum beggja vegna Atlantshafsins sem leiddu til loka mdernska tmabils-
ins. a sem fyrstu voru handahfskenndir dropar tk smm saman sig mynd risavaxins
spegilsltts lns, undarlegs spegils sem ltur stundum t fyrir a vera glerharur en samt
svo sveigjanlegur a hgt vri a stga gegnum hann. Okkur flgunum til mikillar furu
birtist allt einu ri 1983 yfirltislaust landslag t r reiu frumforma og flmkenndrar
pensilskriftar. Fyrst birtist landslagi striga listamannsins, og san kom sjlfur listama-
urinn ljs: Georg Guni, landslagsmlari.

Guni var skyndilega orinn gamaldags landslagsmlari landi ar sem abstrakt konseptlist
hafi veri vi vld meira en tvo ratugi. egar hann afhjpai verk sn Nlistasafninu
ri 1985 uru horfendur heillair. Persnuleg efnistk og srst nlgun Guna geri
a a verkum a honum var strax hampa og hann lauk nmi sem boberi nrrar snar
eitthva sem kallast gat srslenskt. Guni hafi enduruppgtva og endurreist slensku
landslagshefina sem listheimurinn var bin a afskrifa sem daua og r sr gengna.

nmsrum okkar urum vi Guni gir vinir. Ein sta ess a g kva ri 1985 a
sna baki vi mlaralistinni var sennilega s hve einbeitt sn Guna var sem listamanns.

Pl. 60: Untitled, 2004, 200 x 150 cm

141 spread: National Gallery of Iceland, 2003
Previous
Leiir skildi; g fr til London en hann til Hollands framhaldsnm vi Jan van Eyck-
akademuna Maastricht og nsta ratuginn hittumst vi aeins heima frum. Undir lok
nunda ratugarins tk Lars Bohman-galleri Svj Guna upp arma sna og ri
1991 lagi Bohman drg a einkasningu hans. Guni ba mig um a skrifa ritger sn-
ingarskrna en vegna m.a. efnahagslgarinnar var ekkert r tgfu hennar. Stytt tgfa
ritgerar minnar fyrir sningarskrna var svo birt Skrni hausti 1994.

Me v a birta essa ritger mna, ar sem himinn mtir jr, fullri lengd nna, meira
en fimmtn rum eftir a hn var skrifu, m segja a veri s a draga fram dagsljsi
sgulegar minjar. Sem slk segir greinin ef til vill meira um tarandann en listamanninn.
Snemma tunda ratugnum fr slensk list loksins a brjtast t r einangrun sinni me
afgerandi htti og vekja meiri eftirtekt erlendis. Grunnttir sgu myndlistar slandi sem
raktir eru ritger minni voru og eru enn nausynlegir vegna ess a list Guna, rtt eins og
svo margra annarra slenskra listamanna, er sprottin upp r hinni srstku run landslags-
mlsverksins, ekki sur en landinu sjlfu.

ritger sinni L, loft og lgur: Georg Guni og slenska landslagshefin myndlist held-
ur Aalsteinn Inglfsson fram umfjllun um list Guna ar sem minni grein sleppir ri
1992. Aalsteinn skoar samband Guna vi slenska landslagshef, sem bregur va fyrir
verkum listamannsins og hann er sr vel mevitaur um. etta stafestir a sland hefur
eignast listsgulega hef sem sari kynslir geta leita smiju til.

ritger minni er fjalla um hvernig samra landslagsins verkum Guna leitar jafnvgis
vi skynjun sem etta vifangsefni veitir; me rum orum, hvernig Guna tekst a
tfra fram r fngeru sjnhverfingar sem frt hafa honum viurkenningu og adun svo
margra. ritgerinni er einnig fjalla um hi plitska vgi landslagsmlverksins sem oft
er liti gjrsneytt llu slku hlutverki. Af eim skum er bkin, lkt sningunni sjlfri,
bygg upp hefbundinni tmar til a veita heildsttt yfirlit yfir feril Guna. Bkin snst
a mestu leyti um mlverk hans striga, en kvei var a sleppa llum vatnslitamyndum,
blantsteikningum og kolaskissum sem hann hefur gert ranna rs. Smuleiis eim ljs-
myndum sem Guni hefur teki ferum snum um landi gegnum tina og skipta ori
sundum.

Hva hefur breyst eim fimmtn rum san ritgerin var upphaflega skrifu? Fyrst m
telja breytingar basamsetningu landsins vegna fjlda innflytjenda, sem hr voru aeins
rfir fyrir tveimur ratugum. Vtk einkaving rkisstofnana ber vitni um aljav-
inguna og hefur breytt v hvernig slendingar lta landslag. slenska landslagshefin
rtur a rekja til fyrri hluta 20. aldar og var mjg hvtt fram af barttu jarinnar fyrir
efnahagslegu og plitsku sjlfsti. Enda tt tlka megi list Guna aljlegum ntum,
hafa essir ttir sterk hrif hvernig hann nlgast landslagi og r jkvu vitkur sem

142
verk hans hafa fengi hr heima. Landslagi hefur a geyma rautseigar leifar jlegrar
vitundar sem tkn sameignar og menningarlegrar samstu; a er spegill sem vi hldum
uppi bi til a skoa okkur sjlf og sna heiminum hver vi teljum okkur vera.

Vegna ess a sland hefur svo lengi veri tjari heimskortsins hefur slensk listfengi
a hlutverk a tala mli jarinnarog gefa hugtakinu merkingu. Undir yfirborinu m
greina tilfinningavitund sem er andsnin v a vera skilgreind sem jernishyggja.
Hn er meira anda innhverfrar sjlfsskounar sem grefur undan eirri opinberumynd
sem haldi er lofti af okkur slendingumog spyr rannsakandi hvort a a vera
slendingur hafi raun nokkurt mannfrilegt ea darwinskt gildi.

Eftir a hafa veri undir oki nlenduveldis aldarair hefur slenska jin loksins eign-
ast fullroska plitskt, hagstjrnarlegt, samflagslegt og menningarlegt sjlfsti n-
kvmlega eim tmapunkti egar nverandi kerfi eru tekin a glina og renna undir nja
heimsskipan. Me etta huga er okkur boi feralag um landslag Guna, okkar eigi
innra landslag, og me honum sjum vi sjlfsmynd okkar speglast fram og til baka fr tal
hlium.

Hannes Sigursson

143
144
 Pl. 61: Untitled, 2005, 200 x 180 cm

145
GRIP

FJALLA-FJLLUN
nefnd 1992 nr. VII

g er ti, stend ea sit steini. g horfi kringum mig sjndeildarhringinn, vttuna,

fjllin. Sum standa nlgt, nnur fjr. sjlfrtt fer hugurinn (slin) a reika, kannski a
svfa um. g fer t fjarlgina, t eilfina ar sem fjllin hafa rjfandi kyrr, ar sem
au eru htt a vera fjll, au eru loftkennd. g fer inn au, gegnum au. a sem br
fjallinu er lka fyrir utan a og kyrrinni er lka gn og drungi. loftinu rmast allar
hugsanir heimsins.
Georg Guni: r skissubk, dagsett 8. janar 1989.

San listaakademan var og ht hefur landslagi roki upp og niur vinsldalistann og

fengi margvslegar merkingar. annig yfirgnfi slenska landslagsmlverki, sem ein-
kenndist upphafi af undarlegum sambringi akademsks raunsis, rmantkur og j-
legra kennda, mestalla ara myndlist landinu fr aldamtum og fram undir lok sari
heimsstyrjaldar, egar a umbreyttist abstrakt-tgfu sjlfu sr og vk a lokum fyrir
fjlbreyttari vifangsefnum. Eftir a konsepti hlt innrei sna me tilkomu SM ttu
myndlsingar Hver sr fegra furland litlu fylgi a fagna. Mrgum fannst landslags-
mlun ba yfir (httulega) stanari hugmyndafri og vera hlfvegis fyrir nean sna vir-
ingu, srstaklega melimum yngri kynslarinnar.

N egar vi virumst standa frammi fyrir vistfrilegri tortmingu hefur nttran last
akallandi ingu. Upp r mijum sasta ratug fru listamenn Evrpu og Bandarkj-
unum aftur a gefa henni meiri gaum, en t fr nokku mismunandi forsendum. slandi,
lkt og annars staar Norurlndum ar sem umhverfisspjll af vldum mengunar eru
enn hverfandi, hefur aukinn klofningur milli borgar og sveitar leitt til lngunar a gra
saman sorfin tengsl, yfirleitt me (mevitari) endurmeltingu arfleif fyrirrennaranna.
erlendum strborgum, ar sem sndarveruleikinn er kominn hrra stig, hefur firringar-
firingurinn og tregablandinn sknuur eftir mur nttru aftur mti viki fyrir hagnt-

147
Pl. 62: Untitled, 1994, 185 x 200 cm
ari afstu til landsins. Bandarskum listamnnum er til dmis tamt a einblna yfirvofandi
eyileggingu lfrkisins, sem veldur svipuum tta og atmsprengjan geri dgum Kalda-
strsins, og beita gjarnan njustu tkni og vsindum (tlvuvddum innsetningum, textuum
ljsmyndum, techno-sublime, eco-agitprop) til a koma umhyggju sinni framfri og
hrista upp horfendum. Mlstaurinn er vafalaust gur. En slkar sjnrnar umvandanir
gu nttruverndar eiga a hins vegar til a fletja t innihaldi svo verkin virka oft sem lti
anna en umbir utan um boskapinn.

Georg Guni (Hauksson, f. 1961) tti hva strstan tt a blsa nju lfi slensku lands-
lagshefina. a eru lka fir slenskir listamenn sem jafn hreinrkta hefur veri apa eftir, ef
ekki gr-bltt fram lit og formi stemningu og yfirbragi, enda eru mlverk hans vill-
andi fljtmelt einfaldleika snum. Myndlist Guna snst ekki eins miki um landslagi
sem slkt og um ekkingarfrilegt samband okkar vi umhverfi, hvernig vi erum samofin
v, og henni er tvhyggjunni varpa fyrir ra. Mlverkin styja v ekki hina hefbundnu
skiptingu lkama og sinni, nttru og menningu, heldur er eim ja a eirri hugmynd a
andi jafngildi efni. etta er hvorki tilbrigi vi drauginn vlinni n a lit a allt megi
skoa sem innantmt sprikl efnafrilegra reinda. Spurningin snertir samspil mtfs og ml-
verks vi vilja listamannsins dansi skilningarvitanna.

Vi fyrstu sn mtti lykta a myndir Guna vru bundnar vi einhvers konar mnimalskan
formalisma. Svo er ekki. Hann er a glma vi andsta pla listrnnar skpunar og leitast vi
a bra : Hi geometrska (vitsmunalegt, rklegt, vlrnt, vensla, afmarka) og malerska (til-
finningalegt, draumkennt, lfrnt, sundurlaust, fljtandi). List hans byggist nkvmum athug-
unum fyrirbrigum nttrunnar hann gerir sr tar ferir um rfi og sveitir fjallatrukkn-
um snum til a upplifa hana fyrirvaralaust og er ess vegna grundvallaratrium emprsk.
Formrnt tlit verkanna stafar me rum orum ekki sur af raunverulegum eigindum
landslagsins en stlvali. Sem dmi notai hann byrjun stundum stefnu pensilfaranna til a
greina milli forms og birtuskila. En smm saman ruust strokurnar r rlegu flmi yfir
fnger hnitakerfi eins og sj m 1992 nr. VII, og vi munum fara betur saumana sar, v til
a skilja hvert hann er a fara er nausynlegt a vita hva undan er gengi. (Pl. 40)

Strax upphafi ferils sns beindi Guni sjnum snum a stkum fjllum, vanalega umkringd-
um eyilegu landflmi, nlgaist au hgt og sgandi og lsti eim sfellt einfaldari og
almennari htt. Fyrir honum vakir a sna landslaginu yfir mlningu svo a fjalli og sn
hans af v veri eitt. Til a tta sig afstu Guna til fjallsins er gagnlegt a hafa tv au-
kenni slenskrar nttru bak vi eyra, skgarleysi og verahaminn. essi leitni prsi, sem

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hann hripai niur skissubk ri 1987 og minnir vedska hugleislubn, tti a koma
okkur spori: g mla fjalli me sjlfum mr. g mla sjlfan mig fjalli. g mla fjalli r
huganum. Hr er jafn sparlega fari me or og listamaurinn notar form og liti.

Segja m a Guni hafi dregi athyglina a rigningunni og slyddunni svipaan htt og

Kjarval, og seinna Jn Stefnsson, opnuu augu okkar fyrir hrjstrugu bersvinu. Flk er
oft (viljandi) blint hi augljsa. Varla skortir rkomuna slandi, og samt drottna sl-
skinsmyndir yfir mlarahef okkar tt rok og rigning setji mun frekar svip sinn lofts-
lagi. Ein af athyglisverum afleiingum rkomu ea frassa (.e. mun tlna og afmun
smatria) er hvernig hlutirnir okkar tilviki fjalli hlirast til slkri verttu og vera
efniskenndir. annig aflkama yfirgefur fjalli sna hlutlgu verund, losnar r vijum
yngdarlgmlsins og umbreytist flktandi vofu. ar sem essar astur hafa hrif hfi-
leikann a meta fjarlgir getur veri erfitt a henda reiur hva hluturinn er langt burtu,
hvort fjarlgin skiptir klmetrum ea aeins rfum metrum; hvort hluturinn er rtt fyrir
framan nefi manni ea (ekki algeng skynvilla) inni hausnum. sama tma myndar
regnringurinn reifanlega efnisbr milli hlutarins og manns sjlfs, hugarins og ess sem
hann metekur. slskini og bjrtu veri skapast aftur mti gleidd ea rof milli ess a
horfa og kunnugs hlutveruleika snarinnar. gu skyggni er nnast eins og grundun ytri
fyrirbra gufi upp unngert lofti. Tvsi sem sprettur af rigningunni veitir hlut og huga
hinn bginn tkifri a mtast sama grundvelli.

Fr sjnarmii Guna er munurinn milli hugsunar (loft) og efnis (jr) v spurning um

stigsmun fremur en elismun. Hugarstarfsemin arf vitaskuld ekki a vera einangru, hn
getur borist t fyrir ramma sinn og ori finnanleg. a ngir a leia hugann a borg-
arumhverfi okkar til a glggva sig hva fyrir honum vakir, enda mtti segja a bygging s
hneig ea r sem frst hefur yfir anka og aan, gegnum uppdrtt, yfir fast efni. S
essu ljsi er rignignarinn r millignguagnir sem tengja skynlaust efni vi hugann
hugann sem fjalli gekk inn og var hluti af starfsemi hans vistulausum samruna
upplifunar, tilfinningavangaveltna, minninga.

Guna er blman ekki sur hugleikin. (a mtti lka ora a svo a hn hafi laast
a Guna, a hann s henni hugleikinn.) Fjll snast loftkenndari eftir v sem au
standa manni fjr uns au leysast upp vi himinhvolfi. Hvar byrjar fjall, hvar endar a?
Hvaa lna, ea samsetning lnum, m me fullvissu segja a lsi tilteknu fjalli? Hvernig
vitum vi a hn lsir v en ekki einhverju ru? blmu fjarskans er gjrningur a
greina kvenar tlnur. Ea rttara sagt, r eru allstaar.

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etta hefur valdi Guna nokkrum heilabrotum. ri 1987 temprai hann hlf-expressjn-
skan stl sinn og hf a bera mlninguna dkinn lngum, rofnum pensilstrokum annig
a r var ttur vefur samtvinnara lrttra (jr) og lrttra (loft) lna er endurspegla
fltting strigahranna. En hann lt ekki ar vi sitja. sta ess a smyrja litnum feinum
lgum byggi hann fltinn upp af olinmi me hundruum ef ekki sundum nf-
urunnra hjpa og ynnti olumlninguna svo miki t me fernis a mgulegt er a segja
hvar ein lna hvlir og nnur tekur vi. tkoman lkist ekki bara vatnslitum, votviri hefur
vissan htt veri endurstasett innan myndarinnar. Verklagi hafi hinsvegar fr me sr a
Guni gat aeins bi til um tta mlverk ri. Og afraksturinn fer minnkandi. etta hefur
hann mtt gjalda fyrir a reyna a fanga eitthva varanlegra en hverfult augnabliki, eitthva
h t og tma, frt um a kalla fram hljlausa hrynjandi nttrnnar. Hann liggur yfir
hverri mynd svo mnuum skiptir, mlar hana og endurmlar aftur og aftur, anga til hann
telur a fjalli og r hugsanir, tilfinningar og minningar sem hann hefur um a hafi bund-
ist saman rekjandi htt.

a sem mtir horfandanum eru ekki myndir sem sna fjalli undir kvenum ve-
urskilyrum ea tma dagsins, heldur heildarsummu allra tta eirrar reynslu sem Guni
hefur haft af v, ar meal hugsana sem uru til mean lngu vinnsluferlinu st. etta
tskrir einnig hvers vegna litur margra verkanna er jafn grr og afgerandi og raun ber
vitni; birtustyrkur eirra er einskonar mealtal hinna mismunandi stunda dagsins og rst-
anna fjgurra. Skerandi litasamsetningar og formrnt skklatog, er tlka eiga strufullar
kenndir gerandans, liggja eim vsfjarri. Sumar myndirnar luma svo fngerum litbrig-
um a r virast eintna. En ef grannt er a gtt kemur ljs a r eru gerar af mikl-
um fjlda hlfgegnsrra himna llum regbogans litum, sem hver um sig breytir ltillega
blbrigum laganna fyrir ofan og nean. (Alla myndlist verur a skoa millilialaust, og
a srstaklega vi um mlverk Guna. au eru eins og tnlist sem hljmar rtt vi heyrn-
armrk, jafn illprentanleg og svarttna-mlverk Ad Reinhardts.)

rtt fyrir jafnvgi formgerarinnar skynjai Guni samt sem ur spennu milli nlgar
og fjarlgar, forgrunns og bakrunns, er hann sveiflaist innbyris eins og verkin Brekka
(1988) og Akrafjall og Skarsheii (1987) gefa til kynna. Hann tk v a leita a lausn
andstunum nnd-fir, inni-ti, huglgni-hlutlgni, tilfinning- grundun, minning-sn
eirri vileitni a sameina mlverki, mlarann og hi mlaa einu plani ar sem slkar
mtsetningar standast ekki lengur og brotna undan innbyggri togstreitu tungumlsins.
Brn (1989), mean hann var a mla bratta fjallshl, lkkai hann hallalnuna stig af
stigi uns hn var orin a flugbeittu, lrttu striki en skar myndfltinn tvo jafna hluta, og

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hann st frammi fyrir hinni gnvekjandi samhverfu, svo notu su or William Blakes.
Brn er sasta myndin sem Guni gaf (stafrilegt) nafn. Hann var ekki lengur a fst vi
tilteki landsvi og byrjai a vsa almennt til verkanna sem Fjallsins. Eftir a eru au
einungis skrsett rgerinni samt rmverskri kennitlu.

Hugmyndin, hvernig hann gti forast ennan verskur og grtt sri, fddist egar
hann hafi loki vi stra mynd af Hjrleifshfa (1988), sem skipta urfti tvennt til
a koma henni t r vinnustofunni. Guni lt lrttan jaar hfans, me himinrnd
fyrir ofan, stemma vi samskeyti blindrammanna. upphafi gekk mj landrma eftir
forgrunninum er tengdi einingarnar saman, en a lokum tk hfinn yfir allt sjnsvi
lreftsins, og landrman hinum flekanum hvarf smuleiis svo eftir st himinhvolf-
i. Askilnai himins og jarar hafi veri vsa t fyrir mlvekri, a brnum umgjar-
arinnar, ann sta ar sem hin klassska sjnblekking opnai glugga sinn mt umheim-
inum. (Ef mlaralist fyrri tar markast af einrmi og veigamikill angi mdernismans af
fjlrmi, samanber Err, mtti kenna pst-mdernska naldarsn Guna vi alrmi.)
Hjrleifshfa svipar til rtflunnar 1989 nr. I, er samanstendur af blum, grum
og svrtum flekum. Guna tti samt ekki ng a gert. 1989 nr. II fjrir stramm-
ar, hver um sig str vi hur, sem spanna tplega tta metra kafla fr heiblum til
mettas indgbls litar, nstum svarts, fr dreifum reindum til svarthols er skur-
arlnunni engin hvld gefin. a er eins og verki innihaldi allt efni jarar. Guni fiskar
snilega lnuna upp r hinu Nietzsche-ska hyldpi, bilinu milli aliggjandi rammanna,
og hrekur hana t fyrir endamrk heimsins.

Lrtt og lrtt pensilfrin koma n til skjalanna v au eru s kngularvefur, s ramm-

geri fjtur slttur og blautur sem silkirma, er heldur efni og tmi lstu saman. Grindin
er kannski tknrnasta einkenni hinnar mdernsku hefar. San hn var innleidd ml-
verkum frum-kbistanna hefur hn lifa hlfgeru kngalfi og smitast kynsla milli, fr
Picasso og Braque til Piet Mondrians og aan yfir til Agnesar Martins, Jasper Johns, Brice
Mardens og Sol LeWitts. Grindin, eins og listfringurinn Rosalind Krauss rkstyur af
kantari fortlulist, er a meal sem myndlistin hefur nota hva mest til a einkava
sjnsvii og koma veg fyrir a frsagnarhefin traki yfirrasvi hennar. Hn heldur
fram a ala af sr fleiri dmi um eigi gti, samkvmt Krauss, jafnframt v a vera and-
sni run og umru. Krauss fullyrir einnig a hn s and-eftirlkingarleg og and-ntt-
ruleg. Eftir mlflutningi hennar a dma ttu mlverk Guna rauninni ekki a geta ver-
i til. Er hann einfaldlega undantekningin sem sannar regluna, ea m vera a honum hafi
heppnast a rjfa vitsmunalega gn grindarinnar og opna hana fyrir merkingarfrilegum,

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jafnvel frsagnarlegum, mguleikum? Krauss fjallar um hvernig ristaneti hefur veri nota
til a lsa yfir nskpunarmtti ntmalista. tmalegum skilningi er etta net einfaldlega
tkn ntmaleika, en:

rmislegum skilningi stafestir grindin sjlfsttt rki myndlistarinnar. Hn er marflt,

geometrukennd, skipuleg, auk ess a vera and-eftirlkingarleg, and-nttruleg, and-raun-
veruleg. Hn snir hvernig listin ltur t eftir a hafa sni baki vi nttrunni. Flatneskjan
sem stafar fr hnitsunum spar burt eiginleikum raunveruleikans og hleypir hliart-
breislu grindarinnar tvvu yfirborinu skora a. Reglufesta skipulagsins er ekki
afleiing eftirlkingar heldur fagurfrilegs setnings [...] Grindin gerir a a verkum a
samtengingar hinu fagurfrilega plani virast tilheyra rum heimi og vera, me hli-
sjn af nttrulegum hlutum, bi endanlegar og fyrirfram kvaraar.
(The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, bls. 9-10. MIT Press, 1985)

Guni stlir berlega ekki landslagi strangasta skilningi ess ors, en mlverkin hans
eru ekki and-realsk heldur (s anna bor hgt a segja a realisminn hafi eitthva sr-
stakt tilkall til raunveruleikans), og a er vissulega ekki hgt a tala um a au sni baki
vi nttrunni. tt lrtt og lrtt pensilfrin, er breia endanlega r sr hfutt-
irnar, eigi sr ekki beinlnis hlistu heimi reifanlegra hluta m finna me eim skyld-
leika sem virist fordmislaus fyrir essa annars sveigjanlegu formger. sar ristarinnar
eru margfldu eftirmynd af tlnum fjallsins, ea jari klettsins, og slttunnar umhverfis.
En Guni gengur lengra me v a setja fallbeinar rendurnar samhengi vi regndropana
er tengja hann sjnrnt bi andlega og lkamlega vi fjalli. Og me v a renn-
bleyta olumlninguna fernis hefur hann ahft vifangsefni enn frekar a nttru mi-
ilsins, gert a snertanlegt (ekki bara tkna a).

Hi stalaa sni grindarinnar er vanalega dregi upp lrefti me reglustiku; a er mek-

anskt, and-malerskt, flatt, stft, kalt, valdmannslegt og einstaklega vitsmunalegt. a hlfar
og fletur t einsleitt yfirbori og spar burt eiginleikum raunveruleikans. Guni dregur
hinsvegar lnurnar frhendis rfnum, talmrgum lgum sem gefur eim lfrna vdd. Og
me v a brytja rmi ekki niur lofttmd holrm hefur honum tekist a skapa tilfinn-
ingu fyrir botnlausri dpt n ess a sleppa hendinni af hfukennisetningu mdernismans
um tilokandi sjnvgi. En hann verbrtur anna boori, vegsmun flatnseskjunnar.
horfandanum finnst sem hann sji gegnum holt og hir vegna trleika litabljanna.
Hglansinn, sem orsakast af margsmurri fernisolunni, veldur v a innri vddir mlverks-
ins umsnast yfirborinu og varpast t rm horfandans. Hann rennur mti, saman
vi yfirbori, og verur ar me hluti af andardrtti verksins. Eins og fjall sld virist

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myndin yfirgefa vegginn og la t salinn. Hn rekst augnar horfandans tilteknum
punkti milli hans og mlverksins. Hann og a vera eitt. (En etta gengur ekki upp nema
horfandinn gefi sr gan tma. List Guna er enginn skyndibiti. Hn er hundrartta
einkaveisla fyrir auga.)

Guni hefur nlgast felli skref fyrir skref (n ess a hreyfa sig r spori) og horfi inn a.
vissan htt er hann alltaf a mla smu myndina v hvert verk tekur stugum breyt-
ingum, sem sjst margttum undirlgunum, ur en hann frir sig yfir nsta lreft og
engu verur vi btt. Eftir a hafa trtla annig hvarmaljsunum upp a fjallinu og
gengi vit ess tti okkur ekki a koma vart a sj Guna horfa landslagi fr gagn-
stum sjnarhli, innan r v, lkt og kynjavera me augu allstaar hfinu. Fjalli,
alter-ego Guna, horfir samtmis okkur og sjlft sig.

1992 nr. VII kom sem skr r heii egar vnt birtist vttumikill dalur me svarbrn-
um, iandi eyisandi og verhnptum fjallgrum til beggja handa. a er engu lkarara
en Fjalli hafi allt einu kvei a opna augun eftir milljn ra dvala. Verki steypir
mismunandi tmabilum ferli listamannsins saman vi andartak upplifunarinnar. a er
eins og heilaskannmynd ea bakspegilsyfirlit af lei hans inn Fjalli. versturnar
milli innra-ytra, minningar-snar hafa dregist saman, ef r hafa ekki horfi me llu.
Vi fljtum glru, vkvafylltu hylki ar sem allt virist snilegt, enda segist Guni ekki
hafa veri a mla dalinn heldur andrmslofti sem fyllir hann. a mtti halda a Witt-
genstein hefi veri a rna etta verk egar hann skrifai a gegnsi mtti lkja vi
hugsun. Einstk atrii myndarinnar leysast upp fyrir augliti okkar, bindast margbrot-
i mengi skynjana og merkingu, og nnur ggjast fram, sem renna svo aftur saman vi
aukna vitund um heildina.

Norski mlarinn Christian Krogh (d. 1925) hafi einu sinni ori a tt ll jleg
list vri eli snu slm, vri ll g list hjkvmilega jleg. rtt fyrir kve-
inn skyldleika vi slensku landslagshefina hefur Guni aldrei lagt miki upp r hon-
um og yri byggilega ltt snokinn fyrir a lta bendla list sna vi gfugan mlsta
lveldisins. Myndir hans eru heldur ekki svo miki af (slenskum) fjllum og r eru
(almennt) um fjll, fjalla-fjllun, gati milli hlutarins og ess sem hann horfir. Guni
heimfrir athuganir snar nttrunni upp ravenslakerfi rmfrinnar og klir
landslagi skrautlausan bning grunnformanna, rtt eins og Czanne taldi v best
komi til skila. Fyrstu verk Guna voru annig stundum lti meira en strik, rhyrn-
ingur og baugur (land, fjall, sl) sem hann tfyllti me fremur ttingslegri pensilskrift.

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En ltlausri mehndlun sinni vifangsefninu hafa skilin milli tkns og myndar, inntaks
og stlbrags, smm saman mst burtu. Ea segja m a andsturnar hafi gengi eina
sng. llu falli er erfitt a henda reiur hvar mrkin liggja.

Kannski er algjr hlutdrgni ekki til. En ef hn vri a, reynir Guni a mila kjarna
landslagsins gegnum bakdyrnar algjrri hlutdrgni. fugt vi n-expressjnisma s-
asta ratugar er malersku yfirbragi verkanna ekki tla a bera vitni um skapger lista-
mannsins. Me v a kerfisbinda pensildrttina hefur Guna lnast a sneia hj eirri
formleysu sem tengd er vi persnulegar tilfinningar, hj hinu sjlfvsandi og kempulega
burstafari sem Lichteinstein skopstldi svo eftirminnilega Big Painting (1965), og jafn-
framt a draga r nrveru sinni. Og a a hann skuli ekki vera me innyflin utan sr
kostna sjnrnna stareynda, ea lta slina sem einhvern veginn ofan og handan vi
lkamann, er einn af athyglisverari fltum list hans.

Hin tilvistarlega spegilmynd sem horfir vi okkur 1992 nr. VII flytur okkur fram vi til
tpskra Iavalla og samtmis afturbak eitthvert inn okkur. Verki rnir augunum r
horfandanum til a skoa sig sjlfa. A horfa er fylgifiskur ess a hafa sjn og vera vak-
andi. Skoun felur hinn bginn sr leit innan um a sem ber fyrir augun. Verundin
tvstrast sundur milli sn og sndar sinnar, sn og Fjallsins sem ori er tvfari sjlfs-
verunnar. A lokum httir skoandinn a nenna a leita og snr sr a rum hlutum
fullvissu ess a ekkert meira s a sj. essi vissa kallast vitneskja. En hversu miki sem
augnari djflast nr a aldrei a afkla snina; a mokar sig niur ar til a er statt
kafi henni. Dyrnar sem sjnin kom inn um skellast ls og vi taka endanlega margar
merktar tgnguleiir.

Mlverk Guna lsa and-hetjulegri og and-formalskri leit eftir fullkomnu jafnvgi. Og etta
feralag hans verur stugt kunnuglegra furulegra me hverju rinu sem lur.

Hannes Sigursson

essi grein birtist upprunalega Skrni, Tmariti hins slenska bkmenntaflags, hausti 1994 (168. rgangur), bls. 538546.

154 Pl. 63: Untitled, 2003, 280 x 200 cm

155
157
GRIP

L, LOFT OG LGUR
Georg Guni og slenska landslagshefin myndlist

essi ritger fjallar um r breytingar sem uru myndlist Georgs Guna vi upphaf
tunda ratugar sustu aldar og run hennar framhaldinu, me srstakri herslu tengsl
essarar myndlistar vi tlkun eldri listamanna nttru slands. a hefur komi fram
greinum og vitlum vi listamanninn a vi upphaf ferils hans, um 1982 ea svo, gerist
hann afhuga v sem var efst baugi aljlegri myndlist. Kom ar til vantr r lausnir
myndlistarvandans sem boaar voru listtmaritum og sningum. Um lei hf hann a
horfast augu vi au hrif sem langvarandi feralg um byggir slands hfu haft hug-
myndir hans um eli og markmi myndlistar.

Strax nmsrum snum kynnti Georg Guni sr hvernig slenskir forverar hans hfu
tlka a sem nefna mtti veruleika rfanna, og vildi afskrifa megni af landslag-
stengdri myndlist helstu listamanna landsins sem hjrma og klisjukennda. ess sta ein-
blndi hann ltt ekkt verk rfrra frumherja bor vi rarinn B. orlksson og sgrm
Jnsson, ar sem ftt var a finna nema haf, land og sjndeildarhring. Auk ess lagi Georg
Guni sig eftir verkum utangarsmanna landslagstengdri myndlist, alumlara, ntt-
rufringa og tlendinga bor vi Englendinginn Collingwood.

Upp r hgvrum, fbrotnum og ljrnum landslagsmyndum af v tagi spratt san

Orrustuhll (1983), eitt af lykilverkunum ferli Georgs Guna, sem bsna margt sam-
merkt me mikilfenglegum og samhverfum fjallamyndunum sem hann geri sar, nema
hva smatrii f a fljta me sem sar hverfa me llu. Myndlist Georgs Guna var
sar huglgari, kk s nmsdvl hans Maastricht Hollandi, ar sem hann hf a mla
myndir af slenskum fjllum og dlum eftir minni. Um 1990 hafi listamaurinn sni baki
vi allri yfirfrslu stahtta lreft; ess sta einangrai hann kvena tti sem hann
tengdi vi staina sem hann var me huga; grma grjthlanna, grnku mosaembunn-
ar, brna litinn moldarbarsins og blma himinsins allt um kring og geri r eim hlut-
bundna litfleti til upprunar einfaldri r. tti msum hugamnnum um myndlist
Georgs Guna, ekki sst erlendum gagnrnendum, sem hann vri a frast meira tt til
hreinnar, nttrutengdrar afstraktlistar.

159
Pl. 64: Untitled, 2004, 280 x 200 cm
Previous spread: Gallery Turpentine, Reykjavk 2006
Innan tar fr listamaurinn a sakna landslagsins sem essar myndir voru byggar og
bjst til a brjta eigindir ess sjlfs til mergjar, sta ess a gera r v hlutbundnar ein-
ingar. framhaldandi feralg hans um landi ttu sinn tt essari hugarfarsbreytingu,
auk ess sem hann tk a endurskoa slensku landslagshefina sem hann hafi ur gefi
falleinkunn. ess m geta a um etta leyti, 1990, hafi einnig fari fram endurmat essari
smu hef meal slenskra og erlendra listfringa, ar sem kom fram a hinn huglgi tt-
ur tknhyggja ea einhvers konar frumspekiplingar voru fyrirferarmeiri vihorfum
og verkum eldri landslagsmlara en menn hfu ur tali. M ar nefna yfirlitssningu
verkum Jns Stefnssonar Listasafni slands 1989-90 og stra sningu verkum slenskra
myndlistarmanna Bretlandi, sem nefndist Landscapes from a High Latitude.

Eitt einkenni verkum frumherjanna slenskri myndlist er a landslagsmyndir eirra eru

nnast n veurs; a var engu lkara en regn, oka, frost og frviri fyrirfinndust aldrei
slandi. etta hafa menn tlka sem upphafningu landslagsins gu jernishyggju ea sem
hreina og beina skhyggju. Georg Guni snerist ndverur gegn essari upphafningu/sk-
hyggju eim landslagsmyndum sem hann hf a gera kjlfar hins meinta afstrakttmabils.
augum hans voru vond veur og bltt landslag helsta einkenni slandi, og ttu a vera helsta
adrttarafl ess. Um svipa leyti hfst slensku jflagi virk umra um gildi bygg-
anna, en hfu komi fram form um vatnsaflsvirkjanir msum stum hlendinu.

framhjhlaupi m geta ess a strangt til teki var Georg Guni ekki fyrsti landslagsml-
arinn sem snerist ndverur gegn eilfu sumarlandi slensku frumherjanna; rija ratug
aldarinnar kom fram ltill en harsninn hpur landslagsmlara (Gumundur Einarsson
fr Midal, Finnur Jnsson, Sveinn rarinsson o.fl.) sem setti sig upp mti v, taldi a
einmitt stula a misskilningi slenskri nttru, sem vri eli snu allt anna en vinsamleg
mnnunum. Ef Georg Guni sver sig tt vi einhvern hp listamanna, er a sennilega
vi ennan hp endurskounarsinna.

Segja m a s myndlist Georgs Guna sem fylgir kjlfari megi flokka niur rjr frum-
myndir ea erkitpur; sjnhring, dal og fjall. sta ess a elta uppi srkenni landslagsins
annig a horfanda s alveg ljst hva myndirnar eiga a fyrirstilla, hreinsar hann skipu-
lega burtu alla stahttafri. Eftir stendur fjall ea dalur sem eru eins og samnefnarar allra
fjalla og dala landinu. essum verkum verur horfandinn reifanlega var vi endurvak-
inn huga Georgs Guna slensku landslagshefinni. Myndir hans af sjnhring sem teygir
sig t ysta fjarska eru eins konar samrur vi vttumyndir rarins B. orlkssonar og
sgrms Jnssonar fr fyrstu ratugum 20stu aldar, nema hva Georg Guni hefur meiri
huga v sem gerist rminu, sjlfu andrmsloftinu, heldur en landslaginu fjarska: rign-
ingunni, okunni og skjafarinu almennt.

vitlum hefur Georg Guni gert grein fyrir huga snum veri og vindum, ar sem hann
nefnir t.a.m. r breytingar sem vera landslaginu vegna veurs. Auk ess telur hann

160
a veur landslagsmyndum geri meiri krfur til horfenda, rngvi eim til a reia sig
myndunarafl sitt. Myndlistarlegt andf Georgs Guna gegn stahttalsingum er ekki
einasta atlaga gegn merkilegum stum landslaginu, heldur mevitu lofgjr um alla
merkilegu staina sem vi ltum okkur sjst yfir, bara vegna ess a enginn hefur gef-
i eim gaum. arna hann mislegt sammerkt me Jhannesi Kjarval, sem opnai augu
slenskrar alu fyrir ffrnum stum sem ekki voru samrmi vi r hugmyndir sem
menn geru sr um dgilegt landslag.

Mlverk Georgs Guna af dlum, kvosum ea dldum landslaginu eru llu flknari sam-
setningur en sjnhringirnir, svo au virist agengileg vi fyrstu sn. au eru aallega
tvenns konar, ljsmettair dalbotnar sem breia t faminn mti okkur ea dalir uppfullir
me drgum sem skerast me taktfstum htti inn a skjannabjartri ungamiju. Upp
hugann kemur ein fyrsta landslagsmynd sem kennd er vi slending, leiktjald Sigurar
Gumundssonar vi tlaga Matthasar Jochumsonar fr 1872-73, ar sem hrjstrugt
byggalandslagi er snt sem griarstaur. Georg Guni hefur lkt myndum snum af dl-
um vi vistarverur, uppfullar af regni og okuslingi, en einnig af hugsunum og hlj-
um. etta eru griarstair, segir hann, ar sem maurinn getur veri einn me hugsunum
snum og myndunum. Aftur er eins og Georg Guni kallist vi Kjarval, sem iulega leit
landslag sem samnefnara fyrir allt sem gerst, heyrst og hugsa hefi veri eim sta, miklu
frekar en daua jarfri.

undanfrnum tveimur ratugum hefur Georg Guni einnig teki hugmyndir snar um
fjalli til endurmats. Eldri fjallamyndir hans voru oft eins konar skuggamyndir me sterka
emblematska nnd. Sari myndir hans af fjllum eru me raunsrra snii, en eins og
iulega gerist verkum Georgs Guna, dregur raunsi hvorki r dul eirra n em-
blematskri skrskotun. Me margskonar virkjun fngerra ljseffekta gefur hann skyn a
vi rtur essara fjalla, ea rtt handan eirra, s a finna hugljmun sem horfandanum
beri a kynna sr.

essum myndum er einnig a finna lgt stemmdar samrur vi Jn Stefnsson. Lengi vel
voru verk Jns ekki efst vinsldarlistum Georgs Guna, en smm saman jkst lit hans
hinum ungbrnda byggingarmeistara. Vi skoun myndum Jns var Georg Guni hug-
fanginn af mehndlun hans rmi, af v hvernig hann leiir horfandann skipulega inn
myndir snar, inn dali og krkaleiir inn milli fjalla. nokkrum myndum beinir Georg
Guni sjnum a tveimur samstum fjllum sem gtu veri komin beint t r landslagi
eftir Jn. Georg Guni mlar essi fjll sn mjklega, gir au innileika sem vekur me
okkur lngun til a leggja okkur feralag inn a innstu drgum, ar sem kunna a leynast
innstu rk.

Aalsteinn Inglfsson

161
Pl. 65: Untitled, 2006, 160 x 160 cm
163
 LIST OF PLATES
Page 2-3 Pl.1: Untitled, 1989. Oil on canvas, 23,5 x 121 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 6 Pl. 2: Mt. Burfell, 1986. Oil on canvas, diameter 36,5 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 12 Pl. 3: Mt. Ingolfshfdi, 1984. Oil on canvas, 34 x 28 cm. Private collection.

Page 20 Pl. 4: Untitled, 1995. Oil on canvas, 185 x 200 cm. Private collection.

Page 22 Pl. 5: Untitled, 2002. Oil on canvas, 244 x 205 cm. Private collection.

Page 25 Pl. 6: Leira, 1983. Oil on canvas, 35 x 50 cm. Private collection.

Page 26 Pl. 7: Mt. Orrustuhll, 1983. Oil on canvas, 36 x 43 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 28 Pl. 8: Ferningsskjaldbreidur, 1987. Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm. Kpavogur Art Museum.

Page 31 Pl. 9: Mt. Hganga. Oil on canvas, 1985, 50 x 60 cm. Private collection.

Page 32 Pl. 10: Glacier Snaefellsjkull, 1985-86. Oil on canvas, 140 x 200 cm. Private collection.

Page 34-5 Pl. 11: Mt. Hestfjall, 1984. Oil on canvas, 30 x 150 cm. University of Iceland.

Page 36 Pl. 12: Mt. Inglfshfdi. Oil on canvas, 1985-86, 23 x 120 cm. Private collection.

Page 36-7 Pl. 13: The Eminence of skjuhld, 1986. Oil on canvas, 24 x 120 cm. Jan Van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht.

Page 39 Pl. 14: Glacier Eirksjkull, 1986. Oil on canvas, 140 x 150 cm. National Bank of Iceland.

Page 40 Pl. 15: Mt. Thrhyrningur, 1986. Oil on canvas, 330 x 290 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 44 Pl. 16: Dalur Kjs, 1985. Oil on canvas, 110 x 200 cm. Jo Eyck, Wiljre, Nederland.

Page 47 Pl. 17: Mt. Ernir, 1987. Oil on canvas, 220 x 240 cm. Reykjavik Art Museum.

Page 48-9 Pl. 18: Untitled, 1999. Oil on canvas, 135 x 165 cm. Private collection.

Page 50 Pl. 19: Mt. Akrafjall and Skardsheidi, 1987. Oil on canvas, 10 x 50 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 50-1 Pl. 20: Mt. Hestfjall, 1987-88. Oil on canvas, 53 x 371 cm. Private collection.

Page 52-3 Pl. 21: Untitled, 1989. No. I. Oil on canvas, 3 x 170 x 170 cm. Frederic Roos Collection.

Page 55 Pl. 22: Edge, 1988-89. Oil on canvas, 230 x 140 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 56 Pl. 23: Slope, 1988. Oil on canvas, diameter: 200 cm. Private collection.

Page 59 Pl. 24: Untitled, 1989, No. II. Oil on canvas, 4 x 190 x 136 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 60-1 Pl. 25: Untitled, 1989. No. V. Oil on canvas. 240 x 260 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 63 Pl. 26: Untitled, 1989. No. VI. Oil on canvas, 80 x 180 cm. Private collection.

Page 64 Pl. 27: Untitled, 1990, No. IV. Oil on canvas, 200 x 140 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 66 Pl. 28: Untitled, 1991, No. I. Oil on canvas, 150 x 150 cm. Private collection.

Page 69 Pl. 29: Untitled, 1990, No. V. Oil on canvas, 200 x 140 cm. Private collection.

Page 70 Pl. 30: Untitled, 1990, No. VII. Oil on canvas, 200 x 140 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 73 Pl. 31: Untitled, 1990, No. VIII. Oil on canvas, 200 x 140 cm. National Gallery of Iceland.

Page 74 Pl. 32: Untitled, 1991. Oil on canvas, 200 x 140 cm. Private collection.

Page 77 Pl. 33: Untitled, 1991, No. II. Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm. Private collection.

Page 78 Pl. 34: Untitled, 1992, No. II. Oil on canvas, 130 x 230 cm. Collection of artist.

164
Page 81 Pl. 35: Untitled, 1992, No. I. Oil on canvas, 130 x 230 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 82-3 Pl. 36: Untitled, 1991, No. VII. Oil on canvas, 40 x 80 cm. Private collection.

Page 84 Pl. 37: Untitled, 1990. Oil on canvas, 200 x 200 cm. Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.

Page 86 Pl. 38: Untitled, 1997. Oil on canvas, 135 x 165 cm. Private collection.

Page 89 Pl. 39: Untitled, 1992. Oil on canvas, 195 x 195 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 93 Pl. 40: Untitled, 1992, No VII. Oil on canvas, 170 x 180 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 95 Pl. 41: Untitled, 1992, No. XI. Oil on canvas, 195 x 195 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 105 Pl. 42: Untitled, 1996. Oil on canvas, 110 x 150 cm. Private collection.

Page 106-7 Pl. 43: Untitled, 1997. Oil on canvas, 135 x 165 cm. Private collection.

Page 108 Pl. 44: Untitled, 2003. Oil on canvas, 280 x 200 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 111 Pl. 45: Untitled, 1995. Oil on canvas, 170 x 180 cm. Reykjavik Art Museum.

Page 112 Pl. 46: Untitled, 1995. Oil on canvas, 75 x 200 cm. Private collection.

Page 113 Pl. 47: Untitled, 1996. Oil on canvas, 135 x 165 cm. Private collection.

Page 114 Pl. 48: Untitled, 2001. Oil on canvas, 200 x 180 cm. Private collection.

Page 117 Pl. 49: Untitled, 1996. Oil on canvas, 135 x 150 cm. Private collection.

Page 118 Pl. 50: Untitled, 1997. Oil on canvas, 193 x 223 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 121 Pl. 51: Untitled, 1990. Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 122 Pl. 52: Untitled, 2004. Oil on canvas, 190 x 200 cm. Private collection.

Page 125 Pl. 53: Untitled, 2006. Oil on canvas, 240 x 220 cm. National Bank of Iceland.

Page 127 Pl. 54: Untitled, 1998. Oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm. Reykjavik Art Museum.

Page 128 Pl. 55: Untitled, 1994. Oil on canvas, 150 x 170 cm. University of Iceland.

Page 130 Pl. 56: Untitled, 1998. Oil on canvas, 70 x 85 cm. Private collection.

Page 131 Pl. 57: Untitled, 1998. Oil on canvas, 193 x 223,5 cm. National Gallery of Iceland.

Page 133 Pl. 58: Untitled, 2004. Oil on canvas, 170 x 110 cm. Private collection.

Page 134-5 Pl. 59: Untitled, 1998. Oil on canvas, 135 x 165 cm. Private collection.

Page 138 Pl. 60: Untitled, 2004. Oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm. Private collection.

Page 142-3 Pl. 61: Untitled, 2005. Oil on canvas, 200 x 180 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 144 Pl. 62: Untitled, 1994. Oil on canvas, 185 x 200 cm. National Gallery of Iceland.

Page 153 Pl. 63: Untltled, 2003. Oil on canvas, 280 x 200 cm. Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm.

Page 156 Pl. 64: Untitled, 2004. Oil on canvas, 280 x 200 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 161 Pl. 65: Untitled, 2006. Oil on canvas, 160 x 160 cm. Private collection.

Page 165 Pl. 66: Untitled, 2007. Oil on canvas, 240 x 220 cm. Collection of artist.

Page 172-3 Pl. 67: Untitled, 2000. Oil on canvas, 90 x 190 cm. Private collection.

Page 175 Pl. 68: Untitled, 2005. Oil on canvas, 200 x 190 cm. Private collection.

165
167
 EXHIBITION HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

GEORG GUDNI
BIOGRAPHY
1961 Born in Reykjavik.
1980-85 Studies at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts, Reykjavik.
1985-87 Studies at Jan van Eyck, Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
1993-95 Member of the Board of Directors, Richard Serra Fund.
1997-01 Member of the Board of Directors, National Gallery of Iceland.

One-Person Exhibitions
2007 Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland: The Mountain. A retrospective exhibition. (Catalogue)

2006 Gallery Turpentine, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden.
Track 16, Santa Monica, Los Angeles: The Nature of Landscape.(Together with Viggo Mortensen).
2004 Gallery O2, Akureyri, Iceland.
Galerie Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland.
2003 Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden.
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik. A retrospective exhibition. (Catalogue)
Nordiska akvarellmuseet, Skrhamn, Sweden.

2002 Skaftfell in Seydisfjrdur, Iceland. (Together with Peter Frie)

2000 Gallery Svar Karl, Reykjavik, Iceland.

1999 Church of Hallgrimur, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden.

1998 Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir, Reykjavik, Iceland. (Catalogue)

1995 Nordic House, Reykjavik, Iceland. (Catalogue)

Caf Mokka, Reykjavik, Iceland: Terra virgo.

1994 The Corridor, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden.

1993 The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland.

1992 Galerie Artek, Helsinki, Finland.

Slunkariki, Isafjordur, Iceland.
Gallery Nyhofn, Reykjavik, Iceland.

1991 Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden.

1990 Galleri Slvberget, Stavanger, Norway.

Galleri Riis, Oslo, Norway.

168
1989 Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, Sweden.
1988 Galleri Lng, Malm, Sweden. (Together with Jon Oskar)

1987 Slunkariki, Isafjordur, Iceland.

Gallery Svart hvtu, Reykjavik, Iceland.

1986 Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Netherlands.

Caf Mokka, Reykjavik, Iceland.

1985 The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Group Exhibitions
2007 Saurbjarkirkja, Hvalfjrdur, Iceland: Myndin af Hallgrmi.

2006 Church of Hallgrmur, Reykjavik, Iceland: Myndin af Hallgrmi.

Gallery Turpentine, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Hoffmannsgaller, Reykjavik, Iceland: Vegvsar.
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland: Mlverki eftir 1980.
The Faroe Islands Art Museum, Thorshavn: The Renewal of the Icelandic Painting.
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik. (Works from the collection)
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Landslagi og jsagan.
Hoffmannsgaller, Reykjavik, Iceland: Kennd vi tilfinningar.

2005 rhus Kunstbygning, rhus, Denmark. Kunstnersammenslutningen Jylland.

Sakskbing Sukkerfabrik, Lolland, Denmark: Lys over Lolland.
Sophienholm, Copenhagen, Denmark: Island-sagaen.

2004 Espace dart contemporain Gustav Fayet, Serignan, France: Parallele 64. Art Contemporain Islandais.

2003 Edsvik Konsthall, Sollentuna, Sweden: Dialog med naturen.

Konstens Hus, Lulea, Sweden: Dialog med naturen.
Pommersches Landesmuseum, Greifswald, Germany.
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik.
Rda sten museum, Gteborg, Sweden: Carnegie Art Award.
Helsinki City Art Museum, Meilahti, Finland: Carnegie Art Award
Victoria Miro Warehouse, London, UK: Carnegie Art Award.
Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, Denmark: Carnegie Art Award.

2002 Tretyakov Museum, Moscow: Confronting Nature.

National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Icelandic Art 1980-2000.
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway: Carnegie Art Award.
Reykjavik Art Museum, Harbour House: Carnegie Art Award.
Gerduberg, Reykjavik, Iceland: etta vil g sj.
Reykjanesbaer Art Museum, Keflavik: The Golden Brush.

169
2001 National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Yfirlit 20. aldar.
Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir: Flogi yfir Heklu. (Catalogue)
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA: Confronting Nature. (Catalogue)
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Andspnis nttrunni.
The Faroe Islands Art Museum, Thorshavn: The Golden Brush.
Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir: The Golden Brush.
Felleshuset, Nordic Embassies, Berlin, Germany: The Golden Brush.
The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik: Nja mlverki andar a enn?
2000 The Corridor, Reykjavik: The Golden Brush.
Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK: Carnegie Art Award.
Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir: Carnegie Art Award.
Gerduberg, Reykjavik, Iceland: 25 ra afmlissning F.B.
Konstakademien, Stockholm, Sweden: Carnegie Art Award.

1999 National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Carnegie Art Award.

Helsingin Taidehalli, Helsinki, Finland: Carnegie Art Award.
Sophienholm, Copenhagen, Denmark: Carnegie Art Award.
Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland: Carnegie Art Award.
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway: Carnegie Art Award.
Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland: Sjnauki III.
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Nja mlverki 9. ratugnum.
The Corridor, Reykjavik: The Golden Brush. (Catalogue)
Art.is. The touring exhibition Lfar. (Catalogue)

1998 National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: slensk myndlist 20. ld.

Stenersenmuseet, Oslo, Norway: Carnegie Art Award.
Sophienholm, Copenhagen, Denmark: Carnegie Art Award.
Konstakademien, Stockholm, Sweden: Carnegie Art Award.
National Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing, China: Icelandic Painting of the 20th Century. (Catalogue)
Hong Kong Museum of Art: Icelandic Painting of the 20th Century. (Catalogue)
Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark: Natura.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Vilnius, Lithuania: Studija Islandija.

1997 PS1, Contemporary Art Center, New York, U.S.A.

Caf Mokka, Reykjavik: Maur me mnnum.
The touring exhibition New Territories:
Balbardie Gallery, West Lothian, Howden Park Gallery,
Livingston, Scotland: New Territories. (Catalogue)

1996 Rooseum, Malm, Sweden.

Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir: slensk Nttrusn. (Catalogue)
Kunstforeningen, Gammel Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark: Mrkets lys.
The touring exhibition New Territories: (Catalogue)
Stamford Art Center, UK.
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, UK.
Lancaster Maritime Museum, UK.
Sheffield Hallam University Gallery, UK.

1995 Vejle Art Museum, Denmark: Nordiske landskaber.
Ernst Museum, Budapest, Hungary: Fragments: Contemporary Icelandic Art. (Catalogue)

170
1994 Deiglan, Akureyri, Iceland.
Gallery Greip, Reykjavik, Iceland: Salon exhibition.
Nikolaj, Copenhagen, Denmark: Islandske Kunstnere 1944-1994. (Catalogue)
Konstmassan, Stockholm Art Fair, Sweden: Nordiskt 90-tal. (Catalogue)
1992 Palazzo Esposizioni, Roma, Italy: Il Paesaggio Culturale, Aspetti
DellEsperienza Nordica NellArte, 1890-1990. (Catalogue)

1991 The touring exhibition Transparencia Azul: (Catalogue)

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janero, Brazil.
Museo Nacional de Artes Plsticas, Montevideo, Uruguay.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota, Colombia.
Centro de Arte Moderna, Lisbon, Portugal.
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas, Venezuela.
Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark.

1990 Rheinlandhalle, Cologne, Germany: Icelandic Art in Cologne. (Catalogue)

Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands: De Kollektie.
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway: The Art of Drawing. (Catalogue)
The touring exibition Landscapes from a High Latitude. (Catalogue)
The Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, UK.
Great Grimsby Town Hall, Grimsby, UK.
The Barbican Art Centre, London, UK.
Brighton Polytechnic Gallery, Brighton, UK.
Burstow Gallery, Brighton, UK.
The Talbot Rice Art Centre, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

1989 Nordic Art Center, Sveaborg, Helsinki, Finland: Aurora 3. (Catalogue)

1988 Galleri Lng, Malm, Sweden.

National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Aldarspegill. (Catalogue)
Lyngby Kunstforening, Denmark: Ny Islandsk Kunst. (Catalogue)
National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik: Five Young Artists. (Catalogue)

1987 Malm Konsthall, Malm, Sweden: Borealis 3. (Catalogue)

Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir: Myndlistarmenn framtarinnar.

1986 Staatliche Kunstakademie, Dsseldorf, Germany.

Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands.

1985 Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden: Ung Nordisk Kulturfestival (UNK).

1984 Trondheim Art Museum, Norway: Utgaard.

1983 Reykjavik Art Museum, Kjarvalsstadir: UM: Ungir myndlistarmenn. (Catalogue)

JL-hsi, Reykjavik, Iceland: Gullstrndin andar.

171
 Teaching
Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts, Reykjavik.
Iceland Academic of the Arts, Reykjavik.

Works in Public Institutions and Private Companies

National Gallery of Iceland.
Reykjavik Art Museum.
Kpavogur Art Museum, Iceland.
University of Iceland Art Museum, Reykjavik.
Isafjordur Art Collection, Iceland.
Apoteksbolaget Konstfrening, Stockholm, Sweden.
Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland.
Malm Museum, Sweden.
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway.
Rooseum Art Collection, Malm, Sweden.
Eimskipaflag slands.
Icelandair Art Collection.
The City of Reykjavik.
SAS.
Central Bank of Iceland.
Sparisjur Bolungarvkur, Iceland.

Awards
1988 The DV Prize for Visual Arts.
1988 One-year stipend from the Visual Artist Fund. Icelandic Ministry of Culture, Science and Education.
1990 Three-month stipend from the Visual Artist Fund. Icelandic Ministry of Culture, Science and Education.
1992 Six-month stipend from the Visual Artist Fund. Icelandic Ministry ofCulture, Science and Education.
1995 Three-year stipend from the Visual Artist Fund. Icelandic Ministry of Culture, Scienceand Education.
1996 Artist in residence at Stanford Art Centre, UK.
1997 Travelgrant from the Icelandic Ministry of Culture, Science and Education.
1998 Nominated for Carnegie Art Award.
1999 Nominated for Carnegie Art Award.
2000 Ars Fennica Nomination, Helsinki, Finland.
2002 Nominated for Carnegie Art Award.
2003 Two-year stipend from the Visual Artist Fund. Icelandic Ministry of Culture, Science and Education.

Bibliography
Halldr B. Runlfsson: N landsn, jviljinn, March.13, 1984.
Gubergur Bergsson: Georg Guni, jviljinn, February 13, 1985.
Bragi sgeirsson: Georg Guni Nlistasafni, Morgunblai, March 15, 1985.
Kimmo Sarje: Islannin vouret, Taide, nr. 2, 1986.
Aalsteinn Inglfsson: Mountains of the Mind, Iceland Review, Issue 1, 1987.
Ssanna Svavarsdttir: Mlverk er ekki efni, heldur andinn, Morgunblai, October 25, 1987. (Interview)
orsteinn G. Gunnarsson: g mla fjalli me sjlfum mr, Ntt lf, Issue 7, 1987.
Halldr Bjrn Runlfsson: Georg Guni, Gallery Svart hvtu. 1987. (Catalogue)
Sjn: Af fjllum, Heimsmynd. Volume 2, Issue 6, November 1987, p. 113.
Aalsteinn Inglfsson: Fjllin eru minn slarreitur, Dagblai, March 5, 1988. (Interview)
Hrafnhildur Schram: 5 menningarnir, Mannlf, Volume 5, Issue 7, 1988, pp. 68-77. (Interview)
Gsli Sigursson: Fimm ungir og upprennandi Listasafni slands, Lesbk Morgunblasins, September 3, 1988.
John Peter Nilsson: Nordens unga 80-talister-efterlyser naturen, uppfinner landskapet, Manads journalen, nr. 3.

172
 March 1988, p. 132. (Interview)
Steve Sem-Sandberg: Landskapet bortom synranden, Svenska Dagbladet, May 6, 1989.
Aalsteinn Inglfsson: Old Skills to New Images: Recent Icelandic Printmaking, Scandinavian Review,
Autumn 1989, pp. 57-58.
Halldr Bjrn Runlfsson: Listamaurinn og fndur hans, Aurora 3, Helsinki, Nordiskt Konstcentrum, 1989. (Catalogue)
Gertrud Sandqvist: Maleri som fingeravtryck, Svenska Dagbladet, February 23, 1991.
Halldr Bjrn Runlfsson: Intimacy, Austerity and Irony, Flash Art, nr. 157, 1991, pp. 108-111.
Tiina Nyrhinen: Kaikki sulautuu horisonttiin, Helsingin Sanomat, March 5, 1992.
Rita Roos: Molnet, himlen eller luften, Hufvudstadsbladet, March 15, 1992.
Gurn ra: Veit hvaan g kem, ekki hvert g fer, Lesbk Morgunblasins, May 16, 1992. (Interview)
Hannes Sigursson: Georg Guni, Aspetti DellEsperienza Nordica NellArte 19801990, ll
Paesaggio Culturale, Roma 1992. (Catalogue)
Michael Casey: Georg Guni, Siksi, 3, 1992, pp. 53-54.
Gertrud Sandqvist: Borderlines, Tema Celeste, Contemporary Art Review, January-March 1992, nr. 34, pp. 80-84.
Gunnar J. rnason: djpum dal mlverksins, Pressan, April 29, 1993.
Eirkur orlksson: skauti landsins, Morgunblai, May 1, 1993.
lafur Gslason: Landslagi og mynd ess, Vikublai, May 7, 1993.
Hannes Lrusson: Magurt en feitt, DV, May 11, 1993.
Gunnar J. rnason: Georg Guni, Siksi, nr. 3, 1993, pp. 48-49.
Hannes Sigursson: Fjalla-fjllun, Skrnir, Autumn 1994, pp. 538-546.
Gunnar B. Kvaran: A Survey of Icelandic Art, Ernst Museum, Budapest 1995. (Catalogue)
Gunnar J. rnason: Georg Guni, New Territories, Stamford Art Centre 1996. (Catalogue)
Margrt Elsabet lafsdttir: Legg allt hverja einustu lnu, Alublai, July 13, 1995. (Interview)
Gunnar J. rnason: New Perspectives, Iceland Review, 1995.
Bragi sgeirsson: Landsminni, Morgunblai, July 25, 1995.
Gunnar J. rnason: Georg Gudni, Contemporary Art. Vol 3. No, 3, 1996, pp. 7-9.
Paul Lydon: Looking Out the Window, Iceland Review, 1996.
Sigrn Davsdttir: Ljs myrkursins verk norrnna meistara, Morgunblai, January 27, 1996.
Hulda Stefnsdttir: myndun og veruleiki geta veri jafn raunveruleg, Morgunblai, April 18, 1998. (Interview)
Gunnar J. rnason: Kammermsk striga, Morgunblai, May 1, 1998.
slaug Thorlacius: fami dalsins, DV, May 11, 1998.
Silja Aalsteinsdttir: Buskinn skiptir mli, DV, May 15, 1998. (Interview)
Richard Middleton: From Here, Iceland Review, nr. 4, 1998.
Anders Olofsson: Georg Gudni, Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm, 1999.
Halldr Bjrn Runlfsson: Eftir syndafalli Morgunblai, June 27, 1999.
Sindri Freysson: vintradalur Georgs Guna, Lesbk Morgunblasins, February 19, 2000. (Interview)
Jn Propp: Litrf heianna, Morgunblai, March 3, 2000.
Hrafnhildur Schram: Reykjavk mlaranna/Reykjavik of the Painters, Ml og menning 2000, pp. 86-87.
Vigds Stefnsdttir: Horft inn eilfina, 110 Reykjavk. Br borg. Rotaryklbburinn Reykjavk, rbr, 2001. (Interview)
Jn K.B. Ransu: gurleg fegur nttrunnar, Morgunblai, July 20, 2002.
Edward Weinman: Painting Scandinavia, Atlantica, September-October 2002.
Gunnar J. rnason: Skoun Georgs Guna Haukssonar landinu, Georg Guni, National Gallery of Iceland 2003.
Gertrud Sandqvist: Painting as Weaving, Georg Guni, National Gallery of Iceland 2003.
Edward Weinman: Imaginary Landscapes, Atlantica, March-April 2003.
Emilia Siltavuori: Landskap med diffus horisont, Hufvudstadbladet, March 13, 2004.
Sverrir Gujnsson: rkoma grennd; portrett Georg Guni, Hs og hbli, nr.188, issue 12, 2004.
Viggo Mortensen: Introduction, Strange Familiar, Perceval Press 2005, pp. 1-7.
Jane Johnson: The Landscapes of Iceland and Georg Guni: Works in Progress, Strange Familiar,
Perceval Press 2005, pp. 8-21.
Kevin Power: Conversation with Georg Guni, Strange Familiar, Perceval Press 2005, pp. 23-57.
Anna Mara Bjrnsson: Mountain Man, Iceland Review, 2005, pp. 34-39. (Interview)
Anna Ja: Birta landi, Morgunblai, November 16, 2006, p. 57.

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175
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
HANNES SIGURDSSON
has been actively involved in the art world for 27 years. He was appointed the director of
the Akureyri Art Museum in 1999, and is the founder and director of the Icelandic Cultural
Enterprise art.is. Sigurdsson received an M.A. in Art History from UC Berkeley, having
previously studied at University College London and graduated from the Icelandic College
of Arts and Crafts, Department of Painting, and the Reykjavik College of Music as a flautist.
He worked in New York for half a decade as an art correspondent and began his career as
an independent curator there. Since then, he has edited and published dozens of books
and catalogues and curated over 350 exhibitions and large-scale projects, including shows
on Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Per Kirkeby, Carolee Schneemann,
Sally Mann, Peter Halley, Spencer Tunick, Joel-Peter Witkin, Andres Serrano, Komar and
Melamid, Orlan, Barbara Kruger, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rembrandt and Goya, to name
but a few. Sigurdsson has collaborated with museums, institutions, educational authorities,
corporations and galleries around the world in countries as diverse as Norway, Faroe
Islands, Greenland, Latvia, Russia, Germany, England, France, Spain, Jordan, India, Japan
and the United States. He is the founder of the Icelandic Visual Arts Awards that were
launched in 2006.

ADALSTEINN INGLFSSON
is an art historian and presently director of the Icelandic Museum of Design and Applied Art
in Gardabr. He has also been curator and senior curator at the Reykjavik Municipal Museum
and the National Gallery of Iceland. He has worked as arts editor and chief arts reviewer for a
Reykjavik newspaper, DV, and three magazines, Stord, Iceland Review and Atlantica. He has
written on Icelandic art and culture for specialist magazines in Sweden, Denmark, Finland,
England, the USA, Canada and France, and over twenty books on Icelandic and Scandinavian
art and culture, the most recent being an acclaimed monograph on Faroese artist S.J. Mikines.
Adalsteinn Inglfsson has written essays for over a hundred exhibition catalogues and
brochures in Iceland and elsewhere and curated around fifty exhibitions of Icelandic and
foreign art in different countries. He has been a guest lecturer and visiting critic at numerous
academic institutions in Scandinavia, England, Poland, Canada and the USA. Adalsteinn
Inglfsson studied in Scotland, England, Italy and Sweden and has an M.A. in English
literature from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and an M.A. in Art History from the
Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Pl. 68: Untitled, 2005, 200 x 190 cm

176 Previous spread: Pl. 67: Untitled, 2000, 90 x 220 cm
177
GEORG GUDNI

THE MOUNTAIN AKUREYRI ART MUSEUM 30 JUNE 19 AUGUST 2007

Editor & Curator

Hannes Sigurdsson
Publisher
Art.is/Akureyri Art Museum 2007
Design
Art.is/Erika Lind Isaksen
Proofreading
Julian Thorsteinson, Shauna Laurel Jones, Bra Magnsdttir & Uggi Jnsson
Photography
Georg Gudni, Gudmundur Inglfsson, Viktor Smri Saemundsson, var Brynjlfsson, Hannes
Sigurdsson,National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik Art Museum & The Labour Unions Art Gallery
CV & Bibliography
Sigrn Jnasdttir
Printing
Oddi, Reykjavik, Iceland
Paper
Galerie Silk, 200 gr
Typography
Bulmer, Avenir
ISBN
978-9979-9632-9-5

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publisher.

The following companies and individuals supported this publication:

Orustuhll, Gunnar Dungal & Thrds Alda Sigurdardttir, Sjv-Almennar, Icelandair & Nordurorka
 Georg Gudni (b. 1961) studied at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in

the early 1980s and at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in Holland from 1985 to

1987. By mid-decade he had already breathed new life into both painting as

a medium and into landscape so historically central to Icelandic national

identity as a subject. Gudni has exhibited extensively in the Nordic coun-

tries and Western Europe, both solo and in group shows, as well as in the

United States, China, and South America. His images are characterized by

formal simplicity with a densely layered atmospheric quality that makes them

optically engaging. His landscapes, subtle yet powerful, possess a refined

sensibility not only to the Icelandic countryside he portrays, but also to the

profound emotional and corporeal relationships with the natural environ-

ment that stand available to us all.

179
Selfportrait, 2000. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Im outside, standing or sitting on a stone. I look around, toward the horizon, at the amplitudes
and the mountains. Some stand close by, others further away. Automatically, the mind starts
roaming or perhaps gliding around. I go into the distance, into eternity, where the mountains
have impenetrable tranquillity, where they cease being mountains and become aeriform. I
enter and pass through them. What exists in the mountain exists also outside of it, and in the
surrounding quietude both dread and gloom reside. And in the air all the thoughts of the world
can be accommodated.

Georg Gudni

ISBN 978-9979-9632-9-5

180
9 789979 963295