I learned to paint in the 1970s and the early 1980s, according to a pedagogy that came out of a modernist tradition grounded in early 20th century Paris, and was then developed in Swedish art schools through a generation of painters from about 1920 to the late 1980s. It was a formula relating to artists such as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and the Swedes Karl Isakson (1872-1922) and Ragnar Sandberg (1902-1972). 104 We were taught in the context of studio practice, where the teacher circled around us to correct our ‘mistakes’. It was a system, a language that served to provide a way of seeing where the canvas became a space for what was considered a personal study of the object (the motif of the day). This kind of school was involved in teaching to observe: a nude, apples, a vase, to look as one should look at any non-seeing object (including the nude), and to translate what is seen through form and colour. This was presented to us as a way of reading reality through the act of painting and the object of our attention was claimed to originate out of ‘nature’, existing for us to be translated into ‘pure’ painting. Looking through some of my old textbooks, for instance Måla och Se/“Paint and See”, I found notions like “form”, “line”, “sign”, “expression”, “recognition”, “colour motion”, “levels” and “clearance”, and suddenly I remembered the specific language that I developed with my peers. My way of painting changed dramatically during this period, from naïvely realistic with surrealistic undertones into an analytic use of facets of clean, pure colour – no white or black pigments were used when mixing my oil colours to define the seen object as form and space and to activate the whole canvas in the tradition of the masters. In reading Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne, I recalled this manner in which I was taught: “Then he began to paint all parts of the painting at the same time, using patches of color to surround his original charcoal sketch of the geological skeleton. The picture took on fullness and density; it grew in structure and balance; it came to maturity all at once.” 105 I believed that I had left this process entirely behind. However radical the shift in my work is from this, I still like to work across the whole canvas, and use the process of painting as a looking device, but now with different intentions and contrary results. Peggy Phelan, in our e-mail exchanges, referred to the writing of Samuel Beckett to convey the difference between habit and repetition: “Beckett wrote, ‘Habit is a great deadener.’” Phelan goes on to say, “and sometimes I think we want to make things a little bit dead, a little bit still. […] Repetition is related to habit, but they are not the same. Habit relieves me from thinking; repetition focuses my attention.” 106
;)
104 Teachers important for me during this time were Birgit Ståhl-Nyberg and her husband Hendrik Nyberg, both students of Ragnar Sandberg at the Royal Academy in Stockholm in the early 1950s.
105 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt” (from Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 9-24 in the 1964 translation), here printed in Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, edited by Thomas Baldwin, Routledge, London and New York, 2004, p. 281.
106 Peggy Phelan, Matts Leiderstam Works 1996-2001, p. 38
Åsberg, Stig
Page: 20(a.)
after-image
Page: 5, 5(a.), 26, 32, 34, 40, 48, 49, 55, 56
Akerman, Chantal
Page: 3, 3(a.), 57(a.)
Alberti, Leon Battista
Page: 27
Angelo Giorgio, Cardinal
Page: 19, 19(a.)
Armitage, John
Page: 51(a.)
Art Institute of Chicago
Page: 32
Arvidsson, Kristoffer
Page: 35(a.)
Ashburton, Lord
Page: 19(a.)
Bätschmann, Oskar
Page: 33(a.)
Bal, Mieke
Page: 8(a.)
Barton, Judy (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30
Baudelaire, Charles
Page: 44
beat, the
Page: 44
Beckett, Samuel
Page: 39
Bellini, workshop of Giovanni
Page: 28
Bierstadt, Albert
Page: 17
Bjurström, Per
Page: 19, 19(a.), 33, 57, 57(a.)
Blaugrund, Annette
Page: 17(a.)
Bonaparte, Lucien
Page: 19(a.), 41(a.)
Bosch, Hieronymous
Page: 40
Brealey, John
Page: 19, 19(a.)
British Museum, London
Page: 22, 22(a.)
Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
Page: 45
Bryson, Norman
Page: 2, 2(a.), 8, 8(a.), 27(a.), 44(a.)
Butler, Judith
Page: 48, 48(a.), 49
Calaresu, Melissa
Page: 9(a.)
Calefato, Patrizia
Page: 43, 43(a.)
Cavalli-Björkman, Görel
Page: 19(a.)
Cederström, Gustaf
Page: 46, 46(a.)
Certeau, Michel de
Page: 53
Cézanne, Paul
Page: 39
Church, Fredric Edwin
Page: 17, 17(a.)
Claude Glasses
Page: 5, 12, 18, 51, 54
Claude Lorrain Mirror
Page: 10
Claude Mirror
Page: 5, 10, 11, 18
Claudian
Page: 11, 14, 14(a.), 15, 17, 41, 41(a.), 53, 56
Claudian gaze
Page: 17
Claudian light
Page: 14
Claudian model
Page: 14, 14(a.), 15, 41(a.)
Cohen, Ernst
Page: 8(a.)
Constable, John
Page: 25(a.), 41(a.)
copy
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 5(a.), 20, 22, 25, 26, 30(a.), 31, 32, 32(a.), 34, 38, 40, 41, 41(a.), 42, 42(a.), 44, 48, 51, 55, 57
copying, act of -
Page: 31, 51
copyist
Page: 26, 32, 34, 40, 41, 42, 44
Courbet, Gustave
Page: 34(a.)
Crary, Jonathan
Page: 13, 13(a.)
cruising
Page: 8, 35, 35(a.), 44, 44(a.), 49
Dahlbäck, Bengt
Page: 20(a.)
Degas, Edgar
Page: 44
Dercon, Chris
Page: 51(a.)
Düsseldorf School
Page: 15
Dughet, Gaspard
Page: 27
Dunwell, Frances F.
Page: 16(a.), 17(a.)
El Greco
Page: 2
Elster, Madeleine (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30, 31, 34, 38, 44
Fabiani, Bardo
Page: 43(a.)
Fahlcrantz, Carl Johan
Page: 14, 15
Ferguson, John "Scottie" (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30, 31
Ferrier, Maïten de
Page: 32
Field, Cyrus
Page: 17(a.)
framing
Page: 7, 33, 35, 51, 54
Fraser, Andrea
Page: 40(a.)
Fredlund, Björn
Page: 8(a.), 19(a.)
Fried, Michael
Page: 28(a.)
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.), 46, 46(a.)
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Page: 24
Gallerie Brunner, Paris
Page: 19(a.)
Gardner, Jack
Page: 29(a.)
gay
Page: 8, 35, 35(a.), 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 48(a.)
gaze
Page: 4, 5(a.), 8, 9, 13, 17, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27(a.), 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 42, 44, 44(a.), 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54
gender
Page: 30, 43, 48(a.), 49
Georgel, Chantal
Page: 24(a.)
Gilpin, William
Page: 9, 9(a.), 12, 12(a.), 16, 16(a.)
Giori, Cardinale
Page: 22
Goldfarb, Hilliard T.
Page: 28(a.), 29(a.)
Gombrich, Ernst Hans
Page: 25(a.), 48(a.)
Gordon, Douglas
Page: 30(a.)
Grünewald, Matthias
Page: 2
Grammel, Sören
Page: 30(a.)
Granath, Olle
Page: 4(a.)
Grand Tour
Page: 9, 14, 32, 35(a.)
Grate, Pontus
Page: 37(a.), 41(a.)
Gray Mirror
Page: 10
Great Chain Overlook, The
Page: 5
grid
Page: 24, 25, 25(a.), 26, 37, 38, 44, 46, 47, 49
Guerrilla Girls
Page: 40(a.)
Gustaf Adolf VI of Sweden, King
Page: 18
Hansen, Constantin
Page: 8(a.)
Harriss, Joseph A.
Page: 32(a.), 40(a.)
Hedén, Karl-Gustaf
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.)
Herrmann, Bernard
Page: 30(a.)
Hidaka, Ritsuko
Page: 24, 24(a.)
history
Page: 1, 7, 15, 18, 19, 20(a.), 21, 24, 26,32(a.), 35, 41(a.), 44, 46, 47, 48, 55, 56
Hitchcock, Alfred
Page: 30
Hockney, David
Page: 11(a.)
Holger, Lena
Page: 46(a.)
horizon
Page: 25, 27, 35, 38(a.), 41, 52, 53, 54, 56
Hudson River Highlands
Page: 16, 16(a.), 17(a.)
Hudson River School
Page: 17, 17(a.)
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Page: 28, 29(a.)
Isakson, Karl
Page: 39
Kennedy, Randy
Page: 45(a.)
Kitson, Michael
Page: 22(a.)
Købke, Christian
Page: 8(a.)
Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, Grand Duke
Page: 46, 46(a.)
Kopp, Céline
Page: 42(a.)
Krauss, Rosalind
Page: 25, 25(a.)
Kulick, Don
Page: 44, 44(a.), 49
Kunstverein München, Munich
Page: 30(a.)
landscape, Arcadian -
Page: 9, 35
landscape, cultivated -
Page: 16
landscape, designed -
Page: 10
landscape, Dutch -
Page: 10
landscape, lost -
Page: 16
landscape, national -
Page: 9, 14, 15
landscape, Nordic -
Page: 15
landscape, pastoral -
Page: 21, 34, 35
landscape,pictorial
Page: 14
landscape, Roman -
Page: 11
landscape, Romantic -
Page: 52
landscape, Swedish -
Page: 14, 15
landscape painter
Page: 5, 14, 17, 19(a.)
landscape painting
Page: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 11(a.), 14, 15, 53
Landscapes, Ideal -
Page: 9, 9(a.), 22(a.), 33(a.), 35, 40, 41(a.)
Landscapes, Imperial -
Page: 14, 14(a.)
Langdon, Helen
Page: 11(a.), 33, 33(a.), 57(a.)
Lawler, Louise
Page: 40(a.)
Lefebvre, Henri
Page: 27
Lenbach, Franz von
Page: 30(a.)
Liber Veritatis
Page: 21, 22, 22(a.)
linguistic matrix
Page: 25
Lorrain, Claude
Page: 2, 4, 4(a.), 5, 8, 8(a.), 9, 10, 11, 11(a.), 12, 12(a.), 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 18(a.), 19, 19(a.), 20, 21, 21(a.), 22, 22(a.), 23, 25, 25(a.), 26, 27, 28, 33, 33(a.), 34, 34(a.), 35, 36, 36(a.), 38, 38(a.), 41, 41(a.), 42(a.), 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 57(a.)
Louvre, Paris
Page: 24, 32, 32(a.), 40, 44, 44(a.)
Lyberg, Louise
Page: 32(a.)
Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm
Page: 35(a.)
Maillet, Arnaud
Page: 12(a.)
Malsch, Friedemann
Page: 28(a.)
Manson & Woods, London
Page: 8(a.)
Martin, Elias
Page: 14, 14(a.)
Matisse, Henri
Page: 39
memory
Page: 7, 11, 17(a.), 20, 30(a.), 31, 35(a.), 41, 41(a.), 43, 51
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
Page: 24, 24(a.), 27, 27(a.), 39, 39(a.), 55, 55(a.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Page: 17(a.), 24
Metz, Philip
Page: 30(a.)
mimicry
Page: 5, 6, 34, 40, 47, 49, 51
Mitchell, W.J.T.
Page: 11(a.), 14, 14(a.), 28(a.), 38(a.), 48(a.)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Page: 20, 40(a.)
Molvidson, Martin
Page: 46(a.)
Mulvey, Laura
Page: 30, 30(a.), 31
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica
Page: 41, 41(a.)
museum
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 8,18, 19, 20, 20(a.), 23, 24, 24(a.), 25,26, 27, 28,29, 29(a.), 30, 30(a.), 31, 32, 32(a.), 33, 34, 36,38, 40, 40(a.),42, 42(a.), 43, 44, 44(a.), 45, 46, 46(a.), 47,49, 50, 51
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Page: 45, 45(a.)
National Gallery, London
Page: 24, 41(a.)
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 8(a.), 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 20(a.), 24, 27, 32, 32(a.), 37, 38, 41(a.), 46, 47, 48(a.), 55, 57(a.)
nature
Page: 7, 9, 12, 13, 17, 18, 24, 33, 34, 39, 43, 47, 48, 51, 57
Newman, Michael
Page: 51, 51(a.), 52, 52(a.)
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
Page: 8
Nilsson, Håkan
Page: 48, 48(a.)
Nordic Light
Page: 15
Nordqvist, Per
Page: 14
Novak, Kim (actor in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30
original
Page: 4(a.), 5, 5(a.), 8, 14, 18(a.), 19(a.), 20, 22, 25, 25(a.), 26, 29(a.), 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 41(a.), 42, 46, 46(a.), 47, 48, 48(a.), 49
painting, historical -
Page: 6, 24, 30, 35, 41(a.)
painting, landscape
Page: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 11(a.), 14, 15, 53
painting, lost -
Page: 26
painting, process of -
Page: 39, 57
Palazzo Riccardi, Florence
Page: 19(a.)
Pehrson, Mathias
Page: 18(a.)
perspective
Page: 11, 18, 27, 27(a.), 33, 44
Persson, Helena
Page: 8(a.)
Petterson, Åke
Page: 18(a.)
Phelan, Peggy
Page: 5, 39, 39(a.)
Phillips, Tony
Page: 27(a.)
pictures journey
Page: 8
Picturesque
Page: 5, 9, 9(a.), 10, 10(a.), 11, 11(a.), 12, 12(a.), 14, 16, 17, 18
Pollock, Jackson
Page: 48(a.)
Pordenone, Bernardino Licinio da
Page: 28(a.)
Poussin, Nicolas
Page: 9, 27, 33, 33(a.), 40(a.), 41(a.)
Prado Museum, Madrid
Page: 41(a.), 53
Röthlisberger, Marcel
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.), 21, 21(a.), 22(a.), 34(a.), 35, 35(a.), 36, 36(a.), 37, 38(a.), 41, 41(a.), 42, 42(a.)
Rørbye, Martinus
Page: 8(a.)
Raphael
Page: 36
Rebekah
Page: 4(a.), 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 25(a.), 26, 28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 37(a.), 38, 40, 41, 42, 47, 55, 57
recognition
Page: 2, 8, 28, 38, 39, 40
Rembrandt van Rijn
Page: 19(a.)
restorer
Page: 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 21
Rossholm Lagerlöf, Margaretha
Page: 9(a.), 22(a.), 33, 33(a.), 34, 34(a.), 41(a.)
Rubens, Peter Paul
Page: 41(a.)
Sandberg, Ragnar
Page: 39, 39(a.)
Sandrart, Joachim von
Page: 36, 57
Sarto, Andrea del
Page: 30(a.)
See and Seen
Page: 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 29(a.), 44, 47, 49, 50, 54
seeing, act of -
Page: 27, 43, 49, 54
seeing, moment of
Page: 21, 48, 54
seeing, process of -
Page: 5, 26
seeing, way of -
Page: 7, 9, 14, 18, 39, 51
shepherd
Page: 4(a.), 19(a.), 22, 33, 35, 42
Shiner, Larry
Page: 40(a.)
spectator
Page: 11, 11(a.), 13, 29, 29(a.), 30, 33, 38(a.), 41, 43, 44, 50, 53
Stewart, James (actor in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock))
Page: 30
Stewart Gardner, Isabella
Page: 28, 29, 29(a.), 49
Storrie, Calum
Page: 44, 44(a.)
tourist
Page: 5, 7, 9, 9(a.), 10, 13, 18, 54
translate
Page: 2(a.), 11, 19(a.), 26, 39, 46
translation
Page: 1, 18(a.), 19(a.), 27(a.), 39(a.), 55(a.), 57(a.)
Turner, J.M.W.
Page: 11
US Military Academy at West Point, New York State
Page: 5, 16, 17, 18, 54
vanishing point
Page: 11, 27, 51, 52
Vertigo
Page: 30, 30(a.), 31, 38, 44
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Page: 43
viewer
Page: 2, 4, 5, 7, 13, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 24(a.), 26, 27, 28, 29, 29(a.), 30, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41(a.), 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54
viewing, act of -
Page: 13
viewing, conditions of -
Page: 44
viewing, modes of -
Page: 13
viewing aids / instruments
Page: 10, 13, 48
Warner, Deborah Jean
Page: 10, 10(a.), 12, 12(a.)
Williams, Raymond
Page: 7, 7(a.), 10, 10(a.)
Wittgenstein
Page: 48(a.)
Wood, Marjorie 'Midge' (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 31