Dr Marja Lahelma (University of Helsinki, IASH Fellow): Decadence and the North: Symbolist art in the Nordic countries
This talk reflects on the artistic implications of ‘decadence’ and ‘northernness’ within the framework of Symbolist art and aesthetics in the Nordic countries around the year 1900. In European culture of the period, northernness was associated with notions of purity, authenticity, and vitality. In this sense it constitutes a counterpoint to the concept of decadence with its overtones of artificiality, morbidity, and perversion. While late nineteenth-century Nordic art often strived to be decidedly anti-decadent, there was also an emphatically decadent movement in the art of the period. Edvard Munch and August Strindberg, for instance, have been associated with notions of decadence. Within this specific Nordic context, decadence becomes integrated with constructions of cultural hierarchy and national identity, making it an exceedingly complex and politically sensitive concept. This talk examines both the mythical and fictional dimensions of these concepts, and the very real impact that they had on the art of the period.