Cafe Dolly. Picabia, Schnabel, Willumsen.

8 September – 30 December 2013

Controversial artists

The three artists' work with figuration, narrative and portraiture in an era dominated by abstraction and distancing themselves from painting as an artistic form of expression has made them controversial. Their works have often been the subject of harsh criticism. Picabia's late, figurative works from the 1940s were written out of his oeuvre, and Schnabel's figure paintings from the 1980s were accused of lacking critical potential and continuing an outdated artistic expression. Willumsen's late works have been considered banal and eccentric for decades. Unlike his early works, they have never been part of the Danish art canon.

Dolly, the cloned sheep

The reception of the three artists’ works has alternated between rejection and admiration as times have changed and new narratives have become possible. Although Picabia and Schnabel – and increasingly Willumsen – are currently experiencing great recognition, their paintings continue to provoke questions about style, good taste and even ethics in art. The exhibition’s title “Café Dolly” refers to the world’s first cloned sheep, Dolly. The sheep that in 1997 seriously shook our cultural notions of authenticity and genuineness. In a visual artistic context, Picabia, Schnabel and Willumsen challenge the same concepts in their open-minded dealings with the traditions of art history, mass-mediated images and private photographs and narratives.

Artist-curated exhibition

“Café” Dolly is curated by the visual artists Claus Carstensen og Christian Wind in collaboration with Anne Gregersen, PhD fellow at the University of Copenhagen and Willumsens Museum. Based on stories, moods and painterly traces, they have staged the exhibition in a series of associative spaces that are open to interpretation.