In this premature note I will try to get as close as possible to a final concept. I envision the entire project as something that is, for me, genuinely joyful. I have intimations of something grounded in what I know – and perhaps especially in what I do not know. We are working with a group of artists from around the turn of the century, 1800–1900. I will suggest which works I have in mind, but of course I am entirely prepared to yield if these cannot be obtained.

Imagine an exhibition whose obvious centre is Vilhelm Hammers-høi’s major work Five Portraits (1901), featuring Thorvald Bindesbøll, Karl Madsen, J. F. Willumsen, Carl Holsøe and Svend Hammershøi. Of these, until now I have only had any real connection with Bindesbøll, Willumsen and Svend Hammershøi – to say nothing of the greatest inspirer of them all, who is, of course, the painter himself: Vilhelm Hammershøi.

At the age of nineteen, an amateur curator with vastly inadequate knowledge (me) set out for Stockholm with the sole purpose of seeing Five Portraits and, in the process, also the exhibition building at the Thiel Gallery. Hammershøi’s masterpiece exerted an almost magical pull on that young man. And I did indeed note that this picture was far removed from the rest of Hammershøi’s work, such as the interiors – not least due to the strange coffin-shaped table around which the five sitters were gathered.

I mention the young ‘curator’ because the exhibition this text concerns may, at heart, be conceived as something that in truth has more to do with the curator than with the – mostly – sublime works it contains. One might see the exhibition’s selection and method as a kind of unveiling of the curator’s leech-like artistic relationship to the ‘family’ he has himself largely defined and lived off. Hence the title of the exhibition: Descendant.

Let us, as a courtesy, refer to the curator in what follows as Trier. The forces that drew the young Trier to the Thiel Gallery were, of course, triggered by earlier events, among which it is essential to mention the British director Peter Watkins and his, on Trier, utterly overwhelming impact by way of his television film Edvard Munch (1974). The film – which would later influence that self-same Trier precisely as ‘film’, but which at first affected him through its subject matter: Edvard Munch’s life and art – was the snowball that, quite explosively (if one can say such a thing about snowballs), sent Trier straight to the local paint shop (where, among other things, he became acquainted with the intricacies of stretcher frames and other technicalities of traditional work in the visual arts).

Trier tore through every last -ism at breakneck speed without ever showing the faintest hint of talent. During his brief Expressionist phase he used, to a hysterical degree, the shafts of his brushes far more than their bristles – those actually intended to spread paint – in order to scream the pain of his tormented soul out into the ‘wondering’ (for which we may read: indifferent) world.

Happily, very little tangible evidence of Trier’s alleged early artistic activity survives. There does, however, exist a self-portrait entitled On the Way to Zarathustra (1975). The picture is believed to be in the portrait collection at Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerød. It ended up there after a dubious barter between the film production company Zentropa and the museum, and, legally speaking, the ownership presumably remains mine. I mention this only because one might imagine the picture being included as a detail within the exhibition, and it ought to be possible to get hold of.

My idea is to indulge myself with a collage of images which, together, represent my youthful – naïve, if you like – love for primarily Nordic artists and their followers. A kind of interwoven tapestry of images which can be viewed both as a whole and in detail by following one or several threads in order to, ideally, grasp its ‘story’: that is, the curator’s, or Trier’s, story and the tapestry’s impact on it.

Besides Willumsen, other relevant artists, subjects, or commentators might, off the top of my head, be – or not be: Munch, Strindberg, Dr Jacobson, Hammershøi, Hill, the curator himself, Nietzsche, Dreyer, Kirkeby, Gauguin, Nielsen, Tegner, etc. As you can see: famous names, no geeky obscurity, and, more often than not, the familiar works by the familiar. No refinement and no in-depth expertise to offer hints only to the few initiated, or signal why these (banal) choices and connections have been prioritised … only the curator’s love, absorbed in his youth, sets the boundaries that include and exclude!

Lars von Trier, Ørholm, Denmark, 21 April 2024