Just before the explosion and shootings in Oslo, I went to see “North by New York: New Scandinavian Art” at  Scandinavia House.  I went with immense curiosity, wanting to know more about what this part of the world was like, to round out what I’d imagined from watching Ingmar Bergman and reading Henning Mankell.  But the exhibit didn’t really congeal – the paintings and photographs weren’t held together by any principle (formal, thematic, tonal) at all.  The curator, Robert Storr, gave a thoughtful introductory lecture the night I was there.  He said that this was precisely the point, that Scandinavia is no longer “Scandinavia,” and that these countries are increasingly pluralistic ones, plagued by the same troubles (violence, intolerance, drugs) that all other industrialized countries are.  But when the folks at Scandinavia House set out to shape the exhibit, didn’t they have something, anything, in mind?  Surely the Scandinavian landscape, its languages, its socialist governments, its very long summer nights, shape a culture with unique qualities, qualities that find some expression in the art?

There are very fine paintings here, in particular three by Sara Vide Ericson.  She paints figures, and parts of figures, against flattened backdrops, in contorted and strangely affectless poses.  It’s as if she’s drained each image of all particularity, aiming at a higher, symbolic truth that never arrives.  She handles the paint in flat, luminous fields.   Her figures remind me of those by the great 80’s New York City painters Eric Fischl (they’re athletic but not erotic) and Francesco Clemente (they’re interior and dreamy).  Is the quality of light in these paintings Scandinavian?  Is the emotional detachment in these paintings Scandinavian?  Although recent events suggest that Scandinavia is just like the rest of the world, I’d like to believe otherwise.