Landscape Painting and the Construction of “Icelandicness”: Icelandic Modern National Art vis-à-vis its Danish Origins

Abstract

The article constitutes an attempt at developing a new approach to Icelandic national art, supported by an analysis of its role in the process of constructing “Icelandicness” and the Icelandic identity. It enters a dialogue with the study Kryptokoloniale landskaber: tid, sted og rum i billeder af islandsk landskab 1874–2011 by Ann-Sofie Nielsen Gremaud, with a concurrent focus on Icelandic landscape painting of the period 1874–1944 and its relation to Danish art. The Nordic, and especially the Icelandic art was routinely overlooked in the European artistic and historical narration, including the Polish scholarly environment, but it is well worthy of a closer scrutiny. Two fundamental assumptions that define the analysis presented herein are that the modern national art of Iceland derives from the Academic tradition in Denmark and that, concurrently, Icelandic artists participated in the process of developing national identity in opposition to the Danish model. In order to find confirmation for the posed theses, methodologies close to post-colonialism and crypto-colonialism have been used, as well as ones inspired by imagology and based on interdisciplinary research in the fields of art history, history, anthropology and cultural studies.