IDYLL AND DISCOMFORT

Why did Dick Bengtsson put a swastika in his painting? Was it a political gesture aimed to inject discomfort in an otherwise idyllic scene? Bengtsson’s action has been interpreted in a variety of ways. He himself never offered a clear explanation.

Dick Bengtsson has copied the American artist Edward Hopper’s work "Early Sunday Morning" from 1930. But he added the swastika. This symbol has strong links to Nazism and the genocide during the Second World War. We don’t know why Bengtsson painted a swastika there. His own comment in a newspaper interview in 1983 was that the idyll is not always what it seems to be. It’s a false image of reality.

Ola Billgren painted a corridor. It is made to look like you could step right into it. In Western painting tradition, this is called photorealism or hyperrealism; the picture is experienced as being real. Note the lamplight. In the semi-darkness of the corridor, the light is reflected in the shiny doors and floor. The reflections pull us into the work.

Painting in this way is an aesthetic choice. It causes a feeling that something has happened or is about to happen. We’re left dangling, waiting for something. Filmmakers use light in a similar way in their narratives, to create suspense and atmosphere. The absence of figures in motion might trick us into thinking nothing is going on, but the calm is deceptive. What goes on behind the windows and doors is left to our imagination. The idyll can get nasty.

Both Bengtsson and Billgren processed the surface of their paintings. Bengtsson tried to age his picture by heating the surface with an iron so the colour would crack. Billgren, on the other hand, tried to paint the surface as evenly as possible.

The way we look at things reflects the culture we live in.

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