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Household Paintings #3
A Fictional Installation by Lance Blomgren
Somewhere deep in the minds of all Danes, lurks the image of P.S. Krøyer's painting, Two Women Walking on the Beach. This painting, famous for its flat, "midnight sun" quality of light, depicts a banal, yet Romantic, image of two women sharing an evening stroll and some conversation on a beach in Skagen, at Denmark's northernmost tip. All children will have seen reproductions of this painting in school, and most adults will have heard that this image is a representation of bohemian life in the Skagen artist colony in the late 1800s. Many know that the women are Krøyer's wife and her friend, the artist Anna Archer. The mixture of bourgeois manners and outdoor adventure, elegance and measured decadence embodied by this picture remains an inspirational model for the passionate yet practical life: fresh air, exercise, relaxation, friends, family, food. And then there's that light, a haunting North Sea blue-grey that flares in the mind like an afterimage flash on the retina, a light that many Danes know eventually began to drive Krøyer into mental illness. Similar to The Little Mermaid, Krøyer's painting has become something of a national symbol and thousands of forgeries have been made by enterprising souls worldwide.
Perhaps it's not strange, then, that Two Women is rarely seen in the houses of Danes. Many disdain it. The painting is hopelessly saccharine, offering little but empty nostalgia to the modern viewer. So it takes one by surprise when, in the living room of some distant relative, Two Women is on display over the fireplace, its outdated quaintness somehow at home amidst the teakwood furniture and minimal décor. The image is not a poster, but it has been mechanically printed onto canvas, then smeared with gesso to give it the appearance of texture. It takes one by surprise to see the painting displayed so brazenly, creating a backdrop for what was otherwise predicted to be a stiff, boring evening.
This is really the way to eat an early dinner. Textbook festivity. We shared sandwiches and potato salad. We parenthesized the meal with bitters and port. The houses beyond are dark. The tablecloth is red. There is more than one way to eat rabbit and it is called roasted lamb. The great aunt stews rhubarb. Someone's children are swearing and counting money. The casual comments between a new husband and wife about an obscure news item prove significantly to us all that they are perfectly suited as a couple.
After dinner we step carefully from one slippery rock to the other as we walk along the shore. The dusk is not cold, not quiet, and is hanging lustily. We can't feel our arms for the air. The laws of breathing let us gasp as we climb the embankment before discussing unrequited love, and finally turning in.
And this is unrequited love. We are sick with it. We either sleep it off, or find suitable distractions. We are modern viewers and nostalgia is being offered. Isn't the far off sound of traffic on the highway the sound of fortune? Of warning? The evening is like a dog, awaiting its reward for laying still. I am a woman smelling of a soap called melancholy. I heard today that my friend Fred Douglas has died.
