The Conceptual, the Romantic, and the Nonhuman: The SÚM Group and the Emergence of Contemporary Art in Iceland, 1965-1978 by HEIÐA BJÖRK ÁRNADÓTTIR A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Art History and Theory) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) May 2019 © Heiða Björk Árnadóttir, 2019 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: The Conceptual, the Romantic, and the Nonhuman: The SÚM Group and the Emergence of Contemporary Art in Iceland, 1965-1978 submitted Heiða Björk Árnadóttir in partial fulfillment of the requirements for by the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History Examining Committee: Dr. T’ai Smith Supervisor Dr. Ignacio Adriasola Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Maureen Ryan University Examiner Dr. Vin Nardizzi University Examiner Additional Supervisory Committee Members: Supervisory Committee Member Supervisory Committee Member ii Abstract This dissertation considers the emergence of contemporary art practices in Iceland through the activities of the artist collective SÚM between 1965 and 1978. The founding of SÚM in 1965 brought forth, for the first time, a generation of Icelandic artists whose practices closely correspond to that of experimental artists globally, especially those aligned with Fluxus and conceptual art. As I highlight, this relied on Iceland’s belated modernization and changes to the country’s geopolitical status in the twentieth century, as well as on global efforts to decentralize the artworld. And yet, SÚM’s challenge to the definition of the art object is also uniquely configured through the artists’ complicated relationship to the local tradition of landscape painting and the concomitant romantic nationalist discourse which had shaped Icelandic self-identity, cultural practices and discourses since the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, SÚM’s practice developed through a critical engagement with the idealized place of nature in Icelandic national identity—a critique which sought to complicate the boundary between nature and culture. SÚM artists’ efforts to subvert Icelandic nationalist ideology and artistic tradition are complicated, however, by their alliance with the postwar political resistance movement against the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States in Iceland as well as its neocolonial practices globally. This led the artists to situate their work in relation to a specific, yet ill-defined, local Icelandic way and sense of being. Often characterized in terms of a “poetic” or “romantic” attitude, this typically focuses on the centrality of the natural in the work of prominent members of SÚM, their engagement with “premodern” Icelandic cultural traditions, folk belief and art, and their suggestions for an intuitive or emotional basis for their practice. Highlighting the dialectical tension between the globalizing and localizing impulses of SÚM, I argue that to understand the specificity of Icelandic contemporary art, one must consider the degree to which its emergence, through SÚM, was produced within the context of the country’s changing geopolitical position and its longer history as a peripheral territory within the Danish colonial empire. iii Lay Summary This text examines the history of the artist collective SÚM, established in Iceland in 1965 and active until 1978, the practices of which were foundational for the emergence of contemporary art in Iceland. Analyzing SÚM’s translation of avant-garde forms and practices of art into Iceland, it highlights the dialectical tension between the artists’ ambitions towards participation in the increasingly “global” artistic sphere of the 1970s and their positioning of their work in opposition to certain dominant forms of contemporary art, as well as their adoption of distinctly “local” themes and subject matter. Focusing on SÚM artists’ ambiguous relationship to Icelandic nationalist discourse and their critical engagement with the idealized place of nature in Icelandic national identity, this study argues that the terms of SÚM work and of contemporary art from Iceland can be understood as produced in the longer geopolitical history of Iceland since the Early Modern period. iv Preface This dissertation is an original and independent work by the author, Heiða Björk Árnadóttir. All translations from the Icelandic into English throughout this dissertation are the author’s except where otherwise noted. v Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. iii Lay Summary ......................................................................................................................... iv Preface ...................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ xxix Dedication ............................................................................................................................. xxx Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 The Current Literature .................................................................................................... 13 Methods and Terminology .............................................................................................. 23 Cultural Nationalism ................................................................................................... 23 Colonialism in the North? The Ambiguous Subject Position of Icelanders ............... 27 Translation and Transculturation ................................................................................ 34 Contemporary Art ....................................................................................................... 36 Organization and Scope of the Study ............................................................................. 42 Note on Icelandic Names ............................................................................................ 46 Chapter 1. Nature and Nationalism: Landscape Painting and SÚM ............................... 47 Landscape Painting: The Paradoxical Logic of the Discourse of Art and Nationalism in Iceland ............................................................................................................................ 53 vi The North Re-Imagined .............................................................................................. 56 Landscape Painting, Cultural Nationalism and the Ethical Revival of Icelanders ..... 59 Herder’s Theory of Language ..................................................................................... 64 Landscape Painting, the Reification of Nature and the Paradox of Cultural Nationalism ................................................................................................................. 70 The “Naturalization” of Abstract Art ............................................................................. 73 Nationalism and the Reception of Abstract Art .......................................................... 77 The Rise of Abstract Art and the Emergence of an Institutional Framework for Art 80 The Adaptation of Abstract Art to Nationalist Discourse .......................................... 83 Landscape Painting and the Development of Contemporary Art within SÚM .............. 86 Popular Culture, “Americanization” and Postwar Cultural Debates .......................... 90 The Nationalist Framing and Reception of SÚM I, 1965 ........................................... 95 SÚM’s Challenge to the Tradition of Landscape Painting ....................................... 104 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 109 Chapter 2. SÚM, Dieter Roth, and Fluxus ........................................................................ 112 The Transformation of Dieter Roth’s Practice ............................................................. 117 Aesthetics, Ethics and the Nonhuman ...................................................................... 121 Roth’s Network ......................................................................................................... 126 Dieter Roth and Fluxus ................................................................................................. 134 Fluxus and the Reconceptualization of the “Concrete” ............................................ 137 Dieter Roth’s Material .............................................................................................. 144 Fluxus “Moralism” and Dieter Roth’s Animals ....................................................... 146 SÚM and Fluxus ..........................................................................................................