Join us September 30 for a discussion on the first English-language anthology of writings by Swedish art critic and museum director Ulf Linde: Essays from a Lifetime in the Arts. Curator, critic, and artist Robert Storr will discuss Linde’s career with Kerstin Lind Bonnier and Peter Galassi, who edited and translated the book, which will be out on October 3 from Artbook/D.A.P.
Ulf Linde (1929-2013) played a key role in the early years of Moderna Museet, where in 1961, he produced the first replica of Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass, approved and signed by the artist. While Linde was a major voice in Sweden for over six decades, he is little known outside of Scandinavia.
This anthology rectifies that oversight, making available Linde’s most rigorous and illuminating essays: studies of Swedish painters and other modern masters such as Picasso. Matisse. Picabia and Giacometti, as well as a bevy of theoretical texts including his ambitious final essay on the art of drawing.
The volume is generously illustrated and features an introduction by Olle Granath, former director of Moderna Museet and Sweden’s Nationalmuseum.
The talk will take place at Scandinavia House. Registration recommended; sign up at the link above.
“This fascinating selection of beautifully translated texts demonstrates [Linde] was in fact one of the most powerful critics of the era”—Daniel Birnbaum, Artistic Director of Acute Art & former Director of Moderna Museet
“A vital contributor to both Moderna Museet and the Centre Pompidou in their early years, Ulf Linde was a leading critical voice in Sweden for half a century… Now readers of English can enjoy the breadth of his adventurous, exacting, versatile, and eloquent writings”—Laurent Le Bon, President of Centre Pompidou
“Ulf Linde’s wonderful essays bust out in unexpected directions, bringing a spirit by turns playful, celebratory, scholarly, and daringly idiosyncratic to subjects as diverse as Duchamp, Matisse, Giacometti, Duke Ellington, Wallace Stevens, and Early Christian illuminated manuscripts. Linde, who began life as a jazz musician, has a gift for intellectual improvisation. He lets his ideas fly. His great subject is the enchantment of modern art. Open this beautifully produced book and you’ll find yourself getting to know a writer of head-spinning range and originality.” — Jed Perl, author of Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts
About the Editors
Kerstin Lind Bonnier is a Stockholm native and former executive producer at Svensk Filmindustri. With Elizabeth Clark Wessel, she translated Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods (2018).
Peter Galassi is an art historian and former chief curator of photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He is the author of more than twenty books and catalogues.
About the Moderator
Robert Storr is an artist, critic and curator.
He divides his time between Brooklyn, New Haven and “the road.”