Moderna Museet is participating in Nobel Week Lights 2021 with Ragnar Kjartansson’s neon artwork Scandinavian Pain from their collection.

Scandinavian Pain, a pink neon sculpture of twelve meters was first shown in Moss, Norway in 2006. It was mounted on the roof of an old barn, in which Kjartansson lived in for a week’s long time to realize his ironic performance of the melancholic Nordic artist.

Sad poetry combined with subtle humor is often found in Ragnar Kjartansson’s art. He throws himself headlong between feelings of hopelessness, doom and life joy. The romanticized image of the artist – boundless, seeking, suffering – can be found, while he simultaneously makes fun of the same image. He finds the soul of the Scandinavian people to be charged with gloom and melancholy, which he touches upon in his art. As an artist he uses different means of expression, always influenced by the opposites found in theatre, tragedy and comedy. In 2010, he created “Natten. Erotik, folköl och melankoli” for Moderna Museet’s The Studio. It was a performance piece where he during 24 hours ceaselessly played and sang Bellman’s epistle Glimmande Nymf while drinking beer surrounded by his own stage design of snow covered mountains.

The idea of Nordic melancholy, which became known internationally through Ingmar Bergman’s films, has a long history. At the turn of the century several Nordic artists and writers, with Edvard Munch and August Strindberg leading the way, used melancholy as inspiration and a way of expression. Pär Lagerkvist, Nobel laureate and member of the Swedish Academy, often returned to the dark emotions in his work. His poem Ångest, ångest är min arvedel (1916) may be his most well-known.