Stockholm: Exhibition on Nordic Design – Culture

The number of variants in which a reasonably presentable apartment can be furnished seems to have decreased in recent times. Everywhere you turn you come across a style that bears the name “mid-century modern”: simple shapes, ergonomic concepts, light woods and surfaces. The furniture is named after its creators, and most of them come from the north of Europe: the items were designed by Danes like Hans Wegner and Poul Kjærholm, by Swedes like Bruno Mathsson or Nisse Strinning, by Finns like Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino . Those who surround themselves with the objects they have drawn cannot seem to go wrong: The owners reveal taste without making it too personal, they express a sense of functionality, and they are apparently wealthy too. For all three reasons, this style is likely to be so popular among renters of furnished apartments for tourists with high demands.

The Stockholm National Museum is currently showing an exhibition dedicated to the early internationalization of this style of furnishing, which then figured programmatically as “Scandinavian Design”, including Finland. More precisely, it is about exporting the style to the United States. At its height in the fifties and early sixties, American notions of modernity were combined with Nordic ideals of form in such a firm way that the United Nations headquarters on the East River in New York, on the site of an abandoned slaughterhouse, also became the symbol of a global one aesthetic movement: the room in which the Security Council meets, for example, was designed by a Norwegian architect. Conversely, the American embassies in Oslo and Stockholm became iconic representations of cosmopolitanism and transparency. It may be that the curators of the exhibition are actually interested in developing a design and a great export success. At the same time, however, the show shows the extent to which this moderate form of modernity belongs to a history of political representation. And not only because the “Office of War Information”, a propaganda agency operated by the United States during World War II, campaigned for the spread of the Nordic style. The organization later became part of the CIA.

Open detailed view

Rather, the Stockholm exhibition covers a long arc, from the early 20th century to the 1980s, presumably deliberately omitting the historical forerunners of the Nordic style, such as the “Arts and Crafts” movement or the Bauhaus. This gives the impression that one is dealing with a genealogy that has, as it were, been created by itself. And of course the immigrants from the Nordic countries brought their craft with them. But so did the immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Germany or the Eastern European countries. But John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon were sitting in Danish chairs in September 1960 when the candidates for the office of American president first argued against each other on television. They did it not only because Kennedy suffered from back pain or because goods from the Nordic countries could be considered politically unaffected. Rather, the seating reflected the spirit of a social awakening in which history seemed to be heading towards a new meaning: democratic, efficient, close to nature and directly opposed to the neo-baroque style of Stalinism.

The protagonists of the new movement belonged to a milieu of democratic reformism

The history of Nordic design began three, maybe four decades earlier, when Danish architects and designers initially turned to furniture that was preceded by romantic neoclassicism and that would then become the establishment of new, equally classless living. The design was based on a simple but carefully executed and durable craft. As far as possible, local materials were used – teak was one of them because it was widely used in shipbuilding – adapted to the requirements of series production. And if the protagonists of the new movement were not all socialists, they still belonged to a milieu of democratic reformism, right up to Poul Henningsen, the designer of some of the most popular lights of the 20th century, and Arne Jacobsen, the creator of a chair that was popular around the world called “Series 7” and perhaps an even more popular armchair known as “the Egg”. In September 1943, threatened by Danish fascists, the two fled to Sweden.

Open detailed view

“Populuxe” is what the American historian Thomas Hine calls this movement, in which the pioneering spirit is combined with popular education and a belief in progress with apparently egalitarian consumption. Little has remained of the associated claim to classlessness, especially when it comes to the works of well-known designers: Instead, the furniture, beginning in the nineties and now categorized as “design”, became the self-expression of a global elite, which is characterized by the fact that it encounter the same expensive facility anywhere in the world. Perhaps it is the memory of past hopes that attracts such people to the white oiled birch wood, perhaps it is the idea of ​​a clearly and benevolently ordered world in which no restrictions are imposed on the individual on his way to a better self, least of all through stylish furniture. Perhaps this furniture is also so popular because it accommodates a mobile lifestyle.

In the United States, at any rate, the style that is now called “mid-century modern” has not remained at home for long. At the end of the exhibition, works by Nordic designers from the seventies and eighties are shown, for example a tapestry showing a desperate young Vietnamese and an American flag on which the stars have been replaced by crosses of the dead. For political reasons, however, Scandinavian design is unlikely to have left the United States. Rather, the ideals of democratic reformism had become so fragile that less and less ideological common ground could be based on them. However, this retreat did not detract from the success of Scandinavian design: As a branded item, this apparently timeless furniture later entered the sphere of symbolic consumption, and as such it soon received a story to which a large and nostalgic exhibition can be dedicated.

Scandinavian Design & USA. Stockholm National Museum. Until January 9, 2022. The catalog, written in Swedish and English, costs the equivalent of 30 euros.