Nationalism and the Nordic imagination
Subtitle: Swedish art of the 1890s
By: Michelle Facos.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 234
Subjects: Painting, Swedish -- 19th century.; Nationalism and art -- Sweden -- History -- 19th century.
Description: Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Michelle Facos links the social and cultural dynamics in turn-of-the-century Sweden to the discourses of primitivism, nationalism, and symbolism. In the process, she sheds new light on a major area of study, the manifestation of modernism in Sweden.

These painters - among them Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn, Bruno Liljefors, and Prince Eugen - sought to produce a specifically national Swedish art. They focused on indigenous history, legends, and folk tales as well as customs, values, geography, and ethnography - anything they perceived as uniquely or typically Swedish.

Politically progressive and culturally conservative, the National Romantic artists protested against the dangers they perceived in capitalist industrialism and urban expansion and promoted an egalitarian ideology centered on the Swedish/Nordic native culture.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-222) and index.
Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--New York University, Institute of Fine Arts).