Post by Grubb. (From Bergen days)
The KODE Art Museum in central Bergen is actually four different buildings (KODE 1, 2,3, & 4) blocks apart. This being Scandinavia, we knew we could depend on at least one of the museums being closed (a lot of time is spent installing new exhibits in the spring). It seems a couple of merchants in Bergen were big collectors. One of them was a buddy of Munch’s. Another, a Picasso fan, who had an obsession with modernist nudes and wrote experimental erotic fiction. I thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if American tech billionaires could add a Norwegian twist to their affairs, like Bill Gates collecting R. Crumb comics and making soft-core art films, something to show that his entrepreneurial drive is fueled by an off-kilter obsession. A modernist nude would go good here, but I can’t resist a large painting in the middle of the Norwegian exhibit that was entitled…you guessed it:
Scottish artists did a lot of similar paintings, often centered around the Highland Clearances that took place in the late 1700s and 1800s. You can check out the painting on Google called “the last of the clan“ by Thomas Faed for an example.