It is an overwhelming experience to enter Vanessa Baird’s intense, cartoonish universe that now fills the 3rd floor of the Munch Museum. Here the whole of Baird’s powerful, wickedly cheerful reality unfolds in full width. The exhibition is called “Go down with me”, and it really is a journey down into the depths and into the darkness. In the first room, the walls are practically wallpapered from floor to ceiling with beautiful, polemical and eerie watercolours. Here there are many different expressions and themes that are woven together, including references to the war in Ukraine. STRONG CHAOS: The first thing that meets us in the exhibition is a rather massive and overwhelming collage of various watercolors with humorous and sinister motifs. Photo: Ove Kvavik / The Munch Museum There are also pictures here that thematize the fear of infection that affected us during the pandemic. We find strong glimpses of the interaction between an old mother and her middle-aged daughter. The pictures offer both grotesque, sexual excesses, but also lots of bizarre humour. Human frailty is a common thread that ties it all together. As a memory journey Throughout my twenty years as an art critic, I have followed Vanessa Baird closely. In fact, walking through the exhibition is a bit like taking a trip down memory lane in my own history. These works have at various times touched me so strongly that I still associate them with certain phases and events in my own life. CONTROVERSIAL: The work “To Everything There Is a Season”, which the employees of the Ministry of Health did not want, is included in the exhibition. It was initially hung up in the ministry’s press room, but was removed because it brought up bad memories of 22 July. They also believed that it formed a poor backdrop for TV interviews. Photo: Ove Kvavik / The Munch Museum For example, I remember well my very first meeting with Baird. It was in 2005 when I arrived nervous and pregnant as a fairly new art critic, and had to review the National Museum’s prestigious exhibition “Kiss the Frog”. It was a spectacular and extensive muster, but it was Baird’s fierce, fairytale-inspired drawings that definitely made the strongest impression on me. At the Munch Museum, I see the same work for the first time in almost twenty years, and I am still a little shocked by the erotic interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Here, the predator is not looking to eat the girl, but to conquer her sexually. Little Red Riding Hood lies naked, her thighs heavily scratched up in close intercourse with the furry beast. NOT SMALL: Each column is divided into pieces and stories. Vanessa Baird is very literary, but even though the works are full of stories, you don’t need to know any background history. The design has a unique sense of rhythm and a coloristic connection. Here, the monumental format explodes the framework for the room. Therefore, it has had to be slanted. The Little Red Riding Hood interpretation can be seen in the fifth column from the left. Photo: Ove Kvavik / The Munch Museum In the exhibition I come across another work that once made a strong impression. It shows a slightly unkempt and obviously tired woman who seems to want to stick her head into the fireplace in sheer desperation. As a mother of young children, who knew something about standing exhausted in a home that resembled an inferno in flames with stains on the clothes that might as well be vomit as faeces, I found these delightfully unromantic depictions of home and motherhood quite liberating. I will also never forget the image of a shapeless woman in a maiden’s dress sitting and cutting off her fingers. EARLY PHASE: In the exhibition we get to see some of the work from when she had just graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. At the Academy of Fine Arts, she was encouraged to drop figurative painting, but Baird stuck to both painting and figuration. Taking Rodin’s “The Thinker” as a starting point, she here teases the male artist’s ego. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen A contemporary masterpiece In 2017, Vanessa Baird created the work that I was convinced would stand as the definitive highlight of her entire career: the monumental pastel chalk frieze “You Are Something Else”. The whole of this work is strikingly beautiful, even if the motifs are individually grotesque. Here we see women being licked on the crotch by animals, there are people who vomit and poop. There is masturbation, abuse, suicide and despair. As a recurring theme, we see the sea, and refugees fighting for their lives in the foaming bodies of water. THE HIGHLIGHT – OUR CRITIC BELIEVED: The pastel chalk frieze “You Are Something Else”, here photographed at Kunstnernes Hus in 2017. Photo: Hilde Bjørnskau On the contemporary scene, it’s not often that I feel like I’m standing in front of a masterpiece, but that’s exactly what I thought when I stood at Kunstnernes Hus and stared at this mighty whole. And I remember thinking that she will never be able to top this. Therefore, I was quite sure that this particular frieze would form a climax in the Munch Museum’s retrospective exhibition. But Vanessa Baird is not one to rest on yesterday’s triumphs. “You Are Something Else” is actually only represented with a few small selected sections. MUNCH IS INVOLVED: There are few Norwegian visual artists who do not in one way or another formulate an attitude towards Munch. Vanessa Baird has created a series where she has been inspired by the mood, body language and facial expressions in Munch’s various self-portraits. Photo: Øystein Thorvaldsen, with permission from the artist and OSL, Contemporary, Oslo What really plays the role of the main work in the exhibition is a stunning new visual epic, a merciless depiction of the carnage in Gaza. Here, Vanessa Baird offers us a darkness that is almost unbearable. Even as well as I know this disturbing and unique artistry, I am once again left speechless with admiration at her virtuoso linework, her incomparable coloristic and compositional abilities. Swipe for a closer look at the Gaza frieze: MASSACRE: In the face of death, we are all equal. Therefore, there is a justified lack of visual hierarchy, no one should play the main role here. This is a surface where everything is leveled and treated. She takes us into the deepest human darkness. Photo: Ove Kvavik / The Munch Museum Putting text into a context can both bind and close the work, and it is also difficult to make it fit well into the visual whole. Vanessa Baird strangely makes it work. Photo: Ove Kvavik / The Munch Museum While the rest of us try as best we can to shield ourselves a little from the gruesome details, Baird has stood by this day after day, week after week, month after month. Maybe her way of really trying to take part in the Palestinian history of suffering? Photo: Ove Kvavik / The Munch Museum How is it even possible to orchestrate such chaos: to stitch together so many elements into a form-perfect whole? Vanessa Baird has never been a feel-good artist, and the Gaza Frieze is truly both the rawest and most brutal thing she’s ever created. But strangely enough also one of the most beautiful. This is not only art that is fascinating and important to us now. These are works that will be admired and studied a hundred years from now. I am absolutely sure of that. news reviews Title: “Go down with me” Artist: Vanessa Baird Curator: Kari Brandtzæg Place: MUNCH, Oslo Time: 10 October 2024 – 31 December 2025 Estimated time spent in the exhibition: 40 to 90 minutes Published 15.10.2024, at 15.52
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“Go Down With Me” by Vanessa Baird at the Munch Museum, Oslo – Reviews and recommendations
