He is described by many as our last great painter. When Leonard Rickhard died earlier this month, he had come to terms with the fact that he himself would not get to experience the large exhibition at the Astrup Fearnley Museum that he had worked towards for several years. But even if he was not present at the grand opening, the planning is thoroughly characterized by his participation. Curator Solveig Øvstebø has told about how he placed miniature paintings into millimeter-scaled models of the museum’s halls. Dozens of small works of art cover an entire wall in one of the exhibition halls at Astrup Fearnley. Photo: Christian Øen Despite a great interest and admiration for Leonard Rickhard, I have always felt a rather significant discomfort in the face of his pictures. When I was young and went to the National Gallery, I hurried on when I came to a work of his, and did not study him as carefully as I should have done. Later I made up for it. I have actively resisted my ambivalence and sought out one exhibition after another, immersing myself in texts about this unique artistry. And although both interest and fascination have increased, I still feel the small resistance inside me when I enter Rickhard’s universe. AT WORK: Leonard Rickhard in his studio in the spring of 2023. He died on 7 January, just weeks before the large-scale exhibition opening at Astrup Fearnley. Photo: Helle Holm Leonard Rickhard (right) photographed in 2014. Photo: Pål Hoff Oslo Mayor Anne Lindbo, Queen Sonja and Leonard Rickhard’s wife, Berit Rickhard, during the opening of the exhibition. Photo: Annika Byrde / NTB Arouses discomfort in me This time I have decided to try to find out what it is about these images that arouses such feelings in me. One of the first paintings in the exhibition is called “Back-facing figure in nocturnal interior”. It is a fairly typical Leonard Rickhard painting. He is known for his naïve, stylized figurative style. LONELY: Here he often creates a rather absorbing central perspective, which is often also slightly distorted. There is something alienating and eerie about the whole scene, and as always with Rickhard, the human figure is stiff and cardboard-like. It does not contribute to an experience of identification and recognition. On the contrary, it emphasizes the feeling of alienation and loneliness. The fact that the frame is absolutely enormous means that we experience the big picture as quite small. It looks as if a miniature painting has been blown up to enormous dimensions. Photo: Dag Fosse The slightly distorted central perspective often gives the subjects something eerie and surreal. In this picture, a man sits completely statically on a chair with his back to us in a room. The absorbing perspective in the depiction of space is repeated in the twilight landscape on the TV screen. We also find the same rigid, doll-like representation of people in the painting “Figures and actions after sunset” (1995-2008). Here, a red barn wall, with a monotonous row of windows, creates an almost dizzying perspectival attraction into the pictorial space. And as in many of Leonard Rickhard’s pictures, it is so deafeningly quiet that I can hardly stand it. MAKE ME Dizzy: “Figures and actions after sunset” (1995-2008) is included in the exhibition. The image is taken from Haugar Kunstmuseum’s Collection. Photo: Thomas Widerberg/Haugar Kunstmuseum Do something with people I close my eyes to try to find out where in the body or soul this discomfort is. I get some photos from my early childhood in Rygge in Østfold. I envision forests and fields. I can smell sauerkraut from the factory, and the noise of fighter jets coming in low over the rooftops. When I was young, I thought everyone experienced Rickhard’s pictures just like me. I thought this discomfort was kind of his thing. HIS OWN ROMANCE: The painter Lars Elling told me that when he worked as a guard at the National Gallery as a young man, he saw Leonard Rickhard come time and again to see Thomas Fearnley’s painting “Labrofossen”. It is interesting that Rickhard was so fascinated by the romantic landscape, when his own approach is so different. But during the pandemic, he created a series of images in which bodies of water play an important role. Here he emphasizes the stillness by bringing in something moving, like boiling water. Photo: Thomas Widerberg But throughout my life I have met many people who have a completely different relationship to him. I have heard people say that they think the pictures have an almost meditative calm. So we can experience it differently. What brings old soul sludge to the surface for me may be pure recreation for you. But what I think we have in common is that Rickhard does something with us. He is not an artist you shrug off and forget straight away. FLATT: Leonard Rickhard is a master of oil. Throughout his artistry, he has managed to exploit the potential of oil painting to the full. In recent years, he had to switch to acrylic for health reasons. This painting was created especially for the exhibition and for this particular location in the museum. Here we see what is lost when Rickhard paints with acrylics. With his stiff, slightly rigid style, he needs the living, moving, translucent surface that the oil painting creates. With the acrylic, it simply becomes a bit too flat. But the vast majority of the pictures in the exhibition are fortunately oil paintings. Photo: Christian Øen The romantic and the mathematical A distinctive feature of Rickhard’s paintings is the element of technical drawing which is often included in the marginal zone of the subject. It can be lines drawn with a ruler, but also numbers. Perhaps he brings in something practical, technical and mathematical to balance out the pomp and sentimentality inherent in the great landscape tradition. With his rigid figure compositions, you can at first glance take Rickhard to be someone who primarily cultivates the pure form. But if you look closely at his pictures, you will discover what an absolutely fabulous color artist he is. GORGEOUS: Rickhard is a formidable colourist. It looks so simple when he conjures up a twilight scene with a cooler and a slightly warmer violet, or with white and gray creates shades in the snow. But there are undoubtedly countless attempts behind this. Photo: Jens Hamran This is another example of how flat and dead it becomes when Rickhard works in acrylic. Much of the surface tension in his oil paintings is missing here. Photo: Christian Øen / Astrup Fearnley Museum For me it was particularly fun to see his very earliest paintings, which I have not seen before. Here we see how he gradually finds the unique expression that would become his. Photo: Christian Øen In the frieze “Stillheten brytes ved daggry” (2014–2023) I see another important tension that characterizes this artistry, namely how he juxtaposes the grand, emotional landscape painting against something mathematical and rigid and numerical. Photo: Christian Øen Despite the simmering discomfort that I constantly carry with me wherever I go, I am thrilled and impressed by his superior visual musicality. In his paintings, he matches different timbres, denominations and color temperatures against each other. One of our biggest “Between construction and resolution” is a solid, professional presentation of Leonard Rickhard’s artistry. I feel both inspired and enriched. Admittedly, I didn’t quite find out what was happening to me in the face of this artistry. FASCINATING: Rickhard revolves around various forms of cultural landscape, such as a red barn building against a blue summer sky with combine harvesters and other agricultural machinery outside. Is it the silence, the waiting, the claustrophobic that gives me this feeling of resistance and discomfort in the face of Leonard Rickhard’s pictures? But I admit once again that I prefer the strange resistance that Rickhard arouses in me, rather than the many glossy, pleasant and seductive images that surround us in everyday life. Rickhard is our strangest and perhaps most important contemporary artist, and I really hope that people will flock to see this exhibition! news reviewer Title: Leonard Rickhard: Between construction and collapse Artist: Leonard Rickhard Curator: Solveig Øvstebø Location: Astrup Fearnley Museum City: Oslo Period: 16 January – 19 May 2024 Estimated time: 60-120 minutes
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“Between construction and collapse” at the Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo – Reviews and recommendations
