Nikolai Astrup, “By the Open Door,” before 1911, oil on canvas. Courtesy Clark Art Institute
The Clark manages to feel old and new simultaneously.
Williamstown’s accessible art museum—officially the Clark Art Institute—houses its sweeping collection of great masters in Daniel Perry’s 1950s wing. But the adjacent Clark Center, designed by Tadao Ando and opened in 2014, makes the Clark feel contemporary as well, with its views of the reflecting pool and the museum’s hilly campus. Extensive trails lead throughout the grounds, which also include the Manton Research Center and the Lunder Center for conservation, research and addition exhibitions.
The Clark currently offers a retrospective of Norwegian painter Nikolai Astrup (1880–1928), and a compellingly antic tribute to Les Lalanne, the French husband-and-wife sculptors who blended the animal world with the domestic world.
Nikolai Astrup painted oils and made woodblock prints in his home near Alhus, on the western Norwegian coast, inland from Bergen. Although Astrup studied in Olso and Paris, he spent most of his life near the remote Lake Jølster, first in the family parsonage and later in his own Sandalstrand, farmland that he and his wife assiduously cultivated.
“Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway,” is the first North American retrospective of his work. The exhibition, spread out over half-a-dozen dramatically installed rooms, contains 85 paintings and wood-cut prints.
Astrup farmed and painted. He was hardly a recluse; his studies introduced him to other painters and ideas, and his traditionally composed landscapes maintain an arch, modernist sense. Geographic isolation did not mean artistic isolation. He focused on his environment, imbuing the challenging locale with a feeling of devotion but also mystery.
His dwellings can look like fairy houses. His human subjects convey their personalities simply, off-handedly: gazing out a window, tending garden beds, staring at bonfires. Rich ideas underlie the amiable pastoral subjects.
His color choices are harmonious, understandable but intense. Their unusual quality arises from the ethereal light of his far-north home, and the glow he lends to his subjects and their lives. His woodblocks, and the multiple prints he made from each, show how he used color to alter simple compositions. His vision of Alhus’s landmarks—the lake, the mountains, cultivated farmland, austere dwellings—can take on a looming, uncertain quality.
His paintings infuse the beauty of his home with emotion. This is a large, comprehensive collection of Astrup’s work, and visitors should provide time to enjoy its scope.
In the entryway gallery, spilling out to the lawn and into the outdoor reflecting pool, a smaller exhibition, “Claude & François-Xavier Lalanne: Nature Transformed,” greets visitors.
Les Lalanne had exhibitions in the United States in 1966 and 1977, but nothing since. Claude (1924–2019) and François-Xavier (1927–2008) fabricated sculptures that altered the animal kingdom into faux-practical objects.
François-Xavier Lalanne, “Petit Rhinocéros mécanique,” copper. Galerie Lefebvre, Paris © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy Clark Art Institute
A flock of sheep is actually a set of seats and footstools. An enormous cricket has wine storage. A rhino opens its belly to reveal a desk. To further cross-pollinate, cabbage heads grow chicken feet. Some feet are even banded, as if Claude Lalanne’s “choupattes” were part of a nature study in the wild.
None of this is truly practical. The objects don’t feel combined, but integrated.
Not all of the creations mock the combination of practical and animal. “La Dormeuse” by Claude Lalanne) shows a placid, disembodied head (a mold of her daughter). Wreathed in leaves, she looks like a magical creature caught sleeping in the woods.
“Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway” remains on view through Sept. 19. “Claude & François-Xavier Lalanne: Nature Transformed,” remains on view through Oct. 31. The Clark is open with timed entry reservations, daily in July and August from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458-2303.
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Leonore Overture and Opera News. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.