The conceptual, the romantic, and the nonhuman : the SÚM group and the emergence of contemporary art in Iceland, 1965-1978 ...

• Main Author: Árnadóttir, Heiða Björk
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2020
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0378951; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0378951

This dissertation considers the emergence of contemporary art practices in Iceland through the activities of the artist collective SÚM between 1965 and 1978. The founding of SÚM in 1965 brought forth, for the first time, a generation of Icelandic artists whose practices closely correspond to that of experimental artists globally, especially those aligned with Fluxus and conceptual art. As I highlight, this relied on Iceland’s belated modernization and changes to the country’s geopolitical status in the twentieth century, as well as on global efforts to decentralize the artworld. And yet, SÚM’s challenge to the definition of the art object is also uniquely configured through the artists’ complicated relationship to the local tradition of landscape painting and the concomitant romantic nationalist discourse which had shaped Icelandic self-identity, cultural practices and discourses since the turn of the twentieth century. In particular, SÚM’s practice developed through a critical engagement with the idealized ...