House Beautiful

This summer's presentation of works from Louisiana's collection stands as a testimony to how new connections, dynamics and themes arise in the encounter and mix between modern classics, well-known favorites, new acquisitions and contemporary art.

In the museum’s South Wing, you can experience a rich and varied selection of works from the museum’s collection throughout the summer: painting, video, sculpture and photography, created and collected over the almost seven decades that have passed since Louisiana opened. And signed by names such as Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein, William Kentrideg, Ana Mendieta, Nan Goldin and Ed Ruscha.

The variety of works and expressions are juxtaposed under an ambiguous title referring to a major work by American Martha Rossler, ‘House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home’.

These photomontages, in which Rosler combines images of homes in lifestyle magazines with images from the Vietnam War, date from the years 1967-1972. However, the series is new to the museum’s collection and a testament to Louisiana’s ambitious goal of collecting along multiple tracks – in this case, to “cover gaps in history” by adding a significant work by a significant artist who has not previously been represented in the collection.

Overall, the juxtaposition of “new” and classical works, paired with pieces that have not been shown for a long time, leads to new dialogues and connections that unfold in a number of main themes in ‘House Beautiful’.

The paintings range across time – from 1929 to 2007 – and geography, but are linked by the artists’ preoccupation with figuration. These are images of something, even if this something does not necessarily belong to the external world. Here are paintings by, among others, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Wilhelm Freddie and George Condo, as well as a single sculpture group by Germaine Richier.

The next theme – which takes its title from Mamma Andersson’s landscape painting ‘The Day After’ – transcends forms of expression, generations and national borders to find kinship between artists who are concerned with the significance of the past for our existence now. As seen, for example, in ruins, maps of appropriated territories or fleeting imprints on the ground. Here are works by, among others, Pia Arke, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer and Mohammed Sami.

In addition to the aforementioned series of photomontages by Martha Rosler, works by, among others, Ed Ruscha, Nan Goldin, Julie Mehretu and Robert Longo are presented here on the upper floor with access to the Panorama Room. In a side room here you can watch Louisiana Channel interviews with several of the artists, represented in this presentation.

Louisiana’s collection is a dynamic entity that not only continues to grow, but also moves around the house, where it is included in selected presentations throughout the year. This is necessary to make room for the changing exhibitions, for which the house’s permanent works thus become a kind of sounding board. But at the same time, it provides the opportunity to show the individual works in new ways and in changing constellations.