The visibility of divergence: Vicke Lindstrand - Swedishness, Scandinavianness and the "other"

• Published in: Konsthistorisk tidskrift 2016-07, Vol.85 (3), p.208-224
• Main Author: Jones, Mark Ian
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Design; Designers; National identity; Rhetoric
• ISSN: 0023-3609; 1651-2294
• DOI: 10.1080/00233609.2015.1074280

During discussion of national identity, stereotypical characteristics inevitably emerge. In applied arts and design, the character or appearance of objects is commonly understood to express certain notions of national identity, yet this concept of a national "style" is inherently problematic. The Nordic region is arguably one of the most oft-cited exponents of national and regional design identity, or style, by way of the mid-twentieth-century marketing of Swedish and Scandinavian design. Stylistic stereotypes abound in mid-twentieth-century discourses on both Swedish and Scandinavian design and, indeed, ideas of Swedishness and Scandinavianness became somewhat homogenous and apparently resilient to divergent, non-Scandinavian influences. This paper discusses the construction of the narrative of modern Swedish Design and Scandinavian Design identity by way of an examination of divergent influences in the work of the Swedish artist and designer Viktor Emmanuel (Vicke) Lindstrand (1904-1983). The aim is to readdress Lindstrand's position in twentieth-century design history by problematising the historically unbalanced reading of his work as an artist and designer, constrained as it was by the construction of national and regional design identities and their mediation in discourse [see also the essay by Mark Ian Jones, "Vicke Lindstrand after Orrefors - In the Shadow of Streamlined Perfection", in Ann-Christine Fogelberg (ed.), DESIGN: Vicke Lindstrand (1904-1983) Glas, keramik, textil, måleri och skulptur, Uppsala, 2013, pp. 4-23; Mark Ian Jones, On the Periphery. An Examination of Mid-twentieth Swedish Design and the Reception of Vicke Lindstrand, Sydney, 2011]. My position is that of a non-Swede, an outsider with a different vantage point, examining English language discourse of Swedish origin that was, in turn, intended for outsiders. As such, this paper considers how key mid-twentieth-century English language discourses and rhetoric, manifest in exhibitions and texts, represented Swedish and later Scandinavian design. Lindstrand is positioned as an exemplar and his work is utilised to illustrate and underscore the arguments proposed by this paper.