The Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen has largely been omitted from the narrative of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century art because its students produced works that deviated from French norms. It was only in the twentieth century that Friedrich and Runge were restored, largely because of their relevance to Neoromanticism, Symbolism, and Surrealism. Although the Danish Academy was structured on the same principles as academies in Paris and London, it encouraged innovation at a time when all other European art academies promoted conformity. In this way, the Danish Academy was avant garde before such a concept even existed. It is time to integrate Copenhagen artists such as Nicolai Abildgaard, Jens Juel, and Johannes Wiedewelt, as well as Friedrich and Runge, into the story of modern art’s development and to evaluate them in the broader socio-cultural context of which they were a part.
Michelle Facos (*1955) is professor of the History of Art and adjunct professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she has taught since 1995. She received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University with a dissertation entitled Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Art of the 1890s. Her recent publications include: Symbolist Art in Context (California, 2008) and An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art (Routledge, 2011). Michelle Facos has received awards from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, Fulbright, and the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Kilian Heck