Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.07.2009, Side 14

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2009
14
Culture | New documentary
It has always been
an Icelander’s
greatest dream
to be accepted
by big city folk.
The Sagas are
full of stories
of Icelanders’
triumphs abroad,
be it at the court
of the Norwegian
king or the Byzantine Emperor. These may
have been a tad embellished, as reports
of Icelanders’ triumphs in the last few
years certainly were. It was artists such
as Sigur Rós and Björk who were the
first Icelanders in modern times to really
conquer the world. But long before them,
a man by the name of Sveinn Kristján
Bjarnarson had New York at his feet. No
one, however, seems to know about him.
Early 20th Century quarter life crisis
Now that Iceland’s reputation is in tatters,
it is a welcome opportunity to revisit one
of our countrymen’s more successful
exploits. In the documentary “From a Turf
Cottage to the Cover of Time,” filmmaker
Hans Kristján Árnason does just that. At
the age of 27, having what would now
probably be called a quarter life crisis,
Sveinn knocked a few years off his age,
passed himself off as being born in the
USA and changed his name to Holger
Cahill.
As such he became director of the
prestigious Museum of Modern Art in
New York City and supervised a program
to help starving artists during the Great
Depression. Now that depression is
upon us again and artists are starving
even more than usual, it is a worthwhile
reminder of how even the Americans
thought is necessary for the state to chip
in to save the arts.
Cahill is also credited for helping to move
the world capital of visual arts from Paris
to New York. Whether this was a good
idea is another matter, but probably
inevitable. If Cahill was the “pull” effect
of moving visual arts across the Atlantic,
Hitler was most certainly on the “push”
end of things.
Art in the time of depression
Nevertheless, Cahill deserves credit for
his work as a real patron of the arts who
cared equally much during bust or boom.
The story is told in a straightforward
documentary style, which is almost a
relief these days. It often seems to be
the case, especially when dealing with
the visual arts, that the filmmaker sees
himself more as artist than chronicler,
with the inevitable result that the point
gets lost along the way.
Hans Kristján and filmmaker Guðmundur
Bjartmarsson resist all such temptation,
instead concentrating on the story
at hand. The film includes interviews
with surviving family members and art
historians. The full version was debuted
at the Gimli film festival in Winnipeg in
late June, having received rave reviews
in Fréttablaðið. The DVD is available in
Reykjavik bookstores and select music
stores.
-VALUR GUNNARSSON
Before Björk
There Was...
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Tonight, as opposed to those
covered in previous columns, is
wrapped in a cloak of boredom and
meagre turnover. Stranded at a slow
procession of differing taxi stands
throughout the greater Reykjavik
area, end of the month depleted
wallets and the exam season conspire
to rob my ilk and I of our livelihood.
Neal Stephenson comes to the
rescue in the form of The Diamond
Age; A Young Lady’s Illustrated
Primer, whilst in the background
Neurosis lulls me into contemplative
submission teetering on the borders
of LaLa land.
The late spring evening drifts
uneventfully into a light shade of
darkness and unfolds with a two
o’clock sunrise ripe with prank orders
and un-lucrative sprint distance fares.
The customary post midnight
rush won’t pick up and I’m reduced
to cruising and poaching middle-
aged prey in the more fertile dinner
party infested suburbs. The middle
aged notoriously cannot hold their
liquor and the seething bickering
of an après dinner party couple, one
of whom which has inevitably over
imbibed, lends it self to a fare less
rancid only to a heard of menopausal
females all atwitter with the roaring
rambunctiousness of a girls night
out.
Among the same old comments
along the lines of me being young
enough to be the son of a drunken
heifer, said heifers pitch beer-
goggled remarks about my perceived
handsomeness and then, at my
failure to smile and rejoice, the
cheerfully inebriated invariably turn
to bitchingly berating me for not
brimming with a festive spirit.
The herds, oblivious to anything
but reminiscing in shrill shrieks
about girls nights of yore, pay up and
disperse at such dens of desperation
as Players in a manner eating away
at the hour as greedily as they did in
slowly amassing in the vehicle from
tardy goodbyes at their abandoned
dinner parties.
As the notion of punching out
early is grabbing hold, the front
passenger door is swung open and
Hank Moody (an alias of course)
plants his lanky self in the shotgun
seat. Hank is, as ususal, brimming
with animated stories and seemingly
more anxious to disperse jokes and
good humour then to get home
and pass out. Hence I employ him
for comic relief until the point that
coincidence f loats us a fare in the
vicinity of his address. We then
tour the city night performing the
Moody Show on stretches of street
as far as his home in Kópavogur.
Still, Hank’s deadpan delivery along
with his scathing doses of sarcasm
often fails to elicit much cheer from
my ride sharing customers, so we
mete ourselves the largest shares of
laughter once offended customers
have paid up and alighted.
After an odd hour or two of
sowing un-PC jokes and reaping
all shades of offence, we leave
a threesome of youngsters
uncomfortably re-evaluating the
sexual nature of their friendships
and – having depleted Hank’s stock
of insults – call it a night.
-“TRAViS BiCkLE”
Grapevine’s taxi driver
Tales from the Cab Side...