Yesterday it was finally released - the long awaited guide over the art at Umeå university campus. Students, colleagues and visitors have often asked me (and others) if there is information available on the university's art collection. It was an interesting and fun job to be part of, analyzing artworks (both old and new to me) and writing short introductions. All the photos are new, as most of the texts, and it also includes an essay on the architectural developments on campus. The university have a collection of c. 1200 artworks, so it was a challenge to select the 51 that made it to the guide. We had to consider accessibility, variation and representation on many levels, but I am so proud of the book (that will be available in English in the future). But it is not just a book, it is also a free digital product so people walking around campus can find QR-signs near the selected artworks with both the information on the particular object and access to the whole publication. You can also find it here: http://umu-konstguide.onspotstory.com/sv/webapp/guide/sv/1251

In October 2013 I wrote a blog post on a signature of a weaver, Gunn Leander-Bjurström, that made a tapestry designed by Berta Hansson. Now it is time to present the artwork, Livets träd (The tree of life), 1960, and give you a small taste of Umeå university's collection of art. I have the luxury of seeing this masterpiece almost daily since it decorates a main corridor of Humanisthuset (Faculty of Arts building) where I work.

Berta Hansson (1910-1994) made her first solo exhibition in 1943 and was living on her art just a few years after her debut. She painted portraits, landscapes and religious themes. She has described how she after the Second World War was inspired by art she experienced as a child: bible cards used in the biblical teaching in church and the illustrated Bible of Gustave Doré. 

Livets träd can be read as a collage of these cards, mixing scenes from both the Old and the New Testaments; Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses and the life of Jesus. A common way of adapting stories from the Bible into a combined program of the Christian message of God's love and Salvation. Each depicted scene can be read as both evidence and witness of that the message is the truth. In this tapestry we see figures with reduced forms, almost a bit naive in expression with rather large heads. Grand rhetorical gestures makes the viewer understand what each figure wants to communicate. Yet it is also full of finer details; leafs, flowers, animals etc. that together with its strong colors makes it a vibrant and vital composition. The Biblical scenes follow models from early Christian art that makes them easy to identify if you are familiar with the textual and/or visual narrative. What scenes do you recognize?