Sometimes it gets wild out there! Umeå is inaugurating the Umeå 2014: European Capital of Culture this weekend and it started off with a aggressive situation. The graffiti artist Carolina Falkholt was working on a piece that will be part of the inauguration festivities, when a man comes up and screams at her and pushes her (she even claims he hit her). There was probably some misunderstanding that led to this incident, but still it ended up too violently. And the artist's work have been discussed in local media during the week, as well as in national media for some months —why? Because she is a graffiti artist and (among other things) paints vaginas.

Oh the horror! The vulgarity! And you know what, she even does it at schools so teenagers can see them! For ages the female genitalia have been both exposed and obscured, in art and in real life. It is connected to (male/heterosexual) sex and lust and because of this considered filthy (men can even catch nasty diseases from them). But it has also been part of the modern women's movement with artists like the American Judy Chicago (see her famous Dinner Party: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/home.php) . It was a way of gaining control over your own body and its symbolic interpretations. In so many cultures words for female genitalia are still used for cursing, blaming and shaming.

I see Carolina Falkholt's art, here represented by a photo from an installation at Gothenburgs Art Museum called Matrialutmattning from 2011, as part of this tradition of empowering women's bodies and female experiences. She uses an art form that is beginning to be accepted by the art world, but not in society where it is still mostly connected to vandalism. She both questions the heterosexual norms that corners the nude female body to exclusive sexual interpretations, and depict new erotic images. Falkholt's art is not safe and not everybody will like what she does, but please, stay off the violence!

The last few days I have been participating in a "game" on Facebook that has the intention of filling Facebook with art. If you "like" someones chosen image, you get a mission of finding an artwork of an artist and post it on your wall. And since you mention the person who gave you the artist, the illustration also appears on his/her wall. Is it a silly game? Perhaps, but now my wall has a fine gallery of female artist. You also get a chance to find new artists and art works, both my assignments (so far) where of artists I did not  know much of. The contemporary Berlinde de Bruyckere (b. 1964), an artist from Belgium, and the Swedish artist Anna Palm de Rosa (1859-1924) who made the above watercolor called Speed ticket at Bois de Boulonge. And it sure is a break from the usual Facebook entries, selfies and food (that I also contribute to). So play the game, explore the art world and have fun!

Today we celebrate a most important birthday. 17 January is when Art was born when someone dropped a sponge into a bucket of water — 1,000,051 years ago. All according to Fluxus artist Robert Fillion in 1963.

Today this event seems more celebrated in music than my preferred media, and on the website of Sveriges Radio (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/default.aspx?programid=3676) you can link to many European events.

Happy birthday!

Winter has come to Umeå with snow and freezing temperatures, but 2014 is an exciting year since the city is selected as European Capital of Culture (together with Riga). On the official homepage you will find everything you need concerning Umeå 2014 (http://umea2014.se/en/). My first contribution to the festivities (officially starting 31 January) is a blogpost on one of my favorite artists, Vera Frisén. Loved by many here in Umeå, but perhaps not so known outside Västerbotten.

Frisén made a number of portraits, but she was mainly a landscape artist. She found her motif in the outskirts of Umeå and in other regions of Västerbotten, and even if she moved to other parts of Sweden she kept her focus on her native province. Not only that, the majority of her paintings depicts the landscapes in a summer twilight. It puts them in a melancholy mode, like a bittersweet sensation, that also gives the paintings a liminal quality. It is as if nature is standing on the threshold to a new day, a new season, or to some environmental change that might occur. The above painting, called Myr (Bog) dated to the 1970s, shows one of her main motifs, the silhouettes of pine trees on a misty bog on a summer night.

Vera Frisén (1910-1990) made her solo debut at an exhibition in Stockholm 1941, and she held just a few solo exhibitions after that. But she worked continually and exhibited occasionally in collaboration with others until her death. She is still exhibited with some regularity, and will be included in Västerbottens Museum's Resenärens blick (http://www.vbm.se/sv/se-and-gora/utstallningar/2014/resenarens-blick.html) opening on 2 February and lasting throughout the year (at least). If you want to know more of Vera Frisén's landscape paintings, read art historian Felicia Tolentino's dissertation Porträtt av ett landskap: Vera Friséns gestaltning av naturen i Västerbotten from 2008.

As promised, here is a short presentation of Jenny Nyström. She is the Queen of the Swedish tomte, the gnome that delivers the Christmas presents and just slightly resembles the Anglo-American Santa Claus. When Nyström created this character she was influenced by the folklore house gnome, that took care of a household if the family treated him nice — otherwise, things turned bad. This figure was grey, almost invisible and quite moody, if not plain angry. Nyström infused him with the Santa Clauses of Germany, Netherlands and Britain, and also with porcelain garden gnomes from Germany and Italy. So, on Christmas Eve it is this small, colorful and cheerful tomte that delivers presents to Swedish kids of all ages. He loves animals of all kinds, plays with children and help with the decorations. He works with many other tomtar, as they live together in large (mostly male) communities.

Jenny Nyström's tomte became popular nationwide since her illustrations were common in the new media of Christmas magazines for children at the turn of the century 1900. She did about 250 covers of different magazines. Today she is most famous for her Christmas cards, and from her first originals in 1898 until her death in 1946 she is believed to have made c. 3000 original paintings for these postcards. No wonder she made us believe!

In the next issue of RIG (2013:4) due in mid-January, you can read more about visual representations of Christmas celebrations in my peer-reviewed (Swedish) article: "Julfirandets ideologi och genus i svensk bildkonst från sekelskiftet 1900: Elsa Beskow, Carl Larsson och Jenny Nyström"(Ideology and gender of Christmas celebrations in Swedish art from turn of the century 1900).

With that I wish you all a Mary Christmas with a Nativity scene from the baptismal font of Grötlingbo church in Gotland. I will be back with new posts in the new year.

I quite enjoy December, even if it is dark and (occasionally) cold. Decorations and lights brightens up my day and I simply cannot resist the kitschiness of Christmas. It is also a season for annual public lectures, and I have two versions that I keep returning to since a couple of years. One is connected to the Imitatio Mariae-project and concerns images of the Nativity and the Three Magi. It focusses on the development of the visual representations of the Christmas story and its various contents and characters. But this year that particular lecture is hibernating.

My other public lecture in the December collection concerns visual representations of Swedish Christmas celebrations. At first it was a lecture I held with a colleague from literary studies under the title The Man in Red, where we used gender perspectives in the analysis of Christmas and Santa Claus in art, film and literature. Now I have dropped the title for two reasons: 1) there are not that many Santas (or tomtar as this figures is called in Swedish) in artworks, and 2) our witty intention caused some confusion as the audience did not seem to know about The Man in Black: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXRmJyIyJbM&noredirect=1.

The visual representations of Christmas celebrations are a vital part of celebration itself and particularly illustrations from the turn of the century 1900 is crucial in creating our understanding of "a real Swedish Christmas". It is a commercial, modern, aesthetic, nationalistic and urban understanding of a rural past, where the patriarchal father figure is compared with the farmer as the superior provider of all material goods for his family. Basically it is dad's money that makes Christmas possible, and mom's hard labour with food preparations, cleaning and decorating the house is kept in the dark.

The above image is an illustration from the book Spadarvet (1905), that was also the name of a small farm owned by the artist Carl Larsson. In the book one can follow the life on the farm during a year, and it ends with the feast of Christmas Eve. You can see a decorated Christmas tree in the background, but it is the laid table with food and particularly all the silver ware that are in focus. A veritable triumph of the farm and farmer (born an urban man). He really does not need a Santa Claus to satisfy his family!

Hopefully I can tell you the story of the Swedish tomte and its creator, Jenny Nyström, in a blog post before Christmas...

Today (in Sweden at least) we celebrate Saint Anna (or Anne), mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ, so I post a quick post of this particular figure. Her story became popular during the Middle Ages with the increase interest of the Virgin when stories of Mary´s family was invented. This sculpture from the parish church of Skellefteå is an example of a common depiction of Anna. It is called Anna-själv-tredje in Swedish from the German Anna selbdritt (also known as Metterza in Italian), but I actually do not know if there is an English name for it. Please tell me if you know.

It shows Saint Anna holding both the crowned Virgin and baby Jesus in her arms. In this particular model mother and son is holding hands over Anna's chest, almost creating a heart-shaped form. If it is a heart it should be read as the love of God and the Salvation made possible through all three. There are variations in the Anna-själv-tredje, but this type can also be found in other regions of Sweden.

Saint Anna is patron saint for unmarried women, housewives, women in labour, grandmothers and more. She is celebrated in the Western church also at 26 July. But Anna-day, 9 December, is also part of folklore traditions concerning Christmas celebrations in Sweden. This is the day when the Christmas beer should be ready and when a particular fish dish (lutfisk) is starting to be prepared.