Aftenposten
- NEW ART.
- Ulefos Ironworks
- Centralbanken for Norge
This Aftenposten page of 6 November 1926 carried a signed column titled "New Art" by museum director Jens Thiis. Thiis opened by calling the Dresden exhibition the first international art exhibition since the war, and he presented it as an attempt to pick up where the 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne had left off, which he praised as the fullest survey of modern art in its day. Advertisements framed the page. Ulefos Jernværk promoted its stoves, ranges and fireplaces as cheap because it mined its own ore and smelted it with power from its own waterfalls. Centralbanken for Norge, then under public administration, advertised general banking, silver storage, safe-deposit boxes and asset management at its Drammensveien branch.
Translation
NEW ART.
For Aftenposten, by museum director Jens Thiis.
The exhibition in Dresden was the first international art exhibition since the war. It sought to take up the thread from the glorious "Sonderbund" exhibition in Cologne in 1912, which in its day gave the fullest overview and the deepest insight into modern art, with its connections and preconditions.
Ulefos Ironworks
Norway's largest stove foundry. Stoves, cooking ranges, fireplaces, etc. Handsome, solid and fuel-saving. Several new models. Since Ulefos Jernværk has its own mines and smelts its ore with electric power from its own waterfalls, it holds a special position with regard to raw material and can therefore sell at low prices. Dealers in all the country's towns. Retail outlet in Oslo, Stenersgaten 8.
Centralbanken for Norge
Under public administration. Drammensveien branch. Conducts banking business of every kind. Stores silverware in an armoured vault. Rents out safe-deposit boxes. Asset management. Banking hours 9½–3½. [?]
Context
Why Thiis framed Dresden 1926 as a postwar reconnection
Thiis opens his column by calling the Dresden show the first international art exhibition since the war and by placing it in line with the 1912 Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, which he praises as the deepest survey of modern art in its day. The show he means is the International Art Exhibition held in Dresden in 1926. Its curator was Hans Posse, who had directed the Dresden Picture Gallery since 1910 and who also curated the German sections of the Venice Biennales of 1922 and 1930. In his opening speech, Posse himself presented the exhibition as a window onto the international art world after the isolation of the war years. Calling it the "first" postwar international exhibition and comparing it with the Sonderbund are Thiis's own judgments. The idea of reconnecting with the international art world after wartime isolation, however, matches how the organizer described the exhibition's purpose.
Hans Posse's modernist program and the backlash it drew
The exhibition Thiis wrote about was part of Posse's wider effort to treat the avant-garde as legitimate contemporary art. Posse bought expressionist paintings for the Dresden gallery, among them works by Oskar Kokoschka, Edvard Munch and Emil Nolde, and as curator of the 1926 Dresden exhibition and the Venice Biennales he presented the avant-garde as the art of the present. German nationalist artists attacked him for this stance from 1926 onward. The conflict continued long after the exhibition. In December 1937, eleven years after Thiis's column, a Nazi campaign led to the confiscation and sale of 56 paintings from Dresden's New Masters Gallery, including works by Munch. The modern art Thiis discussed in 1926 was therefore already contested in Dresden itself, the city where it was shown.
Jens Thiis, director of Norway's National Gallery, as critic
The byline identifies the writer only as museum director Jens Thiis. Thiis had become director of the National Gallery in Oslo in 1908 and afterwards worked widely as a lecturer and writer to raise public interest in art, so a column for Aftenposten on a foreign exhibition belongs to a long-standing practice. He held the post until 1941 and in that time built up a representative Edvard Munch collection as well as the gallery's French collection. This background helps explain the yardstick in his opening lines. He measures Dresden against the 1912 Sonderbund show as a survey of modern art "with its connections and preconditions", a phrase that stresses where modern art came from rather than novelty alone. Dresden also touched his own collecting field directly, since Posse had acquired Munch paintings for the Dresden gallery.
Why Centralbanken for Norge advertised as "under public administration"
The small banking notice opens by stating the bank's legal status. Centralbanken for Norge was founded in Oslo in 1900 to serve as a common bank for the commercial banks outside the capital, and it had become one of the country's largest commercial banks, with total assets of 660 million kroner in 1920. In 1922 the state and a group of commercial banks backed it by subscribing 50 million kroner in subordinated loan capital. In 1923 it was placed under public administration, and after several failed rescue attempts it went into liquidation in 1928, a process completed only in 1935. The advertisement therefore shows the bank, three years into public administration and before its 1928 liquidation, still offering ordinary services such as vault storage, safe-deposit boxes and asset management from a branch in Drammensveien.
The 1923 administration law behind the bank's status
Public administration was a legal status created during the Norwegian banking crisis. In 1923 the Storting passed a temporary administration law that made it possible to place banks under public administration. By 1928, 47 joint-stock banks and 19 savings banks had been placed under it, and 56 of them were wound up. Centralbanken, once one of the largest commercial banks in the country, was among the most prominent of these cases. The law was disputed when it was introduced, and both contemporaries and later historians criticised it as a patchwork of improvised crisis measures. A more favourable later assessment held that the law, in its final form, was a usable instrument that made it possible to bring the crisis to an end.
Original
NY KUNST.
Utstillingen i Dresden var den første internationale kunstutstilling efter krigen. Den søkte at ta traaden op fra den glorværdige» Sonderbund-utstilling «i Køln i 1912, som i sin tid gav det fyldigste overblik og den dypeste indsikt i moderne kunst med dens sammenhæng og forutsætninger.
Ulefos Jernværk
Norges største ovnsstøperi Ovne, Komfurer, Kaminer m. m. Vakre, solide og brændselsbesparende. Flere nye typer. Da Ulefos Jernværk har egne gruber og smelter sin malm ved elektrisk kraft fra egne fosser, indtar det en særstilling med hensyn til raamateriale og kan derfor sælge til lave priser. Forhandlere i alle landets byer. Utsalg i Oslo, Stenersgaten 8.
Centralbanken for Norge
Under offentlig administration Filial Drammensveien Utfører bankforretninger av enhver art. Opbevarer sølvtøi i panserhvælv Utleier sikkerhetsbokser Formuesforvaltning. Banktid 9½-3½. [?]