Vilhelm Hammershøi and Danish Art at the Turn of the Century

By Poul Vad

In Hammershøi´s rooms the woman is not the center. She is just there, among the things which are also there, frequently unoccupied and usually standing or sitting unmovingly. The fact that she is reading a book, for instance, has no significance in itself: it is not an occupation which is supposed to tell anything about the completely anonymous woman in question, but only affirm that she is in a state of calm. In this sense the woman´s presence is devoid of content, but then another content arises imperceptibly. Her presence is a perfectly vegetative state; it calls forth neither the image of a concluded act nor a potential act. On the contrary, it is the image of the absence of all action. The exceptions are few and striking: a woman sweeping the floor, a woman placing a cup on the table, a woman straightening her hair. The woman´s non-action among the lifeless, expressive furnishings and walls underscores the moment´s enchantment, that time stands still, that emptiness is fullness.

It goes without saying that Hammershøi had no such thoughts when he painted his pictures. The feminine figure is suggestive precisely because it is not supposed to express a hypothetical content. That it is supposed to be at rest, with a firmly drawn outline, is a logical consequence of the whole concept of form. That is what Hammershøi has been absorbed in, and in the pictorial content, in balancing the cool and warm tones and the degrees of lightness, in thoroughly painting the pigment to a dense consistency or keeping it thin and transparent over the primer - all in accordance with the demands of the form. It is on this level that the drama of the creative process is played out. It is here the picture´s expression is urged to a dramatic culmination.

Vilhelm Hammershøi and Danish Art of the Turn of the Century (Yale University Press 1992)

Translated by Kenneth Tindall