What is the meaning of an artist's life? What remains after s/he is gone? These questions popped up recently when I came across Danish artist Oluf Høst two times within a short period of time.
At the end of May I visited the Oluf Høst Museum at Bornholm. Museum is a house that used to be his home and a studio. A place with a nice garden at the outskirts of a romantic seaside village Gudhjem. And a few weeks later I noticed one of Oluf Høst’s paintings at Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki. That painting was purchased to the collection after the death of the artist, by Danish born art collector Gunnar Didrichsen, a successful entrepreneur and the founder of the museum.
Oluf Høst (1884–1966) was a painter who married his fellow art student and moved back to his birth island Bornholm 1929 at the age of 45, painting, with expressionistic style, mostly local sceneries by Bognemark farm till his death 1966. The painting in Didrichsen Art Museum’s collection is one of those Bognemark landscapes dated 1963. Høst was 79 when he painted it. So, he was a local artist for 37 years, the most of his career.
For me it was somehow consoling that a collector wanted to support the artist’s name, to help us to remember someone who so easily fades away like the majority of all names of mankind. Gunnar Didrichsen must have seen something valuable, something worth retaining at Høst’s painting.
Oluf Høst’s painting at Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki.
It is not enough that an artist makes a piece of art. The artwork can’t survive forever without someone to take care of it, someone who sees the work and wants to maintain it. Without collectors – whether individuals or institutions – art can't be remembered. If there were no Oluf Høst Museum and collectors like Gunnar Didrichsen, I would know (most likely) nothing about this Danish artist. He was not so important from an art historical point of view.
I would know nothing about his artist wife Hedvig who abandoned her own career to support Oluf’s career – which was a pity because she definitely had potential. And without these instruments of remembering – museums and collectors – I would know nothing about the family’s Nazi connection and tragedy related to that, or about his son Ole's artist dream that was cut short.
Portrait of artist’s father at Oluf Høst Museum, Bornholm.
Now I even know something about Oluf's father by looking at his portrait which is conserved. Not only artists are remembered but their models also. In general, art is full of memories and information. Art helps to remember and museum is a place of remembrance.
Artist’s working table at Oluf Høst Museum, Bornholm.
Right now there are millions of visual artists in the world making art and I’m one of them. Most of us will sink into oblivion at some point in the future. From the point of view of remembering lucky ones are those whose works are widely collected.
Oluf Høst’s grave at Gudhjem graveyard.