Grand Tour by Matts Leiderstam, installation view. Magasin 3, Stockholm.
Jemima Charleston took a grand tour of her own to Dundee to take in an unusual take on an old tradition.
These days, it’s the done thing when you’ve finished school or university to go on a gap year. The Grand Tour is a similar concept - only 300 years older.
Back then it was a chance for educated, upper-class males and budding artists to experience the culture of Europe. Italy, France and Germany were most commonly visited as historical sites and world-famous architecture was taken in, meditated upon and sketched. As a result of this early form of tourism, a market was created for artwork and mementoes to bring back home - rather like the postcards of today.
In a new exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA), running until September 25 2005, Swedish artist Matts Leiderstam presents a different view of the tour - a personal journey through travel and tourism, from the perspective of a gay male.
Leiderstam explained that his interest in the concept of the Grand Tour came from a desire to learn about and engage with other cultures: “You go there with a kind of personal desire but also, through your education and your culture, you have already framed that space,” he said.
In Leiderstam’s case he read about many of the sites he visited in his Spartacus International Gay Guide, which amongst other things details prime cruising spots for gay males - some often overlapping with beauty spots frequented by tourists.
The exhibition is laid out like an archive. Books lie open at specific pages with magnifying glasses above them on high, science lab-style tables; artwork hangs high on walls or stands freely on large easels.
Grand Tour by Matts Leiderstam, installation view. Magasin 3, Stockholm.
The project has been developed over the past eight years and due to its scale, Grand Tour has now become too large to transport to one space. Leiderstam has therefore selected certain works to be shown in Dundee.
A computer terminal in the gallery makes it possible for visitors to find out more information on the website www.grandtourexhibition.com where you can see images of works currently in the archive, essays and information about the project. (The website will open in a new window, uses Flash animations, and works best on a broadband connection. Close the window it displays within to return to the 24 Hour Museum.)
As you take a seat at the top of the gallery and look down at the rows of tables and open books, you get the feeling that you could be sitting on a precision-placed bench on the top of a hill, gazing at a popular beauty spot. All the tables and paintings face you and it seems as if the entire display is Leiderstam’s very own landscape painting.
“I see the exhibition as a kind of looking device. It’s both about my desires - I have chosen these paintings because I had a desire to look into them - but also, I present it in a way so that viewers have the open possibility to start making their own stories,” he explained.
Your assumptions and your imagination are all that matter. Viewers can pick and choose where they would like to stop with their magnifying glasses and have a closer look. They are invited to walk around and take a step into Leiderstam’s world of secret liaisons and fleeting glances - a world where the slightest detail can mean so much.
While Leiderstam’s works pay homage to the masters of landscape art such as Claude Lorraine, Nicolas Poussin and Gustave Courbet, he does not copy their paintings outright.
Originally, landscape painting was about the study of architecture and scenery, allowing the artist to develop a sense of style. Leiderstam is more interested in the finer details; the tiny figures set against a colossal backdrop. “I don’t think I’m revealing something that was actually there; I could have done that,” he added. “I’m not so interested in the artists themselves, I’m more interested in the painting and what the painting is doing with you when you are looking at it.”
In a copy of The Meeting (1854) by Courbet, Leiderstam has chosen to focus upon the face of the man who is greeting Courbet. This time, however, he is staring at us, as if we are at one of the cruising spots mentioned in the Spartacus guide. He is sizing us up, but does he like what he sees?
After Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Bonjour Monsieur Courbet (1854) by Matts Leiderstam, oil on panel, 1999.
Leiderstam also introduces tools artists used to frame their perfect painting. Fieldscopes provided artists with a perfectly framed rectangle in which to place their vision of the landscape. Visitors are invited to create their own pictures by looking through the scopes placed beside windows throughout the gallery.
Leiderstam has made some additions to give this exhibition a local taste and includes his study of a painting by Alexander Nasmyth entitled Castle Huntly, Perthshire (c.1810). This is a painting of a castle just outside Dundee, now a prison, and a perfect example of a landscape painting in the grand tour style. The romantic countryside surrounds a dreamy, stone castle and both nature and architecture are represented in one go.
With such a vast exhibition the possibilities for interpretation seem endless. Leiderstam uses all sorts of media, from books and computers to slide projectors, fieldscopes and paintings.
“With this project I can add on to it and make it a kind of life thing - but don’t think I want it to be like that,” he commented. “I will let the show go around, maybe two or three or four places more and try different things and then it will go into the institution and will be dead for a while. And if I’m asked maybe in 20 years’ time when I’m old, to show it again - maybe I’ll show it in a completely different way.”
