Descendant

From Hammershøi to Munch, Strindberg to Gauguin―cult filmmaker Lars von Trier presents a curated selection of his artistic influences “My idea is to satisfy myself with a collage of images that together represent my youthful, naïve, if you will, love for primarily Nordic artists and their followers, as a kind of interwoven tapestry that can be viewed both as a whole and in detail.” This is how Danish film director Lars von Trier (born 1956) introduces his curatorial project, Descendant, staged at the Willumsen’s Museum and the Thiel Gallery. The accompanying catalog unfolds with an array of works from 19th- and 20th-century Nordic and continental European artists―August Strindberg, Caspar David Friedrich, Edvard Munch, J.F. Willumsen, Paul Gauguin, Per Kirkeby, Rudolph Tegner and Vilhelm Hammershøi―and traces their visual influences on von Trier’s feature films such as Melancholia, Breaking the Waves and the Palme d’Or–winning Dancer in the Dark. Essays by literary critic Lilian Rösing, artist Erik Steffensen, author Karl Ove Knausgård and von Trier himself wax poetic on the director’s most common and controversial themes and their reflections in the psyches of these artists from bygone generations.