Artist of the Month: Pernille Brethvad

I've noted in myself a recurring theme with regards to the gender of my favourite artists and the mediums they tend to employ. Most of the sculptors whose work I prefer, though not all, are female, where as the vast majority of the illustrators whose work I like, are male. Whether or not this is just because of me, or some obscure trend which I've tuned in to, I don't know, but one thing is for certain. I've come across some great female sculptors in my time (including Mette who has an unpolished and sadly neglected ability to form art in three dimensions) and amongst my favourites is a Danish artist called Pernille Brethvad who has a successful gallery in a fashionable part of Copenhagen, not far from where Mette and I used to live.

Another thing about me (some my friends have probably noted) is a tendency to be attracted to plump and even fat women. I know exactly why this is. Its because I am in love with Mette and everything about her seems to have become hard wired into my brain.
This manifest appreciation of voluptuous female beauty found an expression one day as we walked down the street in Copenhagen and came across Brethvad's gallery. Alas, my economy does not extend to buying sculptures, but if it did, I would be a regular patron.

Its not simply a question of sexual titilation however. Although ones sense of the aesthetic must surely include a strong portion of sexuality, there are also other factors which play in, and amongst these, I include a love of the human form as an expression of the human condition. Brethvad's figures, exploding with form, cater to this notion by virtue of their physical presence, though to be honest, I find them a wee bit small in that she seems to be aiming for the coffee table or window ledge as the ultimate destination for her work. Personally I'd like to see her working on a larger scale, in the manner of Gustav Vigeland (more on him later) but I guess her work is confined to the smaller as a result of market forces. Danes are wealthy, but few have the means to purchase five ton statues of plump women.

So, instead, Brethvad confines herself to statuettes, and she is very good at it. Obviously she also has some deeper meaning behind her work, some obscure narrative; the smaller heads hint at some deeper meaning, but frankly it means nothing to me. Its the phyiscal presence of the figures that appeals to me. Their form and texture. Crude and extravagant like the Venus of Willendorf figures which are either elements of the earliest known religion, or stone age pornography... or maybe both?

Brethvad's work and her successful gallery demonstrate to the meanest understanding that there is no originality in art. That art is and always will be an outward expression of humanity and its base instincts.