Abstract

In 1870–71, the Danish painter Jens Erik Carl Rasmussen traveled to Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Not much is known about the visit, yet his travels to Nuuk and Maniitsoq provided the artist with visual material for his paintings for more than twenty years afterwards. One outcome of Rasmussen’s travel was the work Midnight Atmosphere by the Coast of Greenland. The Danish Royal Gallery acquired this painting, an idealized imagination of a colonial setting, in 1872, where the work came to represent the first collection of a “Greenlandic” motif. Subsequently, this artwork continued to travel in and out of other political settings, such as the 1931 colonial exhibition in Paris. This article follows the trajectory of Rasmussen’s Midnight Atmosphere through the archives and through its institutional settings in order to consider how images travel and how travels create images. It is argued that while the itinerary of the artist remained entangled within the colonial system, the trajectory in and through various institutions was similarly central to the colonial control of Kalaallit Nunaat as both place and image.

摘要

1870-71 年，丹麦画家延斯·埃里克·卡尔·拉斯穆森 (Jens Erik Carl Rasmussen) 前往卡拉利特努纳特（格陵兰岛）旅行。关于这次访问我们知之甚少，但他对努克和马尼伊索克的旅行为这位艺术家二十多年后的绘画提供了视觉素材。拉斯穆森旅行的成果之一是作品《格陵兰海岸的午夜气氛》。丹麦皇家画廊于 1872 年购买了这幅画，这是一幅对殖民地环境的理想化想象，这幅作品代表了第一批“格陵兰”主题的收藏。随后，这件艺术品继续进出其他政治场所，例如 1931 年在巴黎举行的殖民展览。本文追踪拉斯穆森的午夜大气轨迹通过档案馆及其机构设置，以考虑图像如何传播以及旅行如何创造图像。有人认为，虽然艺术家的行程仍然纠缠在殖民体系中，但在各种机构中和通过各种机构的轨迹同样对于卡拉利特努纳特的殖民控制作为地点和形象至关重要。