The art and anthropology student spent his summer researching the work of his renowned woodcarver relative, Lars Kinsarvik
“Making art should be for anybody to enjoy,” said Edward Kinservik, whose ancestor was one of Norway’s leading woodcarvers. Photo: Alonso Nichols
Edward Kinservik, A28, A28 (BFA), has been carving out his roots with a research trip to Norway to study the art of his ancestor.
The Tufts art and anthropology student’s great-great-great-uncle Lars Kinsarvik (spelled with an “a”), born in 1846, created a distinctive woodcarving style that celebrated Norway just as the country was cultivating its own identity. His work made it to the international stage at the 1889 and 1900 World’s Fairs in Paris and can be found throughout the country today in hotels, churches, and cafes.
As part of the Summer Scholars program, Kinservik spent six weeks traveling and researching his relative and the development of Norwegian national craft. He immersed himself in the spaces that feature his ancestor’s carvings of dragons and Norse mythology, becoming an expert in Kinsarvik’s ornate work. He now hopes to gain a deeper understanding of folk art’s impact on nation building.
The front of a cabinet made by Lars Kinsarvik at the National Museum in Oslo, Norway. “I see this one as a very good encapsulation of how he adds personality to his work,” Edward Kinservik said.
Lars Kinsarvik’s carvings and paintings decorate Totland Church in Totland, Norway.
A drinking horn made by Lars Kinsarvik for the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, seen at the National Museum in Oslo.
The front of a cabinet made by Lars Kinsarvik at Gamlehaugen, a part-time royal residence in Bergen, Norway.
The back of a chair made by Lars Kinsarvik at the Hardanger Folk Museum in Utne, Norway.
Where did your research into your ancestor and the development of Norwegian national craft begin?
Norway was a part of Denmark from 1380 until 1814, when Denmark lost it to Sweden in the Napoleonic Wars. But Norway didn’t go over to Sweden so easily. They wrote their own constitution and for the next century were building up a national identity until 1905, when they gained independence. Kinsarvik spent his entire life in this culture of nation-making and a push to claim self-identity.
Folk art created a network of communication through a shared visual language. So when nation building happened, it introduced this need to keep things and to preserve the knowledge of them.
I was able to translate a couple of Kinsarvik’s journals, and he talks about how his father was a folk artist who taught him rose painting, or rosemaling. Once Kinsarvik was old enough for his own career, rosemaling was shunned in fine arts circles, so he stopped because it couldn’t support the family. Instead, he took a large group of old styles and made them new, abstracting and combining different elements of them and moving away from some of the tenets of decorative art. He wasn’t a big fan of direct restoration, believing a new interpretation in the style of the old was better than copying what existed before.
What new things did you learn during the trip about your ancestor’s art?
There’s a culture of respect for this type of craft, but not a lot of active participation or research. One of the consequences is that nobody has gone through and looked at what inspired him. It’s written off as, “Oh, he was a historicist, he was a romantic, he was looking at past artistic styles and copying them and not doing anything new.”
But having looked at his artwork, I see a huge amount of personality in it. He really loved funny faces. Look for faces in his work, even where you don’t think that there’s going to be a face. He integrated and interpreted other earlier artistic styles and the work of his contemporaries.
I got to read his writing and see his house. He has a lot of the family personality. I would just love to sit down and have a conversation with him. I feel like I kind of got to do that in a way, with his sketchbooks.
How did you conduct your research?
I spent the first three weeks doing nine interviews with museum curators and professors. The Hardanger Folk Museum is local to where he lived, a pretty small rural town called Kinsarvik, like our last names. I met with his great-grandson, a family member who works at the museum there, who I’d never met.
Being in the places where his work and the work of other folk arts still exist was a big part of the project. I went to churches he decorated and talked to the people in those communities, who only knew Kinsarvik as the person who decorated the church they went to every week. I talked with them and saw how they engaged with the art and they would say, “I’m going to look at this differently now. I understand this more.”
What are the next steps in your research and what impact do you hope your work has?
I have a very clear picture of the art history. Now I’m focusing on the anthropology and the role that folk art played in nation building, and the reasons it exists in the way it does right now, where people have it in their homes, but don’t really progress it. It’s respected and the knowledge is maintained. But the craft itself isn’t such a focus anymore.
I hope that people can look at the objects and maybe think “this is something I could pick up as a hobby.” Kinsarvik wrote about how art shouldn’t be exclusive, cordoned off for people who are the best at it. His phrase is, “geniuses are rare birds.” Making art should be for anybody to enjoy.
