Rolf Aamot
Encyclopedia
Rolf Aamot is a Norwegian
painter
, film director
, photographer and tonal-imagePublished by The Bergen Museum of Art 1998: Electromagnetic energy shapes the colour/photone and curvilineartone span of tonal image art. The laserpower radiance of atoms. The imagetone quantumsystem turns everything into sinewy relations – signalling movement to all our cells. The body builds its world by psychophysiological images. We exist, and exist in, the infinity of perception – matter, identity, intensity, rhythm, and the logic of the cells of our bodies - opening towards the heterogeneous, the void and the exile. The tones of images are, like tones of sound, a unity of dream and act. The information value of imagetones are determined by their frequencies, span, coherence, pulseform, modulation and polarization. The directionality pulse of particlewaves are sinusoidal. Painting/Tonal Image with Laserbrush and Laserfrequency Palette (full text) by Rolf Aamot . composer. Since the 1950s
Aamot has been a pioneer within the field of electronic painting, exploring the emerging technology as it combines with the traditional arts of painting, music, film, theatre, and ballet. Aamot studied painting at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts
(Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
and Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
), and film at Dramatiska Institutet
in Stockholm. Aamot is known for his work as a painter, electronic painter, art photographer, graphic artist, film director, tonal-image composer and cultural author. Much of his work consists of creating electronic tonal images and thus his work contains elements of photography but is hard to pigeon hole. It is frequently a form of performance art with abstract photographic elements. Since 1966, Aamot's works have been displayed in Scandinavia
, France
, Germany
, Belgium
, Italy
, the Soviet Union
and subsequently Russia
, Poland
, USA and Japan
. His work can be found in several important public collections. Aamot has been represented at several international film and art festivals throughout the world.
principles by his father Randulf Aamot, a master carpenter
and wood carver. In 1952 he had his first solo exhibit of paintings at the Paus Knudsen Gallery in Bergen. In 1953, at the age of 18, while still attending the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
in Oslo
, he was awarded a major public commission for the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo
.Translation of part of article (with one illustration of Rolf Aamot's frescoes at the Natural History Museum in Oslo) in La Lettre de l'OCIM n° 77: 'The frescoes in the Paleontological Museum in Oslo - a special case'. In 1955 [sic] (competition 1953, frescoes finished 1955) a young student at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry, Rolf Aamot, was chosen, by means of a competition, to paint dinosaurs and other creatures of the Secondary (Mesozoic
) Era on the walls of the museum. These paintings were originally meant to be an as exact reconstruction as possible, following the scientific advice of the paleontologist Anatol Heintz. Aamot's initial drawings were practically "naturalist reconstructions" but the artist were to let them evolve into a painting of "the soul of the dinosaurs". When contemplating these frescoes today the visitor experiences the same sensations as when facing any other work of art. These dinosaurs are first of all what the artist wanted to create, before being "representations". Rolf Aamot's frescoes are the testimony of an artist on a scientific subject. Emmanuelle Huet, Des dinosaures en représentation. From 1957 until 1960 he studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
with the painters Aage Storstein
and Alexander Schultz, both of them firmly anchored in the effort to combine figuration and abstraction typical of the 1920s
. He later studied Film at the Dramatic Institute in Stockholm
.
was shown on Norwegian television in 1967. “Evolution” represented a milestone of a new art form in which television for the first time was used as an independent picture-artistic means of expression. Throughout the 1960s
, 1970s
and 1980s
Aamot created a series of works for television.
and the photographer, dancer and choreographer Kristin Lodoen Linder
.
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, photographer and tonal-imagePublished by The Bergen Museum of Art 1998: Electromagnetic energy shapes the colour/photone and curvilineartone span of tonal image art. The laserpower radiance of atoms. The imagetone quantumsystem turns everything into sinewy relations – signalling movement to all our cells. The body builds its world by psychophysiological images. We exist, and exist in, the infinity of perception – matter, identity, intensity, rhythm, and the logic of the cells of our bodies - opening towards the heterogeneous, the void and the exile. The tones of images are, like tones of sound, a unity of dream and act. The information value of imagetones are determined by their frequencies, span, coherence, pulseform, modulation and polarization. The directionality pulse of particlewaves are sinusoidal. Painting/Tonal Image with Laserbrush and Laserfrequency Palette (full text) by Rolf Aamot . composer. Since the 1950s
1950s
The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century...
Aamot has been a pioneer within the field of electronic painting, exploring the emerging technology as it combines with the traditional arts of painting, music, film, theatre, and ballet. Aamot studied painting at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts
Oslo National Academy of the Arts
The Oslo National Academy of the Arts is a university college in Oslo, Norway, that provides education in visual arts, design and performing arts...
(Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
The Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry was established in 1818.In 1996 the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry became part of Oslo National Academy of the Arts .-Noted alumni:-External links:*...
and Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
The Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts is a Norwegian university offering studies in the areas of specialization painting, photography / video / film, digital art, sound art, sculpture, installation, performance art, and art theory.-History:...
), and film at Dramatiska Institutet
Dramatiska Institutet
Dramatiska Institutet or University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre is a Swedish university college in Stockholm that provides education programs about activities surrounding film, radio, television, and theater. It was founded in 1970 by the Swedish government...
in Stockholm. Aamot is known for his work as a painter, electronic painter, art photographer, graphic artist, film director, tonal-image composer and cultural author. Much of his work consists of creating electronic tonal images and thus his work contains elements of photography but is hard to pigeon hole. It is frequently a form of performance art with abstract photographic elements. Since 1966, Aamot's works have been displayed in Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
, France
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Germany
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Belgium
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Italy
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, the Soviet Union
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and subsequently Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Poland
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, USA and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. His work can be found in several important public collections. Aamot has been represented at several international film and art festivals throughout the world.
Background
Rolf Aamot was, from a very early age, taught after BauhausBauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
principles by his father Randulf Aamot, a master carpenter
Carpenter
A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....
and wood carver. In 1952 he had his first solo exhibit of paintings at the Paus Knudsen Gallery in Bergen. In 1953, at the age of 18, while still attending the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry
The Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry was established in 1818.In 1996 the National Academy of Craft and Art Industry became part of Oslo National Academy of the Arts .-Noted alumni:-External links:*...
in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, he was awarded a major public commission for the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo
Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo
The Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo is Norway's oldest and largest museum of natural history, situated in Oslo.It traces its roots to the University Botanical Garden, which was founded near Tøyen Manor in 1814...
.Translation of part of article (with one illustration of Rolf Aamot's frescoes at the Natural History Museum in Oslo) in La Lettre de l'OCIM n° 77: 'The frescoes in the Paleontological Museum in Oslo - a special case'. In 1955 [sic] (competition 1953, frescoes finished 1955) a young student at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry, Rolf Aamot, was chosen, by means of a competition, to paint dinosaurs and other creatures of the Secondary (Mesozoic
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...
) Era on the walls of the museum. These paintings were originally meant to be an as exact reconstruction as possible, following the scientific advice of the paleontologist Anatol Heintz. Aamot's initial drawings were practically "naturalist reconstructions" but the artist were to let them evolve into a painting of "the soul of the dinosaurs". When contemplating these frescoes today the visitor experiences the same sensations as when facing any other work of art. These dinosaurs are first of all what the artist wanted to create, before being "representations". Rolf Aamot's frescoes are the testimony of an artist on a scientific subject. Emmanuelle Huet, Des dinosaures en représentation. From 1957 until 1960 he studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts
The Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts is a Norwegian university offering studies in the areas of specialization painting, photography / video / film, digital art, sound art, sculpture, installation, performance art, and art theory.-History:...
with the painters Aage Storstein
Aage Storstein
Aage Storstein was a Norwegian artist.Aage Storstein was born in Stavanger in the county of Rogaland, Norway. Aage Storstein studied in Paris at Academie Ranson, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and Academie Colarossi during 1920 and 1921, and in 1926 under Henrik Sørensen and Per Krohg...
and Alexander Schultz, both of them firmly anchored in the effort to combine figuration and abstraction typical of the 1920s
1920s
File:1920s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: Third Tipperary Brigade Flying Column No. 2 under Sean Hogan during the Irish Civil War; Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol in accordance to the 18th amendment, which made alcoholic beverages illegal throughout the entire decade; In...
. He later studied Film at the Dramatic Institute in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
.
Electronic art in television
Aamot's electronic tonal-image work ”Evolution” (1966) with music by Arne NordheimArne Nordheim
Arne Nordheim was a Norwegian composer who had since 1982 been living in the Norwegian State's honorary residence, Grotten, next to the Royal Palace in Oslo. Nordheim received numerous prizes for his compositions, and was elected an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary...
was shown on Norwegian television in 1967. “Evolution” represented a milestone of a new art form in which television for the first time was used as an independent picture-artistic means of expression. Throughout the 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
, 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
and 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
Aamot created a series of works for television.
Video art and digital photopaintings
Aamot became a controversial artist in the 1960s and -70s. From the latter half of the 1980s he worked with computer paintings on canvas, digital photopaintings and graphic art. He has continued to make video and film art, often in collaboration with the painter and composer Bjørg LødøenBjørg Lødøen
Bjørg Lødøen was a Norwegian painter, graphic artist, and composer.When Lødøen's family returned to Oslo in 1945, by way of her father she came to know the painter Xan Krohn. Krohn had been taking part in the Russian avant-garde movement from about 1910 until he returned to Norway some time after...
and the photographer, dancer and choreographer Kristin Lodoen Linder
Kristin Lodoen Linder
Kristin Lodoen or Kristin Linder is a Norwegian photographer, visual artist, dancer and choreographer....
.
Selected works
Tonal-image compositions for screen
Television
- ”Evolution” (1966)
- ”Relieff nr.2” (1967–68)
- ”BSK” (1968)
- ”Visual” (1971)
- ”Progress” (1977)
- ”Structures” (1979)
- ”Medusa” (1986)
- ”Puls” (1986)
- ”Close cluster” (Nærklang) (1987)
- ”Expulsion” (1987)
Cinema
- ”Relieff” (1966–67)
- Kinetic Energy” (1967–68)
- ”Vision” (1969)
- ”Structures” (1970)
- ”Actio” (1980)
- ”Aurora Borealis” (1991)
- ”Tide” (2000)
- ”Energy” (2003)
- ”U” (2005)
- ”Ir” (2006)
- "Wirr" (2008)
- "Contra" (2009)
- "X" (2010)
External links
- Rolf Aamot official website
- Interview, 1 November 2010. "Rolf Aamot: One Of The World's Pioneers In Digital Art"
- Store Norske Leksikon (Norwegian encyclopedia)
- Bjørg Lødøen official website
- Kristin Linder official website
- Art at the Worker´s Place, Oslo, Norway.
Literature
- Store norske leksikon (Norwegian encyclopedia), (KunnskapsforlagetKunnskapsforlagetKunnskapsforlaget is a Norwegian publishing company based in Oslo that concentrates on encyclopedias, encyclopedic books, textbooks, and dictonaries. The company, created in 1975, is owned by Gyldendal Norsk Forlag and Aschehoug ....
, Oslo, Norway). - Norsk biografisk leksikon (Norwegian biography encyclopedia), 1999-2005 band 10, (Kunnskapsforlaget, Oslo, Norway).
- Allgemeines Künstler-Lexikon, band 1, München and Leipzig: K. G. Saur, 1992.