Tillvaratagna effekter. Om Jan Håfströms konstnärskap och konstnärsroll

Sammanfattning: In this thesis the oeuvre of the Swedish artist Jan Håfström (born 1937), from his debut in 1966 until 2002, is presented for the first time in a comprehensive approach. Concepts linked to modernism and postmodernism are used as a frame and the art works are discussed in a comparative way, placing the artist in an international context. Previous research and theories dealing with material iconography, originality, and the outsider are employed. The thematic study is divided into three major parts dealing respectively with materials, references, and the role of the artist (even though this is not a biography). Håfström is mainly a painter using acrylics in a way that emphasizes his presence in the act of painting. By applying a patina and using old cloth to provide for a structured surface, the works are made to look older than they are. Thereby the artist creates an authentic connection to his personal life, for instance the previous daily usage of the textiles, and to his studio. Even the titles are used by the artist to underscore his line of thought. Håfström's changes in style have been compared to pop art, new realism, minimalism, and land art. He often uses a reduced style similar to minimal art but he constantly accentuates links to European culture, especially to German romanticism, and concepts of time referring to geology. His constructed ruins in natural settings form an important part of his oeuvre, linked as they are to romanticism as well as to Robert Smithson's land art. The author argues that these changes in style are not random, but often related to particular artists in a way that in this context is termed elective affinity. The view is put forward that the artist constructs his own canon of forerunners. Mythical links between life, espeically childhood, and art are presented by Håfström, thereby emphasizing the deeply personal in art and embedding the reduced forms in diverse experiences. It is argued that Håfström's artistic concepts are developed with close inkage to writers like Gunnar Ekelöf and Paul Celan, connecting to the suture and the fragment as preconditions for the creative process. Attentive to postmodernist lines of thought, Jan Håfström's role as an artist nevertheless seems to cling to modernist thought where presence and originality are esteemed. His work is interpreted as an attempt to re-establish the role of the artist previously declared absent or even dead in postmodernist thinking. Furthermore, the author argues that Håfström's oeuvre can and should be understood as a whole, a kind of palimpsest where the canonization of his own works is part of the process.