Blå som blomst, hvid som sne, rød og sort som valmue: Om romantik, utopi og katastrofe i Ursula Reuter Christiansens værk

In this article, I wish to pursue some clues in Reuter Christiansen’s store of images by moving from a utopian blue to blood red while taking a particular interest in the artist’s inspiration from Romanticism. My contention is that in Reuter Christiansen’s work and life, the utopian yearning associated with the blue flower of Romanticism collides with an experience of war and disaster linked to the black and red colours of the poppy, and that this collision prompts a reinterpreting rescue or salvaging of the images of the past (from childhood, Romanticism, Catholicism). Below I link this rescue to the German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history by way of a particular image in Reuter Christiansen’s cache: Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920). For Walter Benjamin, as for Reuter Christiansen, it is imperative to rescue the images in which humanity has recorded its dreams, salvaging them from the ruins that history leaves in its wake.