Master Art Collector

One of the books in my Christmas pile was this one. It´s "Från kart till fallfrukt" (= from unripe to windfalls), a memoir from the Swedish art collector, curator, art professor, art critic, jazz musician, member of the Swedish Academy, etc, Ulf Linde.

I got to know a little about him in a documentary made by Swedish television a few years back and I hoped I had saved the programme, but apparently I had not. Too bad, because I really wanted to see it again after reading this book.

It´s a very unpretentious little thing, he tells it as he remembers it, and in a short afterword he confesses that some things he remembers wrong. (Or perhaps it´s the others who remembers wrong, who knows.) However, he hasn´t changed the texts, because, still, it is as he remembers it. Just like Leif GW Persson, whose memoir I read before Christmas. Linde hasn´t actually written this book, he has recorded it on tape and had it transcribed by a secretary and corrected by his wife. Linde is going on 83 and is bound to a wheelchair. I suppose that his strength is not what it once was.

I suppose that unless you know something about the Swedish cultural scene during the 20th Century, you might not find this very interesting. It´s the gossip that´s fun. Linde gives some flesh to the bones of those long gone artists and bohemians and legendary personalities. And, no one can talk about art like Linde. I think I might have to read some of his old essays.