Jonas Frank
“It was as though the artwork was speaking to me: this one is going home to you.”
Jonas Frank is not like other people. He doesn’t have the sly look of a native of Stockholm nor the hysterical expression of someone from Gothenburg nor the whiny diction of someone from Småland. Because Jonas Frank comes from Skåne, Sweden’s southernmost province. True, he has lived in exile in Stockholm for many years, but first and foremost he is a “Skåning”. Don’t misinterpret his leisurely manner. His thoughts develop at almost extra-terrestrial speed and his insights and humour flash across a clear sky.
Jonas Frank does not just work as an art director; he is an art director. His whole being is characterized by ideas and aesthetics, often linked with popular culture and public debate. He finds it difficult to accept things that are ugly, raw, or stupid. Rubbish of that sort he can dismiss with an appropriately scathing remark. And so it is not surprising that art runs like a red thread through his life. This is something that turns out to have roots in his childhood and in growing up in Helsingborg.
“My father was an accountant and he had clients who paid for his services in paintings.” Jonas leans back against the seat in the garden where I am interviewing him. In my mind’s eye I can see him as a small boy as he stops on the stairs in his childhood home, and straightens a picture hanging on the wall.
“I remember much later when the Russians wanted to buy back their works. My dad called antiques dealer Knut Knutsson and asked him to come and check out what we had at home. There was one painting that was a real bomb, a fantastic bargain. It was auctioned in Uppsala and I heard later that masses of wealthy Russians had flown in on private jets to attend the sale. I wondered where they were because all I could see was young people of both sexes wearing tracksuits. But these turned out to be the sons and daughters of oil billionaires. The sale started, and our painting was sold for 2,2 million SEK. My father was generous and gave me part of the profit. My mother was a little sad because she missed the painting. I then had the idea of pursuing the matter. The whole business of having paintings at home, and suchlike.”
My earliest memories of Jonas are from advertising agency TBWA where he started working about the turn of the millennium. Unobtrusively at first. But then, in his own fashion, he began to take up more and more space. In those days he always wore baggy jeans and sneakers and listened to hiphop in his earphones. “The time was opportune. I had the opportunity of working with Wetterling at TBWA. They had new names, world-famous names. I became interested in Karin Davie. Her work was something like graffiti. I liked it, but my wife Sara was not so keen. She discovered a young woman called Isca Greenfield-Sanders. I had done a catalogue for her on some occasion. Perhaps I thought that her work was a trifle too simple, just painting something that already exists. But I fell in love with an early work by Isca. We bought the artwork and asked someone at the gallery: ‘What should we take in addition?’ It was almost like choosing candy in a store.”
I think of the advertising that Jonas designs. Humanistic and often with allusions to art. His poster for the final palpitating weeks of the Andy Warhol show for Moderna Museet, for example. The poster is dead simple: the motif is a rotting banana with an exhortation to go and see the exhibition. Homage to the classic Velvet Underground & Nico cover with a low-key blink. Beautifully coloured, like candy.
“Josefina at Wetterling said: ‘We have a fabulous one here’. It was a work by twins Mike and Doug Starn from Brooklyn; a triptych and there was one edition left. I felt that it was almost too powerful for me. I thought that if one had an artwork like that it really needed to hang by itself. One can’t mix it up with anything else. It is almost like a religious icon. But I became increasingly convinced that we ought to buy it. It was as though the artwork was speaking to me: this one is going home to you.”
And it did. Absolutely. Just as uncompromisingly as Jonas can be himself. When he was working withApoteket some years later, during a stressful meeting the project manager suggested that the project manager’s own feet might be suitable for photographing. Jonas walked demonstratively out of the meeting. “I am very concerned with the artistic side of my profession. If you want a consumer to stop and look at a poster or a banner you can at least offer an aesthetic experience. I often find my inspiration in art. I have never felt the need to look at other people’s advertising because that has already been done. Art that I see is planted some- where in my head and it re-appears in my subconscious. I have thought a great deal about where one’s ideas come from but I have not found any specific place. The more I fill myself with ideas, the more that comes out.”
And how things come out. Jonas bangs out contributions to the social media in a never-ending stream. Many of them link up with the present (and his favourite team of Chelsea). He tells me that he sees influencing society as a duty. He was recently contracted by the periodical Resumé to give his impression of what is happening in society. What has hit us. And the extent to which art strikes him becomes equally evident.
“One sees a pretty girl. Or a striking young man. Or one hears a new song. It is difficult to explain. I rely to a considerable extent on my gut feeling. If one has some bodily sensation, that takes one a long way. For me, modern art is about spreading what I think is good. I used Facebook. I saw it as a hard disk that I didn’t need to carry about all the time. It’s really quite exciting: tens of thousands of images that I liked. I believe in sharing. Take a band like The Charlatans who released a song called ‘The Only One I Know’. I bought it as a single and played it on local broadcasting in my bedroom in Helsingborg when I was a child. I have a feeling that I made the group big in Sweden and that they were then played everywhere three or four months later. I still live in that dream even though it has got a bit battered.”
I wonder how the man who may have launched The Charlatans in Sweden sees how contemporary art can be made to reach more people. “One can start by framing something: a picture from when you were little, your mum or dad, a pop star. Make sure that you have something on the wall which gives you peace of mind. Start there and then you can change the image later. Things always look a bit better if you put them in a frame. Then one can buy something one believes in. Just as you can buy a Klippan sofa from IKEA you can buy an artwork and look at it for ten years. It won’t wear out.”
Text: Claes Kjellström
Photo: Patrik Sehlstedt
© Wetterling Gallery
