The Spirit of Vitalism: Health, Beauty and Strength in Danish Art, 1890–1940 (originally published in Danish as Livslyst. Sundhed—Skønhed—Styrke i dansk kunst 1890–1940) is a collection of essays with a catalogue that was published to accompany an exhibition entitled Zest for Life. Health—Beauty—Strength in Danish Art 1890–1940 held at the Fyns Kunstmuseum/Odense City Museums and Fuglsang Kunstmuseum in 2008. Both exhibition and publication were the result of a long-term project dating back to 2001 and involving the participation of a number of Danish museums (7). The large-format volume consists of fifteen essays written by fourteen contributors, and a substantial catalogue with predominantly full-color plates that illustrate a vast array of works produced between 1890 and 1940. As such, The Spirit of Vitalism offers a fascinating introduction to those little aware of Danish art produced from the fin de siècle up until the occupation of Denmark by National Socialist forces.

The book, however, is no national survey. Rather, as the editors point out in an introductory article called “The Triumph of Life,” a key aim of the project is to encourage “an understanding of Vitalism as an epoch and a current that forms the transition to modernism in the first half of the twentieth century” (14). “Vitalism,” they contend, “constituted the threshold to our modern age, and was a broad cultural current that is still reflected in our physical culture today” (14). This latter point perhaps serves to highlight two key goals within the project as a whole. First, the volume sets out to offer a more expansive account—and one that is thematically, rather than stylistically, driven—of a key transitional moment in the emergence of modern culture that specifically highlights a close dialogue between past and present. In this context, widely espoused views regarding the degeneration of humankind as a consequence of urbanization and industrialization, and the emergence and consolidation of modern sporting culture, are shown to impact artistic production, not least through a reworking of classical, religious, and Norse mythological sources. The editors write: “The accounts of the antique Arcadia and the Christian Creation, each of which depicts the beginning of civilization and the ideal Paradisiac state, find a counterpart, especially in Danish Vitalism, in the cultivation of the creation myth of Norse mythology” (30). While the arguments here may be familiar, the integration of Danish art more explicitly into this context notionally elevates the status and value of this national cultural contribution to the period. The second goal seems to be to draw attention to the parallels between this first “Vitalist” wave and obsessive concerns regarding lack of physical exercise and poor diet in present-day society. Hence, in the introduction, the editors note that “it is not only research in the humanities that is currently taking an interest in Vitalism: the widespread cult of the body today can also be held up as a mirror to the decided body culture of Vitalism—including the importance of exercise, diet, physical beauty, etc. It therefore prompts us to see Vitalism and its historical perspective as a precursor of the current cult of health” (7). More directly, the sport specialist Hans Bonde ends his contribution on “Vitalist Sport” by noting, “It will be interesting to observe whether today’s serious health threats in the form of the obesity epidemic and growing inactivity will generate a Neo-Vitalist development in physical culture” (105).

A self-evident challenge facing the project from the outset, especially given the fifty-year periodization, was to find an adequate term to capture the range of activities and cultural interventions circumscribed by the exhibition and publication. It is in this context that the term “Vitalism” is foregrounded. The term is defined by the literary scholar Sven Halse in his contribution “Wide-Ranging Vitalism: On the Concept and Phenomenon of Vitalism in Philosophy and Art.” Halse openly acknowledges the difficulty of pinning down the meaning of Vitalism by constructing a metaphorical dialogue between “hardliners” and “softliners,” the former seeking precise definition, the latter content with “a conceptually broad-brimmed hat, big enough to cover many heads” (47). Halse goes on to offer a nuanced, historical account of the emergence of ideas associated with the term, and their relevance for cultural production, citing the importance of, among others, Hans Dreisch (1867–1941), Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), and Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876). Yet it is, of course, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), and not least his “quest for the cultivation of life’s ‘Dionysian’ qualities” (49), who casts the longest shadow over Halse’s contribution and throughout the whole volume.

From the specifically Danish perspective, the two physical-culture pedagogues Jørgen Peter Müller (1866–1938) and Niels Bukh (1880–1959) are inevitably seen to play a vital, in both senses of the word, role in the growth of the movement in the early twentieth century. Müller, described variously by Halse as the “Danish gymnastics prophet” (51) and by Bonde as “the apostle of health” (92), famously popularized gymnastic exercises in his 1904 book Mit System, which was “translated into 26 languages and sold 1.5 million copies” (92). Regarded by many as Müller’s successor, Bukh similarly left his mark on Danish gymnastics, not least through the establishment of his Gymnastics High School in Ollerup, which he sought to establish as “a world centre for physical culture” (100). Both Müller and Bukh famously associated their vision of a modern body culture with the artistic precedents of the ancients. That two such influential pioneers of gymnastic exercise hailed from Denmark perhaps serves to reinforce the argument that Danish Vitalism left a rather significant mark on wider European developments. At the same time, though, this association also generates some anxieties for The Spirit of Vitalism. Given the sensitivities inevitably at play when a nation’s history is one of occupation, it is perhaps not surprising that the editors are keen from the outset to differentiate Danish Vitalism from National Socialist aims and practices. The editors claim, “In connection with the exhibition Zest for Life the Vitalist current was restricted to the period between 1890 and 1940 to show the breadth and scope of a current with an appeal to a wide range of Danish artists. After this Vitalism took a different direction and became more political, and thus moved away from its true philosophical and cultural-historical starting point, instead becoming an ideological instrument of power politics” (17). Some might well argue that it is difficult to sustain either the view that early Vitalism was intrinsically “truer” than its consequential embrace under National Socialism, or indeed that this notional political corruption might be dated as late as 1940. In this context, Müller’s early pronouncements in support of eugenics and Bukh’s explicit association with National Socialism might appear to counter such a claim. Here, however, it should also be noted that Bonde’s contribution strives to deal with this issue more openly, not least in a section dedicated to “Fascism and Vitalism” where he points out that “this dream ended with a brutal awakening in the racist Nazi state’s cult of the instincts and of anti-intellectualism” (105).

Another key element in this volume is the breadth of media coverage, with the declared goal “to create a cross-disciplinary field of research” (7). To this end, essays introduce Vitalism within the context of architecture (“Framing the Life-Rhythm: On the Vitalization of Architecture”), dance (“Dancing Life Itself: The Meanings and Forms of Dance in the Mirror of Vitalism”), and music (“‘Music is Life’: Carl Nielsen’s Vitalist Music Philosophy”). Other thematic areas of coverage include sexuality, nature, and the body. What perhaps stands out most of all, though, is the introduction of so many artists, many of whom are probably little known outside of Denmark. The better-known Vitalist triumvirate of Kai Nielsen (1882–1924), Rudolph Tegner (1873–1950), and J. F. Willumsen (1863–1958) is joined by, among others, the painters Folmer Bonnén (1885–1960), Axel Bredsdorff (1883–1947), Holger H. Hansen (1890–1919), Oluf Hartmann (1879–1910), Svend Rathsack (1885–1941), and Christine Swane (1876–1960), and the sculptors Anne-Marie Carl-Nielsen (1863–1945), Jean Gauguin (1881–1961), Gerhard Henning (1880–1967), and Helen Schou (1905–2006). Willumsen and Tegner, it should be noted, each receive individual coverage.

The Spirit of Vitalism is a big book not only in physical dimension and weight, but also in its ambitions. For those less familiar with Danish art of this period, it will introduce new artists and a new body of work, and offer a broader understanding of cultural activity from the fin de siècle to the Second World War. Its broader mission, however, to foreground the importance of Vitalism as a significant mode of thought that shaped not only attitudes to life but also the means of articulating those ideas in cultural forms makes this volume worthy of serious consideration by those with specific interests in this key historical transition.