At first it was about money — banknotes, to be precise. In 1908 the Swiss National Bank was looking for suitable motifs for a new series: high in quality and Swiss in character. No surprise, then, that the choice fell on the Bernese painter Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918): he was at the height of his powers and had won a gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair. Hodler drew his first woodcutter as a template, to the delight of his clients. The finished product, the 50-franc note, gave him little joy, however — rightly so, for on it the image looks oddly flat and without nuance.
The original pleased the discerning public all the more, so Hodler received several commissions for further woodcutters. He delivered what was wanted — which brought him praise from collectors and commercial success, but also ridicule from fellow artists. Cuno Amiet scoffed: “He’s starting to copy himself like an ape.” Hodler would not have called the pictures copies, but versions of one and the same motif: now large, now smaller, now autumn, now spring, the background abstract or concrete, the facial expression varying. That there were several originals, however, also encouraged forgers — with so many woodcutters, who could still tell what was genuine and what was fake?
The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Luzern presents, alongside different versions of “The Woodcutter”, political posters too: the powerful image is still used today for all sorts of messages — from right to left, always about strength, struggle, resistance. One “Woodcutter”, incidentally, belongs to the Swiss Confederation and hung in the office of Moritz Leuenberger and later Christoph Blocher, who rarely agreed on anything else.
Powerful, mighty, monumental — those are the words that come to mind before Hodler’s “Woodcutter”. It is also a depiction of a man one would hardly find today: in an age when the image of masculinity is badly shaken, it shows, with disarming openness, male strength and resolve as something dynamic and beautiful. (“Hodlers Holzfäller. Die Schweizer Erfolgsserie”, Kunstmuseum Luzern, until 13 February 2022.)
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/21 (November 2021).
