The Roaring Twenties is a thoughtful comparison between the 1920s then and now ★★★☆☆

“The parties were bigger, . . . the mores were looser, and the booze was cheaper,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby† It is well known that the roaring twenties of the last century were crazy. The decade was a slutty summer for years to celebrate the end of the pandemic caused by the Spanish Flu. It’s an era where you can easily think: I wish I could have been there. The title of the exhibition in Museum Kranenburgh suggests that this is possible, because it is simply called The Roaring Twenties†

But, be warned, don’t expect a time machine in Bergen. So leave the dancing shoes and cigarette holder at home. With the help of three guest curators, the museum made a well-considered comparison between the 1920s and today in art, design and fashion. All this – in short – under the motto: life was turbulent then and it is now. A brave undertaking. After all, our twenties have only just begun. What does the comparison yield?

Sometimes it is mainly a matter of ‘look and compare’. It is wonderful to look back and forth from the dancing and chanting figures that Frans Huysmans painted (already in 1914, apparently in the twenties atmosphere) to Raquel van Haver’s large painting from 2018 with exuberant dancing. The decor is different, a dance hall in Bergen versus a bar in South America, and the style and compositions seem incomparable, but the colors and angular shapes allow then and now to come close to each other.

For the more substantive parallels, we have to go to other parts of the exhibition, the one about design and fashion. The exhibition is strictly divided: curator Colin Huizing was responsible for the art, designer Wieki Somers chose the design and fashion consultant Liesbeth in ‘t Hout chose the fashion.

This actually looks like three exhibits, which is a shame. A hundred years ago, such divisions were already being fought for, just think of Bauhaus. The creations of Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), for example, now shown in photos under ‘design’, would have suited art and fashion just as well (or better).

Fashion was given the largest museum hall, and rightly so. Here, for example, the women’s fashion of the time, which allowed for more freedom of movement, is convincingly compared with the gender-neutral suits that Bonne Reijn has been making since 2014. There is also a spectacular meter-sized inflatable statue that represents queer activist Richie Shazam Khan. Why actually? I don’t know, but it made me very happy.

The optimism of the past sometimes clashes interestingly with the activism of today. On one side of a museum room, for example, a chic fashion show from the late 1920s is going on (on film), on the other side designer Duran Lantink (34) shows his fashion in miniatures, as a statement against waste.

The Roaring Twenties is remarkably studious in tone for such a ‘troublesome’ subject. The twenties of yesteryear and today do not meet at an exciting party of the great Gatsby, but in neat museum rooms. The turbulent times have solidified here in a laboratory setting, full of experimental unexpected encounters.