I never knew that Magne Furuholmen, the man who wrote the eighties classic “Take On Me,” was also a visual artist. (I didn’t know very much about Magne Furuholmen at all.) I was enlightened by Ryan D’Agostino’s visit to Furuholmen’s series of woodcuts at the National Arts Club in New York. D’Agostino describes the exhibition in terms of emotion: “I felt surprise, curiosity, fleeting joy. I remembered Christmases and funerals; I tried to picture in my mind the process Furuholmen used to paint the wood; I thought about color and how it can make us feel.” A wonderful way to explain art. And yes, D’Agostino does touch on the origin story of “Take on Me,” but it is the art that keeps center stage—how Furuholmen would want it.
Part of him would prefer that even tonight, no one attending the opening at the National Arts Club knew that he wrote “Take On Me.” But he did, and they do, and that’s okay, because that’s who Magne Furuholmen is.
“I came to the conclusion—and I’m glad I did—that there would be vanity in that. ‘Haha, fooled you! See, I can do this! And if I told you who I was, you wouldn’t have believed me.’ It would have meant succumbing to the idea that because of my provenance, or my history, the work would be diminished. This is fine culture. The other, with A-ha, is popular culture. But I decided that the most honest and best thing would be to own up and say, ‘Look, I am what I am. This is what I make, and when I’m dead, you’re going to have to judge whether you think it has any value,’” he says.
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