Asger Jorn: Quotes about art

“This calls for an explanation and it may be this, that no painting, however good it seems to us is anything in itself, except chemicals smeared on a flat surface. The value in the work of art is in the spectator, you see, and a painting has no bigger value than the mental and intellectual forces it arouses in the spectator.”

Asger Jorn

Jorn's quote, from his speech at the library of Silkeborg, September l0th 1953 (translated from an unpublished Danish manuscript by Guy Atkins) ; as quoted on the website of the Jorn Museum Articles by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255
1949 - 1958, Various sources

Art , Painting

“When I used [in his speech] the word silent myths it was for a personal reason. I mean that the relations of pictorial art to the formation of myths has to be silent, consequently not illustrative. In this part of Jutland where the life of the myth has grown strongest and is kept deepest for millenniums, here where I come from and where I have known the richness of the narrative imagination of the people, here I wanted to place a monument to the anonymous strength of the word, not to a single myth, nor to a single cycle of myths, because the myths of the Edda, of the heroic poetry, yes perhaps particularly the myths of the Kalevala, have inspired me like the myth which is to be created today in the people who are glad to tell, racy and fertile.”

Asger Jorn

Quote from Jorn's speech at the library of Silkeborg, September l0th 1953 (translated from an unpublished Danish manuscript by Guy Atkins) ; as quoted on the website of the Jorn Museum Articles by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255
1949 - 1958, Various sources

Life , People , Art , Imagination

“If the image was sketched onto the canvas and spontaneously drawn, colour would often be restrained and unfree... The most important and the most difficult liberation process we went trough, the one that has distinguished our art, was the freeing of colour, the transition to a painterly spontaneity.”

Asger Jorn

Statement (c. 1944), on automatic drawing, quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art, p. 162
1940 - 1948, Various sources

Art

“It is said that my art has some typically Nordic features: the curving lines, the convolutions, the magical masks and staring eyes that appear in myths and folk art. This may be. My interest in the dynamics of Jugend style probably also comes into it.”

Asger Jorn

Quote of Jorn, from: Tecken för liv, tecken till liv [Signs of life, the characters to life], interview by Marita Lindgren-Fridell, in Konstrevy (1963)
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Art , Appearance

“The reckoning with idealism as a view of life is universal, but it also touches on something central in art-its life's substance. One must understand that it is impossible to distinguish between a picture’s form and its substance. As the flower's structure is governed by the intentional tension (when it loses the sap the form is lost), so also with art the substance creates the tension. Form and substance are one and the same. Form is the life expression and substance the living painting.”

Asger Jorn

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Life , Art , Flowers , Understanding

“The great work of art is the complete banality, and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough. Banality here is not infinite in its depth and consequence, but rests on a foundation of spirituality and aesthetics.”

Asger Jorn

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Art

“One day Pierre Loeb said to me that the ideal picture is one which is completely clear in the artist's mind before he puts a mark on the canvas, and this was, at any rate in this period.... Léger's opinion. It is the basis on which classical art is built. Therefore the setting-down of the picture on the canvas is in itself something quite unimportant. This is connected with [Fernand] Léger's hatred of textural effects in painting. But I love these effects. I remember that I was once told off because I had applied a thick layer of color instead of the thin and even layer that Léger wanted. To him that was not painting but mere color. If he could have got a machine instead of a brush to apply the color, he would have done so.”

Asger Jorn

Quote in Jorn's letter, 1952; as cited on the website of the Jorn Museum 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255,
his critical comment on the art teachings of Fernand Léger, which Jorn started to follow circa 1936, in Paris.
1949 - 1958, Various sources

Love , Art , Color , Painting

“It has been the giver's intention to create as complete a collection of European art as possible, with the aim of illuminating Surrealism and Spontaneous-Abstract art.”

Asger Jorn

refering to his art-gift Jorn made the Mmseum Jorn (1962); as quoted in Silkeborg Kunstmuseum — Jorn Samling by Troels Andersen (1973)
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Art

“To break and be able to grow together again in a better way: that is the difficult art.”

Asger Jorn

Statement of 1963, as quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Art , Way

“An example of this way of thinking is an exchange that took place when someone told Goethe that he admired him for his genius, towering over German intellectual life like a gigantic mountain, to which Goethe replied that "great mountains are found only in mountainous landscapes." The traditional history of art is concerned exclusively which such mountain peaks, and often, as Goethe critically pointed out, they are not even seen in relation to each other.”

Asger Jorn

Jorn's quote, on the publication of the book Thidrek of Folk Art (1948)
1949 - 1958, Various sources

Life , Art , Way , History

“It seems to me that today the Surrealist crisis is the central problem in French art. It is essential for future development that this crisis should be solved… The principal error in the aesthetic program of Surrealism is that it is too literary. Painters have experimented with visions, images, dreams, but not with painting, not with color... The unpainterliness of Surrealism has inevitably produced a reaction among younger painters. [Jorn is thinking here of French painters such as Bazaine, Esteve, Lapique, Singier, Le Moal, and he suggests there should be reciprocity]... These artists cannot get any further unless they absorb the lessons of Surrealism into their painting, just as Surrealists can only advance if they adopt the painterly methods of the other group.”

Asger Jorn

Quote in a writing of Jorn on modern art in Paris, 1947; as cited on the website of the Jorn Museum. 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255,
1940 - 1948, Various sources

Dreams , Art , Color , Error

“We have defined art as the life form and aesthetic art as the life renewal: the stimulating, animating, agitating, inspiring, inspirational, fermenting, fascinating fanaticising, explosive and outrageous: the renewal of the unknown.”

Asger Jorn

Statement of 1963, as quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art, p. 52
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Life , Art , Animals

“We cannot inherit a fixed, unmoving view of life and of art from the past generation. The expression of art is in any period different, as are our experiences. A new experience creates a new form. We like to learn all we need from earlier generations, but we have to find out for ourselves what we need; nobody else can do that for us. It is not our business to receive and work on what the earlier generation might want us to work on. On the other hand, it is its business to help us where we want its help.”

Asger Jorn

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Life , Art , Business , Learning

“My work is based on a tradition quite distinct from the Eckersberg tradition, a Nordic line of development that had never been clearly and consistently defined in the literature on art. This line is not a straight one; it has the strangest and most fascinating twists and curves, and includes such artists as Edvard Munch, Ernest Josephson, Hill, Hansen Jacobsen, Johannes Holbek, Jens Lund, and Emile Nolde. Not all of them equally well known.”

Asger Jorn

Statement in the late 1960s, as quoted in Fortaelleren Asger Jorn (1984) by Gunnar Jespersen, p. 121
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Art , Literature

“To make the material speak to man in the name of man, this is the aim and reality of art.”

Asger Jorn

Statement of 1971; as quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art, p. 145
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Art , Reality

“The reverse process is extremely important to me — that artistic images can inspire to words and different myths, and that in certain cultures this process has been the normal relation between images and words. It is known as a rule in the so-called Germanic art, and through the middle ages heaps of such stories are directly inspired by fantastic images.”

Asger Jorn

Quote in Jorn's letter to anthropologist Francis Huxley (1970) - on the relation between words and images
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Age , Art

“l don't know what Nordic art is worth in other people's minds.... but in today's cosmopolitan art world it doesn't figure at all... Nordic art is dangerous. It compresses all its power inside ourselves. It is not a hedonistic or sensuous art. It neither claims to be objectively intelligible, nor does it deal in clear and conscious symbols. The Danish author Jakob Knudsen hit on something important when he said that Nordic art has mood and works on the mood more than on the senses or the understanding..”

Asger Jorn

as quoted on the website of the Jorn Museum 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255,
1959 - 1973, Alpha and Omega', (1963–64)

People , World , Art , Intelligence

“Those who try to combat the production of shoddy pictures are enemies of the best art today. Those woodland lakes in a thousand sitting-rooms with gold-tinted wallpaper belong to the profoundest inspirations of art. It always feels tragic to see people labouring to saw off the branch they are sitting on.”

Asger Jorn

1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

People , Art , Feeling

“Nordic art casts a spell on the mind which ranges from laughter to tears and from tears to violent rage. One can see how dangerous it is, we can be tyrannized by a cynical person endowed with the power of art. Much has been said about this demonic aspect. In it lies the ultimate demand that the artist must take responsibility for the states of mind that he produces, or at least he must answer for them by knowing them in his own person. This psychic demand in both the artist and the viewer has made Expressionist art so hated by devotees of aestheticism and formalism.”

Asger Jorn

as quoted on the website of the Jorn Museum 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255, - Jorn talks about the Nordic concept of Expressionism
1959 - 1973, Alpha and Omega', (1963–64)

Hate , Art , Tear , Laughter

“There can be no question of selecting in any direction, but of a penetrating the whole cosmic law of rhythms, forces and material that are the real world, from the ugliest to the most beautiful, everything that has character and expression, from the crudest and most brutal to the gentlest and most delicate; everything that speaks to us in its capacity as life. From this it follows that one must know all in order to be able to express all. It is the abolition of the aesthetic principle. We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life; our interest in life, in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art. We do not even know the laws of aesthetics. That old idea of selection according to the beauty-principle Beautiful — Ugly, like to ethical Noble — Sinful, is dead for us, for whom the beautiful is also ugly and everything ugly is endowed with beauty. Behind the comedy and the tragedy we find only life's dramas uniting both; not in noble heroes and false villains, but people.”

Asger Jorn

Variant translations:
What we possess and what gives us strength is our joy in life, our interest in life in all its amoral facets. This is also the foundation for today's art. We do not even know the aesthetic laws.
We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have, and what constitutes our strength, is our joy in life, in all of its moral and amoral manifestations.
1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Life , People , World , Law