The mighty vandal Asger Jorn, much more than the European Jackson Pollock

The life and work of the Danish Asger Jorn (1914-1973) could be interpreted as a synthesis of the history of the 20th century, of contemporary European art and of the left-wing ideological movements that marked him.

Above all, he was a great painter, abstract expressionist, neo-primitivist, irregular but brilliant, who stood out in the fifties as the European Jackson Pollock, but also many other things.

He participated in the resistance against the Nazis as a member of his country's communist party, a formation he left when he began to limit free thought.

He was one of the founders of the influential avant-garde artistic group Cobra (an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) which was founded in 1948 and dissolved due to internal differences.

He collaborated in the formulation of the Situationist International together with his friend Guy Debord and others,

that so soaked the subsequent May of 68 and that postulated the liquidation of class society and the end of the dictatorship of the merchandise.

After distancing himself from this situationist drift, Jorn created the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism to vindicate the legacy of the northern barbarians, so called by the Roman civilization.

He advocated for a popular art, for a life in relationship with nature, for reflecting the vital experience and that of the other, against the hegemonic European vision based on rationalism, initiated in the Greco-Roman culture.

so called by the Roman civilization.

He advocated for a popular art, for a life in relationship with nature, for reflecting the vital experience and that of the other, against the hegemonic European vision based on rationalism, initiated in the Greco-Roman culture.

so called by the Roman civilization.

He advocated for a popular art, for a life in relationship with nature, for reflecting the vital experience and that of the other, against the hegemonic European vision based on rationalism, initiated in the Greco-Roman culture.

View of an IVAM showroom on Asger Jorn.

Monica Torres

Painter, sculptor, draughtsman, engraver, ceramicist, writer, publisher, intellectual, activist... Asger Jorn has as many facets as there are interpretations of his life and work.

Hence the title chosen for the exhibition exhibited by the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) until June 18:

.

More than 200 works make up the exhibition, probably the most ambitious commitment of the Valencian museum for this year, whose protagonist is considered the most important Scandinavian artist after the Second World War.

The bottomless pit of unofficial titles and schematic labels is a common resource in the intertwined world of art and the media, but Jorn's non-conformity and his multifaceted work resist a standard classification, as can be seen during a sample view.

He immediately draws attention to the great expressive power of his intensely colored paintings, which can become strident, chaotic, feverish, shocking, all at the same time.

They contrast in the last room with the archaeological austerity of his photographic cataloging of the Viking-era graffiti on the walls of Normandy churches.

Jorn was a champion of popular culture, of open creation, of experimental and free art, "which is not dissociated from the world but understands the artist as an involved party, because he wanted art to be social", explains Ellef Prestsæter, curator of the sample that tries to reflect that drive.

In this sense, the enemies of open creation to which the title alludes "are those who try to set a specific objective for art, who reduce it to a single meaning, restricting its freedom," adds the Norwegian historian.

Freedom is a word that is repeated throughout the speech about Jorn, who said he perfectly understood Jean-Paul Sartre when he refused the Nobel Prize in 1964. That same year, the Danish creator not only refused the Guggenheim International Prize for a painting with the one that replicated an Eisenhower speech, but refused to be used as propaganda for the museum and demanded from the organization in an angry telegram "public confirmation of not having participated in their game."

This episode brought him unexpected popularity.

Some saw a performative action that predicted one of the paths of contemporary art: others, an advertising action.

“Sartre's rejection of the Nobel Prize is as logical and devoid of ulterior motives as my rejection of the Guggenheim Prize,” Jorn said.

One of Asger Jorn's paintings, in the IVAM exhibition. Mònica Torres

Jorn's work, as explained in the catalogue, “ranges from political agitation to theoretical work that includes criticism of Marxism and its idea of ​​value;

critical and utopian proposals on urban planning and research on art/architecture/life relationships;

studies of aesthetics and anthropological reflections on the image, and even recordings of experimental music in collaboration with Dubuffet”.

“Jorn goes from painting to publishing and from ceramics to weaving, murals or writing.

And in writing, from more experimental books in the form of his own like

(in collaboration with Guy Debord) to strictly political essays like

.

In this incessant work, he is capable of making freedom of creation and social commitment compatible, in a unique way”, points out the curator.

In the midst of the Cold War, Jorn wrote a letter to Picasso in the fifties in which he recounted his intention to arrive at an "expression of our current situation."

He informs her of his creation of a double-headed eagle atop a destruction machine that wipes out "every trace of life."

Not in vain, "Asger Jorn's work is profoundly affected by the historical events of his time", points out the director of the IVAM, Nuria Enguita.

At the same time, the artist “managed to find a particular balance between his interest in Scandinavian prehistory, local ancestral cultures and the universalist dream”.

“Between cultural traditions, the popular and the desire for novelty of avant-garde experimentalism.

In addition, he was able to develop a work that was both authorial and fully involved in projects of collective creation ”,

The situationists Guy Debord, Michele Bernstein and Asger Jorn, in an undated image.

The exhibition is produced by the IVAM, in collaboration with the Museum Jorn in the Danish town of Silkeborg and with the support of the Fundació Banc Sabadell, and is the most extensive of all that have been held on the painter's work in Spain.

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