Page 49 - Studio International - October 1966

Asger Jorn and brutally.
Up and downhill 1966 At GIMPELS, for instance, thereis a new show of sculpture
Oil on canvas
21 1/4 x 25 1/2 in. by Robert Adams, which shows that he, too, has felt the
fascination of the prefabricated part. I'm not sure that
the elements in his new work are really pre-fabricated, as
they certainly are, for instance, in the later sculptures of
David Smith. The point is that they tend to look as if
they were. From the pre-fabricated element to the 'series
original' is really only a short step. In one case, origin-
ality, the claim to be a work of art, lies in how things are
put together; that is, it lies in an intellectual sequence.
In the 'series original' it is the intellectual concept alone
which matters, not the uniqueness of the embodiment.
And this is true, in a different sense, of a great deal of
kinetic sculpture, which also seems to be the product of
pure intellectuality, to be dematerialized. Perhaps it's too
hasty a drawing together of the threads if I say that
ideas, being immaterial, also strike me as being basically
How to make decisions democratic. Nevertheless, this remark may offer a clue,
1964-5 however cryptic, to the things which a number of current
Oil on canvas events and exhibitions have in common. q
36 x 281 in.

Asger Jorn
Asger Jorn is an immensely successful yet, in some ways,
unfashionable artist. His expressionism faces two ways—
towards the art brut of Dubuffet, and towards Munch and
the German contemporaries of Munch. The paintings
now on show at TOOTH'S represent a new direction in
Jorn's work. Painted for the most part on a visit to this
country, they are lighter, freer, gayer, less heavily worked.
The best of them show an obvious debt to Turner, an
artist whom Jorn greatly admires. One picture, even, has
a white whale in it—an allusion to the kind of monster we
see in Turner's The Slave Ship, now in Boston. These con-
nexions and references help to give us a clearer idea of the
sort of artist that Jorn sets out to be. Though figurative,
he is not a painter who bases himself on observation.
Rather, he bases himself on the medium; he tries to
collaborate with the actual materials he is using, in order
of pulsing colour transformations. to give substance to visions which are as much the
To go back to democracy— though facsimiles and property of the paint on the canvas as of his own imagina-
`performing art' are fairly familiar here, one thing we tion. And it is here, I think, that a weakness arises. There
haven't seen much of is the object or set of objects done is something a little too easy about Jorn's art, or, rather,
in series. It was interesting to meet and talk to someone something not so much easy as unfocussed. The more
who is responsible for a very successful enterprise of this heavily worked canvases at Tooth's are the ones with the
kind in New York. Rosa Esman is just putting out her greatest resemblance to the kind of thing which Dubuffet
second series of objects of this kind. They are published has been doing recently. The comparison is not to Jorn's
by the TANGLEWOOD PRESS, and made by the delightfully- advantage. Both painters use the same system of composi-
named KNICKERBOCKER MACHINE AND FOUNDRY INC. tion—the picture-space is crowded with interlocking
Seven objects are packaged in a special box—the artists grotesques which also make wriggling abstract patterns—
included Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, the abstract element and the figurative one are held in
Wesselman and Warhol, a whole Pop Art survey in balance, by a kind of compositional juggling act. Dubuffet
little, in fact. Mrs Esman says that her first series of this juggles with immense sureness. His forms, however wilful,
kind has already been a great success. It seems to me are always crisp. One cannot say the same for Jorn. In
that there are two issues here—that of the work of art as a the simpler canvases we are less conscious of the difficulty,
kind of 'fashion product' on a level with other products, because of the sumptuous beauty of the colour. Neverthe-
and that of the philosophical debate about what an less, too many of these pictures look like preliminary ideas
`original' really is, in contemporary terms. Of these two for some unattempted and perhaps unattainable master-
issues, the second seems to me clearly the more fascinat- piece. The mixture of anxiety and hedonism—Jorn's
ing and important, and a great many other events direct trademark—should surely lead to something more com-
one's attention towards it, though perhaps less directly plex, more interesting, and more realized. q