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| Asger Jorn: Revised Supplement | |
| Authors | Guy Atkins & Troels Andersen |
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| Publisher | Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd. |
| Publishing date | 2006 |
| Series | Asger Jorn Catalogue raisonné |
Asger Jorn - Revised Supplement is the fifth and final book in a five-volume catalogue raisonné series on the Danish painter Asger Jorn by Guy Atkins and Troels Andersen. Published twenty years after the first supplement, it documents 123 additional paintings and formally concludes the registration of Jorn’s oil paintings-a project spanning 45 years of research.
Conclusion of the Catalogue Raisonné
In his preface, Troels Andersen explains the circumstances that led to this final volume:
The first supplement to the œuvre catalogue of Asger Jorn’s oil paintings appeared in 1986. It described one hundred paintings that had been discovered since the appearance of the third volume of the oeuvre catalogue Asger Jorn: the final years six years earlier. In addition, all entries from the appendixes of the preceding three volumes of the catalogue were included.
It was announced in that book that records of paintings not included in the catalogue and its supplement should in future be sent to Silkeborg Museum of Art. Thanks to the cooperation of a number of European and American institutions and private persons we have in the past twenty years been able to identify a further 123 oil paintings. In view of the growing number of untenable attributions, all precautions have been taken to secure reliable information about the provenance and history of the paintings included in the present edition. In some cases a technical investigation has also taken place.
- Troels Andersen, Preface to the Revised Supplement
With the growing problem of forgeries and false attributions, the authors took particular care to verify provenance and, in some cases, conducted technical investigations. The preface concludes with a definitive statement:
In recent years very few authentic paintings have emerged. We have therefore now decided to publish the revised supplement, and to consider the registration of Asger Jorn’s oil paintings - spanning a period of 45 years of research - concluded. From now on Silkeborg Museum of Art will only confirm whether or not a particular work is registered.
- Troels Andersen
Historical Documents
The volume includes several important historical documents, including an interview with Pola Gauguin (1883–1961), painter, art critic, and son of Paul Gauguin. The interview appeared in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet on August 29, 1945, under the heading “Norwegian art in the eyes of an abstract painter”:
Dagbladet has had a visit from a young Danish artist called Asger Jorn who belongs to a very radical tendency in Danish art - the experimental painting. He has come to Norway in search of like-minded Norwegian artists to invite down to Copenhagen to exhibit in the autumn. The group, which was then called The Scandinavians, had an exhibition in Copenhagen in 1938 in which Sigurd Winge, amongst others, took part.
Danish artists have a tendency to gather in small groups of five, ten or twenty young artists who feel more or less the same about art and then they compete with other groups. We have nothing comparable in our art life.
- Pola Gauguin, Dagbladet, August 29, 1945
An essay by Swedish artist Öyvind Fahlström provides critical assessment of Jorn’s development:
Jorn’s development as a painter has been a long (he is now 45 years old) but straight and clear one. Although he went to Léger at the end of the thirties, by the early war period he was into a mystical-magical creation in the spirit of Miró and Klee. Insight into artistic freedom, not just in vision but also brushstrokes, led Jorn into an exalted ‘abstract Surrealism’. The Danish style of the forties, which was also represented by Carl-Henning Pedersen and above all by the later concretist Richard Mortensen, is one of the most remarkable and overlooked breeding grounds for the ‘spontaneous’ currents of the fifties.
- Öyvind Fahlström
The volume also includes an interview with Jacques Michel, art critic of Le Monde, conducted in January 1971 on the occasion of Jorn’s final exhibition at Galerie Jeanne Bucher. Jorn reflected on his practice:
Even today, basically, I know nothing. At any rate, anything that I can explain. Before the picture, I only know what I must do. How I must do it. The ‘why’ lies outside the domain of the intelligible… Painting is primarily a battle which ends in a more or less acceptable picture.
- Asger Jorn, interview with Jacques Michel, Le Monde, January 1971
Contents
Part One - Historical Documents
- An interview with Pola Gauguin
- Öyvind Fahlström on Jorn
- An interview with Jacques Michel
- Illustrations in large format
Part Two
- The Supplement (123 newly identified paintings)
Part Three
- Dis-authentications, omissions, additions and corrections
Explore the Book
This is a preview only - view fullsize on archive.org
The Catalogue Raisonné Series
This volume is the fifth and final in a five-volume catalogue raisonné of Asger Jorn’s oil paintings by Guy Atkins and Troels Andersen. The series documents over 2,000 paintings spanning Jorn’s entire career from 1930 to 1973, representing 45 years of research from 1961 to 2006. The complete series comprises:
- Jorn in Scandinavia 1930-1953 (1968) - 855 paintings from Jorn’s early career in Denmark
- Asger Jorn: The Crucial Years 1954-1964 (1977) - 751 paintings from the period of Jorn’s international breakthrough
- Asger Jorn: The Final Years 1965-1973 (1980) - The concluding volume of the main trilogy
- Asger Jorn: Supplement - Paintings 1930-1973 (1986) - 100 additional paintings discovered after the main volumes
- Asger Jorn: Revised Supplement (2006) - 123 further paintings, concluding the registration
The project began in 1961, when Guy Atkins proposed cataloguing Jorn’s early paintings over lunch at the Coupole in Paris. Jorn was able to authenticate photographs for the first volume before his death in 1973. The work continued under Troels Andersen’s direction, with the Silkeborg Museum of Art serving as the repository for all records. With this final volume, the registration of Jorn’s oil paintings is formally concluded.