Asger Jorn - Supplement - Paintings 1930-1973

Books: Asger Jorn Painting


Asger Jorn: Supplement - Paintings 1930-1973
Authors	Guy Atkins & Troels Andersen
Publisher	The Asger Jorn Foundation/Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd.
Publishing date	1986
Series	Asger Jorn Catalogue raisonné
Followed by	Asger Jorn - Revised Supplement

Asger Jorn - Supplement - Paintings 1930-1973 is the fourth book in a five-volume catalogue raisonné series on the Danish painter Asger Jorn by Guy Atkins and Troels Andersen. Published six years after The Final Years, it documents one hundred additional paintings discovered since the completion of the main trilogy, alongside essays and tributes from artists and scholars who knew Jorn.

Background

As Atkins explains in his preface:

This supplement to the œuvre catalogue of Asger Jorn’s paintings contains new descriptions of pictures that have come to light since the publication of Asger Jorn: the final years in 1980. In addition to these new discoveries, all the entries that were contained in the appendixes to the three volumes have also been included. Both groups of pictures are now integrated and placed in a single chronological order. This arrangement should make for ease of reference, provided that the key letter ‘S’ for ‘Supplement’ is always placed before the numeral.

Just before going to press three previously unknown paintings came to light. These have been included as addenda, bringing the total of new discoveries to exactly one hundred.

- Guy Atkins, Preface to the Supplement

The volume was published in association with the Asger Jorn Foundation, and owners of any further Jorn paintings were asked to send details to the Silkeborg Museum of Art, where all such records are kept.

Tributes and Essays

The first part of the book comprises essays and reminiscences from artists, critics, and scholars who knew Jorn personally. Pierre Alechinsky’s contribution was originally delivered as the opening speech at the inauguration of the new Silkeborg Museum of Art building in 1982:

‘It’s in the bag!’, Jorn used to say in moments of triumph, grabbing hold of an imaginary bag and tying a firm knot in it.

Controversial as always, this museum is his posthumous scheme for a Utopia. The museum is a masterpiece of unselfish planning, a timefuse placed by Troels Andersen, its curator, at the entrance to Silkeborg.

Jorn never limited himself to his own achievements. Towards the end of the 1950s he had no sooner collected an anthology of his own work, than he began to choose, acquire and assemble the works of his fellow artists and rivals. Some were close contemporaries, others were more remote: be they regional, national or nomadic artists like himself. He was a voluntary exile, a wandering theorist, a pictorial showman.

- Pierre Alechinsky, opening speech at the Silkeborg Museum of Art, 1982

Jean Dubuffet, who collaborated with Jorn on musical recordings and whose graphic work Jorn collected extensively for the Silkeborg museum, contributed his own assessment:

It was about 1957 that I first met Jorn. I was not at first aware of what an admirable man he was. This awareness came later and grew progressively. During our early relationship I suspected that his mind was confused and incoherent. I was quite wrong. He had the art of controlling disorder and mastering it. All his plans and enterprises were frightening in their multiplicity… Turmoil was his element, he was a nimble fish in that water. Some of his enterprises which he happened to mention to me during our meetings struck me as nebulous, but they later made sense in the heat of action. He was skilled at producing sense out of original chaos. In all his activities the same principle applied as in his work: thought sprang out of action, not the other way round.

- Jean Dubuffet

Matta recalled their time together in Albisola in 1954 and later in Cuba in 1967:

We went to Cuba together [in 1967]. They put me in the position of working for the cause. Jorn went aside completely, painting the walls of a former bank. He had more fun. We would all have been much better off doing something like that. We were much younger than our age. If we were 40 years old, we were really 18 - mentally.

Now Jorn and I would understand each other very well. Jorn is a fantastic loss.

- Matta

Part One — Essays and Tributes

Pierre Alechinsky
Guy Atkins
Jean Dubuffet
Werner Haftmann
Wilfredo Lam
Conroy Maddox
Matta
Karl Schawelka
Illustrations in large format

Part Two

The Supplement & Addenda (100 newly discovered paintings)

Part Three

Dis-authentications, omissions, additions and corrections