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Asger Jorn on Læsø

Asger Jorn on Læsø

Lars Morell

The secret behind Asger Jorn’s relationship with Læsø is that he not only bought a farm and converted it into a studio, but that his gallerist, Børge Birch, and one of his closest colleagues, the sculptor Jørgen Haugen Sørensen, also bought houses on the island. In this way, a small colony was established of the people who supported him.

It began when Jorn came to Copenhagen and told Birch that he had just bought a farm on Læsø from a man he had happened to meet on a train.

One day in January 1964, Jorn had been traveling by train to Holstebro—perhaps to visit the well-known art collector Frode Folkvang. In the same compartment sat a man named Svend Nielsen Dahl, who lived in Klampenborg and was the owner of Københavns Metal Kunst, which produces key fobs for hotel room keys. Dahl came from Struer, Jorn from Vejrum, and it quickly became apparent that many events in their upbringing had unfolded in the same way. Svend Nielsen Dahl had for three-quarters of a year owned a farm on Læsø, Bangsbohave on Lille Strandgårdsvej 28. Admittedly, he had never set foot on the Kattegat island, but had acquired the house from a merchant who himself lived elsewhere on the island.

They both had to get off in Holstebro and checked into a hotel, where they shared a double bed. Before that, they had had a few whiskies in the bar and with a handshake confirmed that Jorn was buying Bangsbohave for 10,000 kr. The transaction was to be handled through Birch. Jorn had possibly been extravagant and also promised a painting on top, but that was something Birch would not stand by in any case.

1964 was the year when Asger Jorn turned 50. He was in a different situation in life. He was no longer young and the driving force in the artist groups that formulated the spirit of the times. The young were preoccupied with other art movements, especially American pop art. Now Jorn was instead an acknowledged master who had to constitute his own movement.

On April 1, 1964, Birch wrote to Jorn that “today I have deposited money at the bank, so the farm on Læsø is yours. Congratulations on it. I believe you will get much joy from this farm, and I will, together with my family, go up there as quickly as I can and get everything ready for you.”

Birch and Jørgen Haugen Sørensen then went to Læsø. They lodged near Vesterø Søndre Kirke in the old red-painted parsonage and quickly discovered that Jorn’s new acquisition was remote and in poor condition. It had long stood uninhabited as an abandoned farm.

Birch and Haugen Sørensen also fell in love with the island and decided to each buy a house. In August of the same year, Karie and Børge Birch went to Læsø and drove around looking at houses that were for sale. On Karie Birch’s birthday, August 3, they viewed Vesterøgård on Agersigen 4, an L-shaped farm on the outskirts of Vesterø Havn. She interpreted this as a good sign, and they decided to buy it.

Haugen Sørensen had his first exhibition at Galerie Birch in October 1960. It was the gallery’s opening exhibition after a few years’ pause and became a huge success. Haugen Sørensen bought a house on the outskirts of Paris and had contact with Jorn both in Paris and in Northern Italy.

Asger Jorn’s brother, the writer Jørgen Nash, had in the autumn of 1960 bought the abandoned farm Drakabygget on the border between Skåne and Hallandsåsen. From the beginning, Jorn was involved in the renovation of the five-wing farm. In July or August 1961, Jorn visited and painted, among other things, a picture he titled Drakabygget. He was there several times during the summer of 1962 as well—accompanied by, among others, his German gallerist Otto van de Loo. That same year, Jorn and Nash began publishing the journal Drakabygget - for kunst mod atombomber, paver og politikere (Drakabygget - for art against atomic bombs, popes and politicians).

Drakabygget’s former barn was being converted into a studio for Jorn, and in this connection Jorn—who had a tendency toward somewhat unclear agreements—had given Nash permission for unlimited withdrawals from his account with bank manager Andersen at Handelsbanken. This was abused, and Jorn had to terminate the collaboration with Nash in November 1962. The situation was not improved by Nash going to the media and calling his brother’s termination of the collaboration “the meatball’s flight over the fence.”

Jorn was an internationally known painter, even though it was actually somewhat against his nature. When Nanna many years later had given birth to their son Ib in Paris, Jorn received a visit the next morning from gallerist Willy Omme and Birte Beck in Colombes. Jorn opened the door with disheveled hair and declared that his son had been born during the night, but very characteristically he would like it if Birte Beck could make “proper Danish food” to celebrate his son’s birth. Jorn was fundamentally a nostalgic homebody, and after the break with his brother, he once again lacked an anchor point in Scandinavia.

The first time Jorn paid a visit to Læsø was in August 1965. Birch believed that a Jorn exhibition in Norway could be a success, because the Norwegians—with Edvard Munch—had all the prerequisites to appreciate his art. In haste, a traveling exhibition was arranged, which was to be shown at Bergens Kunstforening in September 1965, at Trondhjems Kunstforening in October of the same year, and at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in December. It turned out that Birch’s instinct was correct, for the exhibition became a huge success. Incidentally, it also led to Jorn making contact with Per Hovdenakk, then a journalist at Bergens Arbeiderblad.

Jorn and Birch were extremely busy. In Aarhus, Birch had been allowed to use Galleri ved Aaen, which was closed for the summer. Here Jorn had in July set up a series of canvases and worked like mad to get the new paintings ready in time.

Birch loved big cars, and together they drove for a few days to Læsø. Jorn did not have a driver’s license and was also on that point dependent on people who helped with practical matters. Bangsbohave had not been fixed up yet at all, but Birch’s farm had been put into use. At one end was the main house, in the middle the former barn, and at the far end the former stable. In the barn, Birch had set up a living room where he had his drum set. He loved jazz music.

Birch wanted more open space on the property, and he and Jorn went out into the field and felled trees. After a few hours, Jorn declared that he wanted to go inside and drink a beer.

It was Birch who purchased paints, brushes, and canvas for Jorn. For some reason, a larger supply of paints was kept inside the living room. Jorn frequently painted at the homes of friends and acquaintances. If they had a painting, he might decide to continue painting on it—with whatever colors happened to be at hand. Jorn was not interested in the colors that nature has on Læsø. There is, however, one color, Læsøgrøn (Læsø green), which is used on many farms for the woodwork and stable doors. It is also used on Birch’s farm, where there was a can that Jorn made use of.

While Birch worked on unsuspectingly with the tree felling, Jorn spontaneously began to paint one long wall of the barn. Properties on Læsø are low and winding, dark and with different floor levels. The painting functions as a decoration that binds together the sixteen-meter-long, very varied sequence of spaces.

It is one of Jorn’s private pictures—painted for a friend in a place without public access. It begins on the right with a large regular wall section, where a scene with many figures is painted. It continues to the left across a doorway, whose sides are very deep and contain hidden pictures of an erotic nature on each side. To the left of the door is yet another large wall section with a sun drawn as a face and in one corner an enormous mask that itself consists of several smaller masks. Perhaps a portrait of the farm’s owner. The further the picture moves to the left, the darker it becomes, as if a cheerful day is drawing to a close and the sun is about to set. Furthest to the left—around a corner—Jorn painted a nocturne scene, which is especially known from his art in the 1940s and 1950s. It is now evening, and all has become still.

The excursion to Læsø lasted just a few days. On August 8, 1965, Birch and Jorn were back in Aarhus to arrange photography and framing of the paintings for the traveling exhibition in Norway.

For the next three years, Jorn did not show up on Læsø at all. Account books from Galerie Birch show that Birch began paying out amounts to craftsmen for renovation of Bangsbohave in June 1967. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1967, craftsmen’s bills were paid every month. This continued at intervals throughout 1968, and craftsmen’s bills were also paid in January, November, and December 1969.

Together with his spouse Matie, Jorn had a residence in Paris on Rue de Tage. Typically for Jorn, he had both an attic floor where he painted and an apartment on the third floor where they lived. After the break between them in December 1961, he moved to an apartment on Boulevard de la Gare, which he however lost in November 1964.

Jorn had many projects going on simultaneously. There was extensive correspondence. For a long time one heard nothing from him, but then suddenly there he was. Like a vagabond, he now lived out of a suitcase and traveled from hotel to hotel when he was not staying with friends and acquaintances. He often had half-finished paintings rolled up with him.

Jorn was a secretive person. He liked to hide away. “Jorn is in town,” the rumor went, but usually one discovered it only after he had already moved on. During periods he changed his place of residence almost daily.

Læsø was a place where he could disappear, but even that was difficult. Denmark is a small country. It was soon rumored that he was on Læsø, and then journalists came to seek him out. Sometimes they arrived without an appointment, and Jorn did not like that.

Bangsbohave consists of two slightly separated longhouses.

The main house was low, dark, and damp. To reduce the dampness, new floors were poured and parquet flooring was laid in the living rooms and linoleum flooring in the kitchen. In an extensive operation, the crossbeams on all rafters were raised so that the ceiling height could be increased, except at the sides where the rafters went down and where the ceiling therefore became sloped. It did not help much. The main house remained dark and cramped.

In summer it was hot in Albissola and Paris, and then it was pleasant for Jorn to stay on the Kattegat island. Here he could get air. Considering that he used Bangsbohave to see the children during summer vacation, it is surprising that he did not set up any sleeping accommodations in the main house at all.

To renovate Bangsbohave, Birch used the same craftsmen, carpenter Kurt Strøm and mason Jens Lillethorup, whom he himself had used on Vesterøgård. The renovation of Jorn’s studio came to resemble the way Birch had fixed up his barn.

In Bangsbohave’s former stable, one enters at the gable end facing east, and in this part of the building the stable structures are still visible. Originally there was a center aisle here with horse stalls to the north and a sheep pen to the south. The curved stable ceilings of moler brick and the center aisle are preserved. On each side, a bedroom has been set up, and in the center aisle itself a kitchenette was built.

To the west, the building has been completely transformed, for here the ceiling was torn down so that a large painting studio went all the way up to the ridge. Entering this room feels like stepping into the studio in the barn at Drakabygget that Jorn had lost in the brotherly dispute. In the middle of the painting studio, a fireplace was built and in connection with it a staircase leading up to the floor above the bedrooms, the remains of the original hayloft. Here a paper studio was set up.

On the south side of the studio, Jorn added a garage that is open to the west and has a tool room to the east. Here he stored strips for stretcher frames, canvas on rolls, and paint.

The first thing that happened in the summer of 1968 was that two young people arrived from Holland. They had brought a tent, presumably because from Albissola they were used to Jorn’s houses being in complete ruin. The neighbor, mink farmer Erland Stoklund, was called in, and with a scythe he cut the grass that stood a meter high in the courtyard.

The two young people stayed for a month. It was Martha, one of Matie’s daughters with Constant, who had brought her boyfriend along. She was a beauty with completely black hair. Jorn had taught his children to speak many languages—including Danish. Stoklund did not speak English, and the two young people only a broken Danish. They borrowed a rowboat from Jørgen Haugen Sørensen.

Then Jorn himself showed up. The neighbor was busy putting up a partition wall in the middle of the living room. Jorn went around and painted this wall and the walls in the studio.

Martha was studying anthropology and told Jorn what she had been reading. At that time, in 1967–68, Jorn was preoccupied with French structuralism. The next day he came having read the same thing and wanted to discuss it and had a different opinion about all of it. It was not easy.

Jorn stayed on Læsø until the middle of October. In his account book, Birch noted on October 29, 1968, that he had bought from Jorn five small oil paintings, each measuring 46 x 55 cm, executed on Læsø for a total price of 37,500 kr. Jorn gave the paintings titles in the language of the country where they had been created. If one searches Guy Atkins’ catalogue raisonné, one finds under 1968 precisely five paintings with the stated measurements and titles in Danish: Sandhedens øjeblik (The Moment of Truth), Den gamle debutant (The Old Debutant), Den forfløjne strand (The Dissipated Beach), Sø og land (Sea and Land), and Skovro (Forest Calm).

Jorn gave an interview to Ekstra Bladet, which was published Tuesday, October 22, 1968. It appears from this that Jorn had owned Bangsbohave for four years, but that during that time he had altogether only had time to stay there for ten minutes. That situation had changed. Now he had really taken possession of the farm, including with the arrangement of a large studio. “Strangely enough, he says. But this is actually the first thing I have that is arranged entirely according to my own ideas.” It appeared from Ekstra Bladet that he had just made his entry onto the farm together with his son Ole and the two other young relatives.

Jorn’s statements reflected his new situation in life. To the question of why he had ended up on Læsø, he answered that “it was mostly a coincidence, but behind it probably lies the fact that I, since I have nothing to do with Danish cultural life, but am still and feel myself to be a Dane, had to find a place where I could sit without bothering anyone. It is of course an illusion to think that can be done. But still… One can say I am here to be a little forgotten. Decay quietly, little by little. Perhaps this is the start of the retreat. One must also think of one’s old age. Now I will concentrate on painting,” he declared—naturally against the background that his project of 24 volumes on 10,000 years of Nordic folk art had been discontinued in the spring of 1967.

The direct reason Ekstra Bladet sought out Jorn was that a meeting had been held at Statens Museumsnævn (the State Museum Council) in the middle of October. Silkeborg Kunstmuseum had been established at a founding general assembly on June 14, 1966. For a year and a half they had applied to Statens Museumsnævn for permission to appoint Per Hovdenakk as daily manager, but this had now been finally rejected with reference to the fact that he was trained as a journalist.

Per Hovdenakk was himself in Copenhagen that day, and the agreement was that an official in the Ministry of Culture would call the neighbor, Erland Stoklund, after the meeting, who would then make sure that Jorn came to the phone. The art critic Gunnar Jespersen was also present at the ministry and wished to interview Jorn about the situation, but he declined.

That was why Ekstra Bladet’s journalist and photographer showed up unannounced to see Jorn on Læsø. There were rumors circulating that Jorn would discontinue the donations to Silkeborg Kunstmuseum because his candidate had not gotten the director position. Wisely, he refrained from public polemics about this because it could have harmed the establishment of the museum itself.

Now Jorn had had enough of unannounced visits. In Ekstra Bladet’s photo from October 1968 (reproduced on the cover), Bangsbohave consisted of two independent longhouses, but in the photo that Frank Lund took in June 1969 of Jorn pouring water from a pot of potatoes, in the background can be seen a newly erected wall between the main house and the studio. Now it was no longer possible to drive into the courtyard and from there go directly into the studio.

There exists a painting that with certainty was painted on Læsø in the autumn of 1968. In April 2003, Bruun Rasmussen at auction 720 sold Den blonde hede (The Blonde Heath), which according to the catalogue is marked Gotland 1964 and Læsø 1968 on the back. The double dating shows that it is a genuine travel painting. Erland Stoklund often picked up Jorn at the ferry in Vesterø Havn, and he sometimes brought canvases that were already painted on and now had to be finished. Jorn also started canvases on Læsø and then took them along and finished them elsewhere. Museum Jorn owns such a work. Jorn painted twelve paintings on Gotland in the summer of 1964. Den blonde hede is one of them and was included in the traveling exhibition in Norway in the autumn of 1965, and afterward it was brought to Læsø, where Jorn painted further on it. It is also a genuine island picture—regardless of whether it is Gotland or Læsø that is being referred to. One sees a luminous yellow-green island populated by fantastical figures surrounded by dark water. There is no doubt that Jorn found himself very comfortable on Gotland in the summer of 1964.

One could not simply pick up the phone and call Jorn. If the children wanted to know where their father was, they had to call Birch. In Peter Bramsen’s lithography workshop in Paris, the phone always rang toward the end of the month. Jorn was almost a bit paranoid. If the phone rang, he became nervous and asked Peter Bramsen to answer it. “If it’s for me, say I’m not here, but take a message,” he explained while standing right next to him and whispering so everyone could hear: “Who is it?”

Jorn did not have a telephone at Bangsbohave either. That was the real reason a friendship developed between him and Erland Stoklund. Jorn had a red ladies’ bicycle, and when phone calls had to be made, he came speeding into the neighbor’s courtyard. The calls were to Italy and France and went through the long-distance operator.

There were also some times when Jorn was there, but Stoklund had been instructed to say that he was not there.

In a studio, everything takes place between the artist and the canvas. The rest is irrelevant and just needs to be in order so it does not disturb.

Jorn was very preoccupied with architecture, especially the interplay between art and architecture, and wrote extensively on the subject in the 1940s and 1950s—most of it directed against functionalism and modern urban planning. Therefore it is worth noting that his homes and studios were surprisingly functionally arranged.

A quite specific pattern recurred in Jorn’s residences—and also the places where he set up temporarily. As a rule, he kept living quarters and studio separate so he could work undisturbed in his own rhythm. The studio itself often consisted of two rooms: one for painting and one for writing and sleeping. He preferred to have canvases stretched on frames standing on a low shelf, several side by side. In his studios there is usually sidelight from a high-placed window on the north-facing wall.

When one entered the painting studio at Bangsbohave, one saw in the first corner a sink fouled with paint because brushes were cleaned in it. All walls were painted white except behind the sink, where the wall was covered with imitation tiles of green vinyl. Next to the sink stood a large brown-painted radiator, and here a single stable window was also preserved. The other stable windows on the south wall had been bricked up. Jorn worked at the end wall facing west. Here, in continuation of each other, two low shelves had been mounted where up to six canvases could stand, which he moved around. Jorn preferred to work in this way, where the stretched canvas gave an elastic, slightly swaying resistance to the brush’s pressure. If something was missing from a painting, he might dab the paint on with his fingers; Jorn had very nervous hands. In front of the end wall there always stood a small table with two boards folded up and with the short side toward the end wall. The tabletop was covered with a piece of plastic where there were paint tubes and cans of Ripolin, high-quality lacquer paint. Jorn did not squeeze the colors out onto the plastic to mix them—he took them unmixed directly from the tube and just gave them the right consistency with linseed oil, turpentine, and siccative. The studio has a concrete floor, but in front of the end wall where Jorn stood and worked, he had covered the floor with a wide strip of linoleum. In the corner stood a ladder shelf that Jorn himself had assembled. It always stood all the way to the right with the narrow side up against the end wall. In it and in the windowsill lay a stack of Italian and German crime novels. When he was traveling, Jorn read that kind of thing to practice foreign languages. On the north wall facing the courtyard was a long narrow window with brackets for curtains so Jorn could draw them when he wanted to be free from being observed. If Jorn through this window saw that guests were entering the courtyard, he hurried out of the studio and into the main building and received them from the kitchen door. Thereby he avoided having outsiders come into the studio. On the north side of the saddle roof there are two strips of translucent plexiglass roof panels. On each of the five rafters are mounted two fluorescent tubes with shades made of zinc sheet so that all electric light is cast toward the end wall.

It happened once that Erland Stoklund came into the studio while Jorn was working. Stoklund thought that a painter finished one painting at a time. He saw that Jorn had placed four or five paintings side by side on the low shelf and was in the process of applying yellow to all of them. Later the same day or the next day, he would similarly give them all blue or green. Stoklund was shocked that it took place in such a factory-like manner.

By having two bedrooms in the studio building, Jorn ensured that he could have his own daily rhythm—rest during breaks in the work, paint all night, go to bed late, and get up in the morning—without being disturbed by the family.

In the middle of the painting studio was a fireplace—and from this a staircase led up to the paper studio. From the staircase he could view the works in the painting studio from a different angle. In the paper studio there was a single strip of translucent plexiglass panels in the roof, and beneath them stood a table where Jorn could sit and read, write, and paint watercolors and gouaches. This table was also covered with plastic. Next to it stood the blue sofa he inherited when his mother, Maren Jørgensen, died in September 1970. Opposite the table stood stacked on top of each other two metal drawer cabinets, each with five wide, shallow drawers. Here finished and unfinished pictures were stored when Jorn was not at the farm. To prevent theft, he only signed works when they left the studio. On each side of the drawer cabinets stood a blue upholstered armchair from his mother’s furniture. It was here that Jorn and Birch sat and discussed. There were large ashtrays that were always filled to the brim with ash and cigar butts. The ceiling and the sloped part of the walls were covered with pine tongue-and-groove boards, while the vertical walls were painted white.

Jorn was constantly surrounded by family and friends when he was at Bangsbohave. He cannot have had peace to work, and this gives reason to believe that a good deal of paper works were created. The most famous paper works from Læsø are the so-called “dot pictures.” Jorn gave one of them to Jørgen Haugen Sørensen. With water-soluble paint, he has applied a series of dots across white sheets of paper. Each picture is in a single color with opaque white in between.

The German art historian Gerd Presler has catalogued all of Jorn’s sketchbooks, which are divided between Museum Jorn and Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter. One of the catalogue numbers from Henie-Onstad consists of eight loose sheets taken from a sketchpad. They are executed with gouache, watercolor, oil crayon, pencil, and opaque white. The cover is missing, but on an accompanying piece of paper Jorn has labeled them as “washed drawings from Læsø summer 1971.”

The next time Jorn showed up at Bangsbohave was at Easter 1969. There exists an oil painting with the dedication “Easter on Læsø, to Anette, 1969.” Karie and Børge Birch’s daughter, Anette, had her birthday on April 7, that is, at Easter, and it is a birthday gift for the eleven-year-old girl.

Jorn must have received a visit from yet another journalist during this stay. The Læsø-based Bernth Christensen published an interview “Morning coffee with Asger Jorn on Læsø” in Vendsyssel Tidende Sunday, April 13, 1969. Bernth Christensen described in his introduction how he had driven into the courtyard “unaware that Asger Jorn just a month earlier had once and for all hammered it home with two-inch nails that he would no longer agree to be interviewed.” But “since you have come out here, let this then be my last interview,” sighed Jorn.

Jorn always received guests in the kitchen, where one sat around a small table in the corner. While Jorn made morning coffee, he told them that earlier that year in Paris he had published a cookbook, La langue verte et la cuite. “I am a vagabond. I don’t think artists have a home anywhere today,” Jorn explained, and also said that “it is irrelevant to the viewer what I intended with the picture. It depends on what he himself wants with it. If he does not have a personal relationship to the picture, it is worthless to him.” Jorn revealed that he had begun to feel it was difficult to part with his pictures. It was as if he could no longer just shake them out of his sleeve.

Matie and Jorn’s son Ole had attended as a boarding student at Th. Langs Skoler in Silkeborg, where he graduated in June 1969. Jorn arrived in Silkeborg directly from London, where he had been at the British Museum and visited Guy Atkins. One of the first days, he had a meeting with the director of Reinhold Center—a local company that sold painting supplies—and was given a promotional calendar. Jorn immediately put it to use: noted that the week before he had been in London, and thereafter used it for the rest of the year as a kind of lapidary diary.

Wednesday, June 18, he was at the graduation ceremony at Th. Langs Skoler. Thursday, June 19, he worked at Skandinavisk Institut for Sammenlignende Vandalisme (Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism) with Didrek photos. Friday, June 20, he had a meeting with Jørn Utzon and the mayor of Silkeborg, and Saturday, June 21, there was yet another graduation ceremony at the school.

The same day, Jorn drove to Læsø with Ole and some of his friends, including Frank Lund. Sunday, June 22, his daughter Susanne arrived. Ole and his friends left already on Monday, June 23, and Tuesday morning Susanne left. The same day, Jorn met Peter Bramsen and Jørgen Haugen Sørensen, and in the evening there was a Midsummer bonfire on the beach in Østerby, where Jorn ran into Birch.

“Long drunken night,” Jorn wrote the next morning in the calendar. Everyone had left, and he had been alone at Bangsbohave.

After returning home from the bonfire party, he must have gone directly over to the studio and painted a picture that was given the title Sommerens bål (Summer’s Bonfire). It is with certainty a Læsø picture, for a few days later Birch showed it to Poul Ægidiussen, a young local man who helped out with metalwork. It had just been finished, Birch said. At the top left, a large bonfire is seen that colors the sky red and yellow. On the grass in the foreground stands a row of figures looking questioningly at each other. The flames are reflected in the faces of the people around the bonfire. It is a genuine summer vacation painting and shows how wide-ranging and varied Jorn’s Læsø work is. Here he has left all international ambitions behind, for Sommerens bål is more reminiscent of Danish art and Jens Søndergaard than other works from those years.

Wednesday, June 25, his son Troels arrived and Thursday, June 26, his son Klaus, but already on Saturday all three of them left Læsø via Silkeborg for Copenhagen. The short stay on Læsø is typical of the lifestyle that appears in the calendar for 1969: Apart from week-long work stays in Colombes, Jorn changed his place of residence almost daily between cities like Paris, London, Munich, Marburg, and Copenhagen.

Jorn was not attracted by the light on Læsø, and usually he painted his pictures at night in the glow of fluorescent tubes. He was not a beach person either and did not want to sit out in the sun. He did, however, have plans to build a hexagonal pavilion down in the garden where he could sit and write and observe nature. He had the trees in the garden thinned out and planted mirabelle plum trees. If he had seen a deer or a hare in the field, he would tell Stoklund about it.

No one on Læsø was interested in Jorn’s pictures. It was then a cultural wasteland. They did not understand the way he worked.

Apart from the ceramicist Erik Nyholm, Jørgen Haugen Sørensen was the only Danish artist with whom Jorn had contact. With an advance from Birch, Haugen Sørensen had in 1965 bought a small L-shaped farm, Svinehave on Thorasvej 4. In 1970 he sold it and bought the much larger Søbygård east of Byrum. This meant he came to live even closer to Jorn.

Jørgen Haugen Sørensen visited Jorn—and vice versa. Haugen Sørensen was quite scruffy at the time and came up to Bangsbohave to get free beer and food. “There I was disturbed again,” Jorn might exclaim when Haugen Sørensen had left. They sat at the small table in the kitchen. Jørgen Haugen Sørensen explains that when one was with Jorn, he talked incessantly. Jorn loved to tell stories—for example about the Spanish Civil War. Jorn filled the room. He was a funny and lively person and could laugh so hard that the whole house shook.

He could also become reserved and appear as a very shy person. Then he would want peace. Wanted to be alone. Jorn could disappear. He was secretive and did not tell anyone what he was going to do. He just did it—because he liked it to come as a surprise.

The two colleagues discussed art-theoretical topics. Jorn took such things very literally. For example, he did not believe that an infinite line is curved. He also did not believe that one can fold and halve something infinitely—at some point there is no more material, he maintained.

If one talked with Jorn and the conversation was interrupted—perhaps because he had to leave—then it was such that when one met him the next time—perhaps half a year later—he continued the conversation right where it had been interrupted.

Jorn was a mixture of a very fine person and a bit of a ruffian. That is why he was so amusing, and one could feel quite high after having been with him.

It was not without reason that Jorn in 1957 had given a painting titled Jægeren (The Hunter) to Umberto Gambetta. He was his friend in Albissola, and one evening in September 1969 they had been sitting getting drunk. Jorn had told about Bangsbohave and decided to show Umberto the house right away.

In the calendar, Jorn wrote for Sunday, September 28, 1969, “traveled to Paris with Bertho.” For Monday, September 29, “Paris. With Bertho to Aarhus Monday.” Tuesday, September 31, 1969, “traveled to Frederikshavn with Bertho and Ole.” Wednesday, October 1, Jorn noted laconically “on Læsø with Ole and Bertho.”

Umberto Gambetta was going to try to go hunting on Jorn’s land. Jorn himself did not care for it and therefore asked Erland Stoklund—who had a hunting dog—to go along. “Watch out, he shoots at anything, even if it’s a sparrow,” he warned.

Already the next day, Thursday, October 2, 1969, they went back to Silkeborg. Friday, October 3, Jorn wrote in the calendar “traveled to Fredericia with Bertho, who continued to Italy. Back to Aarhus to Kjærholm’s. The Aarhus boat at night to Copenhagen.”

The restless schedule, where he changed his place of residence daily, almost as if Jorn felt hunted, was typical of the period.

Originally, Jorn had freed himself from the Inner Mission environment that he knew from his upbringing. On Læsø he ran into it again. Lis and Erland Stoklund were religious people and must undoubtedly have been shocked by their new neighbor’s way of life.

Stoklund received 150 kr. per month to look after the house and turn on the oil furnace when Jorn called and said he was on his way. In January 1971, Jorn bought Jørgen Haugen Sørensen’s old Land Rover, apparently a 1954 model, and Stoklund was also supposed to keep it running.

In the beginning, the relationship was mostly pecuniary, and when the monthly payments stopped being transferred during the winter of 1969–70, Stoklund stopped working. This had major consequences when severe frost set in during January 1970. The water pipes and radiators burst, which caused extensive water damage in the newly renovated house. When Ole Jorn, Frank Lund, and a couple of other friends arrived in January 1970 to inspect the property, they were received with hostility. The water pipes had burst so they could not draw water, but the neighbor would not give them water. Instead, they had to melt snow.

Unlike most other Danish artists, Jorn understood what a skilled gallerist could do for him. Birch was instrumental in Jorn having become so popular. Birch took care of all the practical matters. He had to organize everything: drive for Jorn, fix up Bangsbohave, pay bills, send money to Jorn’s children every month, buy paints, canvases, and assemble strips for stretcher frames and mount canvas on them.

Birch was constantly writing to Jorn and complaining about the bills he had paid. On May 23, 1969, Birch wrote that “I have laid out 50,000 kr. for you. Troels Jorn says no money has come. I can sell your pictures when I have some.” On December 12 the same year, Birch wrote again that “I have no money to pay for you at the bank or on Læsø. I will come to Paris and pick up 3–4 smaller things and go out and sell them. Is that an idea?” Apparently not much happened, for on June 2, 1970, Birch wrote that “my credit is now 42,883 kr. Can you give me six smaller things this summer so I can get some coins in the bank.” Birch often asked Jorn for “a few quick little ones, preferably with red, because they sell best.” Jorn was not unwilling, and in the beginning that was the kind of thing he painted on Læsø.

Jorn did not believe in authorities. One day he was driving on Læsø in his Land Rover and accidentally collided with another car. The driver of the other car rushed out and was very upset and pleaded with Jorn not to report the accident to the police, “because I don’t have a driver’s license.” “Well, neither do I,” Jorn replied with a grin. Birch had a beach buggy, but since he only used it to drive down to the beach, he considered license plates unnecessary. Both felt comfortable with the unregulated conditions on Læsø.

Jorn often ate at Østerby Hotel, and every time he paid double what the food cost. This was to show that a great man had come to the island.

Jorn lived primitively in his residences. He was used to living in hotels—where one only has the most elementary things around—and privately he was such that he did not surround himself with too many things.

It was only after his death—when Bangsbohave was rented out to tourists for a number of years—that a partition wall was erected in the bedroom in the studio. In Jorn’s time, the beds were at one end, and there was a sink and toilet bowl at the other—without separation.

The only thing he was interested in was peasant objects and farmhouse furniture. Some furnishings were left in the house from the previous owner. Other things came from an estate on the three-winged seaweed farm on Lille Strandgårdsvej 1, from which Jorn acquired a bench bed, a chest of drawers, and an oblong stool. Troels Jorn drove around in the Land Rover to places where one could find farmhouse furniture as well as old glasses and plates. At a seaweed farm next to Østerby Kirke lived Leo Becker, son of the author Knuth Becker. There was a terrible mess, but many old things, and here Troels Jorn bought the other bench bed that is at Bangsbohave.

Now the farm had to be repaired after the water damage in January. On July 12, 1970, Birch wrote to Jorn that “I must make a very big effort so that Bangsbohave is completely ready from September 20–30. It is very difficult with labor here right now, but I am going to battle, and you will certainly find a lovely house when you arrive.” Jorn arrived, however, before Birch had expected.

One evening at the end of August, Peter Bramsen was sitting on Bjørnø looking out over the water. It was dark, and the only thing one could hear was the waves. Suddenly the silence was broken by someone playing Ølhunden glammer (The Beer Hound Barks) on a trumpet out on the water. In a hurry, Bramsen got a kerosene lamp lit and ran down to the beach.

Around the point sailed a large wooden ship, and in the bow stood Asger Jorn playing trumpet. On board were also Troels Jorn, two of his friends, and one friend’s mother and father, who was the captain of the ship.

A few days later, the small party sailed to Kiel—as one did then—to pick up duty-free beer. The friend’s parents provided the ship, and Jorn paid for the trip itself. He was very rational: How many are we… for how many days… it came to a thousand beers plus a larger supply of spirits.

From here they sailed up through Lillebælt. Jorn liked trying to drink people under the table, and perhaps he tried to do so with Otto van de Loo, but van de Loo’s girlfriend was outraged by the company. Therefore they sailed behind in the motorboat while Jorn and Bramsen were on board the sailing ship and could give it a little more.

Jorn knew that Bramsen had originally wanted to be a sailor, so when Jorn brought out the violin, there were always a couple of sentimental sea shanties in Bramsen’s honor. Bramsen disembarked in Aarhus or Grenaa because he had to get back to the family and his own boat on Bjørnø. Jorn possibly also disembarked here and took the train to Frederikshavn because he was not enthusiastic about sailing.

To Bramsen, Jorn had talked a lot about the house on Læsø. Jorn loved telling the story of how he had bought the house sight unseen from a man he had met on a train.

Meanwhile, Ole Jorn and Frank Lund were working at Bangsbohave to repair the damage from the winter’s water damage. They had arrived on August 16 and stayed until August 28. When word spread that a huge wooden ship had docked in Vesterø Havn, they dropped what they were doing and went down to experience how life was buzzing on board.

There followed several days of parties where Jorn played the violin, Otto van de Loo the accordion, and the young people the guitar. When friends and business associates left Bangsbohave, only the sons Troels and Ole and the latter’s friend Frank Lund remained. It became everyday life and time to talk, and Jorn worked in the studio.

That summer, Jorn also found time to go to Hjørring to work at I. Chr. Sørensen’s lithographic workshop. In 1952, Jorn had drawn seven lithographs that had never been printed in editions. Now he went through them, changed the colors, and published them under the title Silkeborg Suiten (The Silkeborg Suite), because they had been created during his stay at the tuberculosis sanatorium in Silkeborg 1951–53.

A couple of years later, Galerie Birch showed the exhibition Øjets blikstille (The Stillness of the Eye) with a total of seventeen paintings. Of these, a single one was painted 1963–71, while the others were divided with eight from 1970 and eight from 1971. The eight works dated to 1970 were presumably painted on Læsø in August–September of that year. One of them, Det utilgængelige forræderi (The Inaccessible Betrayal), is with certainty a Læsø picture, for it is included in one of the photographs that Frank Lund took at Bangsbohave in August 1970. The majority of the eight pictures are “a few quick little ones” painted at Birch’s request.

One of the interesting ones is Himmelhund (Sky Dog). “A sky dog” was then a much-used slang term for a person who can do everything. Perhaps it is actually a portrait of Børge Birch. It is one of the many late paintings where Jorn put blue and red together. Jorn used two different blue paints. One was Prussian blue, which has green hidden in it. Therefore it is used mixed with yellow to create a beautiful green. The other is ultramarine blue (and cobalt blue), which has red hidden in it; therefore ultramarine is used mixed with red to create a beautiful violet. When red is set against ultramarine, it becomes the Mediterranean. When Jorn chose to set red against Prussian blue, it became the Kattegat, because the red calls forth the green complementary color in the Prussian blue. Another of the interesting paintings is called Farvelfærd (Farewell Journey). The title has little to do with the motif, for it depicts a man who hides his face in a woman’s hair. Presumably it portrays Jorn’s relationship with Nanna Enzensberger, whom he had met a few months before.

In the early spring of 1970, Jorn had been on a world tour. The trip had begun in January in St. Gallen in Switzerland, from where he flew to New York. There he had an opening on February 10 at an exhibition at John Lefebre Gallery. In March he was in Las Vegas, Honolulu, and Hawaii, and afterward he traveled to Kyoto and Tokyo, where Susanne was studying. After a stay, he continued with Susanne to Hong Kong, New Delhi, Tehran, and Beirut. The trip ended where it had begun, in St. Gallen in April 1970.

At the opening at Lefebre Gallery, he had met Nanna Enzensberger, who after Jorn’s return appeared in Colombes and checked into the local hotel. The first time Birch mentions having met her in Paris is in a letter dated June 2, 1970. Erland Stoklund has explained that when she came to Læsø later that summer, Jorn introduced her as his secretary. Stoklund thought that in that case it must be his private secretary.

In the early years, it had been such that Jorn was alone and painted. A change occurred around the time Nanna arrived. Now there were more people around him, and more began to happen.

Nanna arrived only after the guests from the sailing trip had departed. She was very musical, and she and Jorn played together. Jorn had purchased all kinds of instruments, including a cornet that he wanted Jørgen Haugen Sørensen to play. Jorn himself played violin and trumpet. He wished that all three of them would play together. Nanna played a kind of banjo.

After Jorn’s death, Nanna stayed on at Bangsbohave with her son Ib for a year and a half. She was dirt poor, and they had almost nothing to live on. No one would have anything to do with the young woman because she was German.

Jørgen Haugen Sørensen tells that one day Jorn came driving in the Land Rover with Nanna by the post office in Byrum. A small red car was parked right in front. “I can’t help it, I can’t help it,” Jorn screamed and drove right into the parked car. “That was also Jorn,” as Jørgen Haugen Sørensen dryly remarked.

Jorn’s mother, Maren Jørgensen, died in September 1970. Presumably Jorn and Nanna traveled from Læsø to the funeral in Silkeborg and from there on to Colombes.

A year passed. On May 1, 1971, Jorn wrote to Birch: “I am planning to come to Denmark in mid-June and hope that you will see to it that there is a set of oil paints with several tubes of all cadmium colors, green emeraude, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, monastral blue, red lake, cobalt violet, possibly other greens and plenty of black plus 5 kg titanium white or similar. A roll of canvas about 2 m wide would also be good. I have now had the studio at Bangsbo for so long that something really needs to happen there.”

In the same letter, he asked Birch to find a house on Læsø where the director of Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hannover, Wieland Schmied, his wife, and their child could stay as renters for the last two weeks of June. They would arrive around June 17. On May 28, Birch reported back to Jorn that paints and canvas had arrived and that the Land Rover was ready to drive.

On June 20 and 21, 1971, a larger group was gathered at Bangsbohave. Wieland Schmied, Guy Atkins, and Otto van de Loo had arrived to prepare the exhibition at Kestner-Gesellschaft that opened on February 16, 1973. Nanna was there too—heavily pregnant. The company went over to Birch’s to see the large wall painting and afterward went for a drive in his beach buggy. It got stuck in the sand, so they had to push it free—and it nearly went badly for the heavily pregnant Nanna.

Also present was Troels Andersen, who since 1961 had assisted Guy Atkins in cataloguing Jorn’s pictures and who was now in line to become the future director of Silkeborg Kunstmuseum. Andersen wished that he and Jorn would be completely in agreement about what the intention with the museum was. Therefore they were working on a joint Agreement on the museum’s future, which was to be presented to the board.

It appears from Andersen’s diary that Jorn declared that the pataphysicians, the Letterists, and the Situationists were the most avant-garde in Paris after World War II. Andersen asked Jorn why he had collected works by James Whistler for the museum. “It is because Whistler’s pictures are self-destructive. Whistler himself destroys what he has built up in the pictures,” Jorn answered.

Quite generally, Jorn stated that “it is not what one thinks one is doing that has significance. It is something completely different one does, if one does anything at all.” Andersen noted in his diary that in the studio stood two or three large pictures, only begun with underpainting in the form of large, coarse strokes.

It was right around Midsummer, and the sun was high in the sky. It was completely still—it seemed as if even time was standing still. In his diary, Andersen called it nirvana. Others must have had a similar experience, for the title of Galerie Birch’s exhibition became precisely Øjets blikstille (The Stillness of the Eye).

The common thread through Jorn’s life was a desire to explore the distinctive culture and visual world of the North. In December 1961, he had established Skandinavisk Institut for Sammenlignende Vandalisme (Scandinavian Institute for Comparative Vandalism), which was to be responsible for a series of 24 volumes on 10,000 years of Nordic folk art. With his own funds, he hired Gérard Franceschi and Ulrik Ross to take the photographs for the book series—including on Gotland in the summer of 1964. For several reasons, Jorn had to discontinue the project in March 1967.

In the calendar for 1969, Jorn wrote for June 19 that he was working at the institute with Didrek photos. He was becoming clear that he would now instead make a single book with the myths about Didrek. The core of this was to be Franceschi’s photographs from Grötlingbo Kirke on Gotland, Jørgen Sonne’s poetic adaptation of the saga of King Didrek, and a text by the Danish linguist Niels Lukman. In 1943, Lukman had demonstrated that the Scandinavian legendary material from the Viking Age was an echo of actual events around the Danube and Black Sea in the 400s and 500s.

Jorn used the meeting with Guy Atkins and Troels Andersen in June 1971 to review what had been collected of visual material for the book. In July, he made a detour to Gotland by plane accompanied by Niels Lukman and Guy Atkins. He wanted to show them the reliefs on the west gable of Grötlingbo Kirke, the central part of his material. They also paid a visit to the Estonian art historian Armin Tuulse, the foremost expert on the island’s medieval art.

In the first part of August, Jorn was in Randers to install his ceramic relief in the cultural center. Afterward, he went back to Læsø and declared to Erland Stoklund: “Yes, now I have worked like a dog, and then it’s Matie who snatches all the money.” In December 1969—that is, before he met Nanna—he had signed a divorce petition.

He made the relief to afford the divorce and thereby be rid of the monthly payments to Matie. Finally, the pressure on Jorn’s shoulders was about to be lifted.

Aarhus Festuge 1971 was held in the first week of September. Photographer Poul Pedersen was behind two exhibitions in Kunstbygningen. One was with the 21 light drawings that he and Jorn had made in 1953—during the sanatorium period—and which had now been copied onto photographic canvas. Jorn was asked to come to Aarhus to sign them but was not well and only agreed when Poul Pedersen offered to send a plane to Læsø to pick him up—and bring him back in the evening. Jorn brought as a gift a watercolor—presumably made on Læsø—a self-portrait with a long nose. It was a preliminary work for Nasobois, one of the color woodcuts he made later that autumn in Peter Bramsen’s workshop, only mirror-reversed because it was now printed. From Edvard Munch, he had learned that one could take a motif from a painting or a watercolor and cut it unchanged onto a wood block. It did not matter that it thereby became mirror-reversed.

The other exhibition was a test of the material for the Didrek book. In the exhibition catalogue was printed an excerpt from Jørgen Sonne’s poetic adaptation of the saga and a selection of the photographs from Grötlingbo Kirke. The exhibition consisted of photostats of motifs connected to the Didrek myth. Niels Lukman gave the opening speech.

Birch was a real man’s man who in addition to motor racing was interested in professional boxing, and since Jorn never attended his own openings, they went instead on Thursday, September 2, to a big boxing event at Vejlby-Risskov Hallen with Tom Bogs and Jørgen Hansen as the headliners.

He had made an exception from his principle of not allowing himself to be interviewed. Friday, September 3, 1971, Midtjyllands Avis published the article “Asger Jorn found his refuge on Læsø” written by Carsten Elsted and with new photographs by Bernth Christensen. Jorn explained that “previously time only allowed shorter stays on the island (…), but this year he has stayed the entire summer in this wonderful spot. Asger Jorn has also held Christmas and New Year at the farm several times.” The latter does not seem entirely plausible. Jorn added that “he suffered from homesickness when he was working on assignments out in Europe,” and therefore he had bought the farm.

About the exhibition of photographs of Didrek, Jorn explained that “in this he sees the old conflict between south and north, which is especially relevant today when south and north may be joined together in the Common Market.” The exhibition was Jorn’s contribution to the debate about Denmark’s and Norway’s accession to the Common Market that raged in 1971 and 1972.

In the letter to Birch from May 1, 1971, Jorn had written at the end that “I have now had the studio at Bangsbo for so long that something really needs to happen there.”

That was to prove true. Eight of the pictures from Øjets blikstille are dated with the year 1971. Two of them are among the “quick little ones,” while six are large, good paintings. All eight were presumably painted on Læsø.

In the title painting, Øjets blikstille (The Stillness of the Eye), one can with a bit of goodwill see the green colors from nature around Bangsbo. Another painting titled Det viser sig (It Turns Out) is a strange picture. Jorn had used the motif on a poster for an exhibition in December 1970 at Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris. Afterward, he then executed it as a painting—which must be said to be an unusual sequence. Bel-Air is a very different picture due to the light background. It depicts a man in green clothes with Jorn’s characteristic face with a full beard. Enthusiastically, he throws out his arms. Here he can breathe; here there is “good air.”

Hvisken (Whisper) bears in its title a hidden reference to Edvard Munch’s The Scream, but perhaps it is actually Sommerens bål (Summer’s Bonfire) from 1969 that Jorn has given a more dramatic form. The sky is colored red and yellow, and especially one cloud has come to resemble the neck of a screaming swan. It is a mysterious picture, for what does the blood-red earth, the blue-green demonic bird figure on the left, and the naked blonde Nordic woman lying outstretched on the ground to the right mean. Who is she? Nanna was a dark-haired Southern European woman.

Jordens fødsel (The Birth of the Earth) is a depiction of the pregnant Nanna. The new Jorn’s birth became the earth’s birth, and later that year he repeated the motif on the large color woodcut Le future du passé (The Future of the Past).

Alpona is the Bengali name for the patterns that Indian women paint on the ground with white rice paste. Jorn had presumably seen the phenomenon on his world tour. Folk art painted directly on the ground has in general been a source of inspiration for much painting after World War II. Alpona - skrevet i sand (Alpona - Written in Sand) is an important picture that links the young and the late Jorn together. In an article in the Swedish journal Byggmästaren, he had in 1951 used a photo of the Indian patterns as an illustration of his thoughts on the undulating ornament. It was somewhat imprecise because alpona is in fact a geometric pattern. Now—21 years later—he returned to these ideas, but nevertheless in a completely different way. Many of Jorn’s pictures fundamentally have a landscape structure with a foreground and a sky above, but with Alpona - skrevet i sand he freed himself from this and instead spread a pattern evenly across the entire surface. Helped along by the pattern’s bound form, he had arrived at a different way of painting. The picture’s white color refers to the fact that the patterns are drawn with rice paste.

Øjets blikstille opened on April 26, 1972, at Galerie Birch—and incidentally received a directly hateful reception from the Danish critics. “The ambiguity that previously qualified Asger Jorn has become slacker and somewhat diffuse, as if one were being presented with summer-drowsy notes: The run-up to something that was supposed to become a painting by Asger Jorn. All the exciting and relevant symbolism that previously lay just below the surface in his works—and was there in a couple of bull’s-eyes—is now applied with a shotgun. If it is there at all. Alpona - skrevet i sand is an obviously pretty picture. All the external qualities are in order, and it has become a picture. The motif may be a shoreline, rendered in close reading and covered with things. The surface stands and vibrates around an expression like Pollock’s. But where is it, really, that the viewer should go along to, and what is being demonstrated besides an aesthetic color trip at a dizzying price. (…) The goods are introduced with vigor and gusto. Asger Jorn has just executed a series of color woodcuts that have been offered for sale. They are advertised in bold type in a gallery announcement ‘Asger Jorn - latest from Paris,’ as if it were naughty underwear,” wrote Hans Edvard Nørregård-Nielsen on May 2, 1972, in Information.

At Øjets blikstille, eight pictures came from 1970 and eight from 1971. They were presumably all painted at Bangsbohave. In April 2001, Kunsthallen at auction 521 sold Desorienteret succession (Disoriented Succession), which according to the catalogue is marked Jorn 71 Læsø on the back. In two of Bernth Christensen’s photographs from the interview in Midtjyllands Avis, Jorn is seen standing in front of Untitled (Atkins no. 1938) and carrying Untitled (Atkins no. 1982), both from 1971. On October 29, 1968, Birch had noted in his account book that he had bought from Jorn five small pictures painted on Læsø. In 1969, it was presumably a similar number. This means that Jorn painted 30 pictures on Læsø.

There came a long period, from the summer of 1971 to the autumn of 1972, when Jorn did not set foot at Bangsbohave. There exists a very sparsely filled-in calendar for 1972. It shows a somewhat different lifestyle than the calendar for 1969. The restless traveling around had largely been put aside. Perhaps because Jorn now had Nanna and the newborn Ib to consider—or no longer had as much energy. When he in Albissola had to walk from the beach up to the house, he had to take several breaks along the way. It was as if he could not get air. From time to time, he could be seized by great fatigue. It had begun in the summer of 1970 but had now become much worse.

In January 1972, Jorn was occupied with finishing his color woodcuts at Peter Bramsen’s. In August, he delivered twelve new pictures for use in an exhibition at John Lefebre Gallery. Otherwise, he was mostly engaged in making sculpture. Many were formed in clay; about twenty of them were also cast in bronze—with individual patination of the entire edition—and finally he threw himself into marble sculpture. The work with sculpture took place in Albissola, Milano, and Carrara.

Verner Permild wrote on April 18, 1972, to Jorn that he had begun to prepare the Didrek book. During a meeting between them in Colombes in mid-July, it was decided to divide the book into two volumes so that Jorn’s contribution took the form of an independent volume. Therefore Jorn had to travel to Silkeborg in August to search for new visual material in the institute’s archive.

There is an interesting gap in Jorn’s calendar between August 25 and September 28, 1972. For Friday, August 25, he has written “traveled to London, Denmark (Silkeborg, Copenhagen), met van de Loo, Stockholm, Tuulse.” It is clear that he traveled to Denmark to work with the visual material in the institute’s archive in Silkeborg, and that he then met Verner Permild in Dragør and Armin Tuulse in Stockholm. A month later, for Thursday, September 28, he has written “departed from Colombes for Milano, arranged photography with Schubert.”

The question is what he did between August 25 and September 28. He may have briefly been on Læsø. The Norwegian referendum on accession to the Common Market was held September 24–25, 1972, and resulted in a no. The Danish one took place October 2, 1972, and ended with a yes. Jorn was presumably at Bangsbohave at some point in August–September and received a visit from Per Hovdenakk just after or perhaps rather just before the Norwegian referendum. Here Jorn probably painted the pictures that Troels Andersen found in unfinished form when he was sent up in 1978 to empty the metal drawer cabinets.

Jorn believed he was being surveilled because he was against Denmark’s accession to the Common Market. A stone had been thrown through a window in the house in Colombes. Jorn thought it was because he was against the Common Market. Hovdenakk sought to calm him and said it was probably just schoolchildren, since it faced an alley to a school, and through that window one could see Jorn sitting and typing on a typewriter.

After the Norwegian no and the Danish yes, Jorn instructed Birch to obtain money for a house in Norway. He wanted to move and asked Hovdenakk to look for a suitable place. Hovdenakk, however, never made any attempt to find a house in Norway because he found it all a bit overwrought.

Jorn put everything into getting his own volume of Gotlands Didrek finished. In two ring binders, he had collected several hundred photos in motif circles derived from the Didrek stories. From archives and museums throughout Europe and sometimes from postcards and magazines, he gathered elements for his sequence of images. A third proof of the text was already finished, but the editing of the enormous visual material was not completed.

On November 17, 1972, Jorn wrote from Carrara to Birch that “as we have discussed, we are planning to spend Christmas on Læsø and look forward to seeing you. Here I have been fumbling around a bit with marble sculptures. (…) It is quite fun but a slow process. With the bronzes too it is hard to get them finished, but that will come one day.”

On his way to Christmas vacation, Jorn was at Verner Permild’s in Dragør on December 20 to discuss the further work on the Didrek book.

The next day, he was in Silkeborg and took the opportunity to consult his old doctor from his admission to the sanatorium in 1951–53. The reason was persistent problems with breathing. The doctor found high fever and pneumonia and prescribed a course of penicillin.

From Silkeborg, Jorn called Erland Stoklund and asked him to turn on the oil furnace so it would be warm when he arrived the next day.

Nanna and Ib traveled up from Germany. Troels Jorn and his wife came and stayed for about a week. Stoklund helped fell a tree—it was supposed to be from Jorn’s own land—and put a stand on it. At shopkeeper Zeuthen’s, Jørgen Haugen Sørensen had heard that Jorn was sick and stopped by, but left when he sensed that Jorn’s sons did not appreciate the visit.

When Jorn arrived, he had said to the neighbor that he was suffering from pneumonia. Lis and Erland Stoklund thought it was a strange pneumonia. Jorn had changed color. He was gray in the skin. It was clear that he was very ill.

Between Christmas and New Year, Jorn had a hemorrhage and was bedridden. He had almost no strength. Nanna sat beside the bed and knitted. She used very thin yarn, and it became a kind of scarf with a heart at each end. The days passed, and the strips grew longer and longer.

New Year’s Eve 1972/73 was celebrated at the Birch family’s. Jorn gave as a hostess gift to Karie Birch a watercolor—presumably the last thing he painted on Læsø.

Per Hovdenakk had written on December 20 that he could stop by Læsø on the way to Silkeborg to discuss a planned exhibition at Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter. He arrived in the first days of January. He had been in Hjørring and Frederikshavn and took the ferry across. Jorn was lying asleep. Nanna went in and told him that Hovdenakk had arrived, and Jorn came in to greet him. They had a beer and talked. Jorn was very weak, clearly marked in the face by illness. They talked together for half an hour, then Jorn was tired again and went in to lie down and sleep. Meanwhile, Hovdenakk took a long walk because Nanna was occupied with little Ib. When he came back in the evening, Nanna went to bed. He sat in the kitchen and had a beer or two, and then Jorn got up again. They talked. Jorn said: “I am sick, I was spitting blood.” “Then we must go to the doctor immediately,” Hovdenakk replied.

The next day they went to Silkeborg and moved into Hotel Dania. The doctor from the sanatorium period was again called. Ten minutes later he came, examined Jorn, and then they drove together to the hospital. From there Jorn was sent for X-ray examination at the lung department at Århus Kommunehospital. He was to be admitted and undergo radium treatments—but insisted on returning to Læsø.

“I have some work I need to finish,” he explained a few days later to Erland Stoklund. It was the two ring binders with photographs for the Didrek book he was thinking of.

When Jorn arrived at Læsø, he first went to Jørgen Haugen Sørensen’s. He had a crate of beer and a bottle of liquor with him. The doctors had said that the spots on the lungs were not remnants of the old tuberculosis but an attack of lung cancer, specifically in the bronchi. Jorn did not want to go home to the house and tell Nanna—but he could not drink anything, was vomiting blood, and it ended with Jørgen Haugen Sørensen driving him home.

A few days later, he had to return to the lung department at Århus Kommunehospital. Jorn had the ring binders with him. The treatments were exhausting, but each time he had recovered a little, he continued page by page, picture by picture, planning the Didrek book.

On Wednesday, February 21, 1973, he had a visit from Per Hovdenakk. From Oslo, Hovdenakk wrote back a couple of days later that “I am very glad that we could meet, and glad that you are getting better.”

At the end of March, Jorn could rise from his hospital bed. The first thing he did was go to Dragør, where on March 24 together with Verner Permild, Troels Andersen, and a graphic designer he went through the 130 pages he had managed to set up. “That is not even half of my material,” he added.

From there he continued to Albissola in the hope that the warmth would benefit his lungs, but it rapidly got worse, and he had to be brought home in an air ambulance. On May 1, 1973, Asger Jorn died at Århus Kommunehospital.

Five years later, in 1978, Gotlands Didrek was published based on his posthumous instructions.

Bangsbohave Today

After Asger Jorn’s death, Bangsbohave was for a number of years leased by Erland Stoklund, who rented it out to tourists. Later, the property stood empty and ended up as a ruin. In 2007, Nanna Enzensberger sold Bangsbohave to the current owners, who began the major restoration and inaugurated it in 2009 for use as a guest studio for artists.

LARS MORELL
Asger Jorn on Læsø

©2012 Asger J’s venner and the author
Works by Asger Jorn: © Donation Jorn, Silkeborg / billedkunst.dk 2012
Cover image: Asger Jorn in front of Bangsbohave, photographed in October 1968 by Ekstra Bladet (Polfoto)
Floor plan and facades: Villy Frei Krogh, arkitekt maa
Graphic design: Lars Morell

ISBN 978-87-995720-0-7

1st edition, 1st printing 2012
Prepress and typesetting: Narayana Press
Set in New Baskerville 10.5/14
Printed on Condat Matt Perigord 150g
Cover: Galerie Art Silk 170g
Printed by Narayana Press, www.narayanapress.dk

Asger J’s venner
Ehlersvej 7
2900 Hellerup
www.asger-js-venner.dk

Published with support from
Augustinus Fonden

Photographers Bruun, Helge fig. 2, 3, 4
Bruun Rasmussen Kunstauktioner fig. 5
Christensen, Bernth fig. 6, 13, 20
Photographer unknown fig. 11, 18
Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter fig. 10
Morain, André fig. 8
Museum Jorn fig. 7, 9, 12, 14, 13, 19
Nielsen, Brian Kris page 36-39
Nordisk Pressefoto fig. 16
Pedersen, Poul fig. 17
Polfoto fig. 1, 21

The association Asger J’s venner is a Danish non-profit organization whose objective is to spread knowledge of Asger Jorn’s work both domestically and abroad, with a focus on Albissola and Læsø.