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Asger Oluf Jorn (March 3, 1914 - May 1, 1973) was a founding member of the Situationist International, and a prolific artist and essayist. Events 1284 - Statute of Rhuddlan incorporated the Principality of Wales into England 1575 - Indian Year 1914 ( MCMXIV) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year Events 305 - Diocletian and Maximian retire from the office of Roman Emperor. Year 1973 ( MCMLXXIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar of the 1973 Gregorian calendar. The Situationist International ( SI) was a small group of international political and artistic Agitators with roots in Marxism, Lettrism and the He was born in Vejrum, in the northwest corner of Jutland, Denmark and baptized Asger Oluf Jørgensen. This article is about the region of Denmark. For the World War I naval battle see Battle of Jutland. The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe In 1946 he changed his name into Asger Oluf Jorn.

Contents

Upbringing

He was the second oldest of six children, an elder brother to Jørgen Nash. Jørgen Nash ( March 16, 1920 - May 17, 2004) was a Danish artist writer and central proponent of situationism Both his parents were teachers. His father, Lars Peter Jørgenson, was a fundamentalist Christian who died when Asger was 12 years old in a car crash. Fundamentalism refers to a "deep and totalistic commitment" to a belief in and strict adherence to a set of basic principles (often Religious in nature a reaction A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth His mother, Maria, née Neilsen, was more liberal but nevertheless a deeply committed Christian. This early heavy organised Christian influence had a negative effect on Asger who began progressively to inwardly rebel against it, and more generally against other forms of authority.

In 1929, aged 15, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis although he made a recovery from it after spending 3 months on the west coast of Jutland. Tuberculosis (abbreviated as TB for tubercle bacillus or T u' b' erculosis Bacillus --> is a common By the age of 16 he was influenced by Nicolai Grundtvig, and although he had already started to paint, Asger enrolled in the Vinthers Seminarium, a teacher training college in Silkeborg where he paid particular attention to a course in Nineteenth century Scandinavian thought. Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig ( September 8 1783 – September 2 1872) (ˈneg̊olaɪ̯ˀ ˈfʁaðˀʁæg̊ ˈsɛʋəʁin ˈg̊ʁɔnd̥ʋi Silkeborg (ˈselg̊əˌb̥ɒːˀ is a city in central Denmark, located in Silkeborg municipality in Jutland, with a population of 41 674 The 19th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1801 and ended on December 31, 1900, according to the Gregorian calendar Terminology and usage As a cultural term "Scandinavia" has no official definition and is subject to usage by those who identify with the culture in question as well Also at about this time Jorn became the subject of a number of oil paintings by the painter Martin Kaalund-Jørgensen, which encouraged Jorn to try his hand in this medium.

Early career

When he graduated from college in 1935, the principal wrote a reference for him which said that he had attained 'an extraordinary rich personal development and maturity' - especially because of his wide reading in areas outside the topics required for his studies. While at College he joined the small Silkeborg branch of the Danish Communist Party and came under the direct influence of the trade unionist Christian Christensen, with whom he became close friends and who, Jorn was to later write, was to become a second father to him. Communist Party of Denmark ( Danish: Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti or simply DKP) is a Communist Political party in Denmark Christian August Christensen ( August 6, 1876 &ndash December 5, 1956) was a Danish track and field athlete who competed

In 1936 he travelled (on a BSA motorbike he had scraped together enough money to buy) to Paris to become a student of Kandinsky. The Birmingham Small Arms Company ( BSA) was a British manufacturer of Vehicles Firearms and Military equipment and still exists as Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city Wassily Kandinsky (Russian Василий Кандинский first name pronounced as) ( – 13 December 1944 was a Russian painter, Printmaker However when he discovered that Kandinsky was in straitened circumstances, barely able to sell his own paintings, Jorn decided to join Fernand Léger's Académie Contemporaine; it was during this period that he turned away from figurative painting and turned to abstract art. Joseph Fernand Henri Léger ( February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painter, sculptor, and In 1937 he joined Le Corbusier in working on the Palais des Temps Noveaux at the 1937 Paris Exhibition. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, who chose to be known as Le Corbusier ( October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965) was a Swiss The Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life was held in 1937 in Paris He returned again to Denmark in the summer of 1937. He again travelled to Paris in the summer of 1938, before returning to Denmark, travelling to Løkken, Silkeborg and Copenhagen. Løkken may refer to the following locations Løkken-Vrå, a former municipality in Denmark Now part of Hjørring. Silkeborg (ˈselg̊əˌb̥ɒːˀ is a city in central Denmark, located in Silkeborg municipality in Jutland, with a population of 41 674 Copenhagen (ˌkəʊpənˈheɪgən ˌkəʊpənˈhɑːgən ˈkəʊpənˌheɪgən ˈkəʊpənˌhɑːgən kʰøb̥ənˈhɑʊ̯ˀn kʰøb̥m̩ˈhɑʊ̯ˀn is the capital and largest city [1]

During the period of 1937 - 1942, he also studied at the Art Academy in Copenhagen.

Jorn during World War II

The occupation of Denmark by Nazi Germany was not unnaturally a time of deep crisis for the artist Jorn, who had been deeply inculcated with pacifism, initially sinking him into deep depression. He subsequently became an active communist resistant. Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups dedicated to fighting an Invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign nation During the war he also co-founded with Robert Dahlmann Olsen the underground art group, Helhesten or "hell-horse," and was a contributor to its journal. In 1941, he wrote the key theoretical essay, "Intimate Banalities," published in Helhesten, which claimed that the future of art was kitsch and praised amateur landscape paintings as "the best art today. " he was also the first person to translate Franz Kafka into Danish.

Post war

After the occupation was over, he complained that opportunities for critical thinking within the context of the communist arena had been curtailed by what he characterised as a centralised bourgeois political control. Finding this unacceptable, he broke with the Danish Communist Party, while nevertheless remaining a lifelong philosophical communist.

He traveled again to France where he was a founding member of COBRA (a European avant-garde art movement), and edited monographs of the Bibliotheque Cobra. COBRA (or CoBrA) was a European Avant-garde movement active from 1949 to 1952. Avant-garde (avɑ̃gaʁd in French) means "advance guard" or "vanguard An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time or at least with the heyday

He returned, impoverished, to Silkeborg in 1951 and resumed work in the ceramics field in 1953. The following year he traveled to Albisola in Italy where he became involved with an offshoot of COBRA, the International Movement For An Imaginist Bauhaus. Albisola Superiore ( Genoese dialect: D'äto d'Arbisseua) is a Comune (municipality in the Province of Savona in the Italian Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest The International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus was a small European Avant-garde artistic tendency that arose out of the breakup of COBRA

He met Guy Debord in 1954, who was to became a close friend. Guy Ernest Debord ( December 28, 1931 - November 30, 1994) was a Marxist theorist French writer Filmmaker, hypergraphist The two men collaborated on two artist's books, Fin de Copenhagen (1957) and Mémoires (1959), along with prints, and forewords to each other's work. Artists' books are works of art realized in the form of a book Mémoires (Memories is an artist's book made by the French artist & theorist Guy Debord in collaboration with the Danish artist Asger Jorn.

He was a prime mover of the merger of the COBRA with the Lettriste Internationale and London Psychogeographical Association to form the Situationist International (SI) in 1957. The Letterist International ( LI) was a Paris -based collective of radical artists and theorists between 1952 and 1957 who provide the link between Isidore Isou The London Psychogeographical Association ( LPA) is a largely fictitious organisation devoted to Psychogeography. The Situationist International ( SI) was a small group of international political and artistic Agitators with roots in Marxism, Lettrism and the Here he applied his scientific and mathematical knowledge drawn from Henri Poincaré and Niels Bohr to develop his situlogical technique. Jules Henri Poincaré ( 29 April 1854 &ndash 17 July 1912) (ˈʒyl ɑ̃ˈʁi pwɛ̃kaˈʁe was a French Mathematician Niels Henrik David Bohr (nels ˈb̥oɐ̯ˀ in Danish 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962 was a Danish Physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding Jørgen Nash identifies the first manifestation of the Second Situationist International after it broke away from the Situationist International as a leaflet signed by himself

In 1961 he left the SI, largely as a consequence of the fact that he was becoming a well-known artist which did not sit well with the SI, although his own departure was voluntary (which in itself was unusual for the SI, as it was prone to frequent purges and expulsions of members). He went on to found the Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism and contributed material to the Situationist Times. The Scandinavian Institute of Comparative Vandalism (Skandinavisk institut for sammenlignende vandalisme is a non-profit cultural Institute based in Denmark The Situationist Times ran to six issues edited and published by Jacqueline de Jong between May 1962 and December 1964 in Hengelo Later, he donated a museum for modern art to the Danish town of Silkeborg, near where he grew up. Silkeborg (ˈselg̊əˌb̥ɒːˀ is a city in central Denmark, located in Silkeborg municipality in Jutland, with a population of 41 674 He was to remain close to Debord, however, and continued to fund Situationist publications. [2]

His philosophical system Triolectics was given a practical manifestation through the development of Three sided football. A ternary, three-valued or trivalent logic (sometimes abbreviated 3VL) is a term to describe any of several Multi-valued logic systems in which Three-sided football is a variation of football with three teams instead of the usual two

Later years

His first American solo exhibition was at the Lefebre Gallery in 1962. After 1966, Jorn continued to produce oil paintings while traveling throughout Europe collecting images with photographer Gerard Francesci for his vast archive of "10,000 Years of Nordic Folk Art. " He traveled extensively, to Cuba, England, and the far east. Jorn traveled to the United States for the first and only time in 1970, for a gallery opening at Lefebre Gallery. He had earlier asserted that he refused to travel to a country that made visitors sign a statement maintaining that they were not communists.

During the course of his artistic career he produced over 2500 paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics, sculptures, artist's books, collages, décollages, and collaborative tapestries.

He died in Aarhus, Denmark on May 1, 1973. Geography The city lies roughly at the geographical centre of Denmark on the peninsula of Events 305 - Diocletian and Maximian retire from the office of Roman Emperor. Year 1973 ( MCMLXXIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display full calendar of the 1973 Gregorian calendar. He is buried in Grötlingbo, on the island of Gotland in Sweden.

Writing

Luck and Chance : Dagger and Guitar (1952)

The first edition of Luck and Chance was Jorn's first published book, issued privately to subscribers in 1952. It was written at the Silkeborg Sanatorium during his convalescence from a serious attack of tuberculosis aggravated by malnutrition and scurvy. Later in the process, it also became intended as a doctoral dissertation which was refused by a professor of philosophy at Copenhagen University. It is, amongst other things, a critique of Kierkegaard's triad of aesthetic, ethical and religious stages, and of his definition of truth. Another powerful influence appears to be present in ghostly form : Friedrich Nietzsche. It is one of the most fundamental texts to understand Jorn's undertaking of "a reconstruction of philosophy from the point of view of an artist".

Internationale Situationniste (1957-1961)

Value and Economy : Critique of Political Economy and the Exploitation of the Unique (1961)

This books consists of two parts. The first is a concise critique of the apparent contradictions in Marx's Das Kapital which Jorn uses to prepare the ground for a discussion of how the work of "the creative elite" can have "value" in any future society aligned on communist principles. This was originally published in French in 1959 by the Internationale Situationniste and is the most straightforward and least discursive of all of Jorn's texts, probably because Guy Debord had a hand in the editing. The second part is a long polemic against contemporaneous Russian revisionism and the failed attempt by Denmark and Britain to join the Common Market, before coming to Jorn's main proposal, an economically independent international "creative elite" adopting typical Scandinavian institutions to realize "artistic value" for the greater universal good. He also attempts to reconcile the unique and individual position of the "creative elite" with his socialist principles. The second part alternates between objective and subjective modes.

The Natural Order (1962)

If this is a critique of Neils Bohr's theory of complementarity, then it is also to just the same high degree a critique of that dialectical materialism, that I in my earliest youth took to my heart and perceived to be the only acceptable principle for thought. Niels Henrik David Bohr (nels ˈb̥oɐ̯ˀ in Danish 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962 was a Danish Physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding In Physics, complementarity is a basic principle of quantum theory closely identified with the Copenhagen interpretation, and refers to effects such Dialectical materialism, according to many followers of Karl Marx 's thinking is the philosophical basis of Marxism. (Asger Jorn)

Related topics

External links

References

  1. ^ Asger Jorn,by Guy Atkins, Methuen, 1964
  2. ^ Asger Jorn, the Crucial Years 1954-64, Atkins, Lund Humphries 1977 p57
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