“A number of exhibitions and publications marked the centenary of Denmark’s most celebrated artist, Asger Jorn (1914-1973). Jorn was a complex artist whose output exists in at least ten different media; that is even before one considers his political, philosophical, architectural and ethnographic activities.
“Jorn joined the Communist Party in Denmark when he was about 16. He later completed his education in Paris under Fernand Léger and Le Corbusier. After the Second World War, which he spent in Denmark assisting the resistance, he cofounded the Cobra avant-garde movement. In 1957, seeking to emphasise the political dimension to his activities, Jorn became a prominent member of the Situationist International group. Jorn published short texts and books, theorising on topics ranging fr om the artistic to the political and philosophical. The urgent question for socially minded artists in the immediate post-war period was how to operate in the Cold War; should they assimilate or oppose the domination of Western European Modernism? Jorn suggested that two Modernist strands could co-exist: the mainstream derived from French art and Mediterranean cultures and another, assertively Nordic in culture and form….
Read the full review at THE ART NEWSPAPER, 1 April 2015 here: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/reviews/books/17185/
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