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    Sale 2806

    Twentieth Century Art

    2 December 2008, Amsterdam

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  • Lot 154

    Asger Jorn (DANISH, 1914-1973)

    Le Hollandais Volant (Modification) - The Flying Dutchman

    Price Realised  

    Asger Jorn (DANISH, 1914-1973)
    Le Hollandais Volant (Modification) - The Flying Dutchman
    signed 'Jorn' (lower left)
    oil on board over an earlier painting
    50.5 x 99 cm.
    Painted in 1959.


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    Detourned Painting

    Intended for the general public. Read effortlessly.

    Be Modern,
    collectors, museums.
    If you have old paintings,
    do not despair.
    Retain your memories
    but detourn them
    so that they correspond with your era.
    Why reject the old
    if we can modernize it
    with a few strokes of a brush?
    This cast a bit of contemporaneity
    on your old culture,
    Be up to date,
    and distinguished
    at the same time.
    Painting is over.
    You might as well finish it off.
    Detourn.
    Long live painting.


    Asger Jorn.



    Translated from the French and annotated by Thomas Y. Levin. Original text, peinture détourneé, first published in Vingt peintures, modifiées par Asgar Jorn, exhibition catalogue, Paris Galerie Rive Gauche, May 1959.

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    Provenance

    Arthur Tooth & Sons, London.
    Private Collection, London (purchased from the above in June 1959).
    Private Collection, United Kingdom.


    Literature

    G. Atkins, Asger Jorn: The Crucial Years: 1954-1964, London 1977, no. 1190 (illustrated).


    Exhibited

    Paris, Galerie Rive Gauche, Modifications, 6-28 May 1959, no. 10.