Lot Essay
By 1966, Asger Jorn had freed himself from the majority of his external commitments and decided once more to put himself to the test as a painter. In the previous year, he had closed his Institute for Comparative Vandalism and also abandoned his project to rehouse the Silkeborg Museum of Art. As a fresh challenge, he agreed to mount an exhibition at Arthur Tooth & Sons in London for which all the pictures had to be completed within three months. A dozen or so canvases, including Mobile Standstill, were finished by mid-September in time for the show on the 4th October.
During the 1960s Jorn continued to evolve his own innovative and instinctive style of painting. Having dissociated himself from the CoBrA movement and left Denmark, Jorn's new source of inspiration came from Italy and the Italian light. Working in Italy had enriched his feeling for colour and his paintings from this period became both more expressive and autonomous in their use of brilliant tonal values.
Packed, texturally aggressive canvases such as Mobile Standstill, are rare in the last years of Jorn's career. His later works are usually marked by a surge of colour with clear brushstrokes often applied with a Japanese calligrapher's brush. Jean Dubuffet commented: "He excelled at producing meaning during the course of creation being careful not to intervene too much, so as not to lose anything of the spontaneous, vital flow. He liked to keep "meaning" speculative. He was in love with the irrational which, in all his works, he continually faced." (In: Asger Jorn: The Final Years 1965-1973, Guy Atkins, London 1977, p. 15).
In Mobile Standstill, colour clearly has a life of its own. Jorn's loose brushstrokes half suggest images, but he refrained from clarifying them; thus they remain in the shadowland of the subconscious. His kinship with Nordic Expressionism, and particularly the work of Munch, prompted his interest in the expressive power of colours and the value of myth as a source of imagery. However, in this painting the colour is stronger than the images. Jorn applies the reds, blues, yellows and golds with such aggression the piece generates its own dynamic tension. As implied in the title, Mobile Standstill is on the verge of lurching forward, perhaps metaphorically symbolizing the energy with which Jorn was then driven as he re-embarked on his career.
During the 1960s Jorn continued to evolve his own innovative and instinctive style of painting. Having dissociated himself from the CoBrA movement and left Denmark, Jorn's new source of inspiration came from Italy and the Italian light. Working in Italy had enriched his feeling for colour and his paintings from this period became both more expressive and autonomous in their use of brilliant tonal values.
Packed, texturally aggressive canvases such as Mobile Standstill, are rare in the last years of Jorn's career. His later works are usually marked by a surge of colour with clear brushstrokes often applied with a Japanese calligrapher's brush. Jean Dubuffet commented: "He excelled at producing meaning during the course of creation being careful not to intervene too much, so as not to lose anything of the spontaneous, vital flow. He liked to keep "meaning" speculative. He was in love with the irrational which, in all his works, he continually faced." (In: Asger Jorn: The Final Years 1965-1973, Guy Atkins, London 1977, p. 15).
In Mobile Standstill, colour clearly has a life of its own. Jorn's loose brushstrokes half suggest images, but he refrained from clarifying them; thus they remain in the shadowland of the subconscious. His kinship with Nordic Expressionism, and particularly the work of Munch, prompted his interest in the expressive power of colours and the value of myth as a source of imagery. However, in this painting the colour is stronger than the images. Jorn applies the reds, blues, yellows and golds with such aggression the piece generates its own dynamic tension. As implied in the title, Mobile Standstill is on the verge of lurching forward, perhaps metaphorically symbolizing the energy with which Jorn was then driven as he re-embarked on his career.