Lot Essay
In 1953, Asger Jorn was released from a sanatorium in Silkeborg, Denmark, where he had spent seventeen months recuperating from tuberculosis and severe malnutrition.
In The Emigrants, Jorn's choice of title suggests a mood or private reference to the circumstance surrounding the time of painting it. Shortly after its completion, Jorn announced, "I'm quitting Denmark permanently", and moved to Switzerland with his wife and four children. However, after this difficult period of recuperation, Jorn's identification with the idea of emigration became far more symbolic and can be understood in a statement he once made: "I believe that artists are becoming increasingly homeless, vagabonds and wanderers, who are also renewers. They fought hard before the war, but people then knew their place. After the war everything changed. We don't belong anywhere." (In: German Art in the 20th Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1985, pp. 466-467). Indeed, Jorn reflects this idea in his painting by depicting the figures as victims of isolation and dissolution, staring out with despairingly anonymous eyes.
Many private references and symbols which are found prevalent throughout his works are incorporated in The Emigrants. Jorn saw himself as the eternal wanderer, like the Buttadeo, head on legs, on a permanent journey. Here, we find spectres of this symbol arbitrarily depicted of their own accord during the act of painting, never deliberately imposed upon the surface. The large head awkwardly looming above the others on the left can also be found as an independent lithograph and points to a longstanding preoccupation with particular themes.
It is around this time that Jorn came under the renewed influence of Munch, whose Memorial Exhibition in Copenhagen in 1946 had made a powerful impression. Traces of Munch's semi-human forms are enclosed within coloured contours and cool blue tones. Indeed, when Jorn met the original purchaser of The Emigrants while on his bicycle in the streets, he was asked if this was a "good painting", to which Jorn replied, "Oh yes! There is Delacroix and Munch in it." The cool tones of the figures are juxtaposed against the rich and vibrant reds, blues and greens reminiscent of the Romantic's struggle for freedom and expression. The pathos and denuciatory violence of the dark background are rendered more dramatic by the fact that the figures are thrust into the foreground of the picture plane where they block out any relinquishing source of light.
Jorn's works from this period onward reflect an inner vision and mood without any regard for the conventional standards of aesthetic taste. Jorn believed that a picture is ambivalent and thus not susceptible to only one interpretation. This transition came from a more objective approach rooted in his training in Léger's studio and his involvement in the CoBrA movement, leading to a more instinctive and innovative style which would finally emerge soon after The Emigrants was completed.
In The Emigrants, Jorn's choice of title suggests a mood or private reference to the circumstance surrounding the time of painting it. Shortly after its completion, Jorn announced, "I'm quitting Denmark permanently", and moved to Switzerland with his wife and four children. However, after this difficult period of recuperation, Jorn's identification with the idea of emigration became far more symbolic and can be understood in a statement he once made: "I believe that artists are becoming increasingly homeless, vagabonds and wanderers, who are also renewers. They fought hard before the war, but people then knew their place. After the war everything changed. We don't belong anywhere." (In: German Art in the 20th Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London 1985, pp. 466-467). Indeed, Jorn reflects this idea in his painting by depicting the figures as victims of isolation and dissolution, staring out with despairingly anonymous eyes.
Many private references and symbols which are found prevalent throughout his works are incorporated in The Emigrants. Jorn saw himself as the eternal wanderer, like the Buttadeo, head on legs, on a permanent journey. Here, we find spectres of this symbol arbitrarily depicted of their own accord during the act of painting, never deliberately imposed upon the surface. The large head awkwardly looming above the others on the left can also be found as an independent lithograph and points to a longstanding preoccupation with particular themes.
It is around this time that Jorn came under the renewed influence of Munch, whose Memorial Exhibition in Copenhagen in 1946 had made a powerful impression. Traces of Munch's semi-human forms are enclosed within coloured contours and cool blue tones. Indeed, when Jorn met the original purchaser of The Emigrants while on his bicycle in the streets, he was asked if this was a "good painting", to which Jorn replied, "Oh yes! There is Delacroix and Munch in it." The cool tones of the figures are juxtaposed against the rich and vibrant reds, blues and greens reminiscent of the Romantic's struggle for freedom and expression. The pathos and denuciatory violence of the dark background are rendered more dramatic by the fact that the figures are thrust into the foreground of the picture plane where they block out any relinquishing source of light.
Jorn's works from this period onward reflect an inner vision and mood without any regard for the conventional standards of aesthetic taste. Jorn believed that a picture is ambivalent and thus not susceptible to only one interpretation. This transition came from a more objective approach rooted in his training in Léger's studio and his involvement in the CoBrA movement, leading to a more instinctive and innovative style which would finally emerge soon after The Emigrants was completed.