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拍品专文
Painted in 1966 The Situation of a Central Figure, is a striking and powerful work executed during the highpoint of Jorn's painting career. In the early 1960s Jorn became consumed by his philosophical interests and spent most of his energy on the writing of numerous books and treatises that expounded his complex philosophical beliefs. Centering around the idea of the artist's crucial role in society as an agent for change - the very issue which had previously led to Jorn's split from Guy Debord and the Situationist group - these beliefs were essentially a complex variation of much modern philosophical thinking blended with a strong dose of Pataphysics. Pataphysics was the science-less science that had been inspired by the legendary 19th C. writer and proto-Surrealist Alfred Jarry. It was a seemingly nonsensical system of thought that asserted all possibilities, embraced chaos and expounded the equal value of every theory, scientific or otherwise.
By 1965, Jorn had formulated his philosophy and completed his work on the various books and treatises that had preoccupied him for so long. The year 1966 marked the return of painting as Jorn's chief concern and the paintings that he made from this period onwards reflect the coming together of his painterly art with his unique and complex personal philosophy.
Reflecting Jorn's fundamental belief in the equal importance of all viewpoints, Jorn created works in which no one area of the canvas takes precedence over another. Working largely intuitively and spontaneously - usually beginning in the top right-hand corner - Jorn allowed pure colour to dictate the form the work took. "I let myself be guided by what happens on the canvas. The painting develops of its own accord and I react to it. Sometimes I find that it is developing too freely and then I have to bring it back to order. It's a constant battle," he once observed. Establishing a series of relationships between the forms that emerged, Jorn took great pains, struggling with the dictates of the medium, to keep a balance and ensure that no one form predominated but instead formed an active part in the creation of a dynamic whole.
understanding things which requires no formal instruction. Our traditional form of education destroys man. For example, Chomsky has shown that children have an innate capacity to put words together; but as soon as they are taught the rules for putting them together, then they lose this capacity. …The same thing is true for pictorial images: man has a natural capacity for structuring his sensory and visual impressions. Gestalt psychology has shown that this is so. This capacity has nothing to do with the faculty of speech. It developed with the faculty of sight. The development of ideas would thus seem to have a visual basis. The very word 'idea' which is derived from the Greek eidos (of form), expresses this fact." (cited in Asger Jorn Recent Paintings exhib, cat. Arthur Tooth and Sons ltd, London 1971 unpaginated.)
In The Situation of a Central Figure a central form can vaguely be seen to emerge from the cosmic mist generated by the swirling coloured forms on the canvas. Jorn's images seem to materialise like dream images from a Nordic night. Despite his attempts at pure spontaneity, his unconsciously guided brush always leans towards the forming of archetypal figures which Jorn strenuously attempts to keep at bay, allowing the abstract form and colour of his work - the means by which these images come into being - to play an equally vital visual role. This Nietzschean situation, the ambiguous and dynamic relationship with the whole, part emerging from and becoming, part disintegrating into, is perhaps the "Situation of a Central Figure " and the intended meaning behind the enigmatic title of the work. As with most of Jorn's work, however, such an interpretation can only remain speculation, for as with his deliberately ambiguous and complex philosophy and painterly aesthetic, Jorn applied titles to his work also in a quasi-rational, almost Pataphysical way. "For me" Jorn explained, "the aim is to find a title that cannot be confused with that of any other work, and which at the same time is the least deceptive, the least meaningful, the most neutral, the most abstract, the furthest removed from any resemblance to what I myself had visualized, so that the title obliterates, as far as possible, my own intentions in relation to the work, which is why I often, very often, have left it to other artists or other people to invent titles for my pictures, not because I think they've hit upon the right title, not at all, since I maintain that the value of an image lies in its adaptability to several interpretations, the aim of art being precisely to achieve a universal and general meaning, which is why I select titles very much at random, and at the same time I'm careful not to be too specific, and not to give too precise and unequivocal a name to a picture, so that the title shall always contain an ambiguity that allows the spectator to read his own interpretation into the image, without feeling restricted by a title that forces him in this or that direction, which is why I always go for a title that has the maximum number of meanings, yet only applies to one single object." (Asger Jorn cited in Asger Jorn: the crucial years, 1954-64 Guy Atkins, London 1977, p.143.)
By 1965, Jorn had formulated his philosophy and completed his work on the various books and treatises that had preoccupied him for so long. The year 1966 marked the return of painting as Jorn's chief concern and the paintings that he made from this period onwards reflect the coming together of his painterly art with his unique and complex personal philosophy.
Reflecting Jorn's fundamental belief in the equal importance of all viewpoints, Jorn created works in which no one area of the canvas takes precedence over another. Working largely intuitively and spontaneously - usually beginning in the top right-hand corner - Jorn allowed pure colour to dictate the form the work took. "I let myself be guided by what happens on the canvas. The painting develops of its own accord and I react to it. Sometimes I find that it is developing too freely and then I have to bring it back to order. It's a constant battle," he once observed. Establishing a series of relationships between the forms that emerged, Jorn took great pains, struggling with the dictates of the medium, to keep a balance and ensure that no one form predominated but instead formed an active part in the creation of a dynamic whole.
understanding things which requires no formal instruction. Our traditional form of education destroys man. For example, Chomsky has shown that children have an innate capacity to put words together; but as soon as they are taught the rules for putting them together, then they lose this capacity. …The same thing is true for pictorial images: man has a natural capacity for structuring his sensory and visual impressions. Gestalt psychology has shown that this is so. This capacity has nothing to do with the faculty of speech. It developed with the faculty of sight. The development of ideas would thus seem to have a visual basis. The very word 'idea' which is derived from the Greek eidos (of form), expresses this fact." (cited in Asger Jorn Recent Paintings exhib, cat. Arthur Tooth and Sons ltd, London 1971 unpaginated.)
In The Situation of a Central Figure a central form can vaguely be seen to emerge from the cosmic mist generated by the swirling coloured forms on the canvas. Jorn's images seem to materialise like dream images from a Nordic night. Despite his attempts at pure spontaneity, his unconsciously guided brush always leans towards the forming of archetypal figures which Jorn strenuously attempts to keep at bay, allowing the abstract form and colour of his work - the means by which these images come into being - to play an equally vital visual role. This Nietzschean situation, the ambiguous and dynamic relationship with the whole, part emerging from and becoming, part disintegrating into, is perhaps the "Situation of a Central Figure " and the intended meaning behind the enigmatic title of the work. As with most of Jorn's work, however, such an interpretation can only remain speculation, for as with his deliberately ambiguous and complex philosophy and painterly aesthetic, Jorn applied titles to his work also in a quasi-rational, almost Pataphysical way. "For me" Jorn explained, "the aim is to find a title that cannot be confused with that of any other work, and which at the same time is the least deceptive, the least meaningful, the most neutral, the most abstract, the furthest removed from any resemblance to what I myself had visualized, so that the title obliterates, as far as possible, my own intentions in relation to the work, which is why I often, very often, have left it to other artists or other people to invent titles for my pictures, not because I think they've hit upon the right title, not at all, since I maintain that the value of an image lies in its adaptability to several interpretations, the aim of art being precisely to achieve a universal and general meaning, which is why I select titles very much at random, and at the same time I'm careful not to be too specific, and not to give too precise and unequivocal a name to a picture, so that the title shall always contain an ambiguity that allows the spectator to read his own interpretation into the image, without feeling restricted by a title that forces him in this or that direction, which is why I always go for a title that has the maximum number of meanings, yet only applies to one single object." (Asger Jorn cited in Asger Jorn: the crucial years, 1954-64 Guy Atkins, London 1977, p.143.)