Extract from catalogue: CARL-HENNING PEDERSEN 100 ÅR

CONTENTS

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PREFACE

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30 YEARS WITH HENNING – A Few Notes Sidsel Ramson

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Art Keeps Us Alive On the Occasion of Carl-Henning Pedersen’s Centenary Hanne Lundgren Nielsen

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THE SUN ABOVE THE MOUNTAIN

33 THE PAINTER AND THE POET IN CARL-HENNING PEDERSEN Andrea Rygg Karberg 45 ECHO 47

CARL-HENNING PEDERSEN AND THE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMPULSE Lotte Nishanthi Winther

67 THE SUN WHICH WANDERS 69 THE MYTHOPOEIC IMAGINATION – Folk Art as Counter-Mythology Lotte Korshøj 79 EARTH AND HEAVEN 81

THE WHEEL OF LIFE IS A ROUNDABOUT IN HERNING An Introduction to Carl-Henning Pedersen’s Decorative Art Jens Tang Kristensen

96 UP ON THE MOUNTAIN & WHERE I MEET 99 DIONYSIAN ZEAL Hanne Lundgren Nielsen 107 BIOGRAPHY Lotte Korshøj 155 LIST OF WORKS

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Mother and Child, 1956 (58)

PREFACE

The story of Carl-Henning Pedersen is a tale about a poor milkboy who painted his way through the Milky Way and right on to the stars. He achieved fame, got his own museum, and gives us a beautiful and mythical chapter in Danish art history. The literature on Carl-Henning Pedersen is extensive and largely biographical with a poetic slant, as is very suitable for an artist who in every way linked his art to his personal life, and who produced poetry when he was not painting. The centenary is an appropriate opportunity to revitalize the myth, to get behind it and deal with the works in the context of the experiences and methods of our own time. The present publication and exhibition are based on an extensive research project, and the aim has been to reach a new and scientifically based understanding of Carl-Henning Pedersen’s art through a thorough examination of sources and works.

Carl-Henning Pedersen will always hold a position in Danish art history as an artist of international importance in his own time, and a permanent place has also been secured for him in the Danish museum world through the establishment of the Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelt Museum. The artist’s fame is inextricably linked to the designation ’COBRA’; but as this exhibition demonstrates, Carl-Henning Pedersen had already realized his artistic identity ten years before the emergence of COBRA. His style did not change appreciably in the COBRA years, 1948-1951, and he painted for more than fifty years after the dissolution of the group. Thus the exhibition comprises characteristic works from Carl-Henning Pedersen’s entire oeuvre.

Carl-Henning Pedersen is an exponent of the spontaneous-abstract art which was part of the avant-garde of his time. He calls the result fantasy art and maintains that the symbols he draws on in his painting are timeless and universal, and as such can be understood by anyone; this is why he chose to use them. They do not emerge haphazardly from the fanciful brain and hand of the artist. The spontaneous creation has intellectual roots and political, philosophical and psychological dimensions. In the articles in this publication we pave the way for new views on ‘the spontaneous’ and investigate the conscious and unconscious sources of inspiration underlying the artist’s idiom, and the considerations bound up with his distinctive aesthetic.

We owe thanks to many people, and primarily to the six contributors to the seven articles in this catalogue. The catalogue begins with a personal portrait of Carl-Henning Pedersen by Sidsel Ramson, his wife for more than 30 years. Sidsel Ramson has assisted the project with her great knowledge and placed all her source material at our disposal, for which we are truly grateful. Then follows an introduction to the artist’s life and work by one of the undersigned, Hanne Lundgren Nielsen, who also, as director of the artist’s own museum in Herning for many years, presents in the concluding article a close analysis of

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Carl-Henning Pedersen’s museum project and immense productivity. The examination of the extensive Carl-Henning Pedersen archive has led to articles based on previously unpublished material, which throws light on new art-historical themes in the artist’s oeuvre and time. ARKEN’s Curator, Andrea Rygg Karberg, discusses the relation between poetry and painting in the work of Carl-Henning Pedersen; Lotte Nishanthi Winther, M.A., investigates the relationship between the artist’s works and the photographic; and Lotte Korshøj, Curator at the Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelt Museum, illuminates in her article the motivations behind Carl-Henning Pedersen’s fantasy art. Lotte Korshøj has also written the biography in the catalogue. Finally Jens Tang Kristensen, Ph.D. student, taking Carl-Henning Pedersen’s extensive decoration project in Herning as his point of departure, compares this work with that of Paul Gadegaard to attain new insight into the contemporary schools of concrete and spontaneous-abstract art.

We also thank all the lenders to the exhibition, who besides the Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelt Museum are Sidsel Ramson’s Collection, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, National Gallery of Denmark og Vejle Museerne – Vejle Kunstmuseum.

The composer Fuzzy has composed electro-acoustic music for the exhibition with the support of the Danish Arts Foundation. We extend our warmest thanks to both parties for their valuable collaboration. A new film about Carl-Henning Pedersen has been produced on the occasion of his centenary, in connection with which we would like to thank DR-K channel manager Flemming Hedegaard Larsen, Peter Thiesen from Casablanca Film and project worker Astrid Boye Wiik.

At ARKEN this exhibition forms part of a three-year collaboration with the Nordea Foundation under the general heading ‘Passion and Insight’. In addition to this, the exhibition and the publication have received generous support from many foundations, without which it would not have been possible to realize this ambitious project. We extend warm thanks to the 15. Juni Fonden, the Carl-Henning Pedersen Foundation, the Knud Højgaard Foundation, The New Carlsberg Foundation, Færchfonden, The George and Emma Jorck Foundation, Toyota-fonden and Oda og Hans Svenningsens Fond.

Christian Gether Director, ARKEN Museum of Modern Art Hanne Lundgren Nielsen Director, Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelt Museum

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Bird Fight, 1943 (19)

Art Keeps Us Alive On the Occasion of Carl-Henning Pedersen’s Centenary Hanne Lundgren Nielsen

“Time passes away, but through art it is reconquered. And through art we may soar heavenwards in a swirl of ecstasy; art helps us to move onwards, not only to rebirth but to the perception of what is new and burgeoning; it shows us the moment of conception. Art keeps us alive.”1 Time has now run out for Carl-Henning Pedersen. He lived to be 93, and for almost seven decades created one work of art after the other with undiminished energy, finding his impetus in “the joy at placing one colour beside another.”2 This joy he preserved through the years, and it still shines out at us from the many paintings, drawings, watercolours, mosaics, sculptures and decorative projects which he left behind. This enormous output is a permanent reminder of a rare gift for painting and an equally and unusually fertile power of creation.

1 Catalogue for the exhibition at Sophienholm 11.7.-31.8.1970, unpaginated 2 Carl-Henning Pedersen, ’Virkeligheden og drømmen’, Eventyrets maleri, the Høst exhibition 1950, unpaginated 3 Anne Wolden-Ræthinge, Det står skrevet i stjernerne. Carl-Henning Pedersens liv, Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1989, p. 126

Most of the material is gathered at Carl-Henning Pedersen’s own museum in Herning. As director of this museum it is my privilege to have a first-hand knowledge of all phases of the artist’s enormous production, but also my job to ensure that a more nuanced picture of his work is established for the future. The 100th anniversary provides a welcome opportunity to take stock and revaluate the importance Carl-Henning Pedersen has had up to today.

This article seeks to shed light on events and circumstances in the artist’s long career by focussing on specific details which can be seen as having had a decisive influence on his development. Thus the time and milieu of which Carl-Henning Pedersen was a product are described, and also the reception of his art. I will thus look more closely at the artist’s first retrospective exhibition at The Free Exhibition Building (Den Frie) in 1950; this was a crucial moment in the story of Carl-Henning Pedersen, which at one and the same time put him centre stage as a main figure in the circle of spontaneous abstract painters, but also rounded off a period which he regarded as his richest and most important.3 I will then turn the clock back to his début in 1936, when it all began, to his political commitment, to the meeting with Else Alfelt, and onwards to the famous COBRA years. Decorative assignments, the establishment of Carl-Henning Pedersen’s own museum, the years in France and the decoration in Ribe in the 1980s will also feature in my account.

The Høst Exhibition 1950 In November 1950 Carl-Henning Pedersen hung his paintings at The Free Exhibition Building in Copenhagen. There were many works, a great many: 182 paintings and 65 works on paper, a huge number for an artist whose début had taken place only 14 years earlier at The Artists’ Autumn Exhibition in the same notorious building.

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Mother and Child, 1940. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (13)

Sleepwalker, 1943 (21)

4 Corner and Høst are Danish artists’ associations. The word Høst means ‘harvest’ or ‘autumn’.

5 Carl-Henning Pedersen had the material and the capital needed to rent The Free Exhibition Building. Henry Heerup and Asger Jorn had resigned their membership the year before, and besides Carl-Henning Pedersen and Else Alfelt only Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and Ernest Mancoba were left of the ’abstract’ artists. It proved impossible to gather the Høst-group after that, so Eventyrets maleri became the last Høst-exhibition.

In the accompanying catalogue the exhibition was marketed under the title Carl-Henning Pedersen – Fairy-tale Paintings (or ‘painting’, as it says on the front page), but also as the 1950 Høst Exhibition, and this caused some wonder. Since the beginning of the 1930s the Høst artists had filled the Free Exhibition Building, for a period of six years which saw a fusion of Corner and Høst.4 Though some dropped out and were replaced by others, they remained a group. In 1950 it was over. The balance had shifted between the naturalists and the abstract artists, several dropped out, and in the end the exhibition community could no longer maintain a common ground. The annual group exhibition was replaced by a pure solo presentation, reputedly to secure the exhibition rooms for future activities. It was no coincidence that Carl-Henning Pedersen was left as sole representative of the Høst project.5 In those years Carl-Henning Pedersen was centrally positioned as an exponent of the branch of abstract art which is often described as spontaneous, but in his own view should more accurately be named fantasy art. In contrast to concrete abstract art, which works with clear, emotionally purged forms, the spontaneous abstract artists sought to communicate their inner vision via immediate, very personal and free expression. They built on the artistic axis of the pioneers of the avant-garde and drew on cubism, surrealism and other central tendencies in 20th-century art. At the same time they were also

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Read more in the catalogue, on sale at ARKEN.

Imploring, 1944 (24)

THE SUN ABOVE THE MOUNTAIN The grip of a thousand tentacles in the doubt of your heart – chases night from day and leads you across the fields of your soul.

Hold, hold, in your grasp the coming of the solar year the chasing of your happiness.

The sun above the year.

The sun above the night, Rush toward the southern gods’ prelude.

Unpublished poem from the notebook “Hjertets Bytte (The Spoils of the Heart), Carl-Henning. November 1945, February 1946.” Belongs to the archive of CarlHenning Pedersen & Else Alfelt Museum.

The Trompets of Heaven, 1950 Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (38)

THE PAINTER AND THE POET IN CARL-HENNING PEDERSEN Andrea Rygg Karberg

“See how stumbling, though without the miss of a heartbeat, I entered onto the other side. It was as if my heart, led on by wild and shameless horses, was full of fear for the moments that would come, controlling its demons and the leap into the unknown, full of hope for the future, with the observer’s gaze in it and with it, the flower of hope on its pinnacles, full of fear for the moment that would come, the speaking heart (…) I have never forgotten the days I stood with fear quite close to my side, speaking confidentially, while the observer’s eyes were directed towards heaven and the observer’s heart was right at the centre of my secret, its wild eyes looking at itself (…).”1

Words like horses, the heart, the heaven, secrets and the observer’s eyes flow like a stream of consciousness. It is a strange experience to read Carl-Henning Pedersen’s innumerable notebooks filled with imagination, poems, scribble and random thoughts. The first thing that strikes one is the total lack of crossings-out, additions or corrections. It is as if the pen leads the hand. This is not a polished result which the writer has struggled to produce for a long time – and apparently there is no previous plan of content, idea or action. Most poems are impossible to interpret so that one can get a meaning out of them. Sometimes there is a play on the sound of the words, and at other times a certain mood is created by the meaning of the words. They are not intended to produce rhyme.

In certain poems the lines follow a fixed rhythm and structure, but typically there is a sort of stream of consciousness whereby the goal seems to be to achieve pure spontaneity in text and thought. The reader may choose to follow the stream or not. It is the process that matters – we witness a leap into the subconscious or a search for untamed sentences or thoughts that often appear in the state between sleeping and being awake. We are reading the language of dreams.

The Status of the Poet Not all Carl-Henning Pedersen’s poems were limited to his private poetry collections.

In 1945, his first collection of poems Drømmedigte (Dream Poems) was published by Helhesten Publishers. In 1947, he submitted a new collection but it was not accepted for publication. He carried on writing throughout his life, but only in 1968 was he successful with Solens latter (The Laughter of the Sun), despite a delay of more than twenty years in publishing this work. This was followed by Romersk elegi (Roman Elegy) (1971), Himlens trompeter (The Trumpets of Heaven) (1982) and Vesterhavets gyldne aner (The Golden Forebears of the North Sea) (1986), the latter published by Borgen.2 The published collections of poems bear witness to the fact that not only was this a secondary field of study for the artist, but that he regarded the printed poems as completed works at least worthy of publicity and the reader’s gaze. At the same time he recognised that he had a different approach to poetry than for instance his friend Ole Sarvig: ”He

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Illustration from the notebook “Digte 1945. Feb. 1945. Marts” 1 The quotation is taken from one of Carl-Henning Pedersen’s many notebooks which belong to the Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelt Museum.

This particular notebook has a handwritten title on its front cover Hjertets fald. Blomsterbogen (The Fall of the Heart. The Book of Flowers), and on the reverse side the following words are written in pencil “Carl-Henning Pedersen, Ny Carlsbergvej 86 IIv, Copenhagen” – and under that in ink “1946”. The pages are paginated, and this quotation is taken from pages 2 and 3.

2 Drømmedigte, Helhestens Forlag, København, 1945; Solens Latter, published in collaboration with Bjørn Rosengreen, Copenhagen, 1968 (printed at Henrik Sandberg’s lithographic printing press); Romersk elegi, published by Carl-Henning Pedersen and Henry Theils, Copenhagen, 1971; Himlens trompeter, published by Carl-Henning Pedersen, 1982 (printed

by Clot Bramsen et Georges, Paris); Vesterhavets gyldne aner, Borgen, Copenhagen, 1986 Carl-Henning Pedersen reading his poems, 1968 (photographer unknown)

The Ten-Eyed Person, 1959 (75)

[ ... ]

Semiotics is the science that investigates the signs through which man communicates, in ’linguistic codes’ in speech, writing, pictures, movement and other channels. From a semiotic viewpoint, in his paintings Carl-Henning Pedersen used both iconic signs (to put it popularly – signs that resemble what they refer to) as when a concentration of paint is immediately interpreted as the picture of a bird – and indexical signs (the direct traces of the artist’s own presence) as when we clearly recognise the physical act of painting and the large, rough strokes in each movement of the hand.13 To this should be added the splashes of paint which are either by pure form or just naturally part of the drawing.

These signs contribute to the general composition of the work and juxtapose the colours or perhaps just make the picture keel over so that part of it, the object we have in front of us, seems to lean towards us, thus endowing the work with a certain thrust. The aforementioned signs do not resemble anything else and are not connected to verbal language; they are signs in the individually-constructed visual language of pictures. They only acquire their meaning in juxtaposition to all the other signs present.14 Carl-Henning Pedersen worked in the same way when he wrote as when he painted. He used well-known words, symbols and figures. There is a grammatical syntax in the written message, just as well as there is background, foreground, symmetry or a lack of balance, central motifs and subordinate figures in the paintings. But there is no direct, rational communication. Carl-Henning Pedersen was deeply fascinated by the linguistic dimension which he toyed with, explored and scrutinised. There were narrative elements in his progressive verbal story-telling and in his horizontal frieze-like pictorial compositions. But the tale was fragmented and incoherent; the classical structure was splintered. In this way Carl-Henning Pedersen was strongly rooted in modernism – he drew on the classical element and the classical structure which he was familiar with, but to him it was a point of departure for something different, a leap into a world without a presupposed purpose or meaning. It was a world in which the reader and viewer were left to themselves while they tried to extract a story from that which they had read and a visual impression from that which they had seen.

Undoubtedly writing sharpened the painter’s aesthetic considerations concerning his art.

Carl-Henning Pedersen called himself a fairytale painter, and he called the result fantasy art. In his literary endeavours he also focused on fairytales and fantasies. His poems and paintings entered into a very personal, fleeting and floating universe where single elements were mixed in a complex expression. The works arouse curiosity and are difficult to comprehend. Carl-Henning Pedersen explored the innermost structures of the mind and of language, our thought patterns and mental images. His works suggest how an artist basically viewed, understood and reproduced the world in the turbulent 20th century.

Read more in the catalogue on sale at ARKEN.

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13 These kinds of signs are defined by the scientist and semiotician, Charles Sanders Peirce, and the semiotician Charles W. Morris among others has further developed the definition of the iconic sign. A summing up of this is found in Umberto Eco, ’Sémiologie des messages visuels’, Communications, no. 15, 1970 (French translation of the book La struttura assente, Milano, 1968.)

14 Umberto Eco compares pictures with the linguistic concept ’idiolect’ which is the individual’s own usage.

Thus he contends that each work of art forms its own individual system of signs or that each artist forms his own personal style. The argument enters into Eco’s rejection of Claude LéviStrauss’ assertion that nonfigurative art cannot communicate, being pure nature, because nonfigurative art according to Lévi-Strauss diverges from the spoken language at a number of decisive points (Claude Lévi-Strauss, ’Ouverture’, Le cru et le cuit, Plon, Paris, 1964.)

Blue Bird, 1948 (134)

Landscape with Red Mask, 1949 (35)

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Clown, 1996 (90) Right: Bride and Groom, 1996 (91

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CARLHENNING PEDERSEN 100 YEARS Until August 1, 2013.

Buy the catalogue at ARKEN or order it at: reception@arken.dk

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