Abstract
In the autumn of 1958, the Danish artist Asger Jorn (1914-1973) received a commission for a large, coloured tapestry to be installed at the Statsgymnasium in Aarhus, Denmark. Jorn drew in his friend, the French artist Pierre Wemaëre (1913-2010), as a collaborator in this initiative. In this article, I shed light on Jorn's and Wemaëre's effort to push boundaries when producing the work. These included a challenge to disciplinary boundaries - that is, between art, craft, design and architecture - as well as social hierarchies between the artist as the creator and the weavers as the executors. The attempt was also to challenge institutional boundaries between high art and popular art, as well as professional boundaries - that is, between a spontaneous production method versus one that is based on planning combined with a division of labour. But, as I reveal through an exploration of the making of the weaving, these ideals were of necessity compromised during the process of production and, while resulting in an impressive and memorable work, the project did not ultimately challenge existing norms of creating large-scale weavings.
Highlights
In the autumn of 1958, the Danish Cobra1 Artist and co-founder of the Situationist International,2 Asger Jorn (1914-1973), received a commission for a large, coloured tapestry to be installed at the Statsgymnasium in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city after the capital, Copenhagen
Bird in the Forest served as a point of departure for Le Long Voyage, both in terms of the artistic motif and the mode of production
Jorn had been discussing the project for an artistic decoration of the Statsgymnasium for several years and was about to give up on it, when he was able to sign the contract
Summary
In the autumn of 1958, the Danish Cobra Artist and co-founder of the Situationist International, Asger Jorn (1914-1973), received a commission for a large, coloured tapestry to be installed at the Statsgymnasium in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city after the capital, Copenhagen. Today, this building, designed by Arne Gravers and Johann Richter, is considered as one of the most prominent pieces of post-World War II functionalist architecture in Denmark (Figures 1, 2). I show how Jorns ideals – especially when it comes to notions of collaboration, crediting others, and so forth, within the creative process – ended up being compromised during the process of production, and how the project failed to challenge existing norms of creating and producing large-scale weavings
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