Angli Avant-Gardism – Paul Gadegaard's Art Project in Herning, Denmark
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Angli Avant-Gardism – Paul Gadegaard’s Art Project in Herning, Denmark Jens Tang Kristensen Abstract In 1947, the year of Linien ii’s demise, Aage Damgaard opened Angli, a modest little sweater-making factory in Herning, Jutland. In 1952 the Danish painter Paul Gadegaard was hired to decorate the factory’s dining hall, and this job led to a long period of collabo- ration. Gadegaard’s aim, in this first assignment, was to create the largest work of social art in Denmark. On the one hand, the factory project is clearly in line with the stylistic and political principles of the constructivists. On the other, the project was executed at a moment of ascendancy for industrialisation and capitalism in Denmark. The general economic success of the 1950s thus benefited the arts and culture in Denmark in the 1950s and ’60s. At the same time, the co-operation indicated the desire of artists to have their works integrated into everyday life rather than into museum collections. It was in Copenhagen, at the Furniture Fair in Forum in 1952, that the textile industrialist Aage Damgaard (1917–1991), proprietor of the Angli shirt factory, first met the artist Paul Gadegaard (1920–1996). Gadegaard was completing a large (135 cm × 400 cm) painting entitled Maleri paa Lærred Konflikt ii 1952, Tilegnet Vilhelm Lundstrøm (Painting on Canvas, Conflict ii, 1952 – Dedicated to Vilhelm Lundstrøm), which is now in the collection of the Heart Museum of Contemporary Art in Herning. During the five-day period that Gadegaard took to complete the work the public had been allowed to witness the event, which was something of a sensation at this time, when abstract art was still largely unknown in Denmark. Like Knud W. Jensen (1916–2000), Damgaard was inno- vative and progressive, and among the most successful businessmen in the wave of industrialisation that took place in Denmark in the 1950s.1 In addition to their achievements in business, Damgaard and Jensen were also unusually knowledgeable about art and had taken up the cause of the new avant-garde tendencies among artists in post-war Denmark (Fjeldsøe 2012: 151ff.; Jensen 1 In 1958 Knud W. Jensen founded the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/97890043�0506_077 <UN> 728 Kristensen 1996: 447ff.; Reenberg 2009: 58).2 They defended and supported artists both morally and economically. Thus the meeting between Damgaard and Gadegaard was hardly coincidental. Even before Gadegaard began his Painting on Canvas – Conflict ii, 1952, Damgaard had contacted Børge Birch (1906–1993), the gallery owner who represented the spontaneous-abstract artist Asger Jorn (Barbusse and Olesen 1995: 174). It has, in fact, been suggested that Gadegaard painted his large work as a commission from Birch, who wanted it for his villa in the Copenhagen suburb of Holte (Thorsen 1982: 41f.). At any rate, it was Damgaard who ended up buying the painting, before eventually donating it to Hammerum School, just outside Herning. It was not merely out of personal interest that Damgaard had contacted Birch. It was also due to the interest he shared with the concrete artists of the period in getting progressive art out into the public sphere. The goal was to transform urban public spaces and workplaces through a socially edifying art, for which purpose concrete (non-figurative) art was particularly well suited. As Barbusse and Olesen argue, its basis in universal, objective and mathematically derived formal systems meant that concrete art necessarily had a correspond- ing set of socialising characteristics embedded within it (Barbusse and Olesen 1995: 169; Frederiksen 2000: 75). It seems that Damgaard saw this potential; upon meeting Gadegaard in Forum, he offered the artist a job at his textile fac- tory at Th. Nielsengade 87, in Herning. Here Damgaard had just built a new can- teen, which he wanted Gadegaard to decorate in such a way that the employees’ lunchtime would be a more enriching experience.3 This commission, in which an artist was actually placed on the monthly payroll of a textile factory, was not only prestigious but also noteworthy, as indicated by the press coverage that the arrangement received. For Gadegaard the job clearly had greater implications. He had long wished to free art from its traditional, institutional function in 2 In the 1950s Denmark, along with Europe in general, experienced an economic boom. Industrial exports exceeded agricultural exports in 1956, the year Denmark established Statens Kunstfond (National Fund for the Endowment of the Arts). It is also important to note that far-sighted businessmen such as Knud W. Jensen and Damgaard established close friendships with several of the Danish avant-garde artists involved in Linien ii and Cobra. These businessmen managed to make contacts with several international artists as well, and were thus involved in various ways with the new cultural politics that were at play when the Ministry of Culture was established, in 1961, with Julius Bomholt (1896–1969) as the first Minister of Culture. There are thus important parallels to be found between these two patrons, although their significance for the development of art in post-war Denmark has been mentioned only sporadically. 3 Before the completion of the canteen, employees had usually eaten their lunches while sit- ting on the window sills. <UN>.