29 quotes
This is what aesthetics, development and progress depend upon: that we go out on thin ice.
On the task of modern artists (1959)
To make the material speak to man in the name of man, this is the aim and reality of art.
Statement of 1971; as quoted in Asger Jorn (2002)
We are sparks that must glow as brightly as possible.
On being an pictorial artist (1950)
Beautiful, ugly, impressive, disgusting, meaningless, grim, contradictory etc.. .It makes no difference, as long as it is life, vigorously pouring forth.
If you add something to a painting, never let it be for aesthetic reasons. Only let it be for reasons of expression.
Everything is in constant flux, from state to state, from good to bad and back again.. ..only in transmutation, perpetual motion, lies truth.
To break and be able to grow together again in a better way: that is the difficult art.
If a symbolic language dies, it tortures us like a nightmare, like a thousand piece orchestra grating on our nerves and tearing our mind to pieces.. .It is a corpse with no symbolic power or strength.
Asger Jorn (2002)
We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have, and what constitutes our strength, is our joy in life, in all of its moral and amoral manifestations.
True realism, materialist realism lies in the search for the expression of forms faithful to their content. But there is no content detached from human interest.
Even here, nothing ever happens; and nothing ever happens to it.
Speech to the Penguins (1949)
Being an artist is being an isolated individual. … Paths cross and the soil of time is starting to be turned.
It has been the giver's intention to create as complete a collection of European art as possible, with the aim of illuminating Surrealism and Spontaneous-Abstract art.
refering to his art-gift Jorn made the Mmseum Jorn (1962)
The great work of art is the complete banality, and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough. Banality here is not infinite in its depth and consequence, but rests on a foundation of spirituality and aesthetics.
Intimate Banalities (1941)
We have defined art as the life form and aesthetic art as the life renewal: the stimulating, animating, agitating, inspiring, inspirational, fermenting, fascinating fanaticising, explosive and outrageous: the renewal of the unknown.
We are not talking about a new cognition in relation to Abstract art, rather a new area of cognition.. .This is where abstract art steps in, in a stronger sense of life, a stronger contact with the growing life, a feeling of the pulsation of life and growth in oneself, an activation of deep-seated powers a staple vitality far deeper than our cognition, not instead of science but inspired by it.
To get anywhere, one must choose one's mistakes, I chose experimental acts. (1963)
The act of expressing oneself is a physical one. It materializes the thought.
Speech to the Penguins (1949)
In the beginning was the image.
Title of one of his paintings (1965)
You can often give a better description of the fight between people, the essentials of it, by means of fantastic animals, the simple, primitive, naked instincts, than by depicting a specific situation. It is not the human animal we should describe, but ourselves as human animals.