Asger Jorn

Portrait about the legendary abstract painter Asger Jorn told by painter and poet Per Kirkeby.

This film portrait of Asger Jorn is based on interviews with artists and friends with whom he was in a close relationship during the years 1937-1973. They were recorded in 1987-89, a time when their memories of Jorn were still vivid.

This short film can be considered as notes on the origins of the situationist movement; notes which thus naturally include a reflection on their own language.

The members of the artists’ group run around the streets, play amidst the ruins of the city, and literally break through the credits of the film as the bewildered bourgeoisie look on. The bourgeoisie are represented by a masked married couple who have tethered their child to the balcony of their apartment. To the irritation of the parents, the child repeatedly throws a ball down into the street, and the father has to retrieve it again and again. At the end of the film the artists, now positioned on the stairs of the Academy, are all wearing masks and badges with what look like convict numbers. People in the streets begin to uncover the pistols under their coattails. The “Art Brut” music for the film was made by Asger Jorn and Jean Dubuffet and is played on toy instruments. Jean-Luc Godard wanted the film shown before screenings of La Chinoise (1967), but the request was vetoed by Debord.