Artist Quotes by Asger Jorn

To make the material speak to man in the name of man, this is the aim and reality of art.

— Asger Jorn

Being an artist is being an isolated individual.

— Asger Jorn

Only my current situation has enabled me to accomplish the expensive task of demonstrating that the preferred sustenance of painting is painting.

— Asger Jorn

We are not talking about a new cognition in relation to abstract art, rather a new area of cognition...

— Asger Jorn

Those who try to combat the production of shoddy pictures are enemies of the best art today... It always feels tragic to…

— Asger Jorn

If you add something to a painting, never let it be for aesthetic reasons. Only let it be for reasons of expression.

— Asger Jorn

During every really creative act, the artist finds himself homeless. To overcome this state he has to call up his last reserves…

— Asger Jorn

The artist's interest cannot be restricted to a single field; he must seek the highest perception of everything, of the whole and…

— Asger Jorn

The artistic formulae wear thin quickly and yet daily the artist - when developing his own foundation - must enter his own…

— Asger Jorn

The reverse process is extremely important to me - that artistic images can inspire to words and different myths, and that in…

— Asger Jorn

We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions... What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life...…

— Asger Jorn

If the image was sketched onto the canvas and spontaneously drawn, colour would often be restrained and unfree... The most important and…

— Asger Jorn

We have defined art as the life form and aesthetic art as the life renewal: the stimulating, animating, agitating, inspiring, inspirational, fermenting,…

— Asger Jorn

The great work of art is the complete banality, and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough.…

— Asger Jorn

My work is based on a tradition quite distinct from the Eckersberg tradition, a Nordic line of development that had never been…

— Asger Jorn

In 1939 I wrote my first article ("Intime banaliteter" [Intimate banalities] in the journal Helhesten) in which I expressed my love for…

— Asger Jorn