Karen Kurczynski

"Jeg maler som en barbar i denne barbariske tid" Karel Appel Antologien "Karel Appel - Barber Barbar" sætter fornyet fokus på den hollandske kunstner, der var medskaber af den internationale Cobra-bevægelse. Med artikelbidrag fra Danmark, Holland, Belgien og USA følger vi Karel Appels kunstneriske bevægelse fra barber-søn i Amsterdam til hans internationale gennembrud med tilnavnet barbar-maleren. Antologien er på 272 sider og indeholder både dansk og engelsk tekst. Indeholder tekst på dansk/engelsk og er udgivet i forbindelse med udstillingen "Karel Appel - Barber Barbar" på Carl-Henning Pedersen & Else Alfelts Museum.

Burst! Abstract Painting After 1945 looks at the close, but previously unexplored relationship between Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel. Through texts and close to 100 illustrations, the book describes a vital creative exchange across the Atlantic that would entirely redefine painting. Big, expansive, paint-splattered surfaces; spontaneous actions captured on canvas; new ideas of freedom. A story of post-war recovery and Transatlantic dialogue. On both sides of the ocean, society was reacting to the horrors of the Second World War, the Holocaust and the coming of the atom bomb. The book shows how artists searched for new ways to deal with these shattering events. With works by Jean Dubuffet, Natalia Dumitresco, Helen Frankenthaler, Asger Jorn, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Georges Mathieu, Hedda Sterne and Clyfford Still, and more.

This book examines the art of Cobra, a network of poets and artists from Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam (1948–1951). Although the name stood for the organizers’ home cities, the Cobra artists hailed from countries in Europe, Africa, and the United States. This book investigates how a group of struggling young artists attempted to reinvent the international avant-garde after the devastation of the Second World War, to create artistic experiments capable of facing the challenges of postwar society. It explores how Cobra’s experimental, often collective art works and publications relate to broader debates in Europe about the use of images to commemorate violent events, the possibility of free expression in an art world constrained by Cold War politics, the breakdown of primitivism in an era of colonial independence movements, and the importance of spontaneity in a society increasingly dominated by the mass media. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, 20th-century modern art, avant-garde arts, and European history.

This book examines the art of Cobra, a network of poets and artists from Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam (1948–1951). Although the name stood for the organizers’ home cities, the Cobra artists hailed from countries in Europe, Africa, and the United States. This book investigates how a group of struggling young artists attempted to reinvent the international avant-garde after the devastation of the Second World War, to create artistic experiments capable of facing the challenges of postwar society. It explores how Cobra’s experimental, often collective art works and publications relate to broader debates in Europe about the use of images to commemorate violent events, the possibility of free expression in an art world constrained by Cold War politics, the breakdown of primitivism in an era of colonial independence movements, and the importance of spontaneity in a society increasingly dominated by the mass media. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, 20th-century modern art, avant-garde arts, and European history.

A leading figure of the postwar avant-garde, Danish artist Asger Jorn has long been recognized for his founding contributions to the Cobra and Situationist International movements - yet art historical scholarship on Jorn has been sparse, particularly in English. This study corrects that imbalance, offering a synthetic account of the essential phases of this prolific artist’s career. It addresses his works in various media alongside his extensive writings and his collaborations with various artists' groups from the 1940s through the mid-1960s. Situating Jorn's work in an international, post-Second World War context, Karen Kurczynski reframes our understanding of the 1950s, away from the Abstract-Expressionist focus on individual expression, toward a more open-ended conception of art as a public engagement with contemporary culture and politics. Kurczynski engages with issues of interest to twenty-first-century artists and scholars, highlighting Jorn's proposition that the sensory address of art and its complex relationship to popular media can have a direct social impact. Perhaps most significantly, this study foregrounds Jorn's assertion that creativity is crucial to subjectivity itself in our increasingly mediated 'Society of the Spectacle.'

I 1944 malede Asger Jorn sammen med bl.a. kunstnerkollegerne Ejler Bille, Erik Thommesen, Henry Heerup, Else Alfelt, Carl-Henning Pedersen og Corneille en 75 meter lang frise i en lille børnehave på Østerbro i København. Gruppen blev senere kendt som Cobra-gruppen. En kulturskat blev til. Malerierne er verdenskunst. Slidt af tidens tand og børnehavens daglige liv har de levet en anonym tilværelse indtil nu. Men så tog Jorns søn, Troels Jorn, initiativ til at få malerierne restaureret, og i foråret 2018 rykkede børnene ind i de nyrestaurerede, funklende stuer. Bogen her fortæller historien om frisernes tilblivelse og sætter dem ind i en større kunst- og kulturhistorisk kontekst samtidig med, at bogen beskriver den helt unikke situation, at børnene i Hjortøgade hver dag leger i lyset af farvespillet fra verdenskunsten på børnehavens vægge. Rigt illustreret med fotografier af Roberto Fortuna.

I forbindelse med udstillingen på SMK ”Sonja Ferlov Mancoba 9. februar – 5. maj 2019” udgives et rigt illustreret monografisk bogværk om kunstneren. Bogen består af en omfattende, fagfællebedømt oversigtsartikel over Sonja Ferlov Mancobas liv og værk skrevet af udstillingens kuratorer, Mikkel Bogh og Dorthe Aagesen, samt tre mindre artikler. Den første artikel er skrevet af kunsthistoriker Karen Kurczynski og omhandler Sonja Ferlov Mancoba og hendes partner, Ernest Mancoba, og deres tilknytning til COBRA. Den anden artikel, der er skrevet af antropolog Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, diskuterer ’primitivisme’-begrebet i vestlig kultur og kunst. Endelig har forfatter Hanne-Vibeke Holst skrevet en artikel om Sonja Ferlov Mancoba ud fra en mere privat og personlig-feministisk vinkel på baggrund af en brevveksling, hun førte med sin veninde Clarisse Penso. Ud over de fire artikler bringes tekster og breve af Sonja Ferlov Mancoba selv, interviews, arkivmaterialer fra hendes atelier samt serier af helt nye optagelser af hendes gips- og lerskulpturer, dvs. de værker hun selv har ’haft i hænderne’.

A leading figure of the postwar avant-garde, Danish artist Asger Jorn has long been recognized for his founding contributions to the Cobra and Situationist International movements - yet art historical scholarship on Jorn has been sparse, particularly in English. This study corrects that imbalance, offering a synthetic account of the essential phases of this prolific artist’s career. It addresses his works in various media alongside his extensive writings and his collaborations with various artists' groups from the 1940s through the mid-1960s. Situating Jorn's work in an international, post-Second World War context, Karen Kurczynski reframes our understanding of the 1950s, away from the Abstract-Expressionist focus on individual expression, toward a more open-ended conception of art as a public engagement with contemporary culture and politics. Kurczynski engages with issues of interest to twenty-first-century artists and scholars, highlighting Jorn's proposition that the sensory address of art and its complex relationship to popular media can have a direct social impact. Perhaps most significantly, this study foregrounds Jorn's assertion that creativity is crucial to subjectivity itself in our increasingly mediated 'Society of the Spectacle.'