Asger Jorn: The Open Hide

Published on the occasion of the exhibition May 5 — July 29, 2016. “Asger Jorn: The Open Hide” offers a concise overview of the diverse accomplishments of Danish artist Asger Jorn (1914–1973). Edited by acclaimed Jorn scholars Axel Heil and Roberto Ohrt, the book comprises over 75 images of Jorn's work, each with complete provenance, exhibition and literature history. A comprehensive biography of the artist is also included, along with photographs and other archival material. For Jorn, a founding member of the Cobra and Situationist International movements, art was an expression of life, of activism, of an unedited freedom not confined to studio practice. “An Asger Jorn can be garish, florid, tasteless, forced, cute, flatulent, overemphatic; it can never be vulgar,” wrote art historian T.J. Clark, who once declared Jorn “the greatest painter of the 1950s.” As the Cobra artists undergo widespread critical reassessment, this volume helps to retrieve and contextualize Jorn's significance.