13 June – 1 September 2013

Ole Broager: Jens.

Mirrors, electric guitars and sheets of marble. The artist’s association known as the Decembrists take over Thorvaldsens Museum with off-beat and unpredictable works playing up to Bertel Thorvaldsen’s classical sculptures.

About the Exhibition

The setting for the Decembrists’ exhibition is anything but a neutral, architectonic framework and it is surprising to see what happens in the meeting between classical art, modern art and colourful architecture. With materials such as rugs, high-heeled shoes and concrete, distributed throughout the many galleries in the museum, the Decembrists relate in a quite tangible sense to Thorvaldsen’s sculptures and the museum’s architecture, and each artist has thus produced a work explicitly designed for a specific setting.

The Decembrists

The group of artists known as the Decembrists exhibited for the first time in December 1928. Neither at that time nor now have the Decembrists been held together by an explicit artistic programme or a specific artistic idiom. On the contrary, an imagery pointing in several different directions has been a special quality. In recent years, the Decembrists have taken up the many challenges facing artists’ associations and experimented with different ways of bringing the artist-governed organizational form into a contemporary context. And indeed, the group is even today very much made up of individualists.

Artists 2013

Bank & Rau (Guests): Room 1
Dorris Bloom: Room 2
Ole Broager: Room 18
Elmer: Museum Shop Area
Henrik Flagstad: Room 20
Sys Hindsbo: The Courtyard
Deirdre J. Humphrys (Guest): Room 11
Ellen Hyllemose: Landing (by Herkules)
Birgit Johnsen & Hanne Nielsen: Room 17
Heine Kjærgaard Klausen: Room 7
Oda Knudsen: The Christ Gallery
Jørgen Carlo Larsen: Room 3
Henrik Menné : Room 9
Bodil Nielsen: Room 21
Jesper Rasmussen: Grand Hall
Steen Møller Rasmussen: Room 4
Ane Mette Ruge: Room 8
Hans Christian Rylander: Grand Hall
Andreas Schulenburg (Guest): Room 15

Thanks

The exhibition, the exhibition catalogue and the artists have received support from Beckett Fonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, Konsul George Jorck og Hustru Emma Jorck’s Fond, Københavns Billedkunstudvalg, Statens Kunstråds Billedkunstudvalg and Toyota-Fonden.

AS IN NATURE
The Sculptor Mogens Bøggild

21 March – 1 September 2013

Mogens Bøggild, Radio Sculpture. Erected 1950.

Mogens Bøggild (1901-1987) was the greatest naturalist sculptor in Denmark in the 20th century. With sketches and models for major public monuments such as the Radio Sculpture in front of Radiohuset, the Danish “Broadcasting House”, in Rosenørns Allé and the Ceres Fountain in front of the town hall in Aarhus, Thorvaldsens Museum is for the first time mounting an exhibition focused on the works of Bøggild that are on show in public places.

About the Exhibition

The exhibition is specifically concerned with sculptures by Bøggild standing in places in which they are generally on view to the public: the Ceres Fountain in Aarhus, the Bear Fountain in Nykøbing Falster, the Radio Sculpture in Copenhagen, Stag and Boar at Hillerød, the Boar Fountain at Sønderborg Castle and Two Sisters at Glostrup. Of course, we are not exhibiting the actual works. They are where they are and they are accessible to all. The same does not, however, apply to the essential preparatory materials in the form of sketches and models such as are being put on show here. The aim of the exhibition is to gain a new understanding of the finished sculptures with the help of these sketches – probing right down to the premises on which they were made and seeking to reveal the thoughts the artist had in each case.

And the sketches and models are no less interesting than the finished works, as Bøggild had a predilection for the work associated with the sketch and the actual processes. He may well have been slow to produce the finished works, but his hands moved with lightning speed when modelling his sketches. He worked with a will and clearly felt a sensuous delight in the clay in which he was working.

With its focus on sketches and models, the exhibition represents an extension and what might be termed an afterlife in the public sphere. It interacts with what is outside and it relates to these works. After seeing the exhibition, visitors will wish to view the works in their finished forms. The sketches and models are intended to provide greater delight in and insight into the sculptures, which many people have not been able to avoid noticing even if they have not quite been aware of the artist’s name. It is this that the exhibition seeks to correct.

A Sharp Eye for nature

The special quality about the sculptor Mogens Bøggild is that he put naturalness above everything else. At a time when art was to be abstract, he, as a naturalist, always insisted on taking the study of nature as his starting point. It was his view that the artist who failed to acknowledge the observation of nature as the basis of all art ran a great risk of being superficial or of going off at a tangent.

So Bøggild usually sought his motifs among animals. And it was above all the dramatic aspects of animal life and the capturing of a particular moment that especially concerned him: the animal caught in the midst of a specific movement such as the eagle flapping its wings, the piglets running around and the stag uttering its cry. But Bøggild’s animal motifs nevertheless also tell us about human beings. They are all concerned with human existence. When we see the Ceres Fountain, also known as the Pig Fountain we are not only to think of a sow with its young, but also of a mother with her children.

Thanks

The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue containing texts by the museum director, Stig Miss, the curator William Gelius and Rasmus Kjærboe of Aarhus University, has received support from the Beckett Foundation, the Billedhuggeren, Professor Gottfred Eickhoff og Hustru Fond, Maleren Gerda Eickhoffs Fond, Knud Højgaards Fond, Oda og Hans Svenningsens Fond and Overretssagfører L. Zeuthens Mindelegat.

The exhibition is arranged by curator William Gelius and Ulla Norton Kierkgaard.