Thomas Bo Jensen:
per kirkeby / architecture
Per Kirkeby is best known for his visual art. He did, however, have a life-long passion for architecture that manifested itself in his writing, visual art, and sculptures and culminated in a number of buildings erected in the latter part of his career. The book gives an impression of Per Kirkeby’s overall architecture output and also shows that rather than being an appendix to Per Kirkeby’s visual art, it was a central part of his way of thinking and work as an artist.
The book is the result of several years of research into Per Kirkeby’s comprehensive archives that included numerous conversations between the author and the artist. The many well-preserved drawings from Kirkeby’s childhood and youth have made it possible to document a hitherto unknown context in his artistic universe.
Thomas Bo Jensen is an architect and professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture. He has previously written monographs about the master builder P.V. Jensen-Klint and the architects Inger and Johannes Exner.
Issued: February 2019
Features: 312 pages, full color, hard cover
Format: Large format 30x26 cm
Languages in separate versions:
English version ISBN 978-87-91567-28-9
Danish version ISBN 978-87-91567-30-0
Price: € 60 / DKK 450 Incl. Vat
Excluding forwarding expenses
REVIEW - Per Kirkeby- Architecture
Thomas Bo Jensen
Edition Bløndal
Stepping outside Humblebæk station, some 35 kilometers north of Copenhagen, the first thing you see is a square, colonnaded, red brick structure some 2-storeys high. But walking past it on the way to the Louisiana museum that lies a few hundred metres along the road, there is a realisation that it is unoccupied, in fact empty – no roof, no windows, and despite three arched openings at first floor, there is no upper floor. This is for most people the first interaction with Per Kirkeby’s brick sculptures and while its uncertain function may confuse, it leaves a sense of mystery, anonymity, of place. It is beautifully crafted, with an architect’s touch in detail.
But Kirkeby was not an architect, rather an artist. For most architects in the UK, he remains unknown – and this is a great shame as his work is now internationally recognised. While a great painter, it was to be his obsession with mursten, bricks, that would leave an enduring imprint.
Having worked with the one-man publisher Torsten Bløndal over many years on a number of books on the Danish architects Utzon and Wohlert, the one thing that sets Torsten apart from most publishers for me is his obsession with quality – not just in the contents, but the actual book – the paper, the layout – the actual thing itself so that his books are wonderful to hold. This book on Kirkeby’s architecture is such a thing. Beautifully produced, immaculately printed on creamy paper, perfectly laid out to reinforce the joy of holding a book rather than a tablet.
Kirkeby was a Danish artist, poet, sculptor and film maker – trained as a geologist, his work always embraced something about nature and its structures so while his work was abstract it remained rooted in Danish landscape, earning his paintings the title of ‘lyrical expressionism. He also had a lifelong passion for architecture, and his sculptures were essentially buildings rooted in his love of the humble brick. Perhaps growing up in the suburb of Copenhagen in the shadow of Peder Vilhem-Klint’s Grundtvig church with its 5.5 million bricks seeded this passion.
The use of brick in architecture is ubiquitous, but in the modern era it is the work of Louis Kahn that brought nobility back to the humble brick. He famously asked the question, ‘what does a brick want to be?’– and the answer was – an arch. It was this respect for truth in construction that is shared by Kirkeby, but here he infuses his built structures – sculptures – with enigmatic force. Yes they are brick, but why are they there, what do they do?
Kirkeby built a further 17 brick sculptures in Denmark and 25 more in Europe, and with only a couple of exceptions, these were all red brick in stretcher bond. They were all freestanding, mainly colonnaded, open and roofless.
Kirkeby continually worked with the idea of repetitive structures, generally in cubic form or in long zig-zag form, like a zipper. ‘It is the ordinary that is the mystical.’ wrote Kirkeby, and his sculptures prove that. Philosopher Bryan Magee touched on the mystical in art when he said that, 'Art doesn't say things, it shows them. And what it shows can't be said.'
Bricks have served civilisation for over 10,000 years from a handmade lump of clay baked in the sun, to machine-made, moulded bricks fired in a kiln. Nothing has really changed – Kirkeby was to write that, ‘No matter how we toss and turn brick…there is no one on this earth, whether from Bali or Trondheim, who can escape the fact that brick has something historic to it.’
The book, written by Thomas Bo Jensen, a Professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture takes a lyrical tour through Kirkeby’s thinking, his paintings, his brick sculptures, right up to a number of actual buildings between 1988 up to 2009 – not so much buildings for occupation, rather a traffic control tower, an orangery and a bus stop. During this period he also fulfilled his ambition to build several works of architecture – a Stone House for a geologist’s collection, an extension to a couple of Danish museums (in red brick of course, inside and out) – and finally three chapels – these were exhibition pavilions. A small cluster of a wedge-shaped, linked, red brick buildings, all with pointed roofs. The spaces were however pure white to provide a backdrop for art, and top-lit, only a knotty spruce floor provides texture.
Kirkeby’s work is wonderful and lingers in the mind, the book a fitting testimony to a great artist.
John Pardey, Architect
Rezension
Thomas Bo Jensen
Per Kirkeby/Architecture
Edition Bløndal 2019
Das Buch
Wenn der Band von Thomas Bo Jensen auf dem Tisch liegt, wirkt er repräsentativ und gewichtig. Aber schon die Collage auf dem Buchdeckel zeigt an, dass im Inneren nichts Massives, sondern Feingliedriges auf den Leser wartet; also eher etwas wie die reichhaltige Darstellung auf der Vorderseite. Sie ist bis zum farbig schön gewählten Braun des Streifens vorne links angelegt und auf der Rückseite fortgesetzt. Gewichtig bedeutet gerade nicht schwer; denn die Ausstattung des Bandes vermittelt ein angenehmes Gefühl von Handhabbarkeit durch den Leser. Die Druckqualität hat exzellentes Niveau.
Im Buchblock selbst sieht der Benutzer sofort, dass die Struktur des Ganzen durch Kirkebys Collagen inspiriert ist, so dass eine Fülle von Bezügen hergestellt werden konnte. Sie geben den einzelnen Themen eine willkommene Weite und den nötigen Assoziationsraum. Hierin liegt einer der Vorzüge des Bandes.
Der Autor hat sich sinnvollerweise entschlossen, das Buch in zwei Teile zu gliedern. Zu Beginn behandelt er in einer Art Typologie Grundsätzliches, z. B. die biographischen Tatsachen, die für Kirkeby prägend waren. Es ist sicher überraschend und neu zu lesen, wie schon das Kind Per auf dem Junk-Spielplatz (Skrammellegeplatsen) in Bispebjerg sich mit Backstein, Holz und konstruktiven Versuchen spielerisch beschäftigt hat. In weiteren fünf Kapiteln werden Metaphern, Archetypen, tektonische Visionen, das große Ornament, Backsteine und „Reality’s Marbling“ dargestellt. Es folgen die ausgeführten und die nicht realisierten Bauten in monographischen Abhandlungen. Vierzehn Bauten konnten im Zeitraum von 1988 bis 2009 realisiert werden. Neunzehn Projekte zwischen 1976 bis 2015 blieben „ungebaute Architektur“. Unter diesen ist es besonders bedauerlich, dass der Entwurf für das Aarhus Art Museum von 1997 nicht ausgeführt wurde. Denn es hätte ein Ensemble von Gebäuden entstehen können, das die Idee des Museums als einer Erfindung des 18./19. Jahrhunderts ganz selbstverständlich in die Gegenwart fortgeführt hätte, ohne effekthascherisch zu verkrampfen.
Skulptur/Architektur – grundsätzliche Fragen
Als Rudolf Sagmeister 1997 für das Kunsthaus Bregenz in Österreich das Werkverzeichnis der Backsteinskulptur und Architektur erarbeitet und herausgegeben hat, wurden die beiden Felder - hier Skulptur, dort Architektur – nicht getrennt.
Schon als Kirkeby 1973 in Ikast seine erste dauerhafte Backsteinskulptur errichtete, stellte sich die Frage, ob es sich um Skulptur oder Architektur handelt, obwohl das hausähnliche Gebilde natürlich nicht bewohnbar ist. Wenn sich die Ästhetik der Backsteinskulpturen dem amerikanischen Minimalismus annähert, den Kirkeby für sich modifiziert und korrigiert hat, ist der skulpturale Charakter deutlich. Dies ist in den frühen Installationen aus einfach geschichteten Backsteinen der Fall. Aber sobald Ornamente, Treppen, Vorsprünge, Abstufungen erscheinen, zeigt sich das „unreine“ Element, das Kirkeby der industriellen Glätte amerikanischer Werke entgegensetzte. Schon an diesen Eigenschaften lässt sich die Tendenz zur Architektur erkennen. Aber es gibt eine weitere Kategorie von Backsteinskulpturen, nämlich diejenigen, die Passagen oder Durchgänge bieten.
Beispiele: Ballerup, Göteborg, Nakskov, Wanås Castle, Hellerup etc. Auch die Architekturen im Sinne von Thomas Bo Jensen bewahren sich den Ausgangspunkt von Backstein, aber sie verlieren notwendigerweise die Schatten, welche das Innere der Backsteinskulpturen attraktiv machen, und gewinnen stattdessen Festigkeit und Präzision.
Das ist das, was Bauten benötigen, die zu einem bestimmten Zweck bestimmt sind. Insofern gibt es eine kategoriale Trennung von Skulptur und Architektur, die jedoch durch das gemeinsame Baumaterial Backstein an Schärfe verliert. Vielleicht sind solche Überlegungen zu banal, als dass sie vom Autor ausführlicher behandelt werden.
Einen Sonderfall stellt die Gartenmauer des Museums in Ribe dar, die einen Raumbereich umschließt und auf diese Weise erst sichtbar macht. Wohin gehört dieses Gebilde? Gehört es in die Kategorie Ornament? Sicher auch, aber die Mauer hat weitere Dimensionen, da sie das Raumgefühl des Flaneurs im Museumsgarten verändert und lenkt.
Die bisherigen Ausführungen und der Katalog von Thomas Bo Jensen zeigen, dass es eine Struktur im Werk von Kirkeby gibt, die anders als bei anderen Künstlern in hohem Maße eine Osmose von allem mit allem erzeugt, einen Zusammenhang, der nicht das „Gesamtkunstwerk“ zum Ziel hat, sondern das einzelne Werk als Teil eines vom Künstler ausgehenden Energiefeldes sieht, das ästhetisch aufgeladen ist. Es ist der Gewinn des Buches, dass der Autor den Teil der Architektur aus diesem Feld herauspräpariert hat.
Zurück zum ersten Teil des Buches mit den schon erwähnten fünf Kapiteln, dazu lässt sich sagen: Hier bleibt kein Wunsch offen, was die Einbettung von Kirkebys Grundideen in seine Zeit, in sein Schaffen und zu ausgreifenden Quellen und Theorien betrifft.1 Breiten Raum nimmt hier die Bezugnahme auf den französischen Philosophen Gaston Bachelard (1884 – 1962) ein, der allerdings außerhalb Frankreichs erst spät, d. h. seit den achtziger Jahren rezipiert wurde. Es gab keine dänischen Übersetzungen, die Kirkeby hätte kennen können. Troels Andersen erinnert sich nicht, dass der Name Bachelard im Unterricht der Eks-Skole vorkam und genauso wenig gibt es Erwähnungen in den Texten, Tagebüchern oder sonstigen Aufzeichnungen von Kirkeby. Deshalb sind die entsprechenden Seiten bei Bo Jensen ein Gedankenexperiment, das eine gewisse Berechtigung hat, weil Bachelards Metaphern eine Nähe zu Kirkebys Ideen des Hauses, des Auges, der Höhle u.v.a. aufweisen. Es muss offen bleiben, ob Bachelards Archetypen und Metaphern spezifisch genug sind, d. h., ob sie nicht auf so viele künstlerische Ansätze zutreffen, dass sie das spezifisch Kirkeby’sche Denken nicht wirklich betreffen, sondern in einem Gedankenraum verharren, der sich genauso gut aus anderen, der Epoche zugänglichen Quellen, speist.
Es ist selbstverständlich, dass ein Buch über Kirkebys Architektur fokussiert sein muss, um das Genuine der Werke darstellen zu können. Das ist hier überzeugend gelungen. Wie immer bleiben Wünsche offen, z. B. die Frage nach den Bewegungen innerhalb der Werke; denn es gibt immer Richtungen, Verläufe, auch Anklänge an Prozesse der Natur wie das Wachstum, das Fließen oder das Aufragen (analog Felsen oder Bäumen).
Das schmälert den Wert der Publikation nicht, die von jetzt an als Summe und Referenz des architektonischen Schaffens von Kirkeby gelten kann.
Siegfried Gohr
En opbyggelig Kirkeby i fornemt format
En anmeldelse af
Thomas Bo Jensen: Per Kirkeby/Arkitektur. Edition Bløndal, 2019
Det er en væsentlig bog, ingen tvivl om det. Der er ganske vist skrevet og ment meget om Per Kirkeby, men denne bog er vægtet anderledes, idet den så at sige med fokus på arkitekturen i Kirkebys værk bygger et fundament til en større forståelse for nogle gennemgående linjer hos kunstneren Kirkeby. Og med en klar pointe om at arkitekturen også er en kunstart.
Thomas Bo Jensen har været på noget af en rejse i arkiverne, men har heldigvis også haft selskab af Per Kirkeby via samtaler helt frem til Kirkebys død i 2018. Ligesom John Ruskin, der med sine ”Arkitekturens syv lamper” skrev et hovedværk om arkitektur, så har Thomas Bo Jensen i tilsvarende syv kapitler skrevet en medrivende og indlevende gennemgang af Kirkebys fascination af murstenen som byggeklods. En fascination, der for Kirkeby begynder på skrammellegepladsen og fortsætter livet igennem som det fundament for kunstnerens billeddannelse, der skal vise sig at blive den signatur, der kendetegner et Kirkebyværk. Ligesom murstenen danner en basisstruktur i megen arkitektur, så rummer Kirkebys billeder på samme måde nogle basiselementer, der danner det skelet eller den struktur, som viser sig i værkerne. Som en guideline til hele livsværket er ”Per Kirkeby/Arkitektur” eksemplarisk – vi får på bedste pædagogiske vis stilladseret Kirkeby – for nu at udtrykke det pædagogisk-didaktisk.
Bogens styrke ligger i formatet; altså en klar og tydelig skribent, der uden at miste overblikket tillader sig at være detaljeret både i det kunsthistoriske, men bestemt også i det byggetekniske. Imponerende grundig; det fornemmes, at bogen er resultat af et forskningsprojekt. Men resultatet er ikke forskertungt formidlet; dertil er billedsiden simpelthen for indbydende. Naturligvis skal en kunstbog være billedrig. Og det er den. Bogen er gennemillustreret på den gode måde. Altså mange flotte billeder af værkerne, men mindst lige så vigtigt er det, at vi får syn for værkerne ved at kikke med i skitserne fra alle årene. Det er igen yderst prisværdigt – og pædagogisk.
De mursten, som bogen om Kirkeby hylder, viser sig at ligge som en slags forbandt mellem alle de forskellige udtryksformer, Kirkeby mestrede. De strukturer og mønstrer, som geologen Kirkeby tegnede på talrige Grønlandsrejser, indlejrer sig som det arkitektoniske princip, der binder kunstværkerne sammen. Thomas Bo Jensen præsenterer med ”Per Kirkeby/Arkitektur” et blik på billedkunsten, der inspirerer til at arbejde med eleverne ud fra en grundantagelse om, at det er i krydsfeltet mellem udtryksformerne at megen kunst opstår. Og så kan vi tillige lære en del af de benspænd, som arkitekturen nødvendigvis må arbejde med. At stille krav til værket for at få værket til at hænge sammen. Lidt ligesom Kirkebys fortrukne halvstens løberforbandt – æstetisk og praktisk på en og samme tid.
Bogen er således hermed aldeles anbefalet; der er byggesten til mange forløb i både Billedkunst og Design og arkitektur.
Alf Gørup Theilgaard
Lektor i Billedkunst på Odsherreds Gymnasium og tidligere formand for Billedkunst- og Designlærerforeningen
Per Kirkeby Architecture according to Architecture Today, April 2019. Press for large view
Per Kirkeby Architecture according to Arquine, September 2019. Press for large view
Carl Brummer.
Thorvaldsen.
1. The Old Maya, 1971
2. Recollection of a visit at a Lacondon family in the rainforest, 1971
Per had this idea of filming both the Copenhagen Court House and the Carl Brummer houses in the Svanemølle precinct in the evening, when the buildings stood like silhouettes almost like the solidified lava in Myvatn in Iceland, or lit up by both the street lighting and the lights inside the house. At the houses in the Svanemølle precinct, the lights from the windows were an important element. We spent a number of evenings wandering around in the dark. I filmed the garnish mouldings on the Willumsen house in the same way as the ornamentation on the Maya ruins. Per never wrote a script, just a list of what I was to film – and then he left the rest to me.
On his trip to the land of the Mayas, Per had two types of sketchbook with him. His usual sketchbooks of course, but also his 8mm Eumig camera, which he made frequent use of during those years. He not only filmed a lot, he also edited his own films on a small viewer. Per was a member of ABCinema, which a couple of years earlier had occupied the National Film School, where I was a student. So when he wanted to sit and draw, he used to shove the Eumig into my hands and say with a smile: After all, you’ve been to the film school. I would certainly never have been admitted to the film school if I’d shown the film from the land of the Mayas.
Teit Jørgensen
The Latest Brick Works
(Bielefeld, Kröller-Muller, Bergen) – are for me a step into an area where there is hardly a crush. All of these brick sculptures are transparent, are penetrable thoroughfares that only acquire meaning when one walks through them. They are no longer enclosed, monolithic sculptures, even though photographs may give that impression. A photograph nearly always conveys a shape that is slightly obtuse and dismissive. The experience, on the other hand, will be that precisely this ‘reverse side’ (i.e. that which turns outwards to be photographed) dissolves into pure views (mostly of the sky) when passing through ‘The Sculpture’.
As I have already mentioned, this is an uncultivated area. Unnoticed, one might say. It is at any rate very important, I believe, for it to be done in an ‘unnoticed’ way to be successful. It must look so natural that almost no one thinks about it. For such a purpose, brick is of course extremely well-suited. So it ends up looking like a building, and in this way the constructive solutions gain authority and naturalness instead of randomness. For that is the problem when one enlarges a ‘normal’ sculpture’ to a size that one is physically able to move around in: that which in ‘normal’ size looks logical, is the expression of a necessity, becomes meaningless and radiates randomness when magnified up to the size of a building. Here, however, the constructional principles gain authority and a natural aura. To the point of becoming ‘unnoticed’.
Conversely, it is not a field in which the normal practitioners of building can give a convincing account of themselves.
Architects do not think in shapes, they think in buildings. And these works are precisely not buildings, even though they use the elements of buildings. They are meaningless. They make use of materials and methods that are normally linked to usable, useful things that no one would dream of questioning. So part of the effect made by these brick works comes from their being dressed up in the useful and sensible part of the world’s materials and methods, but retaining the inner provocation of the meaningless sculpture.
I have earlier constructed works that looked like buildings, houses, but which one could not really enter. They were monolithic, extremely large sculptures. The new ones do not look like houses. They are actually new, ungainly shapes when seen from the outside. But it is actually possible to go into them. And come out again. To pass through them.
Per Kirkeby, 1989
Håndbog (Handbook) / texts / Per Kirkeby 1991 / Around the Grundtvig Church
This is where I spent my first years. Up on Bispebjerg. Copenhagen, Denmark. The place where Frederiksborgej and Tagensvej meet and continue together out towards Søborg. Over on the other side lay Bispebjerg Cemetery’s crematorium.
On the ground floor lay a bookstore. I ran over there often and played. And also got books many years after we had moved to a completely different and distant quarter. On the corner was a dairy store with a friendly dairy-store lady. We often ran through the store. I can’t really remember what we came to when we ran through the store, a courtyard or another street — but I do remember that we ran through it. It was also safe there when we were afraid of the Germans. It was during the German occupation: streetcars drove over the plaza and there were many horse carts. Horses and horse droppings.
A long poplar avenue ran though the outermost part of the cemetery down to Utterslev Marsh. Which later played a curious, ambivalent role in my life: the wild and dangerous playground — summer in the reeds and winter on the ice — and an eerie place with children’s corpses that had been thrown out and battered. But that was not until later, especially when I had moved to a quarter that lay on the diametrically opposite end of the big marsh. The avenue here had something solemn and threatening about it. And something outdated. Which later made it easy to look at Böcklin and Feuerbach. The funeral-procession avenue.
The avenue was part of one of the axes that led up to the great church. And not the only Medieval element. Medieval understood as a kind of neo-Gothic utopia. The entire quarter had been built in the shadow of the church. There is a big church and there are little, low houses. It is Pugin’s dream of a Medieval urban society. Like a living illustration of the light — Medieval — part of contrasts. Which also fits in quite well with the fact that the church was built as a monument to Grundtvig, the Danish counterpoint to Ruskin. But just as Danish as Ruskin was English. This is why this enormous church was built with a Danish village church as its model, and not a cathedral. It is an over-dimensioned village church, said the architect. It was built from brick. By craftsmen, by masons whose equals could not be found anywhere else in the world at the time. There are no bearing concrete structures. It is also a Morris dream of good craftsmanship and human happiness. Brick is the Danish building material; we do not have any other natural material. It was those who built the Medieval village churches who used up the boulders in the moraine, so now there is only the moraine clay.
But what is truly amazing about the whole story is the time of its construction; from 1921 to 1940. This was the period of Modernism’s breakthrough. A late and wonderful anachronistic triumph for bricks. Both as an atmosphere — romantic-historic monumentality — and as a passionate cultivation of the hand’s brick in enormous textural surfaces and forms.
The housing around it is a Medieval town that lies at the foot of the cathedral, in its shadow. The Gothic-like atmosphere in the gables, portal tunnels, and little courtyards left an inescapable taste in me for atmospheric Gothic. Corners and slouching half-timbering, puppet theaters, and Doré. It has stayed with me. I am not a landscape painter; I come from a city. There are more vertical shafts and falls, ambivalent fear and The Fall — there is far more there than horizontal spread. But perhaps it is the Space in the pictures, the threatening and paradoxical, brick space that evokes some conceptions of a landscape. Because “landscape painting” has the same space, in a way behind the surface’s often harmless character. That the effect is increased because tension is so strong between the surface and the space. And landscape painting has, after all, always in principle been done from the cities.
The buildings around the church are in reality solid Danish brick structures. Perhaps the atmosphere has only emerged as a cross between the bricks’ historic burden and my childhood. Later, I saw the clear and modern brick ornaments. Such as the superb door frames.
It is more difficult to make history of the church’s monolithic and repellent forms. I be-lieve that this is where I had been imprinted with some of the structures that lie in all my pictures. Both the paintings and the sculptures. But perhaps this is my own fiction. But it is clear in any case that the church, with its dimensioning and proportions, com-pletely emancipates itself from historical illustration material. The reason for these large brick figures is Danish Medieval churches, but they surpass their models and become inexplicable. For me, the church does not belong to the Gothic, but has more of Classicism in the spirit of Boullé and Ledoux. And just like their blocks’ conscien-tious shapes that with their bodies explore and challenge the Gothic space. Which has only led them to bristle and stretch out into the space even more defiantly. [...]
Per Kirkeby
