Jubilæumsfald: Landsudstillingen 1909
CENTENNIAL FALL: THE NATIONAL EXHIBITION 1909
The present blog post was originally published in Danish
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| Valdemar Andersen: Poster for The National Exhibition in Aarhus, 1909. Designmuseum Danmark - the photo was taken by me for study purposes hence the poor quality for which I excuse. |
This night hundred years ago Valdemar Andersen fell to the ground from a scaffold.
It happened just a few hours before the formal opening of "Landsudstillingen" (The National Exhibition) in Aarhus on May 18, 1909, and everyone worked day and night to be ready on time. Valdemar had been standing on a wooden ladder placed on top of a wooden scaffold, which in turn stood atop another wooden scaffold while he was working on the dome of the Tuborg triumphal arch at the entrance:
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| - And a very grainy detail to spot the globe of "Tuborg Beer" and the frontispiece of the arc. |
A terrifying height from which to be taking a fall.
Valdemar was a tiny contortionist who would be using
downspouts for a ladder when he wished to surprise friends in their attic
apartment (whether he ever used the same road upwards to reach his own
apartment in an attic is no longer known). But even the most agile can make one
wrong fatigued step: He fell to the ground a few hours after midnight...
Luck had it that he fell a few meters from a fence
that would have killed him on the spot. He plunged directly onto the soft (=
wet, it rained constantly that year) soil. He broke next to everything in the
left side on his body, but his life was saved. On the way to the hospital his
constant words were reported to have been the angry outburst: "reckless,
irresponsible!" in that safety had been so massively neglected.
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| Photo: The Weekly Hver8Dag, 1909 |
Valdemar was the leading artist on the National Exhibition
with about 10 men working for him for six months. Valdemar is marked in red, wearing a cap:
The King headed directly to the hospital from the
formal opening to visit the bruised and ruptured artist. His work had been so
extensive that he had become the star of the exhibition. What the two men
talked about has remained a secret as the newspaper "Extra Bladet"
reported. The same paper based in the capital was offended that Valdemar had
not even been mentioned in the opening speech in which the mayor focused on his
own city. "Politiken" another major newspaper based in Copenhagen
thought it rather difficult to even listen to the mayor when he so confusingly resembled
the former politician and minister who had just been put behind bars: Alberti.
At The National Exhibition as with any other monumental assignment a scaffold was constructed in situ. Entirely of wood as already mentioned:
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| Photo: The Weekly Hver8Dag, 1909. |
Note how they have but a strip of board behind them while working. Not even the boards underneath them look solid. Afterwards one of his men wrote to Valdemar how he felt he had spent the entire spring in a wobbly boat. The wood had been moving with their every move underneath them for 12-18 hours a day.
But the final outcome was fantastic. Such as one of
the boldest compositions imaginable on the politicians of the day (Alberti
excluded) in an antique setting of purples and yellows. The novelty of it on
Danish ground is made obvious when compared to the bids for the central poster
for the exhibition. All the bids received from other artists were of this
nature: 
Mother Denmark, interweaving patterns inspired by the Vikings, declarations of yearning, longing and a tendency to tearing up at the thought of the young lost in war. Everything that the architect responsible for the exhibition had wanted to get rid of. So Valdemar took it upon him to do the poster too - in gold, red and green as a dynamic fanfare leading directly to the heart of Aarhus.
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| Valdemar Andersen: Detail from the poster for The National Exhibition in Aarhus, 1909. Designmuseum Danmark - the photo was taken by me for study purposes hence the poor quality for which I excuse. |
Aarhus is about to initiate the centennial celebrations
of the National Exhibition. In the meanwhile the focus has shifted from the
national element to that of the city itself which has its raison. This type of
exhibitions with its gigantic proportions showing off what the industry and the
world of the burlesque could offer was on its last legs in the first decade of
the 20th century. This particular show emerged on the other side with a
substantial deficit: The needed amounts of guests were simply not met to win
back the money spent on it all.
But if exhibitions were fast becoming obsolete, the location
of this exhibition meant everything to Aarhus as a city. It was an opportunity
to define the values of the city independently of Copenhagen and delineate its
future possibilities, its here and now and its history. The Open Air Museum was
founded here - in the middle of the living city – as one instance of the iconic
value Aarhus gained from The Exhibition.
Aarhus has a lot to celebrate. Valdemar will but
rarely be mentioned. He was after all a Copenhagener.
