The Daily Valdemar No. 1: March 13

Valdemar Andersen, Cover for the satirical magazine Klods-Hans, No. 51, September 16, 1910.

The world is a troubled place. It was no less a troubled place a century ago during the lifetime of Valdemar Andersen. Many of our problems today are in fact reminisces from back then or the very same in that nothing has been solved in the meantime.

Valdemar strived to create a place for relief for his beholders if just for a moment. Not as a means to close his or our eyes to all that is wrong, but because we need that space take in the feeling of calm before continiuing our life's journey.

So from today when his old town of Copenhagen is on its first day of closing down from the covid-19 virus, this blog will have a daily cartoon by Valdemar for us to pause and enjoy the lightness of his pen and how he created presence out a few lines.

The cartoon of today is a cover for a magazine on one of the busy streets from his own home leading to the town hall square in Copenhagen. The town hall itself is not in sight, but we get full view to the hotel next to it. It was newly built the year of the cartoon and Valdemar happened to have created decorations for the hotel, so the cartoon comes with built in advertising. First and foremost the bustle of the street is defined by the emancipated women on bicycles.

Their bikes are hardly drawn, but for a vertical line for their seats and two horizontal ones for the back wheels. The fashion of 1910 at once disguised and undressed the female form and their form billows in soft curves before us. Yet they remain as light as the strokes dotted about to indicate the creasing of their sleeves. The inspiration from Japanese woodprints is to be found in the composition placed at an angle just as in the color blocking in lieu of shadows. The pattern of the front dress is made with a swirl and twist of the brush of the same size all through the dress.

Her dress happens to open to the scenery before us and from what the composition tells us, we are ourselves bicyclists on our way into town. Valdemar transformed the familiar into a little piece of art.