Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen
Three little children are busy on the ceiling of a courtroom painted by Valdemar Andersen.
Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen
Painted a hundred years ago this year they are not contoured. They are modulated in lighter layers of the same colour of the ceiling as if they are plaster decorations in three dimensions. The modulation makes them seem fully rounded babies that could be lifted out from their ceiling.
Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen
Not that they need our protection. That projection is ours seeing that they are too young to walk and should not have been left on their own. Yet, they are putti; the mythological decorative beings whose function it is to create movement, drama and possibly a bit of mischief.
All three have thin baby hair flowing behind them, so that even sitting still they seem busy exploring or deducting.
Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen
Being putti in a courtroom they present three sides of the truth to us. They do not confront us. That part is for the court to determine.
Besides, the confrontational one belongs to one of Valdemar Andersen's best-loved posters made 13 years prior for a charity to help lifting children out of poverty. This too was a nude baby, in his case placed on a cold white surface, from which the spectator immediately felt the need lift him out.
Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen
These children are by no means alone. Each child is flanked by protective guards in the shape of swans warning us to keep our distance.
When explaining the line of Valdemar Andersen a swan's neck is the shape that springs to mind, metaphorically and in this case very definitely so.
His line is vertical of nature, it is not grounded, but as if floating on air and most importantly there is a soft willowing to it, moving to the one side and the other while still defining exactly what it set out to do.
The acanthus leaves mirror the swan wings and in unison with the flying baby hair the ceiling is one of presence as it is lightness and air.
Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen
Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen
