Valdemar Andersen, sketch for the triskele for Johannes V. Jensen, 1916.
Privately owned. Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen.
What defines a life's work of an artist? Could it be a symbol drawn for an author and friend to be used as a visual signature on the cover of his books?
Then again, really?
Valdemar Andersen, sketches for the triskele for Johannes V. Jensen, 1916.
Shown with permission from The Centre for Maps, Prints and Photographs, The Royal Library.
I apologize for the poor quality of the photo; it was taken by me for study purposes.
The author Johannes V. Jensen had found the inspiration for his triskele symbol on a
silver cauldron dating from about the last centuries before or first centuries CE. The three parts of the symbol are eating off or egging each other on into forming a constantly renewed wheel of energy. Whatever it has been intended to symbolise through the ages it comprises the stages of birth, death and rebirth.
Johannes V. Jensen had staged himself as a forceful voice just before 1900. He had set out to declare a new era in which he was an embodiment of the height of civilisation. His declaration was standing all the taller by positioning itself atop the development of history till then. The cauldron was one piece of evidence of this end. It had been created in the area of what is Bulgaria and Romania today from where it travelled far and wide to be dug out of the ground two millennia later close to the place where he grew up. Time and place united in him. He was meant to be a centrifugal force creating energy from what had hitherto been inertia. To this end the triskele was his perfect symbol.
This, however, is all about the author...
... such as it is when the work in question was created as an assignment. This one in particular was a fairly strict one with a specific first inspiration and a final visual structure that was a given beforehand.
Even so the sketches do show that it was not straightforward to get the proportions right. It is at once a circle and triangle and Valdemar Andersen worked his way through that combination a couple of times to find a balance between the two.
He saw to that each leg of the triskele was rounded into a human leg and foot, which at first had hints of toes. Ultimately each leg was rounded off in an upward curve, which in unison with the thick contour gives it softness and a slight touch of humour.
It is a symbol that has been used for millennia, but whose presence is uncomfortable to say the least on the other side of the Nazi regime. When Hitler and his criminals made their first entrance on the scene in Munich 1923 Johannes V. Jensen had to state that he was not AT ALL connected with them nor did he have any sympathy for their doings.
However, it is never a healthy position to have to constantly write out that NO, NO I DO NOT and to add to the creeping, uncomfortable feeling of the signature triskele Valdemar Andersen was assigned to do another cover for Johannes V. Jensen that very same year.
Valdemar Andersen, sketch for the cover of Madame d'Ora by Johannes V. Jensen, 1916.
Privately owned. Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen.
Madame d'Ora is a novel exposing decadence and deceit complete with séances calling out spirits. An almost nude medium is at hand. Everything is veiled and covert with everybody degenerated and underdeveloped. The author's definition of the "female nature" is ridiculed at every level.
We do not know which brief Valdemar Andersen was given for the cover, but we do know that Johannes V. Jensen was generally very specific in his wishes to a degree that Valdemar would be presented with images to work from to get the details right. Johannes V. Jensen would require the cover or illustration to be worked over again and again until it met his requirements. To put it bluntly: working for Johannes V. Jensen must have been pure hell.
For Madame d'Ora Valdemar Andersen drew a young woman exposed in her frontal nudity while holding on to the last figment of her being by veiling herself behind her hair. Just as for the triskele her anatomy was gradually toned down to a mere outline on the final cover. Her outline, however, is softly undulating. She is vulnerable and we share her uneasiness when seeing her, which is far from what Johannes V. Jensen would have wanted and probably, did not see himself in her.
1916 was the year too, in which Valdemar painted his precious little son and the latter's cousin in
a sea of flowers. This one he signed - as he would normally sign even his book covers - placing his signature in the very middle of the canvas just as he did when he made his
portrait of Johannes V. Jensen. Valdemar was deciding every step of the way for himself to a degree that his friend never found any interest in hanging the portrait on his own walls. It remained with Valdemar and his family.
Besides, while we are highlighting specific years: in 1923 when Johannes V. Jensen first had to underline with whom he was NOT associated, Valdemar was playing chess with the expressionist Jais Nielsen. The latter was among the young artists, who had been denoted "intentionally psychopathic" by the virologist Carl J. Salomonsen two years before. Anyone could see that Jais Nielsen painted figures without brains the way their heads were constructed, according to Salomonsen.
Valdemar was continually expanding his circle of friends among
the young and experimenting. For this reason it is possible to decipher with great accuracy when his works were made. He experimented with his own line developing it at least every two years. The Valdemar Andersen of 1923 is worlds away from Valdemar Andersen anno 1916.
Back in 1916 Valdemar created the uncials for yet another book of Johannes V. Jensen of which the one below is far from Johannes V. Jensen's white male stunning a wild beast by staring it into its eyes. Valdemar gives the win to the lion with a sense that the lion is in on fun. This is one happy tail-curling lion.
And that is what defines Valdemar Andersen.
Valdemar Andersen, sketch for uncial for Eksotiske Noveller
(i.e. Exotic Short Stories) by Johannes V. Jensen, 1916.
The original is about 4 cm. tall.
Privately owned. Photo: Niels C.B. Larsen.
We do not know which brief Valdemar Andersen was given for the cover, but we do know that Johannes V. Jensen was generally very specific in his wishes to a degree that Valdemar would be presented with images to work from to get the details right. Johannes V. Jensen would require the cover or illustration to be worked over again and again until it met his requirements. To put it bluntly: working for Johannes V. Jensen must have been pure hell.
