Grounded in the Landscape of Denmark

‘Because I’m from Denmark, my career has developed slowly,” says Per Kirkeby, an artist who’s been critically acclaimed in Europe since the 1970s but has taken 33 years to mosey out to L.A.

The subject of an exhibition at L.A. Louver Gallery, Kirkeby’s work has been shown regularly since 1964 throughout Europe, where he’s represented by heavyweight dealer Michael Werner. He has published more than 60 books of poetry, essays and fiction, directed a dozen films, collaborated on performances with Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik, and is a certified geologist and occasional archeologist. It is his paintings and sculpture however, that command the most attention.

Peculiar abstractions that give equal weight to line and form, Kirkeby’s work was once described by critic Peter Schjeldahl as looking as if “different kinds of pictures ended up on the same canvas by accident.” They’re singular pictures indeed and have an ungainly, lumbering power that keeps you looking and trying to puzzle out what Kirkeby’s up to. Often linked to the landscape tradition of Constable and Turner, the work has more layers than that, in Kirkeby’s view.

“I can’t deny the presence of landscape in my work,” says the 58-year-old artist in an interview at the gallery. “I don’t like being called a landscape painter, though, because that label suggests the paintings are harmless.

“Still, we’re all marked by where we came from in inescapable ways. The landscape of Denmark is flat; there’s lots of sky, and the light is gray and soft because it’s moist,” continues the artist, an elegant, articulate man who clearly enjoys discussing ideas. “As is true of all painters, I’m sure I’m influenced by my environment, but I never look at it for that purpose; it just sneaks in. Our home in Copenhagen is by the sea, and I swim naked in the ocean every damn day, even in winter--so yes, I feel a strong connection to nature there.”

In listening to Kirkeby talk about his life, it becomes apparent that his frame of reference encompasses much beyond the Danish landscape. “I grew up during the occupation and in the postwar years, and I remember the war very well,” says the artist, in L.A. for a week with his wife, film producer Vibeke Windelov, and their 12-year-old son, the youngest of Kirkeby’s four children.

“Denmark came out of the war relatively intact, but the years following the war were difficult. My father was a civil engineer, ours was a working-class family and, like many Danes after the war, my parents were Communists. These leftists collected a certain type of art--Picasso and such--but that was the extent of my exposure to art as a child.

“I was dyslexic as a child and, because of my problems in school, I turned to drawing, which I was good at. Then in fifth grade, I saw an exhibition of masterworks from Vienna at the Danish National Gallery, and from then on I wanted to be a painter. However, I began university in 1957, a time when Denmark was still very poor, and felt I owed it to my parents to learn something practical, so I studied geology, knowing I’d never use it,” says the artist, whose last field expedition was in 1966. “Nobody dreamed of a career in art then because there was simply no money in it.”

Kirkeby nonetheless went on to study art after earning his degree in geology. A student at Copenhagen’s Experimental Art School from 1962 to ‘64, he remembers those years as “incredibly exciting. The Fluxus movement had a presence in Copenhagen, the International Situationists were active then--it was a vital period, and all the young European artists knew about each other.”

Of his relationship with the legendary Beuys, Kirkeby says, “We met in 1965, and at the time I thought of him simply as an artist who’d been a German soldier. The mythology around Beuys is something he created, and you can easily take it apart and see the nasty elements in it. He was a great artist, but I couldn’t stand his politics.”

At the time, Kirkeby was making work he describes as “Danish Pop art. I’d never actually seen any Pop art, though, so in 1965 I spent six months in New York with my first wife, who was pregnant. We rented a lousy room on Broadway and, despite the fact that my English was terrible, I got a phone book and started calling people--[Allan] Kaprow, [Claes] Oldenburg, [George] Maciunas. I visited them all, saw the Velvet Underground and finished my first novel “2,15,” there. It’ll never be a bestseller,” he says, laughing, “but I think it’s great. It’s about the royal family, Brigitte Bardot, gambling and the principle of randomness.

“At the end of the ‘60s I felt completely lost,” he continues. “I wanted to start from scratch and learn what it meant to take a pencil, look at something and try to translate what you see into a line, so in 1971 I visited the Maya ruins of Mexico with two friends. That trip was a huge turning point and was the beginning of these paintings,” he says gesturing around the room.

Of his allegiance to painting, a practice that’s been out of favor more than it’s been in over the course of his career, he says: “Painting resists the idea of progress, and that allows it to continually renew itself over the centuries. I’ve lived through periods when painting was declared dead, but I always found a way to adapt painting to whatever the new ideas in art were. I work on several paintings at a time, and if I get stuck on one, I go hang around another painting for a while,” says Kirkeby, who makes his creative process sound like a form of loitering.

Kirkeby’s work isn’t widely known in L.A., but anyone who’s seen Lars Von Trier’s film, “Breaking the Waves,” has seen it: Kirkeby executed a series of landscapes Von Trier uses in the film to divide its story into chapters.

“It’s a great work, but Lars knew that without small intermissions, it would be unbearable,” says Kirkeby of the film, which was produced by his wife. “He asked me to come up with images, and I made some paintings on a computer that are kitsch enough that you could almost imagine the characters in the story hanging them in their homes. They also have a sentimentality that works well with the music Lars uses for those sequences.”

Kirkeby’s own body of work as a filmmaker includes a documentary on the late Danish artist Asger Jorn (who was a founding member of Cobra, a movement launched in Paris in 1948 that had affinities with American Abstract Expressionism), and an action film called “The Vikings.”

“It was a mixture of philosophical thesis, spaghetti western and lots of heads being chopped off. Nobody was making films with heads being chopped off then, so it took lots of searching to find someone who could arrange that for the film,” he says with a laugh. “I stopped making films because they take too much time, and as you get older, you want to simplify your life.”

He claims he’s simplified his life? Kirkeby says he always has a show somewhere in Europe; last year he designed sets for the Royal Danish Ballet’s production of “Swan Lake,” done under the direction of Peter Martins; and he’s working on another ballet with Martins. They also plan to stage “Swan Lake” in New York next year; last year, he designed a museum that begins construction this May in Jutland; and he has several other architectural projects in the works. Last year, he also painted the ceiling of a medieval church in Jutland. This was thrilling for Kirkeby, who reveres Byzantine art. “That was probably the highest thing, to make images of or for God,” he says.

Of his output as a writer--which includes critical studies on Kurt Schwitters, Picasso, Delacroix and Manet, volumes of poetry and excerpts from his journals--Kirkeby says, “I’m still working on books but stopped journal writing when I realized I was using daily entries to dam up all the dark things and keep my life in an order that was very superficial.”

In parting, Kirkeby is asked if there’s anything that was important to him as a young artist that no longer seems so pressing. He replies, “A young artist needs to be part of his time, but at a certain point, that stops being important. I suppose you could say a young artist is in dialogue with his generation, but for an older artist, the dialogue is with history.

“One belief I had as a young artist has remained constant, though. I always vowed I’d never say ‘it’s all been done before’ when confronted with work by young artists. Ultimately, we’re all redoing things that have been done before, and you sense that clearly when you stand before an ancient painting in a cave. It feels as though the guy who drew that buffalo was there just yesterday. And me? Here I am repeating it.”

*

“PER KIRKEBY: NEW WORK,” L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice. Dates: Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Ends Feb. 15. Phone: (310) 822-4955.