Do you think that art is superfluous? Do you think that the artist is superfluous in our society today?

The moderns, yes – the genuine ones, no. This question pops up every time I mention all about modern art’s uselessness. The problem is that the artists are not adequately conscious about society because art’s norms alone are egoisms. The artist removes him- or herself from the population (isn’t that which is called “art mediation” the best possible expression for the fact that art has abandoned culture?). The supermarket lady does not remove herself from art or from the artist. The artist has completely different interests, separate from serving his or her society. Earlier on, the artist always had a serving function (and this – this “serving” – is still the very meaning of art). Now he has become an intellectual “guru”, high cultural and highly elevated above the supermarket lady. He’s not taking care of his society, and he is neglecting beyond any description the space that he has been given in society. Modern art is not only superfluous: it is harmful.

What do you think the artist should do? What is his task? 

She and he must beautify, embellish and humanize. There is something that is called radiantly coloured, uplifting, ennobling, inspiring – that’s what the image-spreaders have to take care of: that is the task, and that’s what is necessary. They do not need to make pictures at all. All these modern small swatches of canvas, with frames around them, which are commodities for sale and investment objects that have nothing to do with culture. On the contrary – society is being destroyed. 

How did you get started with the large-scale decoration projects? Were you asked to do them?

The first of the two large ones – well, it was the Kunstfonden [Danish Art Foundation] that asked me whether I could do a picture for one of two walls at the hospital in Herlev. Then, the assignment was there in front of me for a good many years. There were so many obstacles and postponements that I, for one thing, became involved in a lot of other matters at the hospital and, for another, spread myself over a number of walls. The decoration grew from a 20m2 picture to being approximately 500m2.

Was it you who came forth with the proposal to colour the rooms? Or were you asked to do this? This is indeed rather unconventional at a hospital.

It was the outcome of a development. But at the time, I had been living from restoring and re-painting, in new and other ways, different environments: for example, for the Copenhagen Municipality holiday camps. The holiday camps were supposed to be restored and refurbished. But I was also messing around with what is called “environment,” and there was a change in what was for me, at the time, not a particularly conscious sense that an artistic execution does not necessarily belong to a small surface in gold frame packaging, but quite precisely, is more correctly approached as folk art was, only 50-100 years ago, which unfolded in all possible places: on walls, on ceilings, etc. and without frames.

Postscript by Poul Gernes

Isn’t it so:

1.         That our modern art really and truly is not present in society, is not being used by the population, but on the contrary is being used only by prosperous people and only as investment objects?

2.         That our modern art is individual, is striving to be individual and therefore individualizes, in a way that is diametrically opposed to the past’s art, in a way that is diametrically opposed to sound reason, custom, tradition – in a way that is diametrically opposed to what a society, a people, and a culture need or can use for any purpose whatsoever?

3.         That modern art’s common ideal claims are all egoisms – all without exception, devoid of fellowship, compassion, and collectively anything whatsoever. Modern art has to be original, new, advanced, even provocative, sensational and more of the same kind?

4.         That modern artists are striving to exhibit, to hang their work in museums, to be famous, to appear in the media, to become internationally known, etc., without even noticing that it is precisely on this account that the possibility of meaning something to society, to fellow human beings, and to culture is disappearing. Precisely because of this – and simultaneously – they, and “their output”, are becoming individual, intellectual, private and irrelevant. – “The art works” are turning into phenomena and experiences, interesting objects, which, in their apparent self-sufficiency, are not even trying to be usable or in any other way in connection with their culture, or to be culturally positive for their own society?