Jørgen Nash (March 16, 1920 – May 17, 2004) was a Danish artist, writer and central proponent of

Situationism The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

Life

He was born in Vejrum,

Jutland Jutland ( da, Jylland ; german: Jütland ; ang, Ēota land ), known anciently as the Cimbric or Cimbrian Peninsula ( la, Cimbricus Chersonesus; da, den Kimbriske Halvø, links=no or ; german: Kimbrische Halbinsel, links=no), is a peninsula of ...

, Denmark, baptized Jørgen Axel Jørgensen, the brother of

Asger Jorn Asger Oluf Jorn (3 March 1914 – 1 May 1973) was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International. He was born in Vejrum, in the northwest c ...

. He later changed his family name from Jørgensen to Nash. He was married three times and had six children. His last marriage was with the painter Lis Zwick and would last until his death in 2004. The last forty years of his life he lived in the artist collective ''Drakabygget'' outside

Örkelljunga Örkelljunga is a locality and the seat of Örkelljunga Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the ...

, Sweden. From 1948 to 1951 he was involved with CoBrA. He went on to join the Situationist International. In 1959 he produced Stavrim, Sonetter a book of poetry illustrated by Jorn. In 1960 he founded the Situationist Bauhaus based at the farm Drakabygget with Jorn. He is the editor of ''Drakabygget'', a journal about art and social philosophy. In 1963 became an honorary artist of the Royal Danish Academy of Art.

Exhibitions

He has exhibited at: * Galerias del Palacio de Belles Artes, Mexico City * Kobe Art Museum, Kobe, Japan * Museum of Modern Art New York * Moderna Museet *

National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo The in Tokyo, Japan, is the foremost museum collecting and exhibiting modern Japanese art. This Tokyo museum is also known by the English acronym MOMAT (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). The museum is known for its collection of 20th-centu ...

* Museum de Art Moderno, Mexico City * Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo * Rooseum, Sweden * The Modern Art Gallery Silkeborg, Denmark * Museo Carillo Gil, Mexico City * Klingspor-Museum, Offenbach am Main, Germany * Yokohama City Art Hall, Yokohama, Japan * Tessin Institute, Paris * Museo National de Belles Artes and Centro Wifredo Lam, Havana, Cuba * Skissernas Museum, Lund, Sweden * Kongelige Kobberstiksamling, Copenhagen, Denmark *

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

, Paris * Royal Academi of Art, Stockholm * Museu Dárt Contemporani, Barcelona, Spain

Exclusion from the SI

On 10 February 1962, Nash voted with the majority of the Central Council of the Situationist International, for the exclusion of the Spur group. The majority was 5 to 1, with Dieter Kunzelmann be the only opposer.
Situationist News
', Internationale Situationniste #7 (April 1962) Nash rebuked those responsible for Spur, was initially in favor of them publishing a retraction, but stopped short of demanding an exclusion. After a debate on this subject, however, Nash decided on the option of exclusion. Kunzelmann too, the only opposing vote, and himself part of Spur, expressed his approval of all the Central Council's critiques towards the other Spur members. In Sweden, in March 1962, Jörgen Nash suddenly attacked the SI in the name of the Scandinavian section, with the tract ''Danger! Do Not Lean Out'', and planned to convert the section in another Swedish "Bauhaus". Reckoning on the considerable geographical dispersion of the Scandinavian situationists, Nash had not even consulted with all of them before his putsch. Surprised at not being unanimously followed and at finding himself countered on the spot by the partisans of the SI majority — Jeppesen Victor Martin, who immediately circulated a definitive repudiation of his imposture — Nash at first feigned astonishment that things had gone to the point of a complete break with the situationists; as if the fact of launching a public surprise attack full of lies was compatible with carrying on a dialogue, on the basis of some sort of Nashist Scandinavian autonomy. According to the SI, Nash's main goal was to use the seal of "situationism" to attract a few highly profitable art dealers. The SI stated that this was confirmed by the fact that Nash's new Swedish "Bauhaus", which consisted of two or three Scandinavian ex-situationists plus "a mass of unknowns flocking to the feast", immediately plunged into "the most shopworn forms of artistic production".
The Counter-Situationist Campaign in Various Countries
'' Internationale Situationniste #8, 1963. According to the SI, the development of this conspiracy was no doubt precipitated by the recent elimination of the SI's right wing, the Spur group, on whose support the Nashists had relied. In the tract ''Danger! Do Not Lean Out'',

' published as a tract, and then reprinted in The Situationist Times #1 (1962) Nash, with Ansgar Elde and

Jacqueline de Jong Jacqueline de Jong (born 1939) is a Dutch painter, sculptor and graphic artist. She was born in the Dutch town of Hengelo to Jewish parents. Faced with the German invasion, they went into hiding. After an abortive escape attempt to England, he ...

, stated that although there may be grounds to criticise the Spur group ( Ervin Eisch, Lothar Fischer, Dieter Kunzelmann, Renee Nele, Heimrad Prem, Gretel Stadler,

Helmut Sturm Helmut Sturm (21 February 1932 – 20 February 2008) was a German painter. He was born in Furth im Wald. From 1952 to 1958, he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich. After this he joined Heimrad Prem, Lothar Fischer and Hans- ...

and Hand-Peter Zimmer), the way they had been expelled, and the SI itself, were

totalitarian Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and reg ...

. However, the decision followed a debate and was voted by the majority 5 to 1, with Nash also voting in favor of it. Nash also implied that Ansgar Elde was present at the Council and that Jacqueline de Jong was part of if, which was false. The SI, at the behest of Jeppesen Victor Martin, described those they had expelled as ''nashists''. On 24 April 1964 Nash with other members of Bauhaus Situationniste decapitated the statue of

The Little Mermaid "The Little Mermaid" ( da, Den lille havfrue) is a literary fairy tale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The story follows the journey of a young mermaid who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

harbour. This ''manifestation'' was part of the movements campaign against consumerist society. Following his exclusion he became involved in the Second Situationist International and the creation in 1974 of the

Situationist Antinational The ''Situationist Antinational'' was an American magazine formed in 1974, two years after the disbanding of the ''Situationist International''. Only one issue of the magazine was published. It included a contribution by the American Situationist ...

References

External links