In this film Laugesen puts the two painters, Asger Jorn and Jackson Pollock, into context and reflects on similarities and differences between the two. Pollock, who became one of the pioneers of abstract expressionism, and Jorn who is still, to this day, considered one of the most important modernist painters in Danish art.

Laugesen connects the two painters work throughout the film with his poem, Night Steamer, from the book “Sailors Home”. As he puts it, “making a poem or a painting is like a jump into an unknown ocean, you have to go in deep, in order to gain greater understanding”. Laugesen looks at how Asger Jorn did just that, by exploring the methods of a Pollock painting in search of understanding Pollock as an artist.

Peter Laugesen (b.1942) is a highly acclaimed Danish poet, one of the finest of his time. Laugesen is greatly inspired by the beat generation such as William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and has over fifty published works behind, him in a variety of genres such as poetry, dramatic writings, critics and translations. Laugesen has a profound knowledge on Asger Jorn and Jackson Pollock as they are deeply related to the time of the beat generation.

Peter Laugesen was interviewed by Christian Lund at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014.

Camera: Klaus Elmer and Kasper Bech Dyg
Edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg
English translation of the poem by: Anne Born
Produced by: Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014

Supported by Nordea-fonden