Frivolous Pictures No. 6. Nuremburg Trash

Asger Jorn’s series of Rash Pictures is influenced by Tachism, which was a further development of spontaneous painting. In tachist painting, the elements in the picture are dissolved into material units, often at the cost of the representative content. Asger Jorn’s version of Tachism draws on his paintings from the 1940s, in which children’s drawings and primitive art were important sources of inspiration. In “Nuremburg Trash “we see an abstract child’s face, the tangibility of which is indicated by the silver granulate that has been laid on top of the oil painting.

“Nuremburg Trash” is a slang term for cheap and nasty factory products, often children’s toys, and refers to the German city of Nuremberg, which is famous for its metal industry. During the Second World War a large part of the German weapon production came from the Nuremberg area, which provides new possibilities for the interpretation of Asger Jorn’s painting.