There is also, for instance, a direct symbolic strength in the words S — Asger Jorn

"The pictures substance reflects the painters substance, showing how much he has felt of himself and his society, how much he spans and how deep his experience goes."

"If one tries to understand the position of art today, one must also try to understand the conditions that have created the development of our perception of art and our perception of the relation to the individual and to society. The artist takes an active part in the campaign to deepen this our knowledge of the basis of our existence, the basis which, for him, makes possible an artistic creation. The artists interest cannot be restricted to a single field; he must seek the highest perception of everything, of the whole and its details. Nothing can be sacred to him, because everything has become important to him."

"We cannot inherit a fixed, unmoving view of life and of art from the past generation. The expression of art is in any period different, as are our experiences. A new experience creates a new form. We like to learn all we need from earlier generations, but we have to find out for ourselves what we need; nobody else can do that for us. It is not our business to receive and work on what the earlier generation might want us to work on. On the other hand, it is its business to help us where we want its help."

"If the image was sketched onto the canvas and spontaneously drawn, colour would often be restrained and unfree.. .The most important and the most difficult liberation process we went trough, the one that has distinguished our art, was the freeing of colour, the transition to a painterly spontaneity."

"Beautiful, ugly, impressive, disgusting, meaningless, grim, contradictory etc.. .It makes no difference, as long as it is life, vigorously pouring forth."

"The great work of art is the complete banality, and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough. Banality here is not infinite in its depth and consequence, but rests on a foundation of spirituality and aesthetics."