PER KIRKEBY (1938-2018)
Per Kirkeby is best known for his visual art. He did, however, have a life-long passion for architecture that manifested itself in his writing, visual art, and sculptures and culminated in a number of buildings erected in the latter part of his career. The book gives an impression of Per Kirkeby’s overall architecture output and also shows that rather than being an appendix to Per Kirkeby’s visual art, it was a central part of his way of thinking and work as an artist.
The book is the result of several years of research into Per Kirkeby’s comprehensive archives that included numerous conversations between the author and the artist. The many well-preserved drawings from Kirkeby’s childhood and youth have made it possible to document a hitherto unknown context in his artistic universe.
Thomas Bo Jensen is an architect and professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture. He has previously written monographs about the master builder P.V. Jensen-Klint and the architects Inger and Johannes Exner.
Stepping outside Humblebæk station, some 35 kilometers north of Copenhagen, the first thing you see is a square, colonnaded, red brick structure some 2-storeys high. But walking past it on the way to the Louisiana museum that lies a few hundred metres along the road, there is a realisation that it is unoccupied, in fact empty – no roof, no windows, and despite three arched openings at first floor, there is no upper floor. This is for most people the first interaction with Per Kirkeby’s brick sculptures and while its uncertain function may confuse, it leaves a sense of mystery, anonymity, of place. It is beautifully crafted, with an architect’s touch in detail.
But Kirkeby was not an architect, rather an artist. For most architects in the UK, he remains unknown – and this is a great shame as his work is now internationally recognised. While a great painter, it was to be his obsession with mursten, bricks, that would leave an enduring imprint.
Having worked with the one-man publisher Torsten Bløndal over many years on a number of books on the Danish architects Utzon and Wohlert, the one thing that sets Torsten apart from most publishers for me is his obsession with quality – not just in the contents, but the actual book – the paper, the layout – the actual thing itself so that his books are wonderful to hold. This book on Kirkeby’s architecture is such a thing. Beautifully produced, immaculately printed on creamy paper, perfectly laid out to reinforce the joy of holding a book rather than a tablet.
Kirkeby was a Danish artist, poet, sculptor and film maker – trained as a geologist, his work always embraced something about nature and its structures so while his work was abstract it remained rooted in Danish landscape, earning his paintings the title of ‘lyrical expressionism. He also had a lifelong passion for architecture, and his sculptures were essentially buildings rooted in his love of the humble brick. Perhaps growing up in the suburb of Copenhagen in the shadow of Peder Vilhem-Klint’s Grundtvig church with its 5.5 million bricks seeded this passion.
The use of brick in architecture is ubiquitous, but in the modern era it is the work of Louis Kahn that brought nobility back to the humble brick. He famously asked the question, ‘what does a brick want to be?’– and the answer was – an arch. It was this respect for truth in construction that is shared by Kirkeby, but here he infuses his built structures – sculptures – with enigmatic force. Yes they are brick, but why are they there, what do they do?
Kirkeby built a further 17 brick sculptures in Denmark and 25 more in Europe, and with only a couple of exceptions, these were all red brick in stretcher bond. They were all freestanding, mainly colonnaded, open and roofless.
Kirkeby continually worked with the idea of repetitive structures, generally in cubic form or in long zig-zag form, like a zipper. ‘It is the ordinary that is the mystical.’ wrote Kirkeby, and his sculptures prove that. Philosopher Bryan Magee touched on the mystical in art when he said that, 'Art doesn't say things, it shows them. And what it shows can't be said.'
estimony to a great artist.
John Pardey, Architect
