The Kjersmeier Collection of African Art, the Danish Avant-Garde and the Construction of Photographic Meaning
In: A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950Search for other papers by Wendy A. Grossman in
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Abstract
The pioneering collection of African objects amassed in the interwar period by the Danish writer and art aficionado Carl Kjersmeier and his wife, Amalie, made a significant contribution to the process through which African cultural artefacts became central in forging an international avant-garde idiom. The artfully constructed photographs of individual objects from this collection by the American Man Ray and the Dane Vagn Guldbrandsen – commissioned by Kjersmeier and disseminated through his seminal publications – illustrate the symbiotic relationship between the medium and the message in effecting new perceptions of African art at a time when photography itself was coming of age as an avant-garde art form. With new scholarship on this elusive figure and the milieu in which he operated, this essay explores Kjersmeier’s role and that of his collection and his publications in positioning African objects within transnational avant-garde practices through their photographic representations.