Mater Profana (Defiguration) 1969

Asger Jorn made Mater Profana, probably in the late 1950s or early 60s, with oil paint on canvas. Look at how thick the paint is, particularly the smears and slabs of bright red and yellow that surround the figures! Jorn was part of the Situationist International movement, which was interested in disrupting conventional ways of seeing and thinking about the world, and this painting is a great example of that. The source painting was probably a cheap print of a Madonna and Child. Jorn took that ready-made image and defaced it with these heavy impasto brushstrokes. There's this one stroke, a thick white slash that obscures the Madonna's chest. It's almost like a bone, a skeleton peeking through the surface of the painting. To me, that mark embodies Jorn's iconoclastic spirit. He's taking something sacred and turning it into something profane, something bodily and visceral. You might think of Francis Bacon, another artist who was interested in the abject and the grotesque.