The End of Copenhagen

ORIGINAL EDITION. Limited to 200 numbered copies, hand-signed by the authors.

A pre-war collaborator of Léger and Le Corbusier, founder of the Danish journal Helhesten (Hell-Horse), and an inspiration for what would later become CoBrA — a movement and journal he co-founded with Karel Appel, Constant, Corneille, Christian Dotremont, and Joseph Noiret — Asger Jorn was a jack-of-all-trades. Primarily a painter, but also a draftsman and ceramist, he did not hesitate to become a theoretician.

Guy Debord, 18 years his junior, was also an active young man, producing quickly and prolifically. Citing Hegel, Jorn said of him: "Debord is of his time; he cannot 'be better than his time; but, at best, be his time.'" First a Lettrist — before breaking with Isou in 1954 — he was also a filmmaker, founded the journals Internationale lettriste then Potlach before creating, in 1957, the Situationist International, of which Asger Jorn would be one of the founding members.

Together, the two men created La fin de Copenhague (The End of Copenhagen) at Permild in Copenhagen, "a small, spontaneous book [...] executed and printed in twenty-four hours," blending the art of détournement — which Debord may have developed through contact with Isou's chiseling and discordant style — and Jorn's color compositions, the "supporting structure" of the work. Composed of "plundering various newspapers" for the body of the work as well as its cover, La fin de Copenhague is a pioneering book of its kind. The authors even went so far as to give each of the two hundred copies a unique cover, formed by the impression of a Danish daily newspaper on the plate.

The result is strikingly powerful, color bursts forth, the text strikes. One of the revolutionary books of the 20th century, the shock of which resonated at the time as far as the United States and inspired pop art.