With his distinctive iconography, his ambitious grappling with existential, scientific and spiritual themes and his unique use of materials, Emil Westman Hertz was a remarkable and talented figure in Danish art. The New Carlsberg Foundation’s donation of one of his most important works to the National Gallery of Denmark now makes his art accessible to a broad audience.
Animated materiality
Nine of wands is a complex compilation of materials and sculptural bronze elements arranged to form an enigmatic tableau. The orderly rows of amorphous objects seem to be organized in accordance with an underlying principle, the nature of which eludes the audience – like an obscure version of the Wunderkammer collections from previous centuries. The title imbues the installation with added spiritual gravity, with its reference to the tarot card ‘nine of wands’, which stands for vigilance, persistence and courage.
Nine of wands is thus typical of Westman Hertz’s practice, which often involved combining mystical undertones with references to scientific taxonomies designed to impose order on a chaotic, sensuous world. Another central aspect was the artist’s profound interest in natural materials and their varying meanings; the installation incorporates everything from bee’s wax, hogweed stems and bark to foam rubber, iron and bronze.
‘There is something inscrutable and cryptic about Westman Hertz’s works, where often humble and mundane materials link up with major systems of thought such as quantum physics, ethnological taxonomies or ritual invocations,’ says Mikkel Bogh, director of the National Gallery of Denmark.
He continues, ‘The result is a distinctive sculptural manifestation, where the superposition of rationality and irrationality provides access to an almost animated space.’
Danish sculpture tradition
Emil Westman Hertz originally studied eskimology but later enrolled at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he graduated in 2008. During his final years, the artist struggled with leukaemia, and he succumbed to the disease in 2016, only 37 years old. Still, his unique expression has left a clear imprint on Danish art history, according to Mikkel Bogh, who points to a kinship between Westman Hertz’s material experiments and a main trend in Danish contemporary sculpture.
‘We consider Nine of wands a principal work, not only in Westman Hertz’s production but in Danish contemporary art overall. This acquisition accentuates a line in Danish art history through a contemporary perspective on themes that former Danish artists have explored. In his own unique way, Westman Hertz thus joins a Danish sculpture tradition springing, especially, from Ib Braase, Bjørn Nørgaard, Kirsten Ortwed and Martin Erik Andersen,’ says the director.
