Audio file 46-2

[tape continues from 46-1] Clarisse speaks of her beginnings

[tape stopped and restarts] Wonga speaks of reading about the young Danes seeing Alberto Giacometti's work in 1937 and being disappointed he had moved away from Surrealism; that Sonja understood that Giacometti's new direction was an effort to better understand the human; Wonga continues about Giacometti

Ernest interprets Giacometti saying he would make a portrait of new-born Wonga as Giacometti being concerned that the direction of abstraction was taking artists away from the human

Wonga brings up Antonin Artaud but Ernest dismisses him as speaking only for European artists, Wonga disagrees

Wonga returns to his view on Giacometti, Ernest disagrees

Ernest feels that Giacometti did not use models for representation but in order to see the human; that he felt art had turned away from the spiritual towards the material

Ernest speaks of African art merging the spiritual and the material; he speaks of Carl Kjersmeier rejecting the young Danish artists - aside from himself and Sonja - from seeing his collection because he did not believe they understand this

Wonga returns to the young Danes seeing Giacometti's work in 1937

[tape stopped and restarts] Ernest believes that CoBrA advocated the material with the spirital but that the others refused; Wonga says that CoBrA wanted the instinctive whereas the Hard edge artists wanted the intellect and material, and that Sonja wanted both

Wonga elaborates that Sonja disagreed with Richard Mortensen and Asger Jorn taking artists towards hard edge and the instinctive as opposing directions, that Sonja wanted the debate to continue as it had during Linien. But the artists split; Ernest speaks of receiving a letter from Jorn later in which he accepted that Sonja was right

Wonga wants to return to Giacometti and Ernest sums his argument that Giacometti wanted to put the spiritual with the material; Wonga speaks of the young Danes engaging with Surrealism through Linien but that it ended in 1938; Ernest explains that Høstillingen served as an open platform for artists during the War, that when the War ended, the artists reached a decisive moment of artistic direction

Wonga states that the artistic argument could also not be divided from the societal argument, which some saw as Russian communism versus American capitalism but Ernest wanted to include the plight of the colonies

[tape stopped and restarts] Wonga recaps that Linien ends, that there was Helhesten, a magazine, and then Høstellingen whose first exhibition was 1938; [tape stopped and restarts] Wonga speaks of the Danish artists returning home during the War, with no access to European modern art they turned to their own national heritage - viking art, Medieval church frescos, masks

[tape stopped and restarts] Wonga speaks of Ernest beginning to paint in 1939-40 was interrupted by his internment; Ernest agrees he had no production but that philosophically and spiritually he was engaged

[tape stopped and restarts] Wonga says he can see the inspiration of the Danish medieval church frescoes in Ernest's paintings, in use of colour and negative space; Wonga compares Ernest's work to that of Carl-Henning Pedersen who was also inspired by the frescos

Many Christian churches were built in the Middle Ages, between 1050 and 1250, with many decorated with "kalkmalerier" (or frescoes)

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