In both reviews of Claus Ørntoft’s art as well as his own statements, it is repeatedly stated that one of the major inspirations for his sculptural universe is “the Nordic”, especially Danish Romanesque sculpture. When I was asked to contribute to this book, I initially declined, because I only had a very peripheral knowledge of Ørntoft’s sculptures, almost exclusively gleaned from photographic reproductions. But these were so enticing that I agreed, after all. But two-dimensional photos of sculptures don’t reveal all, because the sculptures are created for space, and in this case, mostly for city spaces or squares, which have been carefully studied by the artist as a starting point. Thus began a long odyssey from Ballerup in the east to Aabenraa in the south with a stopover in Vendsyssel, which added more and more facets of possible sources of fascination in the Romanesque. It is not easy to comprehend that this can be expressed in so concrete a way with reference to one or the other Danish church sculpture - modern artists paraphrase their sources of inspiration so that they don’t just become a copy or a slavish imitation.

But let us take our starting point in the material itself. This is always important for the overall impression - here it is granite. Ørntoft says himself that he has diligently sought out Danish churches with granite reliefs, and his knowledge of these is quite impressive. Granite is one of the hardest and coarsest grained materials to sculpt, so refined details cannot be chiselled into it as one can with marble, sandstone or limestone. Luckily, we have almost exclusively had granite in this country because the Romanesque stonemasons and sculptors started to chisel into stone to decorate churches, honour God and inform the people. The granite keeps its promise, so we can expect that Ørntoft’s sculptures will have a similarly long lifetime, as those from the Romanesque era (ca. 1050 - 1250). No granite sculptures need silicone injections, as has long been the practice on the much softer sandstone on the facades of Italian churches, where the weather and wind and not least car exhaust emissions of our era have heavily eroded the surfaces, such as, for example in Pavia. The Danish sculptors from the Middle Ages used the stones that came as displaced stones from the Ice Age Scandinavian Peninsula and stranded in Denmark, primarily in Jutland. Here, they lay as irritating field stones in a time when farming land was costly. Fortunately, the clearing of land for cultivation went hand in hand with the need for the creation of the early Christian erecting of churches in the service of the new religion. Ørntoft does not get his material from the field, but usually from Bornholm subsurface (just like other Danish sculptors, for example, Bjørn Nørgaard), or more recently, in China.

There are two fundamentally different production methods for a sculptor. The additive principle, where the form is built up layer by layer in clay or plaster (which is then cast into e.g. bronze), or the subtractive method, which has a lump of material as the starting point, and where hard work with a hammer and a chisel removes layer after layer until the final shape corresponds to the artist’s initial idea based on sketches, drawings and perhaps smaller or identical models in plaster. Claus uses the latter working method, just as the Romanesque sculptors did, eating into the lump until the idea is realised.

Another parallel can be seen in the traces of the preliminary working process. Both the Ice Age field stones and the Bornholm quarry stones have to be fashioned into suitable sizes prior to sculpting. The shaped ashlars in the Romanesque churches often still have vertical furrows from the cleaving, which was done manually in those days. These are not usually visible, because the individual ashlar is chiselled smooth on the front side, but they can be seen on the stone’s inner or top sides, and they can be seen, for example, on the granite ashlars which were used to build Søborg Castle in Northern Zeeland, or the cloven stones from Kringlerøn, on Læsø island. On many of Ørntoft’s sculptures, these cleave marks are visible, which I naively believed to be the artist’s Romanesque “character”, but which, I have been informed, were actually the split marks from the cleaving in the Bornholm granite quarry, which today is undertaken with dynamite, no symbolism here or thought-laden considerations. But the artist has allowed them to be visible - they are, after all, witness to the earliest human processes in the transformation from Archaean rock to artwork.

THE SPACE

Claus Ørntoft’s works are, with only a couple of exceptions, freestanding sculptures, i.e. freed from an architectonic relationship in the physical sense. This does not, however, mean that the space which is defined by the surrounding architecture is not taken into consideration in the instances where the work is a piece commissioned for a particular location, where the considerations regarding exact placing in relation to the surroundings is important. But, as mentioned, it is only in very few cases where the sculptures form a physical part of the architecture, in contrast with the Romanesque. Some examples are, (at a stretch) the animals on the steps, because I have allowed myself to consider the steps to be a horizontal overture to the recessed building. This is true, for example, of “Klippedyr/Rock Animal”, Aabenraa Town Hall. The Mastodon appears to sneak down the three convex stairs with its snout anchored in the lowest step. The bowed, soft forms of the stairs and the beast stand in contrast to the strict Classical horizontal and vertical lines of the building. Another example is the “Tre Strejfere/Three Rovers”, Hedegårds School in Ballerup. They move powerfully down the stairs and stand in dynamic contrast to the recessed wing, the almost Japanese weightlessness of the glass façade and rectangular wooden frames. They are free, can remove themselves or be removed. This kind of autonomous status as freestanding sculptures is seldom found in Romanesque art (apart from pictures of icons made in wood and metal). A unique example from Kærum church is the limestone lion with an archer in a firm grip in the predator’s front paws - its original location is unknown. The sculpture of the Middle Ages is not just factored into, but also connected with, the structure of the architecture, i.e. the structure of the church. The open space did not exist in the consciousness of the Middle Ages. The sculptural decoration consists of reliefs integrated into the fabric of the building although at times, in very high relief, and mainly in corners, where two or sometimes three of the stone’s “sides” are visible, because it is here that the artist is provided beforehand, with an open space, which made a more three-dimensional and voluminous effect possible. Amongst the finest examples are the corner stones from Øster Starup church, here a powerful lion on the one side of the stone, which has bitten into the arm of the fallen man on the adjoining side. The powerful plastic effect can also be seen at times on the Danish baptismal fonts. For example on the most beautiful one of all, the one in Nørre Snede, where the double lions’ shared head grows out of the basin’s curved surface, but they must be held in check because they are a part of the material of the liturgical object.

There are only a couple of instances where Ørntoft’s sculptures are completely integrated into the architecture, and these are surprisingly not Church adornments, both in Odense: Valgmenigheds church and Odense Cathedral (unrealized projects). In the Valgmenigheds church, the sculptural groups are built in to the red brick wall of a low side building, parallel to the road, so that the figures run parallel alongside the church façade and the road. But one has to go around the sculptures in order to complete the view on the opposite side of the small church square. The two groups are counterparts, much like those we know from sacred architecture of prehistoric times and the Middle Ages, where lions guarded the entrance to the shrine. I will elaborate on the content aspect of “The Lion and the Snake” and “Samson and the Lion” later on in the book. The other example is equally intended for an existing architecture, but here on a flat plane. At the bottom, a worm or a snake, which coils around itself with a wide-open mouth turned upwards towards a roaring lion with a luxuriant mane. The head juts out far into the space and is extremely detailed in its three dimensionality, whilst the snake, which is seen in profile, appears to be more ‘stuck’ to the wall and so appears less spatial. None of the animals are part of the bearing elements of the church, which is the custom in Romanesque church art, for example in Limes’ granite lions, which jut out far into the space as partially freestanding sculptures, but at the same time a part of the bearing cornerstone, much like the two groups in the Valgmenigheds church.

FORM AND CONTENT

Ørntoft’s sculptures are only identifiable in a few cases, apart from early works that live up to the titles like “Cow Head” or “Archer”, which are relatively naturalistic. The powerful animals are reminiscent mostly of lions, even though they cannot be identified through their anatomical details. Thus, “paws” are more reminiscent of an aquatic animal’s flippers, large, flattened extremities often without the claws of a predator. The heads are also pure fantasy, even though the open mouth appears to be ready to attack. None resemble in their details, the Romanesque forefathers, and that doesn’t matter, because the Romanesque fauna is just as undefined as Ørntoft’s. Very few Danish stonemasons had actually seen a live lion - possibly at the marketplace in a larger town – but probably never in Denmark, but their source was probably at best a glimpse of and illuminated manuscript owned by the Bishop, although with regard to remote parishes, an oral tradition of “von hörensangen” would more than likely have been the source of inspiration. There is only one thing that the Ørntoft predators have in common with those from the Middle Ages: the tail, which winds itself between the hind legs and up along the body, culminating in a decorative ornament, as is seen in “Samson and the Lion”. In the Romanesque examples these can be of a vegetable type, presumably symbolic, but not in this case.

In the Middle Ages, every picture had a set meaning, even though this is difficult to demonstrate today. In our era, images have, of course, also got a meaning, but the difference is that the meaning is, by and large, of a private nature both for the sender (the artist) and the recipient (the spectator), not collective in a lexical sense, as it was earlier. In other words: you cannot look in a dictionary of symbols to find an answer to the meaning of any given figure. But the fact that you respond emotionally to contemporary art is tied to the possibility of a collective consciousness in a psychoanalytical sense, which is set into motion when viewing the artwork. In both instances these are cases of psychological forces, which do battle, let us call these symbols.

The Middle Ages inherited the lion from ancient Oriental cultures. As a guard in front of the entrances to palaces and holy sites, its power was used positively against negative, invasive demonic forces. The lion was thus passed down to the Jewish and then to the Christian religions, and there are numerous lion metaphors, which we know from the Old Testament as well as The New Testament (about 180) as well as from Natural History books of the Middle Ages, which are a mixture of biological facts and speculation, but always related to the moral theology of Christianity. All of these are interpreted symbolically within the duality between redemption and perdition. The lion is thus the king of the beasts, it can be evil, but it is mostly good, and the duality comes for example in the following quotation “If someone were to wonder why unclean animals are used to symbolise good things, for example the lion, the snake or the dragon, let him know that they can mean the patience of Christ one day, but the rapaciousness of the devil the next day, and in this manner they can be used in a peaceful way.” (Hugo from Saint-Victoire, 1100). The lion, which is the king of the predators, also bears within itself a duality, which is not always obvious in the concrete examples, but which emerges within the context. There are several lion metaphors both in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, e.g. Ps. 22, verse 22: “Free me from the lion’s jaws” (which is written on the Cathedral in Pisa) or Peter’s letter 1. Letter 5, verse 8: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” As a symbol of Christ: “"Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed." (Revelations 5, verse 5) But God or Devil – a supernatural power, made tangible in a material, artistic symbol, which the former artist has given a very particular meaning. When one stands face to face with Ørntoft’s lions, one is not in doubt about the pent up power that seems to look for a release, but they are neither God nor the Devil, it is the inner, spiritual powers, which they express. Symbolic, certainly, but common to all mankind, perhaps a primordial experience, which allowed them to be named in earlier times, but which, in our times, have grown into diffuse, psychological types. The snake also appears in the Ørntoft sculptural universe, and this type is found often in our Romanesque art, usually as representative of the evil forces, and no distinction was made in the Middle Ages between snakes and dragons. It is named earliest in the myth of the fall from grace as the tempter and in the last chapter of the bible, the Apocalypse, it is unequivocally a symbol of the Devil. “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.” (Revelations 12, verse 9). When the lion and the snake are confronted with each other in battle, it is almost always a battle between good (the lion) and evil (the snake). In a couple of cases lions and snakes battle, i.e. in the ornamentation for the Valgmenigheds Church and in Odense Cathedral, they are seen as partners. In the latter, the animals are not physically connected and are therefore not in battle, but on the other hand, the lion head as a hunting trophy the most naturalistic of the type. It is produced to be seen from the front – frontality provides authority; eye contact is a factor, which requires submission, as it is known in the animal kingdom. Here, the artist nears a biblical interpretation of the lion, and understandably enough, as it is intended as a decoration of a church, not as an urban, public space. I think that the writhing worm underneath the lion refers to the traditional Christian iconography, but is loosely connected to the symbol of the lion, so the viewer has to guess a possible meaning. It is a shame that the group only exists as a sketch. In another instances, where the lion is a counterpart, it is to the human, as in the group “Samson and the Lion” vis a’ vis the group on the other side. It is only through the title that it is possible to identify the components of the group, the Old Testament hero, Samson, who in the interpretation of the Middle Ages became a so-called typos of Christ: just as Samson triumphed over the lion, thus Jesus triumphed over the Devil through his death and resurrection. The Herculean Samson pulls open the jaws of the lion, thereby killing it. The Christian symbolism in this instance is obvious. Claus Ørntoft knows his background material and furthermore has had knowledge of the Romanesque treatment of the theme, e.g. the Stjær portal’s “upraised” rendition of the drama or the tympanno relief over the door of the Cathedral in Lund. But sculpturally speaking, there are miles between them; the Stjær motif’s flattened relief, almost like the woodcuts of the time of the Vikings in contrast to the violent lump like forms which characterise Ørntoft’s sculptures: his animals have meat on their bodies just like the gable ashlar in Lime, where a four legged animal has a rider lying on its back, holding tightly to the side of its mouth, possibly Samson.

It has not been my task to describe Ørntoft’s work as a sculptor in general, but only to tackle a single corner in relation to the Romanesque picture world, which he, as well as I, are deeply fascinated by. It was, however, with great pleasure that I undertook a kind of pilgrimage, to look at the sculptures in their locations, because they have to be seen and experienced in the surroundings that they have been created for. Flat photographs just don’t work. And I experienced a growing admiration for the stubbornness that characterises the sculptor in the battle with the hard granite to give the raw material form and content. No absence due to flirts with other materials, which are otherwise in fashion in our times. A fidelity to the “lump” of ancient material, which requires simple tools made of metal, similar to those used by the master Goti almost a thousand years ago. Claus Ørntoft reminds me of another, now deceased artist who was also a master of granite, Henry Heerup. Both had a fascination for our Nordic history. Heerup never went to Paris like Asger Jorn and other contemporary Danish artist, no, he pumped up his bicycle tyres and went to Jelling to view and be inspired by “King Harald's stone”. Ørntoft also has his eyes toward the Nordic, the North Atlantic and the Danish Romanesque and the following quotation is valid for both of them: “Granite is Nature’s Hard-boiled Egg. Albeit Compliant Tool to the Will.”

Translation from the Danish of Inger-Lise Kolstrup's essay from the book Billedhuggeren Claus Ørntoft, Thanning & Appel 2004, p.40-49