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intent; and even now, when seeing paintings, new or old, classic or
modern, his eyes still search for the persuasive representation of the
artist’s perception of reality.
The recent
exhibition of a collection of Cubist paintings by Braque and Picasso at Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen [October 1993], even if
just a single sign like a first swallow which cannot guarantee the coming
of spring, seems to suggest that Denmark now is becoming ready to
understand Skov's oeuvre at just about the same time he has begun to
distance himself from it. This is perhaps ironic, but may not matter much
in the larger scheme of things. Cubism became for Skov a key to understand
the relevancy of modern art and the only means to express the nature of our
physical and perceptual reality on canvas. If that had to be done, only
Cubism, or perhaps its linear descendent retaining its conceptual basis,
its strength of conceptualization, would be adequate to that task.
Cubism may not be
universally accepted or entirely understood even to this day, of course,
and its resources of visual conceptualization may not have been entirely
utilized yet anywhere, let alone exhausted. In the art of the future there
may very likely be more to come that will need to base itself on the Cubist
discoveries of visualization. Skov's contribution to the sum of Danish and
European modern art must be sought in his willingness and persistence to
penetrate to the core of the challenging complexity of this difficult art
form precisely at a time when it was generally being rejected and
misunderstood, notwithstanding he in so doing may have created a very
substantial, comprehensive body of beautiful paintings of international
quality.
For the author,
there is no doubt that the research of an artist's life and oeuvre provides
its own reward in terms of an expanded understanding of the artist and his
epoch, of the multiple ways of finding meaning in art and the process of
artistic developments that span millennia if a century, and, ultimately, of
art itself. If any part of this understanding is facilitated also for the
reader, the author is indeed fortunate.
Ebbe R. Skov, Mission Viejo, California , August 1994
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