Myths
Power
Fragility

Keld Moseholm was a singular figure in Danish visual art. He took no part in the passing fashions of his day. In that sense his life’s work is timeless. Or, to put it another way: it is classical. The classical is exemplary because there is a self-evidence to it, and because it renews in a way that carries the tradition forward and brings it to life. Keld Moseholm’s work is a clear example of this, for his sculptures of small round people are profoundly original and at the same time profoundly classical.

Classical art is marked by a great beauty. Keld Moseholm carried this tradition forward by portraying the human body in a powerful, robust beauty. It is not, as in earlier ages, a matter of the otherworldly, the ideal, the romantic longing. Moseholm’s people are wholly and entirely sensuous presence. Running through his life’s work is a preoccupation with, and a delight in, the clear, supple, expressive forms. It is a body of work born of immersion in sculpture and its possibilities, and in human life with its possibilities and impossibilities.

Keld Moseholm developed this robust beauty above all in his works with the small, round people. But at the same time he draws in earnest on another potential within art: its capacity to convey insight, understanding, truth. He has not merely found an expressive form, but has also created a universe entirely his own. A universe that at once fascinates by its diversity and wealth of imagination, and serves as a mirror of the world we live in day to day — a mirror with the singular power to draw attention to fundamental features of our existence.

It is an utterly decisive trait of the universe of the small, round people that it is formulated in a readily accessible visual language. The forms are clear and precise, the materials solid and familiar. At the same time they are rich in meanings. There are great depths and wide perspectives within them.

A dominant trait in the universe of the small round people is humour. Time and again they call forth laughter. From Aristotle by way of Søren Kierkegaard and on to the present day, it has been said that what makes us laugh is unexpected incongruities — contrasts, absurdities and follies. Provided, that is, the incongruity is painless. If it involves suffering, it is tragic and calls for compassion. In these definitions the close kinship between the comic and the tragic emerges, for the incongruities of existence cannot be sharply divided into the painful and the painless. The depiction of the small round people is again and again suffused with this blend of humour and tragedy.

The small round people are almost spherical, with small heads and jutting limbs. They have no individual features. They are anonymous. Their build accentuates particular aspects of the human being. They are a little comic, with their large bulk and small brains. But there is also something reconciling, good-natured and reassuring about the small round people.

By virtue of their anonymity, the small round people depict universal features of existence. It is a matter of what one might call the conditions of life: the relationship between the individual and the system, between power and powerlessness, between strength and fragility, between man and woman, between balance and imbalance — a laborious struggle with every form of adversity and utterly upside-down situations, but also imaginative possibilities of stepping outside ordinary reality. One could say that these are highly philosophical sculptures; or one could say that they have the character of myth, if by myth — with Johannes V. Jensen — one understands a narrative that casts universal light on something. Myths in sculptural form.

Philosopher, mag.art. Niels Thomassen