Tradition og modernisme: Indfaldsvinkler til PH (review)

Tradition og modernisme: Indfaldsvinkler til PH is the first volume in a series of books from Syddansk Universitetsforlag focusing specifically on Poul Henningsen and Danish cultural heritage. The book has its origins in a seminar in the Poul Henningsen Research Project held in 2006–09 by the Institute for Literature, Culture, and Media at Syddansk Universitet. The designer of lamps that have been in production since the 1920s, Henningsen was also an ardent supporter of social change, an advocate for movements into modernist approaches in architecture and design, and a member of Denmark’s influential avant-garde, especially in the period between the two World Wars. Tradition og modernisme focuses predominantly on one of PH’s seminal articles (“Tradition og Modernisme”) from the journal Kritisk Revy (1926–28). In its time, Kritisk Revy served as the dominant organ for the avant-garde to express its views on almost every aspect of Danish life at that time from nature preservation to cubism, from architecture to religion. Prominent authors such as Hans Kirk and Otto Gelsted were frequent contributors—but none may have been as polemical and persuasive as Henningsen. He not only founded the journal but also designed every aspect of it by incorporating collages and crafting a specific typographical style. In this, as in his social and aesthetic views, PH took a decidedly holistic approach. As in his approach to social issues, no aspect of publication fell beyond his reach. To this day, Kritisk Revy remains a rare time capsule presenting the views that defined the growing cultural radicalism that would take hold in the 1930s. The journal began by attacking the neoclassical-driven architectural tradition in Denmark (as represented initially by the Copenhagen Police Station, designed somewhat like a Greek temple). At the same time, Henningsen used the publication to respond to the influence of the encroaching international modernism emanating from the Bauhaus. PH wanted modernity—but he wanted it on non-dogmatic terms addressing task and solution before pre-determined aesthetics.

The primary exposition of Henningsen’s thoughts on these matters, “Tradition og Modernisme,” appeared in Kritisk Revy in October of 1927 (no. 3). In sweeping rhetoric aimed both at mindless traditionalism and forced modernity, PH tried to stake out a third position—not in the middle, he insisted, but above or beyond the other two. Focusing primarily on design (formgivning), he wanted to move his focal point to inner necessity and away from exterior, aesthetic demands. He becomes particularly playful in a discussion of chairs in which he derides Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel Wassily chair as patently uncomfortable by using it as a symbol of what happens when a given task bends to superimposed aesthetic notions. In Tradition og modernisme: Indfaldsvinkler til PH, five Danish scholars provide a close reading of this central article in PH’s prolific oeuvre. One of the strengths of this collection is having one article receive such careful scholarship: in the end it clearly reflects the depth of Henningsen’s writing that, after more than eighty years, could offer such fertile ground for academic inquiry.

In “Poul Henningsens kritiske modernisme og hans holdning til produktformgivning” [Poul Henningsen’s Critical Modernism and His Attitude toward Product Design], Hans-Christian Jensen does a thorough job of defining PH’s main contentions. He writes that PH “benyttede lejligheden til at samle op på og syntetisere synspunkter og ræsonnementer, der hidtil var fremsat spredt” (14) [used the opportunity to gather and synthesize points of view and argumentations that, until then, had been expressed diffusely]. Jensen insists that PH wanted a natural expression of modernity already found in reality rather than the arbitrary determinations of international modernism. He notes that Henningsen rejected both conventional concepts calcified as cultural traditions and newer dogmatic currents of modernity. Ultimately Jensen views PH’s goal as the creation of a classless object’s non-expressive expressiveness—a design strategy that struggles to avoid profit as a driving force and that also constitutes a paradoxical concept that...