The sculptor Niels Hansen Jacobsen is the central figure at the Vejen Art Museum. Had it not been for him there would be no museum in Vejen. After he had finished his studies - and thanks to the prize awarded to »Loki Chained to the Rocks« - Hansen Jacobsen received a travelling scholarship. The result was a journey through Europe which evolved into a ten year stay in Paris.

The sculptor arrived there about 1892. He was trained in a naturalist tradition - a dying fashion. The young artists wanted to depict the feelings that were to be found under the minutely reproduced surface - they wanted to convey atmosphere and feelings. The goal was reached through the use of symbols - some commonly known, and others were so subjective that today they are difficult to decipher. Hansen Jacobsen specialised in transforming things of no consistency to solid clay and plaster. »The Shadow« is his absolute masterpiece.

What is more intangible then a shadow? If there is no source of light it disappears. In order to 'capture' it, the sculptor started out with the object that casts the shadow - the shape of a human-being. He presents it as close to the ground as possible - yet still a 3-D figure in order to have something to work with. The actual modelling of the limbs does not relate to the picture in a book on anatomy; the scull has become a long oval shape, the chin looks like the point of an arrow, the shoulder blades become awls and the one elbow evolves to a flame shape. The back most foot is an anatomic impossibility - it bends like soft rubber. In a refined way the sculptor shows the mobility of the shadow by letting a meandering shape move about the sculpture.

Niels Hansen Jacobsen wrote a few lines to accompany »The Shadow«:

Death, at one point in time it is invisible
hiding in the dust of the road
but it catches up and appears
when we least expect it
it sneaks along in our tracks
impossible to evade.

These lines and the hourglass - which the figure holds in his left hand - make it quite obvious that the sculpture is more than the depiction of a shadow. It is a memento mori, a memory of death, a reminder that all things perish. As the candle burns down, the flowers wither, the butterfly lives its single summer, the human being and his/her shadow have only a certain amount of hours left.

Teresa Nielsen

Literature

Niels Th. Mortensen »Niels Hansen Jacobsen«, Odense 1945.
Lise Buurgaard og Agner Frandsen »Træet i Stenen - Niels Hansen Jacobsens grav- og mindesten«, Herning 1989.

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