Détourned Painting

Asger Jorn

Exhibition catalogue, Rive Gauche Gallery (May 1959)

Translated by Thomas Y. Levin

Intended for the General Public – Reads Effortlessly

Be modern,
collectors, museums.
If you have old paintings,
do not despair.
Retain your memories
but détourn them
so that they correspond with your era.
Why reject the old
if one can modernize it
with a few strokes of the brush?
This casts a bit of contemporaneity
on your old culture.
Be up to date,
and distinguished
at the same time.
Painting is over.
You might as well finish it off.
Détourn.
Long live painting.