By Lars-Terje Lysemose
From Athelas in English 1994. Copyright Imladris - Danmarks Tolkienforening
To illustrate a universe of imagination like Tolkien's is not an easy task to be set. Nevertheless, the Danish artist Lars Physant has performed this task with distinction and we are honoured indeed being allowed to present you with his 37 black-and-white drawings for Tolkien's Tree and Leaf, together with Inger Edelfeldt's marvellous paintings, at the Northern Tolkien Festival. Also included at the exhibition will be Lars' portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien made in colours.
Lars Physant, who was born in 1957, is a professional artist who has had numerous separate exhibitions in Denmark and who has also been represented in Luxembourg, Italy, Germany and Norway. This, however, is his first exhibition in Sweden and we truly hope you will enjoy his marvellous paintings made for the Danish edition of Tree and Leaf (published in 1987).
On illustrating Tolkien, Lars Physant says himself: "Till now I have tried to slip 37 'camels' through the eye of a needle set by Tolkien not least by studying Tolkien's own drawings, especially for The Hobbit. In many of my drawings I have also tried to imagine how Tolkien himself would have drawn the picture if he had had the skills for it. I have also tried to go some steps further than Tolkien himself, by not only suggesting scenaries in a connected geographical world but also by gaining an insight into what Tolkien calls 'the secondary world' that is, the universe of thoughts which arose in myself when I read the book." Lars Physant's subjects are deeply inspired by the classical Danish tradition of open-air painting originating from Eckersberg and his contemporary followers: Købke, Lundbye and Dreyer. He is also influenced by the virtuosos of British watercolour landscape tradition: Turner, Cotman and Girtin. And Vermeer van Delft is a hero of Lars Physant in the area of portrait painting (as well as landscapes). The special atmosphere of imagination has also been been marked by Van Morrison's music which is "like running water from a deep spring."
The well-known Danish writer and debater, Ebbe Kløvedal Reich, who has taken the Danish translation of Rivendell as his middle name, once said that "Faërie, which some (slacky and imprecisely) call fairyland, is not just a dreamland which we make up for fun in order to get little children to sleep or to kill time. Faërie is that place where the lives of elves and other similar beings take place just as concrete and regular as in human life only in a dimension of reality which lies somewhat apart and awry compared with our usual life. Sometimes it happens that Faërie and our every-day world meet each other, so that we can be at both places at the same time. But not for long. Afterwards we can invent a fairy-story or make a drawing of what we experienced. And if we make a real effort, other people may sense what it is all about. Only sense, since Faërie lies in another dimension of reality. Both J.R.R. Tolkien and Lars Physant agree that this is the case. Lars' drawings conjure up with love and accuracy the No Man's Land between the internal and external landscapes, the place where Faërie and human land meet. The aim of both Tolkien and Lars is to evoke that special kind of happiness which Tolkien in the narrative art names Eucatastrophe, the happy ending and the joy of feeling it as true and consistent. The happy glimses of Faërie which Lars depicts (without betraying our own world) naturally contain a protest against our age and its pictures. As Tolkien points out: 'In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not unless it was built before our time.' But the good message and joy which is 'the seal of the true fairy-story' (Tolkien) is far more important than the protest. Since without this joy we cannot change anything anyway."
Lars Physant is a member of the Danish Tolkien Society and is currently working on a project in Barcelona in Spain. If you happen to bump into him one of these days, I am sure he gladly tells you more about his marvellous pictures And if you happen to have too much money, the 38 pictures can all be yours for the tidy sum of 50,000 Danish crowns!