0128 American Connections: The Early Works of Thomas Bang

Abstract

The Danish artist Thomas Bang spent his early years in the USA. The works he created in this formative period were thus profoundly shaped by the contemporary movements in American art of the 1960s and 1970s when sculpture, or to be more precise, three-dimensional work became a hotbed of expansive experiments. This article traces how Bang made a radical move from painting to sculpture, which was characteristic of that time, and how he developed his artistic idiom by taking an active part in some of the seminal new departures in American art, in particular process art and post-minimalism. By leaping forward to Bang's later works produced after his return to Denmark, the article also demonstrates how the sculptural syntax and working principles developed in the early works still underlie and structure the artist's more allegorical sculptures and installations from the 2000s, thus testifying to the lasting impact of Bang's American period, which remains the key to understanding his works.