Robert Storm Petersen
Encyclopedia
Robert Storm Petersen was a Danish
cartoonist
, writer
, animator
, illustrator
, painter
and humorist. He is known almost exclusively by his pen name
Storm P.
in a lower middle class/worker’s milieu whose jargon
is felt in much of his writings. After an interrupted study on the Academy of Art, he worked as a free-lance painter, illustrator and cabaret
entertainer. Already during World War I
he was a well-known artist, and from about 1920 onward he was almost a national “institution” as a humorist, partly because of his versatile interests. He was for many years connected to the Copenhagen newspaper “Berlingske Tidende
” as a comic writer and cartoonist.
As a humorist, Storm P. is related to British and American
humour, with a strong touch of craziness and absurdity. However, he is less marked by total nonsense than, for instance, Lewis Carroll
. Often his starting point is a plain Copenhagen jargon, combined with a Danish down-to-earth homespun philosophy
and all kinds of cosy fun and comedy; the “little” man’s unimpressed comments on a crazy world.
Though normally loved by most of his countrymen, Storm P. has also been criticised for being too toothless, cosy and petit bourgeois. In spite of his social background and interest of poor milieus, he very seldom shows deeper social criticism or revolutionary
opinions; the dramatic age in which he lived left rather small stamps on his work. On the other hand he was no staunch giggler; many of his paintings deal with death, sorrow and macabre
themes. Though not a revolutionary, he has indeed painted the victims of social injustice and misery, often with a strong touch of compassion
. Melancholy and fear are not unknown to him, but his official appearance was an optimistic one.
1977 a "Storm P. Museum" was opened. In 1982 he was featured on a Danish stamp.
s — who are portrayed as grotesquely dressed-up petty philosophers — and the circus
milieu that he regarded with much warmth.
He is perhaps best known for his Storm P machines, comic drawings of machines that perform very simple tasks through an unnecessarily complex and usually humorous series of actions. Other cartoonists who are known for similar machine drawings are Rube Goldberg
and Heath Robinson. Besides that, he illustrated many books, often written by congenial authors — Mark Twain
, Jerome K. Jerome
and G. K. Chesterton
, among others.
As a painter he is clearly influenced by names like Edvard Munch
and Toulouse-Lautrec, but often with an independent naivist
touch. Later on, Paul Klee
and Wassily Kandinsky
seem to have been an inspiration in spite of his often outspoken ridiculing of modern art. Among his many themes are extérieurs from Paris
, from prostitution milieus and nature scenes. La Morgue (1906) and Kultur (1908, "Culture") are two of his most well known paintings.
and tales, often parodies on detective stories or melodramas, small cozy snap-shots from the Copenhagen lower middle class milieu, absurd and surrealistic tales or, especially, "monologues" put into the mouth of bums, artists, etc. Special kinds of tales were the monologues put into the mouth of his own dog (the Grog, My Dog-tales 1926-1935), in which he let the dog reflect on life, death and daily life, sometimes with a light touch of sadness and pity within the humour.
(titles in Danish
):
. He later acted in stage comedies to supplement his income. In 1920 Petersen created the first Danish animated cartoon
titled Tre små mænd (English: Three Little Men). He also designed scenery for ballets and plays.
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
, illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
, painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and humorist. He is known almost exclusively by his pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Storm P.
Biography
He was the son of a butcher and grew up in CopenhagenCopenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
in a lower middle class/worker’s milieu whose jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
is felt in much of his writings. After an interrupted study on the Academy of Art, he worked as a free-lance painter, illustrator and cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
entertainer. Already during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
he was a well-known artist, and from about 1920 onward he was almost a national “institution” as a humorist, partly because of his versatile interests. He was for many years connected to the Copenhagen newspaper “Berlingske Tidende
Berlingske Tidende
Berlingske, previously known as Berlingske Tidende , is a Danish national daily newspaper based in Copenhagen...
” as a comic writer and cartoonist.
As a humorist, Storm P. is related to British and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
humour, with a strong touch of craziness and absurdity. However, he is less marked by total nonsense than, for instance, Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
. Often his starting point is a plain Copenhagen jargon, combined with a Danish down-to-earth homespun philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and all kinds of cosy fun and comedy; the “little” man’s unimpressed comments on a crazy world.
Though normally loved by most of his countrymen, Storm P. has also been criticised for being too toothless, cosy and petit bourgeois. In spite of his social background and interest of poor milieus, he very seldom shows deeper social criticism or revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
opinions; the dramatic age in which he lived left rather small stamps on his work. On the other hand he was no staunch giggler; many of his paintings deal with death, sorrow and macabre
Macabre
In works of art, macabre is the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere. Macabre works emphasize the details and symbols of death....
themes. Though not a revolutionary, he has indeed painted the victims of social injustice and misery, often with a strong touch of compassion
Compassion
Compassion is a virtue — one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy are regarded as a part of love itself, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism — foundational to the highest principles in philosophy, society, and personhood.There is an aspect of...
. Melancholy and fear are not unknown to him, but his official appearance was an optimistic one.
1977 a "Storm P. Museum" was opened. In 1982 he was featured on a Danish stamp.
Drawings and paintings
Petersen left about 60,000 drawings and 100 paintings of varied quality. His drawings are very often illustrated jokes, or series of a theme besides artist sketches. Among his favourite themes are the vagabondVagabond (person)
A vagabond is a drifter and an itinerant wanderer who roams wherever they please, following the whim of the moment. Vagabonds may lack residence, a job, and even citizenship....
s — who are portrayed as grotesquely dressed-up petty philosophers — and the circus
Circus
A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...
milieu that he regarded with much warmth.
He is perhaps best known for his Storm P machines, comic drawings of machines that perform very simple tasks through an unnecessarily complex and usually humorous series of actions. Other cartoonists who are known for similar machine drawings are Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to...
and Heath Robinson. Besides that, he illustrated many books, often written by congenial authors — Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London...
and G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
, among others.
As a painter he is clearly influenced by names like Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
and Toulouse-Lautrec, but often with an independent naivist
Naïve art
Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...
touch. Later on, Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...
and Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
seem to have been an inspiration in spite of his often outspoken ridiculing of modern art. Among his many themes are extérieurs from Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, from prostitution milieus and nature scenes. La Morgue (1906) and Kultur (1908, "Culture") are two of his most well known paintings.
Author
As an author he wrote many short storiesShort story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
and tales, often parodies on detective stories or melodramas, small cozy snap-shots from the Copenhagen lower middle class milieu, absurd and surrealistic tales or, especially, "monologues" put into the mouth of bums, artists, etc. Special kinds of tales were the monologues put into the mouth of his own dog (the Grog, My Dog-tales 1926-1935), in which he let the dog reflect on life, death and daily life, sometimes with a light touch of sadness and pity within the humour.
Comics
Storm P is also well known in Denmark as the author of a number of comicsComics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
(titles in Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
):
- De tre små mænd og nummermanden (The three little Men and the Number Man) 1913-1923 is a play with situations: three little men making mad pranks leading to success or failure, all accompanied by an even smaller man who delivers the numbers of the strip.
- En underlig Mand ("A strange Man") from the 1930s was an absurdAbsurdAbsurd or The Absurd may refer to:* Absurdity, general and technical usage - associated with extremely poor reasoning, the ridiculous, or nonsense....
strip cartoon about a man who reacts illogically and solves problems in an unexpected way. - Peter og Ping ("Peter and Ping"), 1922-1949 was his greatest success, a comic strip about a small citizen and his friend (or adopted son) Ping, a speaking penguin. Their experiences in CopenhagenCopenhagenCopenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, spiced by Ping’s absurd expressions and jokes, were extremely popular and even led to the foundation of a Ping Club for children. It also caused some international attention and was sold to Great BritainGreat BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
. - Dagens flue ("The Daily Fly") that started in 1939 were drawings illustrating humorous philosophical jokes which often contained a deeper meaning.
Theater work
Storm P. was also an occasional freelance actor and performed in several early Danish silent moviesSilent Movies
Silent Movies are 13 solo guitar compositions by Marc Ribot released September 28, 2010 on Pi Recordings.-Reception:The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4 stars stating "For those interested in one of the more compelling and quietly provocative and graceful guitar records of 2010,...
. He later acted in stage comedies to supplement his income. In 1920 Petersen created the first Danish animated cartoon
Animated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
titled Tre små mænd (English: Three Little Men). He also designed scenery for ballets and plays.
Quotes
- "Life is a circus: you go in, bow, run around, bow again and leave."
- "– What is your opinion of the world situation? – Nothing, something got in my eye."
- "There is something fishy about art that needs to be explained."
- "We human beings are strange creatures – we have to go underground because we have invented the aeroplane. (1939)"
- "Statistics is much like a streetlight. Not very enlightening, but nice for supporting you"
- "It's tough making predictions, especially about the future," (this phrase is sometimes, mistakenly, attributed to Yogi BerraYogi BerraLawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra is a former American Major League Baseball catcher, outfielder, and manager. He played almost his entire 19-year baseball career for the New York Yankees...
) - "I'd like to buy a return ticket, please" - "to where?" - "here!"
Literature
- Henry Chafetz: Robert Storm Petersen (in: The American Scandinavian Review vol. 40, 1952.)
External links
- Home page (entirely in Danish) of the Storm P Museum at FrederiksbergFrederiksbergFrederiksberg Kommune is a municipality on the island of Zealand in Denmark. It surrounded by the city of Copenhagen. The municipality, co-extensive with its seat, covers an area of and has a total population of 98,782 making it the smallest municipality in Denmark area-wise, the fifth most...
(CopenhagenCopenhagenCopenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
) (movie career)