Literature: Guy Atkins: “Asger Jorn. The crucial years: 1954–1964”, London, 1977, no. 1249, ill. full page in colours fig. 210, p. 246. Literature: “CoBrA”, exhibition catalogue, Lefebre Gallery, New York 1960. Literature: Asger Jorn: “Billedfortegnelse” (Studio Book), no. 335. Literature: Guy Atkins: “The Lebefre Family Collection of works by Asger Jorn”, exhibition catalogue, Lefebre Gallery, New York 1983. Literature: John Canaday and Werner Haftmann: “25 Years Lefebre Gallery, with spotlight on Asger Jorn”, exhibition catalogue, Lefebre Gallery, New York, 1985, ill. in colours. Literature: Axel Heil and Roberto Ohrt: “Asger Jorn: The Open Hide”, exhibition catalogue, Petzel, New York, 2016, p. 46–47, ill. Literature: Paul Laster: “Frieze Week Edition: 25 Things to Do in New York's Art World Before May 9”, New York Observer, 3 May, 2016, ill. Literature: Michael Wilson: “Asger Jorn - ‘The Open Hide’” TimeOut, New York, 11 May, 2016, ill. Literature: “Petzel: Asger Jorn” Art|Basel Kabinett/Survery, booklet (Basel: Art Basel U.S. Corp., 2016), p. 52–53 (ill.). Literature: Emma Chrichton-Miller: “Collectors' Focus CoBrA artists”, Apollo, January 2022, p. 69.

Exhibited: “Trente et une peintures de Asger Jorn”, Galerie Rive Gauche, Paris, 1960, cat. no. 19, ill. in the catalogue. Exhibited: “Asger Jorn”, Lefebre Gallery, New York, 1962, cat. no. 4. The artist's first solo exhibition in America. Titled here: “Atrocious Embrace”. Exhibited: “Asger Jorn”, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1982, cat. no. 31, ill. full page p. 68.

Provenance: Collection John Lefebre, New York. Provenance: Galerie Boulakia, Paris. Provenance: Private collection, France. Provenance: Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers, Copenhagen, 2015. Provenance: Private collection, New York.

From around 1960 Asger Jorn often names his paintings with surprising word combinations or ambiguous, contradictory puns. He does so in different mother tongues that with wit and flair follow the national language of the country where the individual work was created. The title “La Caresse atroce” (which can be translated into the atrocious or cruel caress) is in this way related to other titles from the year 1960, such as “Présence lointaine” (Remote Presence) or “La Belle Bete” (The Beautiful Beast). It is characteristic that the description is endowed with an oppositional adjective, so that the wording may be fluent, persuasive or simply poetic, while the search for a meaning is short-circuited in a paradox.

Guy Atkins points out the obvious qualities of these titles, but he also argues that they do not usually supply a key or a checklist to the comprehension of the image itself, which is open for interpretation: “(...) Jorn's titles do not usually provide anything more than a suggestion of mood or a private and therefore uninformative reference to the occasion or circumstances surrounding a particular painting” (Atkins: “Jorn in Scandinavia 1930–1953”, p. 120). Therefore, without seeking an actual explanation of the title in - or directly derived from - the work, the very idea of the conflicting nature of the piece, however, may still be an entry point to a work from a period where Jorn on the one side was deeply involved with the Situationist International in Europe, while he on the other side debuts on the American gallery scene: Figuration is interrupted by clear painterly gesture, suggested motifs face expressivity, muted earth tones meets a spectral force of colour.