The Duckling from Odense.

To Hans Christian Andersen paper was not meant to be media for the written word only. Although he did master all the different genres in literature - poetry, prose and drama - the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is most known as a fairy tale author through out the world. It is less known that the author's artistic field was not limited to the written word. Hans Christian Andersen also used paper for drawings and paper cuttings.

Paper - it seems - represented the basis for his imaginative expressing. Through out his life Hans Christian Andersen was an addict to paper. He wrote on it, he drew on it - and he used it to cut in. Like the ancient expression that he form and art was hidden in the stone, only to be revealed by the sculptor, the poet used his material - the paper - to engrave, or rather to carve out his ideas with ink. And more radically he used his unexpected monstrous scissors to cut out the most elegant figures.

In order to amuse his friends and their children Hans Christian Andersen made his paper cuts. Hans Christian Andersen was in fact a very popular paper cutter. In almost every memoir made by his acquaintances a recollection over this activity of the author is made. There is no straight connection between the authors paper cuts and his fairy tales, but he used to accompany his paper cutting with a fantastic tale, and end the tale by unfolding the paper to the amazed listeners.

The paper cuts were not only meant to be a pleasure for the eye but also a challenge to the mind. Often there was a hidden meaning in the paper cuttings - in the same way, as we know it from the fairy tales: on the surface it could amuse, in the depth it would amaze. Some of the paper cuts are purely picture puzzle or rebus others are icons combined to represent a linguistic symbol.

The double meaning hidden in the paper cuts demonstrates the way of thinking of the fairy tale author. It reveals an utmost modern way of thinking, using the word not as a media to create meaning but as a material of meaning itself.

Source: Odense City Museums

See more at http://museum.odense.dk/e-museum-/hans-christian-andersen-collections.aspx