The idea behind the opening of Dancer in the Dark was that there should be a curtain. I loved that feeling you used to get when you watched long films back in the old days: first came the overture, then the curtain opened, and then the film began. That was the idea. American audiences, however, were not on board with it at all because they simply didn’t know that tradition.

Dancer in the Dark is about going blind. Per Kirkeby made a series depicting how he imagined it might feel to go blind. Later, his own eyesight deteriorated to such a degree that he had trouble recognising faces and even his own paintings.

Per was a geologist, you know. For millions of years the Earth was a place of bacterial mats. There’s a striking connection between those forms and Per’s pictures, even if he himself wouldn’t admit it.