Arp Abstract (From The Dada Almanac)

Constellation, 1932


"It was the special achievement of Hans Arp to view the métier itself as the problem.  In this way he gave renewed  emphasis to it and the possibility of nourishing it with a renewed imagination.   

Hans Arp's Studio Window, Basel


For him it was no longer a question of improving and specifying an aesthetic system and making it more precise.  He wanted a direct form of production, one that exactly conformed to the way a stone breaks off from a mountain, a flower blossoms, or an animal perpetuates itself. He wanted imaginative qualities that are not to be found in any museum.   
 

Mirr, 1949-50


A type of animal-like formation with all its wild intensity and diversities.  The creation of a new body outside of us that lives as long as we do, perches on the corners of tables, resides in gardens, looks down from walls.   


He wanted abstraction."

Alexander Partens, “Dada Art,” published in The Dada Almanac, edited by Richard Huelsenbeck (Berlin 1920), English Edition presented by Malcolm Green (London, 1993), London, Atlas Press, 1993.  (Note:  Alexander Partens was the pseudonym of Tristan Tzara, Walter Serner and Hans Arp, the so-called Limited Company for the Exploitation of Dadaist Vocabulary.)

Hans Arp with Sophie Tauber-Arp

Hans Arp, 1926

Head With Green Nose, 1923

Symbols Are Containers (Arp)

Symbols are containers of the various levels of knowledge.  They represent metaphysical insight into the organizing principle of life itself.   

At their most condensed and when logically understood for what they are, symbols possess enormous power as sources of psychic energy.  They recapitulate the ontology of natural growth, and more specifically, the evolution of the human race and the intellectual and emotional development of every child.  In effect, the code of human universals resides in two contrasting forms:  the first is in each human brain, the second is in all artifacts comprising the man-made world.  

In terms of practical function and iconicity, every manufactured object and spatial enclosure represents a deductible imprint of specific universals.  Consequently, this code is carried from generation to generation by two separate means: organically through the brain of every living individual and inorganically through the trans-lingual relationships embodied in every artifact, writing, or spatial relationship.  

This invites a great paradox.   

  

All profound art and writing lies in conflict between being as the essence of spiritual revelation and the illusional permanence of the written word, the icon or the sacred space.


Jack Burnham, “Objects and Ritual: Toward a Working Ontology of Art”, in Great Western Salt Works, Essays on the Meaning of Post-Formalist Art, New York, George Braziller, 1974.

 

 

  Illustrations by Jean Arp:

          1. Head-Flag, 1926.

          2. The Navel-Bottle, 1923.

          3. Automatic Drawing, 1916.

          4. Tristan Tzara’s 25 Poems, 1918.

          5. Untitled, 1951.

    6. Lion, 1916.

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