Arp, On my way

Arp, On my way

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Title:: Arp, On my way

Sub title:: poetry and essays 1912-1947

Extent:: 147 S.

Collection:: Books

Document type:: Monograph

Shelfmark:: DADA I:32

Persistent identifier:: 19503

Statement of responsibility:: Robert Motherwell

Place of publication:: New York; Zürich

Publisher:: Wittenborn, Schultz Inc.

Year of publication:: 1948

Edition:: [Electronic ed.]

Dimensions:: 25,5 x 19 cm

Language:: English; French; German

Personal subject:: Arp, Hans;Motherwell, Robert;Rand, Paul

Statement of responsibility:: Robert Motherwell

Chapter

Title:: Essays

Collection:: Books

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Chapter

Title:: Dadaland

Collection:: Books

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

47 wore a bearskin cap. One o£ his friends confided to me that he had a well- garnished bankbook hidden in the lining of his cap. On the occasion of a Dada festival, he gave us a souvenir thirty yards long, painted in the colors of the rainbow and covered with sublime inscriptions. One evening we decided to give Dada a little modest private publicity. Going from one beer hall to another on the Limmatkai, he carefully opened the door, shouted in a loud precise voice: “Vive Dada!” and closed the door just as carefully. The diners gaped dropping their sausages. What could be the meaning of this mysterious cry from the mouth of a mature, respectable-looking man who didn’t look at all like a charlatan or a métèque. At this period Giacometti painted stars of flowers, cosmic conflagrations, tongues of flame, fiery pits. For us the interest of his paintings lies in that they proceed from pure color and imagination. Giacometti is also the first who attempted to create a moving object; this he did with a clock metamorphosed by the addition of forms and colors. In spite of the war, it was a delightful period, and we shall look back on it as an idyll in the next world war when, transformed into hamburger steak, we shall be scattered to the four winds, [illustrations 2-8] I became more and more removed from aesthetics I became more and more removed from aesthetics. I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature. He was no longer to be the measure of all things, no longer to reduce everything to his own measure, but on the contrary, all things and man were to be like nature, without measure. I wanted to create new appearances, extract new forms from man. This tendency took shape in 1917 in my “objects.” Alexandre Partens wrote of them in the Al manack Dada: “It was the distinction of Jean Arp to have at a certain moment discovered the true problem in the craft itself. This allowed him to feed it with a new, spiritual imagination. He was no longer interested in improving, formulating, specifying an aesthetic system. He wanted immediate and direct production, like a stone breaking away from a cliff, a bud bursting, an animal reproducing. He wanted objects impregnated with imagination and not museum pieces, he wanted animalesque objects with wild intensities and colors, he wanted a new body among us which would suffice unto itself, an object which would be just as well off squatting on the corners of tables as nestling in the depths of the garden or staring at us from the wall. ... To him the frame and later the pedestal seemed to be useless crutches. ...” Even in my childhood, the pedestal enabling a statue to stand, the frame enclosing the picture like a window, were for me occasions for merriment

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