Jean Arp or Hans Arp (16 September 1886 – 7 June 1966) was a German-French sculptor, painter, poet, and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper.
We do not wish to imitate nature, we do not wish to reproduce. We want to produce. We want to produce the way a plant produces its fruit, not depict. We want to produce directly, not indirectly. Since there is not a trace of abstraction in this art we call it concrete art.
DaDa is beautiful like the night, who cradles the young day in her arms.
I use very little red. I use blue, yellow, a little green, but especially. . . black, white and grey. There is a certain need in me for communication with human beings. Black and white is writing.
Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.
Wij wezen allles wat kopie of beschrijving was af en lieten het elementaire en het spontane in volle vrijheid reageren. Omdat de plaatsing van de vlakken en de kleuren en de verhoudingen van deze vlakken louter op toeval schenen te berusten, verklaarde ik dat deze werken, zoals in de natuur, gerangschikt waren "volgens de wetten van het toeval", toeval dat voor mij alleen maar een beperkt onderdeel vormde van een onpeilbare reden van bestaan, van een orde die in zijn totaliteit ontoegankelijk was.
Any work that is not rooted in myth and poetry or that does not partake of the depth and essence of the universe is merely a ghost.
All things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure.
As the thought comes to me to exorcise and transform this black with a white drawing, it has already become a surface. . . Now I have lost all fear, and begin to draw on the black surface.
the streams buck like rams in a tent whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed shadows of the shepherds. black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees. thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys. wings brush against flowers. fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar.
I like nature but not its substitutes. . . Mondrian opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion. . . Art's origins are natural.
A painting or sculpture not modelled on any real object is every bit as concrete and sensuous as a leaf or a stone. . . but it is an incomplete art which privileges the intellect to the detriment of the senses.
Often the hands grasp more quickly than the head.
In 1915 Sophie Tauber and I carried out our first works in the simplest forms, using painting, embroidery and pasted paper (without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting). These were probably the first manifestations of their kind, pictures that were their own reality, without meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected everything in the nature of a copy or a description, in order to give free flow to what was elemental and spontaneous.
The important thing about Dada, it seems to me, is that Dadaists despised what is commonly regarded as art, but put the whole universe on the lofty throne of art.
The man who speaks and writes about art should refrain from censuring or pontificating. He will thus avoid doing anything foolish, for in the presence of primordial depth all art is but dream and nature.
The essence of a sculpture must enter on tip-toe, as light as animal footprints on snow.
Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.
The vertical and the horizontal are the extreme signs available to man for touching the beyond and his inwardness.
Each one of these bodies (art-works Arp made) certainly signifies something, but it is only once there is nothing left for me to change that I begin to look for its meaning, that I give it a name.
Ever since my childhood, I was haunted by the search for perfection. An imperfectly cut paper literally made me ill. I would guillotine it.