Jean Arp citáty strana 2

„Umění je plod, který v člověku roste jako plod na rostlině nebo jako dítě v matčině lůně.“

„Šílenství a vraždění už byly rozpoutány, když se dada roku 1916 vynořilo z temných hlubin Curychu. … Dada chtělo vytrhnout lidstvo z jeho ubohé neschopnosti a zachránit lidi před zuřivým šílenstvím válečné doby.“

„Produkovat tak, jako rostlina produkuje plod, ne reprodukovat.“

Zdroj: [Míka, Robert, Uragán dadaismu změnil před 100 lety pohled na umění i svět, archiweb.cz, 2016-02-02, 2016-04-01, http://www.archiweb.cz/news.php?action=show&id=18875&type=2]

„Umělecké tvoření by se nemělo nazývat prací, nýbrž uměním. U lásky mluvíme také spíše o snu než-li o práci.“

Zdroj: [Pijoan, José, Dějiny umění 10, Knižní klub, 2000, 80-242-0218-2, 79, česky]

„Umělecké tvoření by se nemělo nazývat prací, nýbrž uměním.“

“Sculpture should walk on the tips of its toes, unostentatious, unpretentious, and light as the spoor of an animal in snow. Art should melt into and even merge with nature itself. This is obviously contrary to painting and sculpture based on nature. By so doing, art will rid itself more and more of self-centredness, virtuosity and absurdity.”

Jean Arp: Citáty anglicky

“A deep and serene silence filled her structures composed of colors and surfaces. The exclusive use of horizontal and vertical rectangular planes in the work of art, the extreme simplification, exerted a decisive influence on my work. Here I found, stripped down to the limit, the essential elements of all earthly constructions: the bursting, upward surge of the lines and the planes toward the sky, the verticality of pure life, and the vast equilibrium, the sheer horizontality and expansiveness of dreamlike peace. Her work was for me a symbol of a divinely built 'house' which man in his vanity has ravaged and sullied.”

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s

“A painting or sculpture not modeled 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... [art must be like.. ] fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant or a child in it's mother's womb.”

a remark on the art of Sophie Taeuber, whom he later married.
in Abstract Painting Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 58
1960s

“Then we went down to his work room, in the horrible beautiful Merz grotto [the 'Merz-Haus', built by Kurt Schwitters, where broken wheels paired with matchboxes, wire lattices with brushes without bristles, rusted wheels with curious Merz cucumbers… How often did we 'p-lay' in this room! Schwitters called playing, considering the sweat, working. There we glued together our paper pictures, and as I tossed away one of my glued-together works one morning, Schwitters asked, 'You don't like it? Can I have it?' – 'What do you want with this failed piece of toast?' Schwitters took a good look at it and said, 'I'll put what's on top on the bottom, I'll stick a little Merz nose in this corner and I'll sign the bottom Kurt Schwitters.' And, yes indeed, this collage became a wonderful picture by Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters was a wizard, just as Hokusai was a wizard.”

Notes From a Dada Diary, published in 1932; as quoted by Anna Moszynska, in Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 113
1930s

“Automatic poetry comes straight out of the poet's bowels or out of any other of his organs that has accumulated reserves... He crows, swears, moans, stammers, yodels, according to his mood... His poems are like nature; they stink, laugh, and rhyme like nature. Foolishness, or at least what men calls foolishness is as precious to him as a sublime piece of rhetoric. For in nature a broken twig is equal in beauty and importance to the clouds and the stars.”

In 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling – Memories of Kurt Schwitters Hans Arp 1956; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken - commissioned by Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam - NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, pp. 140-141
1950s

“[art] urges man to identify himself with nature.”

Zdroj: 1940s, Abstract Art, Concrete Art (c. 1942), p. 118-119

“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.”

Zdroj: 1940s, Abstract Art, Concrete Art (c. 1942), p. 118

“In recent times, Surrealist painters have used descriptive illusionistic academic methods.”

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s

“We [Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber ] painted embroidered and made collages. All these works were drawn from the simplest forms and were probably the first examples of concrete art. These works are realities pure and independent with no meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected all mimesis and description, giving free reign to the elementary and spontaneous.”

In a letter to Polish poet Jan Brzekowski, ca. 1930, co-publisher of the Franco-Polish magazine 'L'art contemporain'; from Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs, Hans Arp, Gallimard, Paris 1966, p. 63
Arp's critical quote refers to the creation of art by the French Surrealists in which Jean Arp participated for a few years and then departed.
1930s

“Concretion signifies the material process of condensation, hardening, coagulating, thickening, growing together. Concretion designates the solidification of a mass. Concretion designates curdling, the curdling of the earth and the heavenly bodies. Concretion designates solidification, the mass of the stone, the plant, the animal, the man. Concretion is something that has grown. I want my work to find it.”

Arp's quote, on the cooperation with his future wife Sophie Taeuber ca. 1916; as quoted in: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 65
1910-20s

“Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.”

Jean Arp (1931), as quoted in: Eric Robertson (2006) Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor, p. 108
1930s

“Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.”

Quoted in: Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1990, p. 66
Attributed from posthumous publications