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Lot Essay
Arp first began creating wood reliefs in 1915 shortly before becoming a founder member of the Dada movement in Zurich. He continued to explore the possibilities offered by this unusual medium throughout the 1920's and though he often associated with the French Surrealists during these years, he later claimed this association was primarily a convenient means of allowing his work to be exhibited on an international platform. Throughout his life, Arp's central working aesthetic remained unchanged despite his close ties with Dada, Surrealism and later International Constructivism. Founding his work on simplistic forms whose relationship with one another were often arrived at randomly - or as Arp put it, through an unconscious use of the laws of chance - he sought 'elemental' art rooted in nature.
Around 1928 Arp permanently disassociated himself from the Surrealists and began to execute works that became increasingly less abstract in their use of form and tended to employ more biomorphic shapes that were evidently founded on natural forms. In this respect Personnage assis can be seen as an important work in that it is a rare abstracted depiction of a human figure. The shapes convey a sense of the biomorphic rhythm of life that so characterises Arp's later figure sculptures of the 1930s, but in the present work are primarily employed as elegant abstract compositional devices within the dramatic white structure of the picture plane.
As Arp explained: "Art is a fruit growing out of man, like the fruit out of a plant, like the child out of the mother. While the fruit of the plant grows independent forms and never resembles a balloon or a president in a cutaway suit, the artistic fruit of man shows for the most part a ridiculous resemblance to the appearance of other things. Thus man thinks he is able to live and to create against the laws of nature and he creates abortions. Through reason man became a tragic and ugly figure. I dare say he would create even his children in the form of vases with umbilical cords if he could do so. Reason has cut man off from nature" (J. Arp, 'Notes from Nature', Transition, 1932).
Around 1928 Arp permanently disassociated himself from the Surrealists and began to execute works that became increasingly less abstract in their use of form and tended to employ more biomorphic shapes that were evidently founded on natural forms. In this respect Personnage assis can be seen as an important work in that it is a rare abstracted depiction of a human figure. The shapes convey a sense of the biomorphic rhythm of life that so characterises Arp's later figure sculptures of the 1930s, but in the present work are primarily employed as elegant abstract compositional devices within the dramatic white structure of the picture plane.
As Arp explained: "Art is a fruit growing out of man, like the fruit out of a plant, like the child out of the mother. While the fruit of the plant grows independent forms and never resembles a balloon or a president in a cutaway suit, the artistic fruit of man shows for the most part a ridiculous resemblance to the appearance of other things. Thus man thinks he is able to live and to create against the laws of nature and he creates abortions. Through reason man became a tragic and ugly figure. I dare say he would create even his children in the form of vases with umbilical cords if he could do so. Reason has cut man off from nature" (J. Arp, 'Notes from Nature', Transition, 1932).