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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Rainer Hueben from the Fondazione Marguerita Arp for his assistance in cataloguing the present work.
Once, after being a guest at a luxury hotel in St Moritz, Arp told his friend and fellow Dadaist, Richard Huelsenbeck, about something he had witnessed that had impressed him deeply. He had seen some American women dancing without their shoes. "Think of this", he said, "they get rid of their shoes and dance", "Why?" asked Huelsenbeck, "It's very simple" Arp replied, "because, they dance better without."
Dancer is one of the finest of an important series of string reliefs that Arp made between 1928 and 1930. Executed at the height of his involvement with the Surrealist group, the use of string in Arp's work eloquently articulates the artist's deep-rooted belief in what he called 'the law of chance' as an profoundly creative and almost sacred force at work in the world. "The law of chance, which embraces all laws is unfathomable like the first cause from which all life arises," Arp once famously asserted, "...(it) can only be experienced through complete devotion to the unconscious" (Hans Arp cited in exh. cat. Arp, New York, 1958, p. 33).
As Huelsenbeck's fond remembrance of Arp's unique logic and humour about the American dancers shows, the theme of the dancer is one that is wholly appropriate for Arp's work. Dancing, like Arp's almost Zen-like process of creation, relies upon a submission of the conscious mind and body to allow unconscious forces to flow through them, and, as Arp had observed to Huelsenbeck, both activities were best performed in the simplest of ways, without props, "without shoes".
Discussing the way in which he allowed the unconscious 'laws' of chance to determine the form and outcome of his work, Arp explained, "I allow myself to be guided by the work at the time of its birth, I have confidence in it. I don't reflect. The forms come, pleasing or strange, hostile, inexplicable, dumb or drowsy. They are born of themselves. It seems to me that I only have to move my hands. These lights, these shadows, that 'chance' sends us, should be welcomed by us with astonishment and gratitude. The 'chance', for example, that guides our fingers...(and)... the forms that then take shape, give us access to mysteries, reveal to us the profound sources of life... Very often, the colour which one selects blindly becomes the vibrant heart of the picture... It is sufficient to close one's eyes for the inner rhythm to pass into the hands with more purity. This transfer, this flux is still easier to control, to guide in a dark room. A great artist of the Stone Age knew how to conduct the thousands of voices that sang in him; he drew with his eyes turned inward" (Jean Arp, Jours effeuillés. Poèmes, essais, souvenirs, 1920-1965, Zich, 1963, pp. 435-6).
The simplicity expressed by both the means and the manner of execution in Dancer reinforces both the power and the beauty of this simple and radical aesthetic. A clearly recognisable though also amorphic figure of a dancer with an enlarged navel at the centre of its being has been defined by the languid meandering line of a piece of string. The loose, easy and free-flowing line created by the string lends the figure a living energy that reflects the natural force of the way in which this string has been gently manoeuvred into its form. Allowing the way in which the string falls to define the nature of the line, the inherent "nature" of the material is preserved and this allows for a far more expressive and powerful line than any masterful copying of nature. It is also an approach that expresses the inherent power of chance in a far more satisfactory way than the purely analytical laboratory-like experiments with tearing strips of paper, dropping them and then gluing them down where they fell, that Arp had previously experimented with. Here, the intrinsic relationship between chance and Nature that Arp believed, lay at the heart of all Creation, is made clear through the simplicity and elegance of the form itself.
Once, after being a guest at a luxury hotel in St Moritz, Arp told his friend and fellow Dadaist, Richard Huelsenbeck, about something he had witnessed that had impressed him deeply. He had seen some American women dancing without their shoes. "Think of this", he said, "they get rid of their shoes and dance", "Why?" asked Huelsenbeck, "It's very simple" Arp replied, "because, they dance better without."
Dancer is one of the finest of an important series of string reliefs that Arp made between 1928 and 1930. Executed at the height of his involvement with the Surrealist group, the use of string in Arp's work eloquently articulates the artist's deep-rooted belief in what he called 'the law of chance' as an profoundly creative and almost sacred force at work in the world. "The law of chance, which embraces all laws is unfathomable like the first cause from which all life arises," Arp once famously asserted, "...(it) can only be experienced through complete devotion to the unconscious" (Hans Arp cited in exh. cat. Arp, New York, 1958, p. 33).
As Huelsenbeck's fond remembrance of Arp's unique logic and humour about the American dancers shows, the theme of the dancer is one that is wholly appropriate for Arp's work. Dancing, like Arp's almost Zen-like process of creation, relies upon a submission of the conscious mind and body to allow unconscious forces to flow through them, and, as Arp had observed to Huelsenbeck, both activities were best performed in the simplest of ways, without props, "without shoes".
Discussing the way in which he allowed the unconscious 'laws' of chance to determine the form and outcome of his work, Arp explained, "I allow myself to be guided by the work at the time of its birth, I have confidence in it. I don't reflect. The forms come, pleasing or strange, hostile, inexplicable, dumb or drowsy. They are born of themselves. It seems to me that I only have to move my hands. These lights, these shadows, that 'chance' sends us, should be welcomed by us with astonishment and gratitude. The 'chance', for example, that guides our fingers...(and)... the forms that then take shape, give us access to mysteries, reveal to us the profound sources of life... Very often, the colour which one selects blindly becomes the vibrant heart of the picture... It is sufficient to close one's eyes for the inner rhythm to pass into the hands with more purity. This transfer, this flux is still easier to control, to guide in a dark room. A great artist of the Stone Age knew how to conduct the thousands of voices that sang in him; he drew with his eyes turned inward" (Jean Arp, Jours effeuillés. Poèmes, essais, souvenirs, 1920-1965, Zich, 1963, pp. 435-6).
The simplicity expressed by both the means and the manner of execution in Dancer reinforces both the power and the beauty of this simple and radical aesthetic. A clearly recognisable though also amorphic figure of a dancer with an enlarged navel at the centre of its being has been defined by the languid meandering line of a piece of string. The loose, easy and free-flowing line created by the string lends the figure a living energy that reflects the natural force of the way in which this string has been gently manoeuvred into its form. Allowing the way in which the string falls to define the nature of the line, the inherent "nature" of the material is preserved and this allows for a far more expressive and powerful line than any masterful copying of nature. It is also an approach that expresses the inherent power of chance in a far more satisfactory way than the purely analytical laboratory-like experiments with tearing strips of paper, dropping them and then gluing them down where they fell, that Arp had previously experimented with. Here, the intrinsic relationship between chance and Nature that Arp believed, lay at the heart of all Creation, is made clear through the simplicity and elegance of the form itself.