.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
'The essence of a sculpture must enter on tip-toe, as light as animal footprints on snow. Art should lose itself in nature. It should even be confounded with nature. Only this must not be achieved by imitation, but by the opposite of naturalistic copying, that is duplication. Thus art divest itself more and more of self-addiction, of virtuosity, of ridiculousness' (Jean Arp quoted in H. Arp, Unserem täglichen Traum, 1955, p. 89).
Arp, who was once described by Alfred H. Barr as 'one-man laboratory for the discovery of new forms', turned his attention during his late work unexpectedly towards the genre of the human figure. And again here, as in his earlier works, Arp, the inventor of the concrete relief and the discoverer of the 'law of accident', avoided the imitation of nature.
The sculptures from the time of the present work can be described as 'stones formed by human hand', in Arp's own wonderful phrase. Released and strengthened by the artist's interest for classic and archaic sculpture, Arp's objects show a simplification and smoothness which can be compared with the works by another towering sculptural artist of the twentieth-century, Brancusi.
Arp, who was once described by Alfred H. Barr as 'one-man laboratory for the discovery of new forms', turned his attention during his late work unexpectedly towards the genre of the human figure. And again here, as in his earlier works, Arp, the inventor of the concrete relief and the discoverer of the 'law of accident', avoided the imitation of nature.
The sculptures from the time of the present work can be described as 'stones formed by human hand', in Arp's own wonderful phrase. Released and strengthened by the artist's interest for classic and archaic sculpture, Arp's objects show a simplification and smoothness which can be compared with the works by another towering sculptural artist of the twentieth-century, Brancusi.