SABLE DE LUNE

by Jean Arp

" De l'inexplicable, du divin, du fait que je me rveille, que je bouge, agis, pense, que je vis, nat la posie, le dessin, la sculpture, l'criture, les lignes, les plans, le choix des couleurs, des formes, des fleurs, des pierres, le choix des fragments de pierres, d'un regard, d'une dmarche, d'une silhouette, d'une figure humaine, d'une figure de nuage. " Intimement lie son travail de plasticien, l'uvre potique d'Arp est encore mal connue. Il y a l une bizarrerie, une injustice. Lui-mme affirme clairement qu'il accordait autant d'importance ses pomes - sinon davantage - qu' ses sculptures : " Si par impossible j tais oblig de choisir entre l'uvre plastique et la posie crite, si je devais abandonner, soit la sculpture, soit les pomes, je choisirais d'crire des pomes. " La posie d'Arp est certes marque par l'exprience dadaste et surraliste, mais son originalit tient en grande part son refus de toute rhtorique, y compris moderniste, son parti-pris de simplicit, son inlassable questionnement sur Dieu, sur le monde et sur l'homme, et surtout son humour malicieux, parfois extravagant, dont les cocasses trouvailles n'excluent pas la gravit. L'humour c'est l eau de l'eau-del mle au vin d'ici-bas. Simplicit du geste, simplicit du dire. Sa posie dit la table et le nuage, le voilier et la fort, l'ange et la rose. Elle nomme et conte sans dcrire ni expliquer, et lorsqu'elle se fait lyrique, c'est fleur de mots, avec une narquoise pudeur. Aime Bleikesten.

Paperback

Published March 1, 2005

About the author

Alsatian artist Jean Arp or Hans Arp, particularly noted for his abstract reliefs and three-dimensional sculptures, founded of Dada.

This German-French painter and poet used other media, such as torn and pasted paper.

Arp spoke in German and then referred as "Hans" and in French then referred as "Jean." Following the war, France ceded the area, known as Lorraine, to Germany in 1871; afterward, a French mother in Strasbourg bore this son to a German father during the period.

He left the École des Arts et Métiers in Strasbourg in 1904, afterward went to Paris, and published his poetry for the first time. Arp from 1905 to 1907 studied at the Kunstschule in Weimar, Germany, and in 1908 went back to Paris and attended the Académie Julian.

Arp, a member of the Moderne Bund in Lucerne, joined in their exhibitions from 1911 to 1913. In 1912, he went to Munich and called on Wassily Kandinsky, who encouraged his researches; he exhibited with the Der Blaue Reiter group. Later in that year, he took in a major exhibition in Zürich alongside Henri Matisse, Robert Delaunay, and Kandinsky. In Berlin in 1913, Herwarth Walden, the dealer and magazine editor at that time of the most powerful figures in the European avant-garde, took him.

Following the return to France at the end of World War I, law determined his name, Jean.

In 1915, he moved to Switzerland to take advantage of Swiss neutrality. Arp later told the story: he reported to the German consulate and then avoided draft into the Army. People gave him the paperwork, which he took and wrote the date in the first blank. He then wrote the date in every other space as well, then drew a line beneath them, and carefully added them. He then took off all his clothes and went to hand in his paperwork.

In Europe, the fondation Arp in Clamart preserves the atelier, where Arp lived and worked for most of his life; two thousand visitors tour the house in each year. Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach, second wife of Arp, started the Fondazione Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach in Locarno, Switzerland. Johannes Wasmuth, the dealer, in 1977 established and dedicated the Stiftung Hans Arp und Sophie Taeuber-Arp e.V. to the late Jean Arp in consultation with Marguerite; this entity owns the largest collection of his works and holds the copyright of all his works. From the remote town of Rolandseck, west Germany, it aimed to relocate to a new research center and office in Berlin in 2012 to raise its profile.