Any work that is not rooted in myth and poetry or that does not partake of the depth and essence of the universe is merely a ghost. Hans Arp More Quotes by Hans Arp More Quotes From Hans Arp Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb. Hans Arp mother children art While guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might. We were seeking an art based on fundamentals, to cure the madness of the age, and find a new order of things that would restore the balance between heaven and hell. Hans Arp distance gun art Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order. Hans Arp deception men order Often the hands grasp more quickly than the head. Hans Arp understanding hands 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. Hans Arp technology essence men I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born. I have confidence in it. I do not think about it. Hans Arp born process thinking I use very little red. I use blue, yellow, a little green, but especially... black, white and grey. There is a certain need in me for communication with human beings. Black and white is writing. Hans Arp black-and-white communication writing We do not wish to imitate nature, we do not wish to reproduce. We want to produce. We want to produce the way a plant produces its fruit, not depict. We want to produce directly, not indirectly. Since there is not a trace of abstraction in this art we call it concrete art. Hans Arp wish want art The essence of a sculpture must enter on tip-toe, as light as animal footprints on snow. Hans Arp light essence animal Zurich in 1915,... While the thunder of the batteries rumbled in the distance, we pasted, we recited, we versified, we sang with all our soul. We searched for an elementary art that would, we thought, save mankind from the madness of these times. Hans Arp zurich distance art DaDa is beautiful like the night, who cradles the young day in her arms. Hans Arp arms beautiful night All things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure. Hans Arp nature should men To be full of joy when looking at an oeuvre is not a little thing. Hans Arp little-things littles joy Dada was given the Venus of Milo a clyster and has allowed the Laocoön and his sons to rest awhile, after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage Python. The philosophers are of less use to Dada than an old toothbrush, and it leaves them on the scrap heap for the great leaders of the world. Hans Arp python struggle son The important thing about Dada, it seems to me, is that Dadaists despised what is commonly regarded as art, but put the whole universe on the lofty throne of art. Hans Arp thrones important art Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his [mankind's] ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation. Hans Arp anxiety ego noise Since the time of the cavemen, man has glorified himself, has made himself divine, and his monstrous vanity has caused human catastrophe. Art has collaborated in this false development. I find this concept of art which has sustained man's vanity to be loathsome. Hans Arp vanity men art A painting or sculpture not modelled 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. Hans Arp sculpture real art the streams buck like rams in a tent / whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed /shadows of the shepherds. /black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees. / thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys. / wings brush against flowers. / fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar. Hans Arp flower spring fall In 1915 Sophie Tauber and I carried out our first works in the simplest forms, using painting, embroidery and pasted paper (without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting). These were probably the first manifestations of their kind, pictures that were their own reality, without meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected everything in the nature of a copy or a description, in order to give free flow to what was elemental and spontaneous. Hans Arp color order reality
