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Lot Essay
Acquired directly from the artist in 1929 and held in the same private collection for almost a century, Amphore infinie is an elegant example of Jean Arp’s enigmatic painted wooden reliefs from the 1920s, which boldly straddled the realms of painting and sculpture. In these deceptively minimalist works, Arp achieves a masterful sense of balance and dynamism, blending elements of Dada, Surrealism and Abstraction together in a series of refined, richly layered compositions. Described by the critic and writer Robert Melville as ‘one of Arp’s greatest and most poetic works,’ Amphore infinie is composed of a painted wooden surface on which a relief has been attached, projecting outwards towards the viewer (‘On Some of Arp’s Reliefs,’ in J. Thrall Soby, Arp, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1958, p. 32). Painted in a pale grey tone, the artist draws our attention to this sinuous central element, its form nestled within a flowing diagonal stream of white paint that cuts across the vibrant blue field of the composition like a ribbon.
Arp had begun to experiment with three-dimensional reliefs during his Dada years, stacking layers of wooden forms together with screws, which he then painted and mounted on the wall like a traditional canvas. By using screws rather than nails or glue in their construction, Arp appears to have intended a certain degree of change and adjustment to the reliefs over time. In this way, their various elements could be removed and reassembled by the artist in subtly different configurations, altering the visual effect of the artwork through gentle nuances within the relationships between each form. When he exhibited these works for the first time at the Kunstsalon Wolfsberg in Zurich in 1918, Tristan Tzara enthusiastically praised the new direction Arp was taking in his art: ‘I see with ARP: vegetation from explosions, tumbling, proliferating asymmetry, freed from any monastic rule, exploding asceticism, theory, tradition, the future’ (quoted in C. Craft, ed., The Nature of Arp, exh. cat., The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, 2018, p. 30). These reliefs continued to occupy Arp intensely through the 1920s, and featured complex arrangements of hand-cut wooden elements, sometimes painted in bright, primary hues, sometimes left bare and untreated, so that the materiality of the object remained clearly visible to the viewer.
The simplified, seemingly random forms that populate many of these reliefs were initially inspired by the artist’s abstract drawings and collages—indeed, discussing the evolution of these works, he later explained ‘My first paper cut-outs had expanded in space. My sculpture, little by little, had emerged from the wall’ (quoted in E. Robertson and F. Guy, Arp: The Poetry of Forms, exh. cat., Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, 2017, p. 79). As he continued to explore the potential of these visual ideas, Arp developed what became known as his ‘Object-Language’: a repertoire of strongly contoured, simplified shapes that were intentionally ambiguous, derived through a process of research in both poetry and art making. Gradually, Arp’s bas-reliefs started to integrate more recognisable elements inspired by his ‘Object-Language,’ the three-dimensional wooden elements evoking quotidian objects, such as moustaches, forks, eggs and neckties, which the artist combined in unexpected pairings and juxtapositions. As Catherine Craft has noted of these forms, ‘a single one could variously conjure a torso, a mandolin, a vase, a bottle, or all of these, more or less simultaneously, and needed only a nudge from Arp in the form of a title to incline the viewer’s reading toward one or another’ (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 2018, p. 15).
When Arp entered the orbit of the Surrealist group in the mid-1920s, the playful mix of abstraction, humour and chance that characterised his works greatly appealed to the circle of ground-breaking poets, writers and artists active within the movement. In turn, the freedom of the Surrealists and their celebration of spontaneity and the unconscious impulse had a profound influence on Arp: ‘They encouraged me to ferret out the dream,’ he later explained, ‘the idea behind my plastic work, and to give it a name’ (‘Looking,’ in exh. cat., op. cit., 1958, p. 14). He exhibited in the Surrealists’ First Group Exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in 1925, and the following year one of his reliefs was illustrated in La Révolution surréaliste, which was swiftly followed by the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Galerie Surréaliste. In 1928, André Breton concluded his seminal essay ‘Surrealism and Painting’ by discussing Arp’s bas-reliefs’ ability to transcend their objectiveness: ‘Arp’s reliefs (…) represent for me the most effective summing-up of the degree to which particular things can achieve generality’ (‘Surrealism and Painting,’ in A. Breton, Surrealism and Painting, London, 1972, p. 47).
Towards the end of the 1920s, Arp’s reliefs became increasingly economical and refined, with the artist restricting himself to one or two forms within a single composition. In Amphore infinie, Arp invokes the familiar silhouette of an amphora, a two-handed storage vessel that was ubiquitous throughout the ancient world. With a neck narrower than its curving body, the amphora’s silhouette is at once recognisable and familiar, and yet through Arp’s process of simplification and translation, rendered mysterious and otherworldly. Here, the vessel appears to have a double opening, rather than a traditional top and base, creating the impression of a magical object, which can contain an infinite volume of whatever substance it holds. Through this subtle change to the classic profile of the storage jar, Arp suggests that the stream of white paint continues endlessly beyond the edge of the artwork. For Robert Melville, the deceptive simplicity of the composition belied the profound nature of Arp’s statement and ruminations on the fundamental workings of the universe: ‘[Amphore infinie] is one of a number of works which might be described as the relief maps of a poetic cosmogony: they appear to relate to Arp’s avowed interest in the Pre-Socratic philosophers, and in particular to their speculations upon the originative material of things and coherence of the natural world’ (exh. cat., op. cit., 1958, p. 32).
Amphore infinie was among the selection of recent works that Arp chose to include in an historic exhibition of Surrealist and abstract art he helped to organise at the Kunsthaus Zürich in the autumn of 1929, in collaboration with Carola Giedion-Welcker and Sigfried Giedion. This ambitious exhibition featured works by a wide range of artists—including Josef Albers, Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi, Robert Delaunay, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, René Magritte, Kazimir Malevich, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, and Yves Tanguy—and proved an important showcase for the diverse strands and styles that were active throughout the European avant-garde at the end of the 1920s. As part of the schedule of events around the exhibition, Arp and Kurt Schwitters gave readings at an evening hosted by the literary club Lesezirkel Hottingen, which also featured a performance of Georges Antheil’s Ballet mécanique and a screening of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s controversial Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou. Amphore infinie was acquired from the artist around the time of this exhibition, and it has remained in the same family collection ever since.
Arp had begun to experiment with three-dimensional reliefs during his Dada years, stacking layers of wooden forms together with screws, which he then painted and mounted on the wall like a traditional canvas. By using screws rather than nails or glue in their construction, Arp appears to have intended a certain degree of change and adjustment to the reliefs over time. In this way, their various elements could be removed and reassembled by the artist in subtly different configurations, altering the visual effect of the artwork through gentle nuances within the relationships between each form. When he exhibited these works for the first time at the Kunstsalon Wolfsberg in Zurich in 1918, Tristan Tzara enthusiastically praised the new direction Arp was taking in his art: ‘I see with ARP: vegetation from explosions, tumbling, proliferating asymmetry, freed from any monastic rule, exploding asceticism, theory, tradition, the future’ (quoted in C. Craft, ed., The Nature of Arp, exh. cat., The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, 2018, p. 30). These reliefs continued to occupy Arp intensely through the 1920s, and featured complex arrangements of hand-cut wooden elements, sometimes painted in bright, primary hues, sometimes left bare and untreated, so that the materiality of the object remained clearly visible to the viewer.
The simplified, seemingly random forms that populate many of these reliefs were initially inspired by the artist’s abstract drawings and collages—indeed, discussing the evolution of these works, he later explained ‘My first paper cut-outs had expanded in space. My sculpture, little by little, had emerged from the wall’ (quoted in E. Robertson and F. Guy, Arp: The Poetry of Forms, exh. cat., Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, 2017, p. 79). As he continued to explore the potential of these visual ideas, Arp developed what became known as his ‘Object-Language’: a repertoire of strongly contoured, simplified shapes that were intentionally ambiguous, derived through a process of research in both poetry and art making. Gradually, Arp’s bas-reliefs started to integrate more recognisable elements inspired by his ‘Object-Language,’ the three-dimensional wooden elements evoking quotidian objects, such as moustaches, forks, eggs and neckties, which the artist combined in unexpected pairings and juxtapositions. As Catherine Craft has noted of these forms, ‘a single one could variously conjure a torso, a mandolin, a vase, a bottle, or all of these, more or less simultaneously, and needed only a nudge from Arp in the form of a title to incline the viewer’s reading toward one or another’ (quoted in exh. cat., op. cit., 2018, p. 15).
When Arp entered the orbit of the Surrealist group in the mid-1920s, the playful mix of abstraction, humour and chance that characterised his works greatly appealed to the circle of ground-breaking poets, writers and artists active within the movement. In turn, the freedom of the Surrealists and their celebration of spontaneity and the unconscious impulse had a profound influence on Arp: ‘They encouraged me to ferret out the dream,’ he later explained, ‘the idea behind my plastic work, and to give it a name’ (‘Looking,’ in exh. cat., op. cit., 1958, p. 14). He exhibited in the Surrealists’ First Group Exhibition at the Galerie Pierre in 1925, and the following year one of his reliefs was illustrated in La Révolution surréaliste, which was swiftly followed by the artist’s first solo exhibition at the Galerie Surréaliste. In 1928, André Breton concluded his seminal essay ‘Surrealism and Painting’ by discussing Arp’s bas-reliefs’ ability to transcend their objectiveness: ‘Arp’s reliefs (…) represent for me the most effective summing-up of the degree to which particular things can achieve generality’ (‘Surrealism and Painting,’ in A. Breton, Surrealism and Painting, London, 1972, p. 47).
Towards the end of the 1920s, Arp’s reliefs became increasingly economical and refined, with the artist restricting himself to one or two forms within a single composition. In Amphore infinie, Arp invokes the familiar silhouette of an amphora, a two-handed storage vessel that was ubiquitous throughout the ancient world. With a neck narrower than its curving body, the amphora’s silhouette is at once recognisable and familiar, and yet through Arp’s process of simplification and translation, rendered mysterious and otherworldly. Here, the vessel appears to have a double opening, rather than a traditional top and base, creating the impression of a magical object, which can contain an infinite volume of whatever substance it holds. Through this subtle change to the classic profile of the storage jar, Arp suggests that the stream of white paint continues endlessly beyond the edge of the artwork. For Robert Melville, the deceptive simplicity of the composition belied the profound nature of Arp’s statement and ruminations on the fundamental workings of the universe: ‘[Amphore infinie] is one of a number of works which might be described as the relief maps of a poetic cosmogony: they appear to relate to Arp’s avowed interest in the Pre-Socratic philosophers, and in particular to their speculations upon the originative material of things and coherence of the natural world’ (exh. cat., op. cit., 1958, p. 32).
Amphore infinie was among the selection of recent works that Arp chose to include in an historic exhibition of Surrealist and abstract art he helped to organise at the Kunsthaus Zürich in the autumn of 1929, in collaboration with Carola Giedion-Welcker and Sigfried Giedion. This ambitious exhibition featured works by a wide range of artists—including Josef Albers, Georges Braque, Constantin Brancusi, Robert Delaunay, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, René Magritte, Kazimir Malevich, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, and Yves Tanguy—and proved an important showcase for the diverse strands and styles that were active throughout the European avant-garde at the end of the 1920s. As part of the schedule of events around the exhibition, Arp and Kurt Schwitters gave readings at an evening hosted by the literary club Lesezirkel Hottingen, which also featured a performance of Georges Antheil’s Ballet mécanique and a screening of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s controversial Surrealist film Un Chien Andalou. Amphore infinie was acquired from the artist around the time of this exhibition, and it has remained in the same family collection ever since.