189

  • Constellation von 5 Formen, (Constellation of 5 Forms)

  • 1956
  • Jean (Hans) Arp (French 1886-1966)
  • Color lithograph
  • 54.5 x 38.5 cm., 21-1/2 x 15-3/16" image
  • Gift of Polly Fehlman ‘46, Augustana College Art Collection, 2001.21

Essay by Veronica Smith, Class of 2012

It could be an egg, sunny side up. Or maybe it’s a summer sea, white sails billowing, hot sun spilling into endless blue. Or (and this is the most likely) it is symbolic of nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but more of nothing than something. This kind of quixotic, paradoxical statement is typical of the Dada movement, which was a reactionary form of artistic expression that responded to the extreme violence and subsequent disorder of World War I (Frey 12). The Dadaists weren’t really a united force. Rather, they were a magmata coalition of artists who were connected only in their vehement opposition to just about everything. Dada, according to the Dada Manifesto of 1918 (which is pointedly ironic), is a testament to almost universal numbness after the atrocity of widespread warfare. “How can anyone hope to order the chaos that constitutes that infinite, formless variation: man,” the manifesto beseeches, and more optimistically: “After the carnage we are left with the hope of a purified humanity” (Tzara 5). Dada is active simplicity, a rejection of everything that had been termed “art” in past generations (Frey 12).

Described by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as “fragile and poetic,” (Geldzahler 22) the work of Hans Jean Arp is associated with the Zurich Dadaists. The poetic attribution to Arp’s work was not hyperbole—the artist was also a wordsmith, winning literary acclaim from critics and scholars alike (Hancock 122). During his Dada period (ca. 1916-1920s), Arp primarily worked in the medium of collage on paper or wood relief. This particular piece is an example of prototypical Dada serendipity— the lighter yellow, white, and gray figures on the pictorial plane seem to be placed (or dropped) precariously and lend a sense of impermanence to the viewer, as if they could begin to float aimlessly to a new position the moment the viewer looses interest.

Just as his contemporary Vasily Kandinsky (web gallery 153) utilized color and form to allow art to create itself (Robbins 145), Arp also had a sense of the organic, almost biological tendency for a work to grow into meaning. This philosophy of creation is in keeping with the Dada mantra of hope: that as a species, perhaps we too will grow into a meaning beyond violence and destruction.