Jean Arp Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a child in its mother's womb.

Jean Arp
The man who speaks and writes about art should refrain from censuring or pontificating. He will thus avoid doing anything foolish, for in the presence of primordial depth all art is but dream and nature.

Jean Arp
Sculpture should walk on the tips of its toes, unostentatious, unpretentious, and light as the spoor of an animal in snow. Art should melt into and even merge with nature itself. This is obviously contrary to painting and sculpture based on nature. By so doing, art will rid itself more and more of self-centredness, virtuosity and absurdity.

Jean Arp
Dada aimed to destroy the reasonable deceptions of man and recover the natural and unreasonable order.

Jean Arp
Ever since my childhood, I was haunted by the search for perfection. An imperfectly cut paper literally made me ill, I would guillotine it. My collages came undone, they became blistered. I then introduced death and decay in my compositions. I reacted by avoiding any precision from one day to another. Instead of cutting the paper, I would tear it with my hands.

Jean Arp
As the thought comes to me to exorcise and transform this black with a white drawing, it has already become a surface...Now I have lost all fear, and begin to draw on the black surface.

Jean Arp
In the good times of Dada, we detested polished works, the distracted air of spiritual struggle, the titans, and we rejected them with all our being.

Jean Arp
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.

Jean Arp
I like nature but not its substitutes. Naturalist art, illusionism, is a substitute for nature. I remember that in arguing with Piet Mondrian (in Paris 1920's), he opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion. I do not think that nature is in natural opposition to art. Art's origins are natural.

Jean Arp
I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born, I have confidence in it (automatic painting). I do not think about it. The forms arrive pleasant, or strange, hostile, inexplicable, mute, or drowsy. They are born from themselves. It seems to me as if all I do is move my hands.

Jean Arp