Jean Hans Arp
French, born Germany, 1887 - 1966Gris-Noir (Gray-Black), 1966
Not on view
Lithograph on paper
Dimensions30 × 22 in. (76.2 × 55.9 cm)
Image: 27 1/2 × 19 3/4 in. (69.9 × 50.2 cm)
Museum purchase through the Acquisitions Fund, 1969.23
Jean Arp is one of the founding members of Dada, an art movement that began at the Café Voltaire in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916, and was characterized by its assault on all aspects of rational thought. During his years spent with the Dada group and Surrealists, Arp utilized a number of innovative approaches in producing painting, sculpture and works on paper, including chance-based processes. For Arp, chance represented liberation from the traditional illusionism of Western art, allowing a more uninhibited means to guide the act of creation. One approach that was used was “automatism.” This process allowed the pen, pencil or brush to wander aimlessly across the paper or canvas in order to bypass the rational mind and tap into the subconscious realm. Arp’s forms were not completely spontaneous as his biomorphic shapes suggest, as these forms are found in nature.
Gris-Noir is representative of Arp's chance-based compositions, its arrangement of colored circles and organic shapes derived by dropping them onto the surface of the plate. Arp’s interest in poetry also inspired many of his prints.
