Abstract Art, Concrete Art

Jean Arp, ca. 1942

Ever since the cave age, man has been painting still lifes, landscapes, and nudes. Certain artists have found it sickening to feed art eternally with still lifes, landscapes, and nudes. Since the cave age, man has glorified himself, deified himself, and with his monstrous vanity provoked human catastrophies. Art has been the collaborator of mans false development. Certain artists have had their stomach turned by this spurious conception of the world and of art which has buoyed up the vanity of man. These artists do not wish to copy nature. They do not wish to reproduce but to produce. They wish to produce as a plant which produces a fruit and is unable to reproduce a still life, a landscape, or a nude. They wish to produce directly and not through an interpreter. But then nothing is less abstract than Abstract art. This is why Van Doesburg and Kandinsky have suggested that Abstract art should be called Concrete art. The pyramids, the temples, the cathedrals, paintings of men of genius, all these have become beautiful mummies. Mans buzzing will not last very long. Not much longer than the buzzing of those little fallen angels that flutter so gaily around a piece of cheese. All this earthly spectacle: these heads of Adam, articulated commas, gloves with navels, parrots imitating thunder, mountains with ice-shirtfronts, spelling furniture, these as in a dream will be transformed into a beautiful sheaf of fire illuminating the void for an instant. Man needs to be cured of his vanity. Artists should not sign their works of Concrete art. These paintings, sculptures, objects should remain anonymous and form part. of natures great workshop as leaves do, and clouds, animals, and men. Yes, man must once again become part of nature. These artists should work communally as did the artists of the Middle Ages. In 1915, O. Van Recs, C. Van Rees, O. Freundlich, S. Taeuber, and myself made several attempts at such a collaboration. I wrote in 1915 in the preface to an exhibition: These works are constructed with lines, surfaces, shapes, and colors. They seek to reach beyond human values and attain the infinite and the eternal. They arc a denial of mans egoism The hands of our brothers no longer serve us as our own hands do, but have become the hands of an enemy. Anonymity has been replaced by fame and the masterpiece; wisdom has perished To reproduce is to imitate play-acting, tight-

2 rope dancing. Art, however, is reality and the reality of all should triumph over the particular The Renaissance taught men how proudly to exalt their reason. The science and technology of modern times has dedicated men to megalomania. That reason has been overvalued, this has caused the confusion of our era. The evolution of traditional painting towards Concrete art which began with Cezanne and was carried on by the Cubists has been explained many times but these historical explanations have served but to obscure the problem. Suddenly, in about 1914, "in accordance with the laws of chance/ the spirit was transmuted, as though touched by a magic wand, and a cessation occurred the significance of which is still an ethical problem. Concrete art wishes to transform the world. It wishes to render existence more tolerable. It wishes to save man from the most dangerous of furious madnesses: vanity. It wants to simplify mans life. It urges man to identify himself with nature. Reason has robbed man of his roots. He leads a tragic life. Concrete art is an elementary, natural, and healthy art which causes the stars of peace, love, and poetry to sprout in mans brain. Wherever Concrete art enters, melancholy goes out dragging its gray valises crammed full of black sighs. Kandinsky, Picabia, Sonja Delaunay, Rossine, Streminsky, Magnelli, Man Ray, I am unable to enumerate all the artists who painted and sculpted works significant of the period that begins about 1914. Without knowing one another we worked towards the same goal. The greater part of these works was not shown before 1920. Then there was a bursting forth of all the shapes and colors of the world. These paintings and sculptures were stripped of every convention. In every country artists of this new art arose. Concrete art influenced architecture, furniture, the cinema, typography. In the Breteuil Pavilion at Svres we can see at zero degrees centigrade the international meter made of irridium platinum. It is not with this meter that the greatness of geniuses is measured. In order to measure a genius one must employ an appropriate meter. Vanity and commercial imagination have constructed one. At times it must be very short so that you can say: Look at this genius. See how big he is. He measures a hundred and fifty meters. Youll see no genius in my shop who measures less than a hundred meters. Sometimes the meter must be very long. You can say, then: Just look at this! Its not even a meter long! Why, its not a genius, its a dwarf. This is no man of might. Its a mite. The man who lives buried in man as a mole in the earth can no longer distinguish black from white. He does not understand the language of shapes and colors. He has never seen the gaze of the stars. Many of these painters and sculptors, Kandinsky, Picabia, Duchamp, Arp, Hausmann, Van Doesburg, Magnelli, Schwitters, Nebel, have written automatic poems.

3 Automatic poetry comes straight out of the poets bowels or out of any other of his organs that has accumulated reserves. Neither the Postilion of Longjumeau, nor the Alexandrian, nor grammar, nor aesthetics, nor Buddha, nor the Sixth Commandment are able to constrict him. He crows, swears, moans, stammers, yodels, according to his mood. His poems are like nature: they stink, laugh, and rhyme like nature. Foolishness, or at least what men call foolishness, is as precious to him as a sublime piece of rhetoric. For in nature a broken twig is equal in beauty and importance to the clouds and the stars.

From Art of this Century, ed. Peggy Guggenheim (New York, Art of This Century, n.d., ca. 1942), pp. 2931.