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HANS ARP DADA TO SURREALISM HIS POEM " THE PLAIN" & MY POEM " A NEW DANSE MACABRE"
HANS ARP (1886-1966)" CONFIGURAZIONE
# 1 "
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PAINTING BY SURREALIST YVES TANGUY
(1900-1955) "I CAME LIKE I PROMISED "
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PAINTING BY MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985)"ABOVE
THE TOWN"
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PAINTING BY MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985)
"CEMETERY GATES"
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PAINTING BY SIGNORELLI (1441-1523)
" DEVIL DRAGGING SOULS TO HELL"
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NOTE: In the four images above below the work by Hans Arp I have tried to give a representation of the experiences & emotions
of my piece of poetry below entitled " A DANSE MACABRE" . Let me know if you thought it worked or not.
And now a few words about DADAIST & Surrealist Xtror_ dinaire :
Hans/Jean Arp (1886-1966)
French sculptor, painter, collagist, printmaker and poet of German birth. The son of a German father and French Alsatian mother,
he developed a cosmopolitan outlook from an early age and as a mature artist maintained close contact with the avant-garde
throughout Europe.
He was a pioneer of abstract art and one of the founders of Dada in Zurich, but he also participated actively in both Surrealism
and Constructivism. While he prefigured junk art and the Fluxus movement in his incorporation of waste material, it was through
his investigation of biomorphism and of chance and accident that he proved especially influential on later 20th-century art
in liberating unconscious creative forces.
Definitions:
Biomorphism:
Term derived from the Classical concept of forms created by the power of natural life, applied to the use of organic shapes
in 20th-century art, particularly within SURREALISM. It was first used in this sense by Alfred H. Barr jr in 1936. The tendency
to favour ambiguous and organic shapes in apparent movement, with hints of the shapeless and vaguely spherical forms of germs,
amoebas and embryos, can be traced to the plant morphology of Art Nouveau at the end of the 19th century; the works of Henry
Van de Velde, Victor Horta and Hector Guimard are particularly important in this respect.
Fluxus:
Name of a group or movement, from the Latin for 'a flowing', formed in Germany in 1962 by the Lithuanian-born American theorist
and art philosopher George Maciunas (1931-1978). He wished to instigate an anti-art, anti-bourgeois pro-gramme involving and
mingling several art forms and operating mostly outside the world of art commerce. In spirit, therefore,
Fluxus came close to a revival of Dada, though its work was seldom as openly political as some of the Dadaists were. What
it presented, during about ten years of notable activity, was often in the form of Happenings, as in street events; it gave
some per-manence to its doings through publications. Many American artists played some part in Fluxus, but its main arena
was Germany where Beuys and Vostell were involved for a time.
Definitions provided by:
www.nelepets.com/art/20c/terms,group/biomorphism
Arp’s poetry has a beautifully haunting quality to it & his poetry seems deceptively simple yet pure.
So here is a sample of his poetry.
The Plain by Jean (Hans) Arp
I was alone with a chair on a plain
Which lost itself in an empty horizon.
The plain was flawlessly paved.
Nothing, absolutely nothing but the chair and I
were there.
The sky was forever blue,
No sun gave life to it.
An inscrutable, insensible light
illuminated the infinite plain.
To me this eternal day seemed to be projected --
artificially-- from a different sphere.
I was never sleepy nor hungry nor thirsty,
never hot nor cold.
Time was only an abstruse ghost
since nothing happened or changed.
In me Time still lived a little
This, mainly, thanks to the chair.
Because of my occupation with it
I did not completely
lose my sense of the past.
Now and then I'd hitch myself, as if I were a horse, to the chair
and trot around with it,
sometimes in circles,
and sometimes straight ahead.
I assume that I succeeded.
Whether I really succeeded I do not know
Since there was nothing in space
By which I could have checked my movements.
As I sat on the chair I pondered sadly, but not desperately,
Why the core of the world exuded such black light.
The Air is a Root
The air is a root.
The stones are filled with tenderness. bravo.
bravo. the stones are filled with air.
the stones are watery branches.
on the stones replacing the mouth
grows the skeleton of a leaf. bravo.
A stone voice face to face and foot to foot
with a stone glance.
the stones are tormented like flesh
the stones are clouds for their second
nature dances to them on their third nose.
bravo. bravo.
when the stones scratch themselves, nails grow
on the roots. bravo. bravo.
the stones woke to eat the exact
hour
Kaspar Is Dead
(Translated by G P Skratz)
o god our kaspar is dead
& now there's no-one to steal away with the burning flag &
snap it every day in the dark cloud's braided hair.
no-one to crank the coffee-mill in the ancient cask.
no-one to conjure idyllic deer from the petrified grocery bag.
no-one to sniff ships umbrellas bee-keepers udders of wind
spindles of ozone no-one to filet the pyramids.
o god god god our good old kaspar is dead. lord lord
kaspar is dead.
heart-broken shark's teeth rattle with grief in the belfry
when we utter his given name. so i stick to his last,
sighing kaspar kaspar kaspar.
why have you deserted us. what form has your great soul
wandered into now. have you become a star or a chain of
water on a hot whirlwind or a plump breast of black light
or a transparent brick on the groaning drum of the rocks
of existence...
o now the crowns of our heads the soles of our feet wither
away & angels smolder on the funeral pyre.
the dark bowling alley thunders behind the sun & there's
no-one to wind the compasses & the wheels of wheelbarrows.
no-one to dine with the phosphorescent rat at the barefoot
table.
no-one to drive off the wind devil when he tries to seduce
the horses.
no-one to teach us monograms in the stars.
his bust will adorn all truly noble firesides but there is
no snuff & comfort for a dead head.
For more examples of Hans Arp’s poetry see OLDPOETRY.COM
& PoemHunter.com
See: Mark Harden’s Artchive: DADA AND SURREALISM
www.artchive.com/
& Surrealist.com
391:dada
www.391.org/dada.
And:
www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/hofmann
theArt Institute of Chicago-Ryerson & Burnham Libraries
/www.geocities.com/
The Politics of Surrealism.
/www.freshwidow.com/
And here’s a little ditty of my own to give you dear reader a little morsel to chew on while you are sleeping.
A NEW DANSE MACABRE
Looking like skeletons
in the Danse Macabre
parading around this bar
young girls all skin and bone
emaciated bodies no breasts no hips
working hard to look like this
they think it’s appealing
and I am haunted by the story
I heard the other day
that you did the deed
no meat left on your bones
looking into a mirror
distorting your image
seeing imaginary rolls of fat
on your emaciated body
once beautiful and full
your sallow sucked in cheeks
gave you away
though you always seemed
to be smiling
“Glad to see you Gord
give me a call
and we’ll have a coffee”
you said last time I saw you
you breezing by
late one night in a café́
and then a message of apology
left on my answering machine
and then the rumour of your death
an old friend filling in the details
your sister finding you there lifeless
one day bumping into her in the street
still wondering about your silence
I asked “so how’s your sister”
“oh she’s dead didn’t you know”
“that’s terrible” I said
not knowing what else to say
“ah well” she said “at least
the pain is over for her
and she’s better off than you or I
we still have to live in this Hell Hole”
as she began to walk away she added
“Look Gord give me a call
we must get together for a coffee sometime.”
More sites on Dada and Surrealism to check out :
Dada and Dadaism: Dadart.com
Artlex.com Dada
Tout-Fait:Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal
UBUWEB
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