Hans Arp: Quotes about nature

“We do not wish to copy nature. We do not want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce as a plant produces a fruit and does not itself reproduce.”

Hans Arp

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 183: Serge Fauchereau (1988) in Arp, p. 20 commented: 'Even though his work was nonrepresentational, Arp disapproved of the term 'abstract art' being applied to it, as he often explained with the above quote'.
Context: We do not wish to copy nature. We do not want to reproduce, we want to produce. We want to produce as a plant produces a fruit and does not itself reproduce. We want to produce directly and without meditation. As there is not the least trace of abstraction in this art, we will call it concrete art.

Nature

“I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature. He should no longer be the measure of all things”

Hans Arp

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 183
Context: I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature. He should no longer be the measure of all things, nor should everything be compared with him, but, on the contrary, all things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure. I wanted to create new appearances, to extract new forms from man. This is made clear in my objects from 1917.

Nature

“I like nature but not its substitutes. Naturalist art, illusionism, is a substitute for nature.”

Hans Arp

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 359
Context: 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.

Art , Nature

“In 1915 Sophie Taeuber and I carried out our first works in the simplest forms, using painting, embroidery and pasted paper [without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting]. These were probably the first manifestations of their kind, pictures that were their own reality, without meaning or cerebral intention. We rejected everything in the nature of a copy or a description, in order to give free flow to what was elemental and spontaneous.”

Hans Arp

on creating art without using oil colors to avoid any reference with usual painting, in The Art of Jean Arp, Herbert Read, Abrams, New York 1968, p. p. 34, 38
1960s

Color , Nature , Reality , Past

“art is fruit growing out of man like the fruit out of a plant like the child out of the mother. While the fruit of the plant grows independent forms and never resembles a balloon or a president in a cutaway suit the artistic fruit of man shows for the most part a ridiculous resemblance to the appearance of other things. Reason tells man to stand above nature and to be the measure of all things. thus man thinks he is able to live and to create against the laws of nature and he creates abortions. through reason man became a tragic and ugly figure. i dare say he would create even his children in the form of vases with umbilical cords if he could do so. reason has cut man off from nature.”

Hans Arp

Arp wrote this in lowercase letters
Notes From a Dada Diary; published, 1932 in 'Transition magazine'; as quoted (in lowercase letters), “Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 17
1930s

Children , Law , Art , Nature

“These paintings, these sculptures – these objects – should remain anonymous, in the great workshop of nature, like the clouds, the mountains, the seas, the animals, and man himself. Yes! Man should go back to nature! Artists should work together like the artists of the Middle Ages.”

Hans Arp

In 1915, w:Otto van Rees, A.C. van Rees, Freundlich, S. Taeuber [his wife] and Arp made an attempt of this sort, as Arp mentioned himself.
Source: 1940s, Abstract Art, Concrete Art (c. 1942), p. 118

Age , Mountain , Nature , Animals

“Like the disposition of planes, the proportion of these planes and their colors seemed to depend only upon chance, and I declared that these works were ordered 'according to the law of chance', just like in the order of nature.”

Hans Arp

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 307

Law , Color , Nature , Chance

“I tried to be natural, in other words the exact opposite of what drawing teachers call 'faithful to nature'. I made my first experiments with free form.”

Hans Arp

Looking, Arp, Jean; as quoted by Soby, James Thrall. Arp: The Museum of Modern Art. Doubleday, New York, 1958, Print. p. 12
1960s

Faith , Nature , Teachers , Drawing

“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.”

Hans Arp

Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories. p. 327 (1958)
1950s