讓·阿爾普 | 《狄蜜特》

皮耶畫廊（皮耶·勒布），巴黎
私人收藏（1962購自上述畫廊；售出：紐約蘇富比，2008年5月8日，拍品編號159）
現藏家購自上述拍賣

基塞佩·馬爾基奧里，《阿爾普》，米蘭，1964年，圖30，載另一版本圖

赫伯特·里德，《阿爾普》，倫敦，1968年，品號175，149頁載另一鑄造版本圖

愛德華·特里爾、瑪格麗特·阿爾普·哈根巴赫、弗朗索瓦·阿爾普，《讓·阿爾普雕塑作品1957-1966年》，斯圖加特，1968年，品號212，112頁載另一鑄造版本圖

伊奧內·伊安努，《讓·阿爾普》，巴黎，1973年，品號212，77頁收錄版本

《阿爾普》（展覽圖錄），明尼阿波利斯藝術學院，明尼阿波利斯，1987年，品號252，235頁載大理石及青銅版本圖

塞爾日·福什羅，《阿爾普》，巴塞羅那及巴黎，1988年，圖63，61頁載大理石版本圖

阿里·哈爾托赫（編），《漢斯·阿爾普雕塑作品》，奧斯特菲爾德爾恩，2012年，品號212，153頁載大理石版本圖並列明現作

Déméter is a beautiful example of Arp’s mature sculpture, executed at the time when his work achieved a formal purity and a high level of abstraction. Although the highly polished form of the present work demonstrates the sleek modernist aesthetic that had been defined by Brancusi (fig. 1) and Laurens, its amorphous and irregular shape evidences some of the central themes of Arp's original manifesto. 'All things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure,' he wrote as a young artist. 'I wanted to create new appearances, to extract new forms from man' (quoted in Serge Fauchereau, op. cit., p. 15).

 

Often guided by chance and intuition, Arp enjoyed creating organic, irregular shapes evocative of natural forms and parts of human anatomy. Although he developed a highly abstract visual vocabulary, in his sculptures Arp always established a connection between these biomorphic forms and elements of the natural world in such a way as to unveil the mysterious and poetic elements hidden in everyday forms. The artist always enjoyed seeing his sculptures in outdoor settings where they could enter into a dialogue with the natural world. This was nowhere more evident than in the garden outside his studio, where a marble version of Déméter served as a focal point.

 

In 1952 Arp travelled to Greece for the first time, and subsequently titled several of his works with names from Greek history and mythology, such as Ptolémée, Ganymède and Daphné. The title of the present work refers to Demeter, who was the goddess of harvest and agriculture, and as such a perfect symbol of fertility, as well as a figure that combined the notions of the human being and nature. The present work is indeed an extraordinary example of the artist's ability to take inspiration from natural forms around him and create an object that transcends the realm of the tangible and reaches the realm of the phantasmagorical.