Jean Arp

Denise Rene, New York
Jeffrey H. Loria, New York
George Ablah, Kansas City
James Goodman Gallery, Inc., New York
Acquired from the above in 1988

Eduard Trier, Jean Arp Sculpture: His Last Ten Years, Stuttgart, 1968, no. 237, illustration of the marble p. 114
Herbert Read, The Art of Jean Arp, New York, 1968, illustration of the marble pl. 128

Golden brown patina. Work has been lightly polished recently. Small area of distinct coloration in patina on side of figure's head is presumably part of artist's process and patina is modulated throughout. A few very minor nicks to surface, otherwise fine. Work is in excellent condition.
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Arp's distinctive style represents the nexus of abstraction and the artist's quest for the definitive representation of the human figure, of which he stated, "I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature" (Jane Hancock, Arp, Cambridge, 1986, p. 14). While his abstractionist contemporaries maintained that the search for universal value and truth necessitated the abandoning of objective realities such as the human form, Arp sought to combine both convictions. 

The concise and seamless Torse fruit is a far cry from the efforts of early Modernists such as Auguste Rodin, and while still reading clearly as a torso, the work possesses an entirely new language of form.  The form is complete, recognizable and fluid. Appendages are reduced to protruding bud-like nodes and the soft curves and gliding contractions suffice to suggest the human body. Arp became entranced with the concept of the node. The poet Friederich Holderlin, who Arp revered, stated, "The node has always been the language of the gods" (Eduard Trier, Jean Arp Sculpture: His Last Ten Years, Stuttgart, 1968, p. 12). Stefanie Poley writes, "Rather than equating human beings with shells, stones, and plants, Arp was developing means to express their access to holiness. Nature was thereby elevated to cosmos, a new interpretation or at least one Arp had not formulated in this way before" (Stefanie Poley, The Human Figure in the Later Work, Minneapolis, 1987, p. 228).  As such, Torse fruit is representative of the artist's capacity for transcendental mysticism and his appropriation of multiple, sometimes heterogeneous, artistic modes.