12 quotes
I like nature but not its substitutes. Naturalist art, illusionism, is a substitute for nature.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
To be full of joy when looking at an oeuvre is not a little thing.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
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.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
The philosophers are of less use to Dada than an old toothbrush, and it leaves them on the scrap heap for the great leaders of the world.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
In the good times of Dada, we detested polished works, the distracted air of spiritual struggle, the titans, and we rejected them with all out being.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
I did exhibitions with the Surrealists [in Paris, c. 1929] because their attitude revolted against 'art' and their attitude toward life itself was wise, as was Dada's.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
Since the time of the cavemen, man has glorified himself, has made himself divine, and his monstrous vanity has caused human catastrophe. Art has collaborated in this false development. I find this concept of art which has sustained man's vanity to be loathsome.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
Each one of these bodies [art-works which Arp made] certainly signifies something, but it is only once there is nothing left for me to change that I begin to look for its meaning, that I give it a name.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
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.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
Dada was given the Venus of Milo a clyster and has allowed the Laocoön and his sons to rest awhile, after thousands of years of struggle with the good sausage Python. The philosophers are of less use to Dada than an old toothbrush, and it leaves them on the scrap heap for the great leaders of the world.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
Already in 1915, Sophie Taeuber [his wife] divides the surface of her aquarelle into squares and rectangles which she then juxtaposes horizontally and perpendicularly [as Mondrian, Itten and Paul Klee did in the same period]. She constructs them as if they were masonry work. The colors are luminous, ranging from the raw yellow to deep red or blue.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)
These collages were static symmetrical constructions, portico's with pathetic vegetation, the gateway to the realm of dreams. They were done with colored paper in black, orange or blue dye plates. Although cubist painting interested me very much, not a trace of their influence was to be found in my collages.
Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966)