Turner Contemporary
Turner contemporary art gallery is on the beachfront at Margate in East Kent. It was opened in 2011, allegedly on the site of a boarding house where the great Victorian painter, J.M.W. Turner, used to stay on his frequent visits to Margate.
Exterior of Turner Contemporary, Margate
Inside the main atrium-reception space-cum-shop is one of the best views I think I’ve ever seen from any building anywhere, better than Tate Modern’s boring view over London, better than the view from the Rockefeller Centre over New York. which I visited a few years ago. The high windows create a frame through which you see the ever-changing movement of the grey sea, the surf-capped waves, the enormous blue sky puffed with clouds and seagulls swooping and wheeling. Apparently, Turner wrote to Ruskin that ‘the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe’, and on the day I visited it was a believable claim.
View from the ground floor of Turner Contemporary over the sea
The gallery contains a main exhibition space, a smaller space, and education and kids’ spaces. When I visited a ballet/contemporary dance class for under-tens was in action, watchable through big sheet glass windows. The whole place feels big and open, family-friendly and happy.
Jean Arp: the poetry of forms
Hans Jean Arp was born in 1886 and lived till 1966. He was a draughtsman, painter, sculptor and printmaker as well as a notable poet. He was born in Alsace-Lorraine, the disputed borderland between France and Germany, which was seized by Prussia in 1870, taken back by France in 1918, and seized again by the Germans in 1940. His mother was French, his father German and he grew up speaking both languages, using Hans or Jean as necessary, or just ‘Arp’, writing poetry fluently in both languages.
Installation view courtesy of Turner Contemporary, photograph by Stephen White
Dada
Arp was associated with the Dada movement of the 1910s and then surrealism in the 1920s and 30s. Dada was founded in 1916 by a group of writers and artists as a reaction against the senselessness of the Great War. Arp wrote:
Revolted by the butchery of the 1914 World War, we in Zurich devoted ourselves to the arts. While the guns rumbled in the distance, we sang, painted, made collages and wrote poems with all our might.
Arp contributed drawings and illustrations to Dada magazines (included here). He also contributed his distinctive free verse poems. These were written in French or German, with a high degree of dada/surrealist no-sense, but have been well translated into English and are strangely persuasive.
Kaspar is dead (1912) by Hans Arp
Object language
Throughout the show are many of Arp’s woodcuts, often in relief, as he laid one outline of wood over another. They are abstract shapes rather than realistic depictions. There are plentiful references in titles to natural objects like birds, cutlery or people, but always these figures have undergone substantial transformation towards abstract shapes and patterns – he seems to have been a natural abstractionist from the get-go. Everything has been alchemised into purer, simpler shapes.
Static composition (1915) by Jean Arp
The exhibition includes this set of seven ‘Arpaden’ which represent pictograms of simple everyday objects which he suffused with his own meanings and became the basis of an object language which he used for the rest of his life. In particular, the navel (a ring shape) represents nature and the cycle of life, whereas the moustache (apparently copied from images of Kaiser Wilhelm) represents pomposity.
Arpaden (1923) by Jean Arp
For such a revolutionary in style is is surprising that he had a surprisingly conservative worldview, a strong belief in nature, believing that art is an extension of natural processes like growth and decay. He was seeking new forms and shapes which gave the sense of having grown, of revealing the essence of life. There are a lot of reliefs made from painted wood which somehow combine the curves of life forms with the hard edge of the wood into a kind of biomorphic modernism.
Der Pyramidenrock (1924) by Jean Arp
Arp’s titles are playful. They share the same enjoyment of language, of mixing incongruous words and ideas, as his dadaist poetry, examples of which are scattered liberally and amusingly throughout the exhibition.
The cloudpump (1920) by Jean Arp
In fact playfulness and humour, a lightness of touch, are in evidence throughout.
Plates, fork and navel (1923) by Jean Arp
Surrealism
In 1925 Arp’s work also appeared in the first exhibition of the Surrealist group at the Galérie Pierre in Paris, but this attachment didn’t significantly alter his well-worked out visual language. From the same time he began to experiment with converting the wood-reliefs into free-standing sculptures. The sculptures included in this exhibition appear fully-formed and highly finished, utterly abstract if vaguely zoomorphic blobs, very smooth and self-contained and complete.
Three disagreeable objects on a face (1930) by Jean Arp
In some of these bronze sculptures the smaller blobs are moveable so they can be rearranged to create new works. Très moderne.
In the early 1930s Arp developed the idea of ‘constellations’, using the same shapes or patterns in a limited set of variations and combinations. In his poetry this meant using the same constellation of words in different contexts, to explore new meaning combinations, echoing the endless metamorphoses of the natural world.
Surrealism in service of the revolution (1933) by Jean Arp
In the 1930s Arp also coined the term ‘concretion’ for his zoomorphic sculptures. With typical fluency Arp wrote:
Concretion signifies the natural processes of condensation, hardening, coagulation, thickening, growing together. Concretion designates the solidification of a mass. Concretion designates curdling, the curdling of the earth and the heavenly bodies. Concretion designates solidification, the mass of the stone, the plant, the animal, the man.
You can see how the poetry comes from this fondness for repetition and recombination.
Human concretion (1933) by Hans Arp
Way back in 1915 Arp had met the artist Sophie Taeuber, who was also involved in Dada, designing costumes and scenery for their wacky theatrical productions, as well as herself dancing and performing. During the war Taeuber taught weaving and other textile arts at Zurich Art School, and from early on she influenced Arp towards abstract design and encouraged the practical handicraft aspect of the woodcuts and his sculptures. They married in 1922 and lived and worked closely together till her tragic accidental death in 1943.
Arp’s art and poetry isn’t usually very moving. The dry outline of the wood reliefs, the smooth globular shapes of the sculptures, the restrained colouring of his prints, all create a kind of mood of tranquillity, a contemplative, relaxed vibe, which he would presumably have said stems from nature, the source of all creativity.
Coloured prints by Jean Arp
Which is why it was a surprise to come across some rather tear-jerking late works. He had previously torn up stuff in the Dada years, and during the war was so hard-up he produced minimal sculptures from waste paper (papiers froissés). But after Taeuber’s death, Arp embarked on a series of papiers déchirés (torn drawings) in which he ripped up and repositioned fragments of drawings by his wife and soul mate. As the wall label says:
The act of tearing Taeuber’s works may be seen as an attempt by Arp to come to terms with his loss and to renew, posthumously, the collaboration that had been such an important part of their life together.
All the more moving for being so under-stated and unemotional.
Collage of torn-up drawing by Sophie Taeuber (1939/47)
Also during this period Arp came across some drawings which had developed mould. He realised there is no stopping the natural processes of degeneration and death. His poems express the same sense of despair and dereliction, the futility of striving for any kind of artistic ‘perfection’, acceptance of mutability.
On my way (1948) by Jean Arp
Summary
I had only a vague sense of Arp before visiting this exhibition, but now feel I know a lot more about his work, his key ideas and motivations, about his personal life and – the biggest surprise of the show – the fact that he wrote poetry, and really enjoyable poetry at that. Thanks to Turner Contemporary for including the translated poems on the walls rather than just in the catalogue – giving them the same size and priority as the art works.
Installation view of Arp: The Poetry of Forms at Turner Contemporary
This is a lovely show, a revelation for anyone who, like me, wasn’t that knowledgeable about Arp. It’s unbelievable that such a thorough and interesting survey is FREE!
And, after being lulled into a zoomorphic, nature-inspired, seraphic mood – you step out of the gallery and into the first floor landing where this amazing view awaits. It’s an all-round lovely experience.
View from the first floor of Turner Contemporary over the sea
Related links
- Arp: The Poetry of Forms continues at Turner Contemporary until 14 January 2018
- Jean Arp Wikipedia article
Books & Boots 