I've been catching up on some reading this summer. I hope to teach a course in the fall on Modern and contemporary art so I've been reading through Volume II of History of Modern Art (seventh edition) by H.H. Arnason and Elizabeth C. Mansfield. Last night I was fascinated with the Surrealist Jean Arp's thoughts about tearing up his own works to make new collages. His ideas are eerily timely.
“I began to tear my papers instead of curving them neatly with scissors. I tore up drawings and carelessly smeared paste over and under them. If the ink dissolved and ran, I was delighted... I had accepted the transience, the dribbling away, the brevity, the impermanence, the fading, the withering, the spookishness of our existence... These torn papers, these papiers déchirés brought me closer to a faith other than earthly.”
Jean Arp (1886-1966), Constellation According to the Laws of Chance c. 1930