"The intrinsic decorative urge should not be evaporated" - Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Composition of Quadrangular, Polychrome, Dense Strokes (1921)
You can't say she wasn't true to her word. At Tate Modern's Sophie Taeuber-Arp's ongoing retrospective you can feast your eyes on as many dots and squiggles, rectilinear lines, and geometric patterns as the time permits you and still come away knowing you couldn't see them all.
It is, undoubtedly, visually spectacular but I must admit I came away not feeling entirely satisfied. At least not with the whole show. I guess I was looking for some grander narrative but this show took a while to get there. At the start it was more a chance to look at the art, admire it, and move on. It never really asked why she felt compelled to actually make it. Unless, of course, you take that first quote about the 'intrinsic decorative urge' to be her motto for life.
Sophie Taeuber with fellow students at the Debschitz School, Munich, Germany (c.1911)
Ernst Linck - Sophie Taeuber and Jean (Hans) Arp with her marionettes for King Stag, Zurich, Switzerland (1918)
Sophie Taeuber-Arp in costume for a housewarming party organised by artist Walter Helbig, Ascona, Switzerland (1925)
That would certainly make sense. It seems she was a hugely creative person who was driven more by the act of creation itself than trying to make any point with it - at least until she felt she had to. Born in 1889, in Davos, she was variously described as an interior designer, a painter, a teacher, a sculptor, a performer, a jewellery maker, an architect, a crafts professional, and an editor of an international arts magazine.
That's quite a bit to fit in to any life let alone her relatively short one. Working primarily in her native Switzerland and, later, France, she saw abstraction as an aesthetic model suited to everyday life. Unlike many other abstract artists she made art that also had a practical use. Though most of what is displayed in the vitrine cases or on the walls of the Tate has no practical use whatsoever.
Vertical-Horizontal Composition (1916)
Vertical, Horizontal, Square, Rectangular (1917)
Abstract Motif (Boats):Vertical-Horizontal Composition (1917)
It's just nice to look at - and would be even more so if the reflections of the gallery lights weren't so strong in the glass that covers the works (something you can witness in my photographs, I always give you the authentic experience!).
It was the influx of artists into Zurich to flee World War I that made that city such a centre for the avant-garde and, specifically, dada. The dadaists challenged rationalism and social conventions and it was them that Taeuber joined with. She would dance to Hugo Ball's sound poems in strange costumes and masks. "A dance full of flashes and edges, full of dazzling light and penetrating intensity", Ball himself called it.
On the invitation of the poet and leading dadaist Tristan Tzara to submit a photograph for an anthology she chose one of herself appearing with a Dada Head she had made using traditional woodturning techniques. Underlining, as ever, Taeuber's mixture of folk traditions with more high brow conceptual art.
Nic. Aluf - Sophie Taeuber-Arp with her Dada Head (1920)
(marionette for King Stag) (1918)
(marionette for King Stag) (1918)
When she was commissioned, in 1918, to make a series of marionettes for an adaption of Carlo Gozzi's 18c play King Stag she was able to bring her practical experience of woodworking to the project as well as indulging her interest in 'performance'. When the strangely monochrome marionettes danced it was somewhat random as if to express a love for dada while also showing off what she had learned by enrolling at Rudolf von Laban's School of the Art of Movement, an early example of an institution devoted to modern, expressive, dance.
Also on show are cushions, wallpaper, rugs, lamps, and curtains. Taeuber had told her sister that designing furniture was the job that appealed to her most. She taught at the Applied Arts Department of Zurich's Trade School for thirteen years and, in 1922, wrote a book with the snappy title Remarks on Instruction in Ornamental Design which argued that household objects should be both simple and functional in design.
As a rejection of the idea that applied art was less important than fine art, she even signed some of her textiles. Although, for the most part, her work was exhibited more as craft than art she did, after the war, receive international recognition for it. Her bold colours, stylised forms, and the overall economy of means impressed observers then and - judging by the fact she has a retrospective at the Tate nearly eighty years after her death - now.
Composition (tapestry) (mid-1920s)
Dada Head (1918)
Elements of Tension (1917)
For decades Taeuber-Arp has been in the shadow of her most famous husband Jean Arp (whom she met and married in Zurich, taking the then quite brave move of going double barrel on the name front). As progress is finally being made in bringing previously marginalised female artists to attention, Taeuber-Arp can now be seen as her husband's contemporary rather than merely his wife.
That's good. But, sadly, the stained glass windows and dada heads, the cushions and the knotted rugs, didn't move me. They impress me, that's for sure, and they look pretty and, what's more, I don't doubt Taeuber-Arp's skill and talent for making them but there was something about the start of this show that felt strangely underwhelming.
Stained glass window for the apartment of Andre Horn, Strasbourg (1928)
Oval Composition with Abstract Motifs (c.1922)
Paris, Montmarte Cemetery (1926)
Drawing of household equipment in a cupboard in the house of Ingeborg and Wilhelm Bitter, Berlin (1935)
Furniture for studio-house in Clamart (c.1929)
One of the more interesting bits was the part about her commencing her first architectural project when she and Jean Arp moved to Clamart, near Paris. She designed the house and the furniture inside it and it has to be said it looks way way ahead of its time.
Three years earlier she'd worked on her first interior design project. The murals of the resataurant/dancehall in the Hotel Hannong in Strasbourg. They speak of a vibrant, jazzy, energy - which you would expect of the time - and it is from hereon in, in the last couple of rooms of the show, that, for me, either Taeuber-Arp raises her game or, more likely, I finally get her.
Off-Centre Composition with White Lines (designed for a stained glass window for the apartment of Andre Horn, Strasbourg) (1928)
Composition for the Aubette (1927)
A third, quite likely, possibility is that these rooms are simply better curated and easier to navigate. As her interest in architecture grew, and as she travelled around more of Europe, her work seemed to become more worldly and more emotional. More involved I may even say.
It's possible that collaborations (with, for example Theo van Doesburg) helped. When, in 1926, Taeuber-Arp and Arp were invited to design a wing of the Aubette building in Strasbourg. Although Taeuber-Arp took sole control of the Foyer Bar and the brilliantly named Five o'Clock Tea Room, van Doesburg and Arp collaborated with her elsewhere in the building and you can see the inspiration of the Dutch De Stijl artist in the bolder than ever, and more stripped down, approach of abstract design.
Cafe (1928)
Pathetic Composition with Rectangular Planes (1928)
Composition with 22 Rectangles and 21 Circles (1931)
From Strasbourg, Taeuber-Arp moved to Paris, becoming a French citizen, and took part in exhibitions with well known and respected artists and architects like Le Corbusier, Mondrian, Kandisky, and Sonia Dalaunay but it seems as much as anything it was the French capital itself that captured her imagination and infused her paintings. She even veered, more or less, into figuration with 1928's Cafe.
The block people have an energy that belies their geometric precision. You can even, if you squint perhaps, view Composition with 22 Rectangles and 21 Circles, as a sort of helicopter view of the city. Looking down on the crowds, the noise, and the hustle and bustle and trying to make sense of it all.
Equilibrium (1934)
Composition of Circles and Overlapping Angles (1930)
Six Spaces with Four Small Crosses (1932)
Movement, or the illusion of it, began to seep into her work in a way it had never done so before. Her 'multispace compositions", such as Six Small Spaces with Four Small Crosses have a buzzing liveliness that speaks of city life but yet retain Taeuber-Arp's passion for shapes and pure colour.
The next step was to move towards making these works three dimensional and the reason for that, for the first time in her life it seems, was very clear and very political. Taeuber-Arp had visited Munich in 1931 and witnessed the rise of the Nazi Party first hand. On seeing them:- "these people are willingly narrowing their horizons and churning up a truly war-like atmosphere. It was utterly depressing".
In reaction, Taeuber-Arp started to add more dimensions to her work. This led to an investigation of space and depth as well as colour and shape. The idea was the viewer would look at the artwork from different angles as they moved around it. Quite a natural thing to do but far from the regressive ideas of some politicians of the time, and now, who hold to the idea that a thing is the same thing whatever the circumstances it is presented with.
Relief (1936)
War, of course, could not be avoided in the end (and it would be foolhardy to imagine art has the power to prevent war, merely to make us consider its true nature) and when German troops entered Paris in 1940 Taeuber-Arp and Arp left Clamart to seek refuge in the unoccupied south of the country. There they'd travel lightly from friends' house to friends' house and this meant a paucity of equipment.
Taeuber-Arp could, by then, only work with light portable materials like paper and coloured pencils. That didn't stop her creating though. Meandering lines are said to represent the nomadic lifestyle she had had forced on her but there's also a celebration of nature in these works - not least 1942's surprisingly straightforward landscape Chateau folie, Grasse. Works which were to prove among the last she ever made.
On the night of 14th January 1943, just days before her 54th birthday, she passed away from accidental carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty stove at the home of her friend, the Swiss architect Max Bill. Outside, the war still raged but Taeuber-Arp's finally recognised legacy was that she celebrated a very different kind of world than that which the Nazis tried to conquer and nearly ended up destroying.
A world of quiet gestures, a world of vibrant city streets, a world of exceptional design, and a world, most of all, of kindness and collaboration. The first half of Tate Modern's show of her work didn't really do justice to that but the second half most definitely did.
Chateau folie, Grasse (1942)
Drawing, Grasse (1940)
Geometric and Undulating (1941)
Construction of a Black Circle and Burgundy, Red and Blue Segments (1942)
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