Nu floral is an extraordinary example of Jean Arp’s ability to take inspiration from natural forms around him, while always managing to transcend the realm of the tangible. The wonderfully organic and sensual quality of this sculpture is further enhanced by its title, which gives it a tender, romantic, as well as a playful note. The artist is inviting the viewer to join him in looking and marveling with fresh eyes at the forms that surround us: objects that when presented in an unfamiliar context or scale, look more like forms from the landscape of our subconscious. The viewer cannot help but be seduced by the sculpture’s undulating lines and admire the subtle yet voluptuous curves and shadowy crevices. The legendary art historian and museum director Alfred Barr described Jean Arp as a “one-man laboratory for the discovery of new form” (quoted in Exh. Cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Arp, 1958, p. 7). The present cast of Nu floral was, in fact, included in James Thrall Soby’s 1958 exhibition dedicated to Arp's works at The Museum of Modern Art (see fig. 1). Just a few years later the museum would acquire a marble version of this sculpture for their permanent collects ion (see fig. 2).
Writing about his life in 1958, Arp began his essay entitled Looking with the following: "To open my eyes, to see, to look, to contemplate the world, to watch clouds and trees, to behold cities and buildings, to look works of art in the eye, to look men in the eye, to see, to look—ever since my childhood this has been my greatest joy" (quoted in ibid., p. 12). In his observation of the physical world around him as well as his influence of and in various artistic movements in the early-to-mid twentieth century, Arp developed a sophisticated vocabulary across media and disciplines.
Jean Arp's most successful sculptures are characterized by their unblemished surfaces and smooth curvilinear forms. Since his involvement with Dada and Surrealism in the 1920s and 1930s and until the end of his life, the elegant beauty of Arp's sculpture was increasingly analyzed in terms of spirituality. Recognized throughout his career for his ability to transcend formal boundaries and create works of art that could be interpreted differently depending upon a given viewer's needs and expectations, Arp was labelled by one critic as "a well-rounded mystic" for his ability to appeal to a wide audience. At the heart of Arp's success is the organic beauty of his sculptures, which seem to manifest from a vision unencumbered by any formal constraints.
The present work’s elegant, elongated form is subtly reminiscent of a human figure, while its simplicity and smooth, polished surface transcend human form, metamorphosing into something evocative and subjective. This abstract, transcendental quality bears strong stylistic, technical and poetic affinities with the work of Constantin Brancusi (see fig. 3). As Stephanie Poley observed: “Arp was concerned with purity, with being free, being independent of everything unpleasant and limiting, and with the active, constant emission of positive energy as well as its perception” (Stephanie Poley in Exh. Cat, Minneapolis Museum of Art, Arp (exhibition catalogue), 1987, p. 229). The present bronze comes from a small edition of three bronzes cast by Georges Rudier in 1958, one of which forms part of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation collects ion in Athens. Two marbles of the form were also created at this t.mes ; one of which is held in the collects ion of The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the other of which is found at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg. The present bronze was first acquired by Charles Zadok in 1958. Deeply involved in both The Museum of Modern Art and the Robert Lehman Art Foundation (whose installation he supervised at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Zadok himself had a superlative modern art collects ion. Nu floral remained in his collects ion until shortly before his death in the mid-1980s.
