Terrestrial Forest Form 1917

Jean Arp made this Terrestrial Forest Form most likely with cut and pasted paper in red, orange, green, blue and white. I’m thinking about Arp and his process. He’d often drop torn paper onto a surface and then glue it down where it landed, letting chance play a role. I wonder if he dropped bits of paper, collaging until he felt the forest take form. You can see how the earthy hues of green, orange, and red, are layered on top of one another. It's like the artist wasn't so much imposing a vision, as he was coaxing an image out of the material. He’s letting the shapes have some say, you know? That little white blob sits on top of the other colors, like a cloud or a moon. I think of Arp’s friend, Sophie Taeuber, also playing with chance and geometric abstraction. This feels like a continuation of that conversation between artists, an echo of a shared way of seeing the world through abstract form, a world of nature and feeling.