Revere, Revolt

Revolution ⸰ Instinct ⸰ Transgression ⸰ Joy

Revere, Revolt asks us to embrace all beauty and truth we find. But also to harness the courage and joy of revolt - to not let tradition bind you. Here Taueber-Arp, as is typical, reconciles opposites; the geometrical with breathtaking sweeps of extravagant line, colour and form.

“Everything to do with Sophie Taeuber-Arp has the luminosity of sunlight, and is the miracle which has replaced tradition. She is full of invention, whim and extravagance,” said the German artist, Hugo Ball.

In her early years, Taeuber-Arp was a key figure in the creation of the Dada movement. Through all her subsequent influential roles across multiple 20th century art movements she demonstrated Dadaism's core aims; her creations were both spontaneous and subversive. But also joyful as opposed to angry. The sense of movement she conjures feels liberating in its rhythmic patterns, its playful colour blocks. Neither cynical nor cold; Taeuber-Arp’s abstract art is life-affirming and full of humanity.

All of this applies to our image for Revere, Revolt. Mondrian's words on his creation of one the world’s most famous abstracts, which came in the wake of Taeuber-Arp’s work may help illuminate her achievements. He clearly defines a radical but classical approach to his painting 'Composition No. 10' (1939–1942) "constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm."

We can see here that with a spare palette and vocabulary of forms, Taeuber Arp creates a feeling of freedom and energy. She resolves and reconciles contradictory extremes as she does across all her work; the intuitive and geometric, disorder and harmony, art and craft, figurative and abstract...

Taeuber-Arp embodies the reverence of beauty and truth as we find it and as we make it - through exploration, transgression and revolt. In doing this with such prolific verve, Taeuber-Arp achieves her stated ambition to make “living things” in “a new style that is fitting for us.”

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (December 29, 1814 – 1880) was an American preacher. He was also a poet, responsible for the poem Burial at Sea, which was the origin of a famous folk song, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.

What was most remarkable about the man were his powers of oration - you can expand a grey accordion, below, to read people’s reactions to his genius in full. It makes you wish you could have been there.

Chapin like Taeuber-Arp was filled with reverence whilst also sweeping away boundaries. He was ‘the reverse of dogmatic in his spirit’ as quoted from his biography by Sumner Ellis;

“His converting power was immense, only that he converted men to a love of the good and beautiful, rather than to any creed or special form of faith. He converted men from partial, embittering creeds, and from all sectarianism, to a nobler appreciation of the great Christian truths - the paternity of God and the brotherhood of man.”

He revolted like Taeber-Arp. He was brought up in an orthodox tradition but, although he avoided labelling himself as such, he was a key figure in the promotion of Universalist ideals - that all may enter heaven, that all can achieve grace and happiness.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp "Untitled" 1949

This painting was reproduced and published in 1949 for a book of the exhibition L'Art Abstrait at Musée de Grenoble. The book published by éditions Galerie Maeght in Paris, France, was limited to 995 copies. The rare volume included most of the major artists of the mid-twentieth century as it sought to investigate the origins and theory of abstract art.

During the 1930s, Taeuber-Arp began introducing new elements into her compositions. She incorporated curves, arcs, and colors that reoriented the clean directionals of her previous grids.

Here, even with a spare palette and vocabulary of forms, there’s a feeling of freedom and energy.

Perhaps Wassily Kandisky can say it best when it comes to explaining the pared down power of Taueber-Arp’s later work.

"Sophie Taeuber-Arp expressed herself by means of the 'colored relief,' especially in the last years of her life, using almost exclusively the simplest forms, geometric forms. The forms, by their sobriety, their silence, their way of being sufficient unto themselves, invite the hand, if it is skillful, to use the language that is suitable to it and which is often only a whisper; but often too the whisper is more expressive, more convincing, more persuasive, than the 'loud voice' that here and there lets itself burst out."

Sophie Taeuber-Arp

1889 - 1943

Sophie Taebur-Arp was an artist at the forefront of many of the avant-garde art movements of the last century. Her prolific, pioneering creativity uniquely crossed disciplines. She worked as a textile designer, painter, sculptor, dancer, writer, interior designer, stage set creator, fashion designer, writer, puppet builder and teacher. The language of abstraction, and her focus on destabilizing and re-drawing fixed conceptions and norms unite all her work.

Born in Switzerland in 1889 Taeuber-Arp taught weaving and other textile arts at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich (now Zurich University of the Arts) from 1916 to 1929. Her textile and graphic work early in this period along with Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Melevich are among the earliest constructivist works.

In Zurich she met, and in 1922, married, fellow artist Jean Arp with whom she collaborated with often. Taeubur was friends with celebrated surrealist artist Max Ernst, and a core member of the Zurich Dada movement, centred on Cabaret Voltaire. The movement celebrated the conceptual approach to making art, often involving unorthodox materials used in abstract, unusual compositions.

The Dadaists blamed rational society for the ills of their present day, specifically the brutality of WWI and the 10 million lives it claimed. Absurdity and nonsense were a tool to challenge and subvert established conventions and open up the new. Taeuber-Arp took part in Dada-inspired performances as a dancer, choreographer, and puppeteer also designing sets, costumes and puppets.

Moving to Strasbourg in 1926 Taeuber-Arp received numerous interior design commissions including her creation of the radically Constructivist interior for the Café de l'Aubette along with Jean Arp and the founder of ‘De Stijl’ art, Theo Van Doesburg. It has been described as ‘the Sistine Chapel of abstract art’.

From the late 1920s, Taeuber-Arp lived mainly in Paris and continued experimenting with design, which included her being the first to use polka dots in fine art. She moved with her husband out of Paris ahead of Nazi occupation in 1940 to create an art colony in Vichy but had to flee due to the occupation to Switzerland at the end of 1942. She dies in a sudden tragic accident in early 1943, poisened by carbon monoxide due to a malfunctioning stove at the house of Bauhaus legend Max Bill.

A fitting way to end this brief intro to Sophie Taeuber’s life might be these two quotes. This first is from the titan of abstract art Wassily Kandinsky:

"Sophie Taeuber-Arp expressed herself by means of the 'colored relief,' especially in the last years of her life, using almost exclusively the simplest forms, geometric forms. The forms, by their sobriety, their silence, their way of being sufficient unto themselves, invite the hand, if it is skillful, to use the language that is suitable to it and which is often only a whisper; but often too the whisper is more expressive, more convincing, more persuasive, than the 'loud voice' that here and there lets itself burst out."

The second comes from the poet Claire Goll:

‘Arp and Sophie discovered the world anew, with new laws, new communicative possibilities [They were] the polar opposite of artists in tortured search of their own individuality, creeping in to a prison so as not to endanger themselves’

Living Words

E.H. Chapin 1860

"Truth is new as well as old."

Our quote comes from Chapin's book of 1860, Living Words, here it is in a fuller context:

"Truth is new, as well as old. It has new forms; and where you may find a new statement, an earnest statement, you may conclude that by the law of progress it is more likely to be a correct statement than that which has been repeated for ages by the lips of tradition."

This shows his highly progressive stance. Not only does he allow for development and change, but he gives precedence to it over tradition.

E.H. Chapin

1814 – 1880

Edwin Chapin drew crowds of over 2000 each week to his church on Broadway in New York - spilling out of the doors, crammed onto steps. But this is not the only testament to his oratory powers.

The non-religious were just as deeply moved on hearing Chapin speak. The following accounts paint a vivid picture of his talent:

"He commands admiration by the kingly majesty and sublime beauty of his thought. Now he flings a page of meaning into a single aphorism; now he electrifies his spellbound hearers with a spontaneous burst of eloquence; now he dissolves their eyes to tears by a wizard stroke of pathos; now he controls their hearts with the sovereign power of a monarch who rules the mind-realm. He infuses his soul into his voice, and both into the nerves and hearts of his hearers."

- A review of a Chapin speech by an English newspaper.

“I was fourteen years old when I first saw and heard Chapin...As soon as he began to to speak I was lifted into a trance. I had the send of music, and of all beautiful things. Never before had I felt such a transforming power in human speech. In closing he painted a word picture of a sunrise in the Alps, as a symbol of the spread of light and virtue among the people; — a piece of fervid eloquence absolutely overwhelming in its dramatic vividness and moral grandeur. When he had closed and taken his seat, for some moments, even minutes they must have been, the audience remained transfixed, breathless, spellbound. No one could move or speak. Every one in the hall had seemingly been magnetized by the orator. At last the chairman rose and crossed the platform to where Chapin sat. This broke the spell. Some one now began to applaud; soon the applause became general. And increased almost to wildness. As I went home that night I was scarcely conscious of walking on the earth.”

- Rev. O.F. Safford

“He calmed a close to riotous drunken military company with ‘the greatest triumph of off-hand speech, used in the most effective way at the most useful and critically perilous moment, that I have ever witnessed.”

- Rev. Dr. Bellows

“No language of mine of mine can give even the faintest idea of the effect upon us of the words to which we that day listened. The writer has heard none like them since. Words forsooth!! They were living, burning thoughts! The spell they cast upon us was like that of some grand symphony whose divine music rings in one’s ears forever. None who were then present can have forgotten the wonderful scene. Many of us for the first time then realized what a mighty thing true eloquence is! Every one present was moved as he had never been moved before.

I cannot describe it. It is indescribable. A whirlwind from some upper sphere seemed to sweep over us, and our souls bent beneath its power. Strains sweeter than those of an aeolian harp, fell upon our ears and sank into the depths of our hearts. It is only once in a lifetime that a great orator strikes his highest note. Even Dr. Chapin never struck that note again. The Voyage Of Life, - that was his glorious and pathetic theme! At such a moment, how impressive, how appropriate! There were few dry eyes when the orator, in closing, alluded to the dangers which were past, and the bitter parting that was to come, and spoke of the time when we should all meet where would be no more parting and “no more sea!”

- Mr John E. Warren, fellow passenger of Chapin's on a ship returning to the US from Europe.

(All accounts taken from 'Life of Edwin H. Chapin' by Sumner Ellis 1883).

Let's finish on Chapin's first entry into his book Living Words, the source of Revere, Revolt's words.

“A DAY! It has risen upon us from the great deep of eternity, girt round with wonder; emerging from the womb of darkness; a new creation of life and light spoken into being by the word of God. In itself one entire and perfect sphere of space and time, filled and emptied of the sun. Every past generation is represented in it; — it is the flowering of all history. And in so much it is richer and better than all other days which have preceded it. And we have been re-created to new opportunities with new powers; — called to this utmost promontory of actual time, this centre of all converging life. And it is for to-day’s work we have been endowed; — it is for this that we are pressed and surrounded with these facilities. The sum of our entire being is concentrated here and to-day is all the time we absolutely have.”

We bet you feel like seizing the day now, right?!