Chapter 1:
Why I hate (er, love) Jean Arp.
Introduction.

This piece of art, in my opinion, is unattractive and wanky:

Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance
Jean (Hans) Arp (1916)
Torn-and-pasted paper on colored paper, 19 1/8 x 13 5/8"

But I love it.

I wouldn’t put a piece like this up in my living room. Its boring looking. The colors are drab. My preschool kids could make it. I’m not generally a fan of abstract art. I’m not generally into art that requires an explanation. I am unmoved by long bouts of wankerism by hifalutin art theorists.

Yet this piece drags me kicking and screaming into an immense fascination that I cannot deny.

Let me try to explain why.


Chapter 2:
Words Arranged According to the
Laws of Chance.
Bex’s late-night automatic writing (read: ranting) about why she loves this silly piece so goddamn much in spite of herself.

The story of Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance is that Jean Arp tore up the pieces of paper then dropped them from above onto another paper and glued them where they lay. Arp was one of the founding members of Dadaism,

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Jean (Hans) Arp

an artistic movement, largely a reaction to WWI, from about 1916-1923ish that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, incongruity, and randomness.

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Cadeau by Man Ran

Politically, Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance was important in the way that it broke social norms of art to beseech: What right did humans have to be getting into wars and killing countless people? Why did we give more importance to our status quo than to the divine order of things, which is fundamentally kind and irrational? Why couldn’t the people fall more closely in line with nature, yielding to the Tao like falling leaves?

Dada has been defined as the first anti-art, a negative force of resistance. Where traditional art sought to conform to rational and pleasing standards, Dadaism sought to be oppositional and offensive and turn the status quo on its head, pointing out its nonsensical nature.

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Object (Luncheon in Fur) by Meret Oppenheim

Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance is in alignment with that destructive anarchical vision, but is also creative. It doesn’t only know what it stands against, it stands for something as well. Its randomness negates the supremacy and egotism of the individual’s role in the creation of the art, as does much of dada (think Duchamp’s readymades),

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Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

but it does so by setting up a collaborative co-artist relationship with the divine. It says that chance and nature are art. They are the art of the divine and only need to be looked at with the right eyes and that if any of us can look with such vision, the world will become the most powerful and awe-inspiring work of art in all creation. The divine can be seen in something as pedestrian as the arrangement of a pile of fallen leaves. But more than this, the divine can be easily recruited as a collaborator. One can create right along side the divine. Arp decided the medium, the colors, the method, but then he relinquished control and let nature put its hand in. Arp was among the first artists to really harness and tame the heartbreaking beauty and awe of serendipity.

The piece also owns up to how psychologically difficult this type of surrender can be. Arp is compelled to use squares! A shape of orderly conformity! But then he rejects the perfectionism of their neat, precise lines. He tears them, letting nature work with him to choose the shape of the line. A tension is set up, the tension of a person wanting to let go to the divine, but not knowing how and having to fight against his socialization. He himself admitted that he wanted to cut them with a blade and make them perfect as he’d been raised to, but he revolted against this compulsion as best he could. One can almost feel the rebellious tingle he must have felt tearing these jagged edges.

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These lines point out the symmetry and strict golden section adherence of the piece.

But one can also feel the well-ingrained perfectionistic human egotism, the falling in line and doing as he was taught in the squareness. Squares are relatively rare in nature but ubiquitous among humans in western society. The ordered appearance of the piece (it is almost perfectly symmetrical, has no diagonal lines, and conforms to classical art standards about the golden section), suggests that Arp did not fully relinquish control to chance as well as the title claims. This dishonesty makes me love the piece even more. It betrays the discomfort of giving over to what we cannot control and the shame over this unease in light of the strong desire to come face to face with the divine. It reveals the awesome power social norms, no matter how hard we may try to rebel against them. Arp was one of the founders of one of the first and most rebellious anti-art movements in Western history, a movement who was known for destructive and shocking rejection of social norms.

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L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp

And yet here he is, at the moment the pieces land, arranging them to be more classically, aesthetically tidy! The work ends up testifying as well as any Boticelli that symmetry is beauty, that things shouldn’t break so far from the status quo as to be crooked, that the Western psyche has difficulty tolerating direct experience of the divine. Arp’s failure to hide the anxieties around his socialization makes his resistance feel all the more delicious, complex, and important.


Chapter 3:
Releasing Arp to Chance.
Why I did it.

Arp would perhaps be pleased and disturbed that since Dadaism, anti-art has evolved and branched into many forms (including our beloved Situationists) and paradoxically, has become incorporated into mainstream standards of art. Thanks to Arp and his cohort, breaking out of the box is easier and more commonplace for my generation. If my generation created Squares, we might have less trouble leaving those shapes and arrangements crooked.

I want to express my gratitude for the wiggle room Arp and his pals have given me. I have ADHD. I don’t fit comfortably in boxes. I want to make a little art that says “Thanks Dada!”

Though Arp’s inability to surrender fully to chance is part of why I love the piece, nevertheless part of me wants to release poor Arp from this reserve and anxiety he fought so hard against and smash at last the shackles that kept him so beholden to symmetry and straight lines. Part of me wanted to remove any doubt about who did the arranging and leave it all to the divine. As an art therapist, I can’t help but feel that though the final product is a wonderful keepsake, the process is really where the magic is to be found. But how to keep the process ongoing?

Thus was born my obsession to make a Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance snowglobe!

Everyone who shakes it will instantly be in collaboration with Jean Arp, the divine, and me, cocreating a work of art and nature. The squares can arrange themselves again and again. Their arrangement can be used as a focus of meditation to inspire awe in the power of combining the separate voices of the human and the divine.

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Chapter 4:
Construction.
How I made it.



1.) Order a couple kinds of snowglobe kits.
2.) Convince my trusty companion YellowBear to accompany me to, like, five different stores looking for the right materials to play the role of squares and background (we ended up using thick plastic folders and a plastic “closed” sign) and to get aquarium glue. He was a very patient and loving bear and got a treat (burritos are the best bear treat around) and collaboration credit, should he agree to it.
3.) Cut out circle backgrounds and squares.



4.) Consult YellowBear on how many of each size to include in each. A debate about whether to keep it simple with a few or to flood it with squares like a snowglobe normally is flooded with snow resulted in agreement that Arp and aesthetics would prefer more minimal squarage.
5.) Realize that my square pieces tragically floated in water instead of sinking gracefully to the bottom!
6.) Remember that alcohol is lighter than water and attempt that.



7.) Burn nose hairs with highly toxic glue.
8.) Wait for glue to dry.
9.) Realize liquid did not load correctly after glue (though it couldn’t be loaded before glue. Become paralyzed with this dilemma.



10.) Adjust to make more room for drops of liquid to make it around gray bottom piece to fill up globe.
11.) Reglue, reburn nose hairs.
12.) Wait for glue to dry.
13.) Attempt to fill with liquid again. Success!



14.) Wait for liquid to settle.
15.) Remove bubbles as best as possible and glue it shut.
16.) Shake and enjoy a different result every time!



Beautiful chaos governed by natural laws! Thanks dada!