Sophie Taeuber: Breaching the Boundaries

Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Living Abstraction is currently on display at MoMA. Tabernacle-Arp’s artistic practice is incredibly diverse, throughout her life she daringly crossed the boundaries between fine, applied, and performing arts. The artist also brought together elements of different mediums and modes of artistic expression.

Although Sofie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) was an independent artist and craftswoman, for most of her career she worked collaboratively with her husband, Jean Arp. It is therefore curious that so little of his work is present in MoMA’s exhibition. The two artists didn’t keep records of who did what, as precise attribution was not important to them. They were members of the Dada movement, which emerged in Zürich, Switzerland, during WWI, a movement, which rejected Western systems of power, the brutality of war, and bourgeois world of private possessions. Since Arp and Taeuber didn’t keep records of authorship, and nobody knows if Arp did the stitching or if Taeuber created designs for any specific work, it seems to be a mistake to exclude Arp from exhibition, since collaborative practice and equality between the sexes was one of the main life goals for both artists. As scholar Babiana Obler explains in her article “Taeuber, Arp, and the Politics of Cross-Stitch,”

Taeuber and Arp experimented with the possibilities of dual authorship… This lack of record keeping has led to a situation in which it may not be possible to pin down precise attributions for the vertical-horizontal embroideries. Did Arp design and Taeuber embroider them? Did Arp design some, and Taeuber others? Did Arp embroider some?(1)

Perhaps viewers would gain a more complete picture of Taeuber-Arp's practice if Arp’s work were included.

*Vertical-Horizontal Composition* (1917)
Wool on canvas

Taeuber-Arp’s vertical-horizontal compositions (1915–18), presented in MoMA’s first room of the exhibition, reflect the love-hate relationship her generation of artists had with machines. The geometry of the compositions’ grid defines the logical Cartesian space, but the technique of embroidery, tapestry, and beadwork subverts it, making the grid warm, human, and joyful. Even though Taeuber-Arp and Arp were part of the Dada movement, they were also influenced by an International Style: De Stijl, which was founded by Piet Mondrian and Theo Van Doesburg in 1917. Similar to the De Stijl group, Taeuber and Arp explored possibilities of art based on the combination of the most basic geometric elements, such as line, grid, and blocks of flat color. In Vertical-Horizontal Composition (1917) Taeuber-Arp created a complicated grid of vertical and horizontal lines that divided her composition into an intricate pattern of squares and rectangles of flat colors. Unlike Mondrian and Van Doesburg, she was not satisfied with primary colors. In addition to reds and yellows, she also uses ochre, rusty browns, oranges, purples, and pinks. In Vertical-Horizontal Composition (1917), two large dark rectangles, located diagonally from each other in the upper left and lower right, define the dynamic movement of the composition. Subtle variations of the shades and hues, as well as sizes and fractions, give an almost musical rhythm to the composition. Is it Taeuber-Arp’s Boogie Woogie?

For Taeuber and Arp there was no separation between craft and fine art. They were part of the larger movement of artists that were interested in going back to the primitive, pre-Renaissance mode of art production, where the artist was not seen as a solitary genius but rather as an artisan who was working with other master craftsmen in the workshop, creating objects that often had some use in the world. At MoMA’s show, such examples of objects that theoretically could serve utilitarian purposes are Untitled (Poudrier)(Powder Box) from 1916, and Untitled (Dada Bowl), also from 1916. Resembling helmets of medieval soldiers, these highly polished painted woodworks project a primitive aesthetic of beauty and dignity. Box and Bowl’s elegant totemic silhouettes and smooth warm surfaces invite the kind of touch associated with household objects and simultaneously demand the respect accorded only to works of art. Obler writes that, together with her husband, Taeuber-Arp was also “interested in embroidery and tapestry as a means of challenging the Western tradition of painting and of reconnecting with a universal essence.”(2) For both artists, then, reconnecting previously unrelated fields such as craft and fine art was an essential part of their work.

*Geometric Forms (beaded bags)* (1918)
Glass beads, thread, cord, and fabric

Another example of Taeuber-Arp’s synthesis of fine arts and craft are her small beaded handbags, which are little symphonies of color and texture. The artist sold them to a group of weathy clients and gave them away to friends. For a while, the proceeds from these sales greatly contributed to her income. The geometric design embroidered on the bags is similar to Taueber-Arp’s tapestries, horizontal-vertical compositions, and drawings from the same period. They reflect her ability to move from one medium to another and her tendency to erase divisions between different modes of art production. However, Taeuber-Arp’s tiny bags are hardly utilitarian, more wearable art pieces than fashion accessories, they were designed to be twirled and rotated with the movement of their owner, displaying various facets of their design. Plants, tiny houses, a woman's head, and an assortment of geometric shapes would rotate in a glittering array of color, as elegant women moved around with Taeuber-Arp’s tiny creations. (3)

Taeuber-Arp spent her short life breaching boundaries and connecting disciplines that had little in common before her time. One of the examples where modern art invaded an old art form was puppet theater. Some of the most joyful and compelling objects in MoMA’s current exhibition are the seventeen marionettes and set designs that Taeuber-Arp created for the adaptation of Carlo Gozzi’s of the eighteenth-century commedia dell’arte-inspired play King Stag (1918.) The figures are made of painted wood, dressed in costumes and decorated with feathers, beads, and brass. The play’s plot is a parody of psychoanalysis in which the hero is saved by a magician Freudanalyticus through the force of liberated libido.

One of the most whimsical figures on display is Truffaldino, The Bird Catcher. The marionette’s vertical body consists of three green cylindrical shapes in turned wood stacked on top of each other. Its head is an elongated oval and its thin arms and legs consist of long tubular shapes that are connected to tiny pointed feet and hands. Truffaldino’s face sports a yellow triangular beak, and his eyes are large and round, complete with arching brows and black curious pupils. The figure is trimmed with feathers and tiny yellow and white bead-like figures of birds. It reminds one of the character Papageno from Mozart’s Magic Flute: a part human, part avian, silly but optimistic bird-catcher. By adopting techniques of turned wood which was usually reserved for children’s toys, as marionettes were always carved, Taeuber-Arp’s innovation allowed her to create abstracted marionettes-sculptures, and to once again bring together two distinct forms of artmaking.

King Stag was performed at the Swiss Marionette Theater in Zurich only three times, on September 11,12, and 13, in 1918, but its influence on Taeuber-Arp’s collaborators was immense. Just as the artist herself, with her gift for synthesis and combination of ideas, left an indelible bright mark on the development of the avant-garde of the early twentieth century.

Notes

Obler, Bibiana. “Taeuber, Arp, and the Politics of Cross-Stitch.” The Art Bulletin 91, no. 2 (2009): 207–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40645480.
On Arp's early career, see Aimée Bleikasten, "Premières publications
d'Arp en Alsace," Mélusine9 (1987): 33-59
Laura Braverman, “Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Geometric Forms and Letters (Beaded Bag). 1920: Moma,” Geometric Forms and Letters (beaded bag) Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Geometric Forms and Letters (beaded bag). 1920 (Museum of Modern Art), accessed January 10, 2022, https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/318/4120.

Bibliography

Boadella, Silvia, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Tess Lewis. Sophie Taeuber-Arp - a Life through Art = Sophie Taeuber-Arp - Ein Leben für Die Kunst. Milano: Skira, 2020.

Obler, Bibiana. “Taeuber, Arp, and the Politics of Cross-Stitch.” The Art Bulletin 91, no. 2 (2009): 207–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2009.10786165.

“Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Geometric Forms and Letters (Beaded Bag). 1920: Moma.” The Museum of Modern Art. Accessed January 14, 2022. https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/318/4120.

Taeuber-Arp, Sophie, Anne Umland, Walburga Krupp, and Charlotte Healy. Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2021.

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