Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction
Description
A definitive survey on the Dada participant and pioneer of abstraction between art and craft, spanning her textiles, marionettes, stained glass, paintings and more
A New York Times critics' pick Best Art Books 2021
Accompanying the first retrospective of Taeuber-Arp's work in the United States in 40 years, Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction is a comprehensive survey of this multifaceted abstract artist's innovative and wide-ranging body of work. Her background in the applied arts and dance, her involvement in the Zurich Dada movement and her projects for architectural spaces were essential to her development of a uniquely versatile and vibrant abstract vocabulary. Through her artistic output and various professional alliances, Taeuber-Arp consistently challenged the historically constructed boundaries separating fine art from craft and design.
This richly illustrated catalog explores the artist's interdisciplinary and cross-pollinating approach to abstraction through some 400 works, including textiles, beadwork, polychrome marionettes, architectural and interior designs, stained glass windows, works on paper, paintings and relief sculptures. It also features 15 essays that examine the full sweep of Taeuber-Arp's career. Arranged into six chapters that follow the exhibition's sections, these essays trace the progression of Taeuber-Arp's creative production both chronologically and thematically. A comprehensive illustrated chronology, the first essay on Taeuber-Arp's materials and techniques, and an exhibition checklist based on new research and analysis detail the expansive nature of Taeuber-Arp's production.
Sophie Taeuber-Arp was born in 1889 in Davos, Switzerland, and trained at the interdisciplinary Debschitz School in Munich. In 1914, she began a successful applied arts practice in Zurich, where she also taught textile design and participated in the Dada movement. Starting in the late 1920s, Taeuber-Arp completed several architectural and interior design projects, most significantly the Aubette entertainment complex in Strasbourg. When she moved to Paris in 1929, she turned her attention to abstract paintings and painted wood reliefs. During the Nazi occupation, Taeuber-Arp spent her final years in the South of France, and died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning in 1943.
Product Details
| Publisher | Museum of Modern Art |
| Publish Date | June 15, 2021 |
| Pages | 352 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781633451070 |
| Dimensions | 10.8 X 9.3 X 1.5 inches | 4.3 pounds |
Reviews
Emphatically frame[s] her art and design work as deeply intertwined, countering a tendency--dating back to the posthumous catalogue raisonné of her work Arp compiled in 1948--to downplay her applied art efforts as something like a side hustle.--Rachel Wetzler "Art In America"
Taeuber-Arp's production thrived on myriad tensions: between abstraction and figuration, applied and fine arts, a constructivist rigor and gestural fluidity.--Ela Bittencourt "Hyperallergic"
A boon to get finally a sense of the full scope of her artistry. It is as if a time capsule has been opened.--Sanford Schwartz "New York Review of Books"
By showcasing all the many media that Taeuber-Arp touched, this exhibit recasts long-held assumptions about a hierarchy in which painting and sculpture reign supreme.-- "The Week"
Does much to bring Taeuber-Arp out of the shadows and into her own light.--James Panero "New Criterion"
Her egalitarian view of art and craft proved that abstractions in woven wool can trounce the oil on canvas kind.--Roberta Smith "New York Times"
Her nimble, irrepressible creativity is a reminder that art making, especially in times of strife, is an inherently optimistic act.--Kate Guadagnino "T Magazine"
No matter how committed she could be to geometric order, Taeuber-Arp communicated her freedom.--Peter Schjeldahl "New Yorker"
Taeuber-Arp's dazzling artistic range...encompassed beaded bags, necklaces, cushion covers, rugs and stained glass, all in abstract, geometric designs. She made costumes with hats fashioned from paper doilies and designed furniture, interior décor, kitchens--even a meticulously planned broom cupboard. [...] blur[ing] the boundaries between fine art and applied art.--Catherine Hickley "New York Times"
A hub of the avant-garde scene in the 1920s and '30s, deeply involved in the Dada movement and later geometric abstraction.--Amy Crawford "Smithsonian"
Her art, as the subtitle "Living Abstraction" implies, began as performance -- yet is refreshingly ego-free.--Jackie Wullschläger "Financial Times"
Presents an overview of Taeuber-Arp's output and her various sources of inspiration and vividly renders the apparently playful ease with which the artist dismantled longstanding barriers between art and life...--Mechteld Jungerius "TLmag"
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