Jean Arp, surrealist sculptor, attributed the organic/abstract ("biomorphic") shapes of some of his sculptures to dreams. This page is just a sampler...

The Dream, 1937, by Jean Arp

Dream Amphora, 1941, by Jean Arp

Dream Flower with Lips, 1954, by Jean Arp

Dream Flower with Lips, 1954, Arp (sorry, won't enlarge)

Star in a Dream, 1958, by Jean Arp

EDITOR'S NOTE

Once I dreamed that Jean Arp's drawings hid secret control points defining the curves and lines in the work (something like vector graphics?) to direct the energy flow and the viewers' eye. In my dream I saw a book of his art, spotted a recurring set of control points, and tried to echo them in a drawing of my own. But it turned out to get his secret I really had to eat his (dried-up, years-old, rubbery, octopus-tentacle) lunch. Really digest his principles? I dunno. But I chewed, and tried. Came out nothing like Arp (see Jean Arp's Octopus), but he got me looking at composition as a set of attentional points. What does you notice first? Then where do you go? That eye-dance is itself a shape...

...an Arp shape?

--Chris Wayan

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