Definite Means: Arp's Cut-Outs, 1911-1930

Abstract

Through an examination of the Franco-German sculptor Hans (Jean) Arp's (1886-1966) commitment to the procedure of cutting out (découpage), this dissertation theorizes the cut-out as a “means” of artmaking and knowing obscured by dominant narratives about collage and the historical avant-garde. The project treats Arp’s work in paper, wood, print, and cardboard as facets of a single and prolonged cut-out practice, arguing that the cut-out provided him with a “definite means” (Arp’s words) to engage with and respond to four media central to avant-garde practice of the 1910s and 1920s—collage, painterly abstraction, typography, and photomontage. In doing so, it establishes découpage as an as yet under-examined deployment of cutting within modernism, where collage and montage have served as the dominant paradigms.