OR artOver time, it has been confronted with the insanity of the war, promoting its own aesthetic uprising in response. When crawls flood the world by violence and destruction, art attempts to raise its voice, sometimes with noise, sometimes with silent reflection. In fact, the question is often asked: What can art oppose our absurd time? Perhaps not many, since often her own inability to dismantle darkness is part of collective failure.

Hans ARP and the artistic avant -garde

In today’s conditions of insecurity, the mind returns to the Hans ARP (1887-1966), who excelled in painting, sculpture and poetry. The son of a German industrialist and a Alsatian singer, Arp rejected German militarism, choosing French nationality. There has been a basic figure of European avant -garde: Group member The blue rider In Munich, co -founder of nanny in Zurich (1916) and friend of surrealist in Paris.

One of his most characteristic poems, the Elegance for Caspar’s deathmasterfully expresses the Dadaist Disposal: Appeal and aesthetic anarchy are projected as an antidote to the era of World War I, sarcasting and parating traditional elegance. The poem, first published in 1920, * plays * irony between the serious and the grotesque, the monument and the humble daily.

The hero’s petty bust

The form of Caspar – a classic figure of the German puppet theater – becomes a symbol of a society that, even in death, formulates the drama itself. His bust adorns the petty bourgeois lounges, but the head seeks “another comfort and a little tobacco”. The ARP, through the structure of the poem, tramples on social automation and highlights the futility of every certainty of the time.

Caspar died

Ali died our good Caspar.
Who will now wear the burning banner in his plait. who
will turn the coffee grinder. Who will entice the idyllic sorter.
In the sea, he was confused on the ships with the Parapluie vocabulary and the cut -bran shouting beekeeper.
Ali and Trisal died our good Caspar. God and Lord Caspar dead.
Carculars are rattling the bells when one pronounces his name hence and I sigh many Caspar Caspar.
Increasing a star or a water chain in a windscreen hot or a black light breast or a transparent plinth in the full drum of the stone being.
So we are dehydrated from top to nails and the fairies lie almost charred in the fires.
The black roast is now stinging behind the sun but no one is moving the compasses and wheels anymore.
Who will now compound with the rat at the lonely table.
Who will chase the devil when trying to mislead the horses.
Who will explain to us the monograms of the stars.
His bust will adorn the fireplaces of all really noble people, though one head would prefer another comfort and a little tobacco.