Jean Arp

To Be Exposed in the Woods, 1932

bronze (0/5, Rudier 1983)

To Be Exposed in the Woods is one of a series of multipart sculptures that were among Arp’s first abstract sculptures in the round. The smaller elements lie lightly and playfully on the soft-looking surface that holds them. Reduced to their simplest selves, these amorphous shapes resemble pebbles. Arp did not definitively dictate the placement of the small shapes; in fact, he stated that anyone could decide it for themselves. This idea first became possible with his plaster sculptures, and various configurations were depicted in the magazines of the time. Due to the smoothness of its surface, however, the bronze version of the piece provides only limited scope for this sort of viewer participation.