"The conclusion that Dada drew from all this was that chance must be recognized as a new stimulus to artistic creation." — Hans Richter, Dada: Art and Anti-Art
"The project of life is to be in grace with chance." — André Breton
In 1933, artist Jean Arp made a piece titled According to the Laws of Chance where he dropped pieces of torn black paper onto a sheet of white paper. According to Arp:
"Since the arrangement of planes and their proportions and colours seemed to hinge solely on chance, I declared that these works were arranged 'according to the laws of chance,' as in the order of nature, chance being for me simply a part of an inexplicable reason, of an inaccessible order." (1974)
The rather balanced composition of this and other works, like the 1930 Constellation According to the Laws of Chance, suggest that perhaps "chance" here is more about undoing habits in the studio (more on that later) than actually leaving things exactly as they fell. But for our purposes, we'll embrace the spirit of the piece's title as a starting point for this workshop.
Above: a detail from Arp's "According to the Laws of Chance"
- Take several pieces of paper and tear them into random shapes
- Standing up, let them fall onto the floor (one at a time or in groups)
- Repeat until you reach an arrangement you like
- Take a picture with your phone
- Continue adding to the composition, remove elements, or start over
Feel free to play with the "rules" here and see what happens! For example:
- What shapes other than randomly-torn pieces could you try?
- Use newspapers, magazines, junk mail etc and perform the results as a poetic score
- Insert your own decision-making into the process in some way so that you're "collaborating" with chance, for example:
- Always dropping from the center of the composition
- Opening a window or going outside to let wind take over
- Stand on a chair, on your roof, with your eyes closed, etc
- If you have colored papers, try white on black, white on white, black on black, etc