Hans, or Jean, Arp (1886-1966) is renowned as one of the foremost sculptors and visual artists of the twentieth century. This English-language monograph on Arp reveals his practices as poet, painter and sculptor to be not only complementary but mutually dependent facets of an aesthetic strategy.

In its eclecticism, its playful refusal of fixity, its preoccupation with notions of framing, and its disregard for the aura traditionally associated with the original, Arp's creative oeuvre challenges and often transcends traditional categories of description. Examining major works in the light of recent critical and theoretical perspectives, Robertson also considers the extent to which Arp's resistance to single, reductive interpretations may be linked to his bilingual, bicultural upbringing in Alsace and his experience of two world wars. In the context of the above, the book addresses three key questions: to what extent can Arp's practices as poet, painter and sculptor be seen as not only complementary, but interdependent? What are the implications of Arp's bilingualism for his visual and textual art, his aversion to semantic closure, and his rejection of the finished work in all his creative enterprises? To what extent do his practices of transfer across genres, interdiscursivity and interlingual wordplay call for a reappraisal of Arp's relationship to the avant-gardes and his standing in twentieth-century European art-historical and literary contexts?