WEBVTT 00:00:04.770 --> 00:00:07.170 STEVEN ZUCKER: We're at the Museum of Modern Art looking 00:00:07.170 --> 00:00:09.890 at a really famous collage. 00:00:09.890 --> 00:00:12.934 It's Jean Arp, sometimes known as Hans Arp. 00:00:12.934 --> 00:00:14.630 It's an untitled object, but it's always 00:00:14.630 --> 00:00:17.100 known as Collage with Squares Arranged 00:00:17.100 --> 00:00:18.576 According to the Laws of Chance. 00:00:18.576 --> 00:00:20.052 And that's exactly what it is. 00:00:20.052 --> 00:00:23.988 It's a gray piece of paper, construction paper, 00:00:23.988 --> 00:00:25.960 almost children's construction paper. 00:00:25.960 --> 00:00:30.930 And it's got some cream colored and almost denim blue colored 00:00:30.930 --> 00:00:33.588 squares that have been ripped into these shapes 00:00:33.588 --> 00:00:35.878 and then scattered on the surface. 00:00:35.878 --> 00:00:39.551 BETH HARRIS: What strikes me is what year we're at, which is 00:00:39.551 --> 00:00:41.630 1916 and '17's, sort of at the end-- 00:00:41.630 --> 00:00:42.092 STEVEN ZUCKER: We're right in the middle of the war-- 00:00:42.092 --> 00:00:42.554 BETH HARRIS: --of the First, 00:00:42.554 --> 00:00:43.478 STEVEN ZUCKER: --or the end, right. 00:00:43.478 --> 00:00:45.519 BETH HARRIS: --middle end of the First World War. 00:00:45.519 --> 00:00:49.850 But what strikes me is how far we've come from Les Demoiselles 00:00:49.850 --> 00:00:52.285 d'Avignon, which is 1907. 00:00:52.285 --> 00:00:53.595 And really how radical-- 00:00:53.595 --> 00:00:54.720 STEVEN ZUCKER: --Ten years. 00:00:54.720 --> 00:00:59.103 BETH HARRIS: --yeah, but how radical Dada was for a time. 00:00:59.103 --> 00:01:02.512 We have a completely abstract work. 00:01:02.512 --> 00:01:07.901 We have it not arranged with any kind of artistic intention. 00:01:07.901 --> 00:01:10.497 STEVEN ZUCKER: It really begins to play fast and loose 00:01:10.497 --> 00:01:13.052 with the very definition of what a work of art is. 00:01:13.052 --> 00:01:14.260 BETH HARRIS: Yes, absolutely. 00:01:14.260 --> 00:01:15.495 STEVEN ZUCKER: It sort of rips at the heart 00:01:15.495 --> 00:01:17.120 of what our definition is historically. 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:19.246 BETH HARRIS: It's not self-expression. 00:01:19.246 --> 00:01:20.650 It's not skill. 00:01:20.650 --> 00:01:22.990 It's not an expression of the unconscious, 00:01:22.990 --> 00:01:26.380 even, like surrealism would claim later. 00:01:26.380 --> 00:01:29.450 STEVEN ZUCKER: So it's actually in some ways 00:01:29.450 --> 00:01:31.409 still really challenging in that-- 00:01:31.409 --> 00:01:32.200 BETH HARRIS: It is. 00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:34.033 STEVEN ZUCKER: --in that we look at painting 00:01:34.033 --> 00:01:36.030 for the decisions of the artist. 00:01:36.030 --> 00:01:37.490 And here that's been given up. 00:01:37.490 --> 00:01:38.490 BETH HARRIS: Completely. 00:01:38.490 --> 00:01:39.966 STEVEN ZUCKER: It is a kind of real anti-art. 00:01:39.966 --> 00:01:40.458 It's a-- 00:01:40.458 --> 00:01:40.950 BETH HARRIS: It is a real anti-art. 00:01:40.950 --> 00:01:42.325 STEVEN ZUCKER: --real destruction 00:01:42.325 --> 00:01:43.902 of the very foundation with which 00:01:43.902 --> 00:01:45.378 we understand how to deal with 00:01:45.378 --> 00:01:45.880 BETH HARRIS: It is. 00:01:45.880 --> 00:01:46.670 STEVEN ZUCKER: --an object in space. 00:01:46.670 --> 00:01:47.990 BETH HARRIS: And, it still is, right. 00:01:47.990 --> 00:01:49.948 STEVEN ZUCKER: And it's an extraordinary thing. 00:01:49.948 --> 00:01:51.807 So how can we understand this though, 00:01:51.807 --> 00:01:52.890 in the context of the war? 00:01:52.890 --> 00:01:55.122 You mentioned that this was 1916, 1917. 00:01:55.122 --> 00:01:55.830 BETH HARRIS: Yes. 00:01:55.830 --> 00:01:56.320 STEVEN ZUCKER: The war is raging. 00:01:56.320 --> 00:01:57.790 It's unprecedented. 00:01:57.790 --> 00:02:00.262 But this is being made in Zurich. 00:02:00.262 --> 00:02:03.764 You know, Arp was one of the founders of the Zurich Dada 00:02:03.764 --> 00:02:06.194 movement, and Zurich, of course, is a neutral-- 00:02:06.194 --> 00:02:07.166 BETH HARRIS: Country. 00:02:07.166 --> 00:02:07.652 STEVEN ZUCKER: It's-- 00:02:07.652 --> 00:02:08.138 BETH HARRIS: Switzerland. 00:02:08.138 --> 00:02:10.931 STEVEN ZUCKER: --in Switzerland, a neutral country, right? 00:02:10.931 --> 00:02:12.430 So I guess I'm just wondering, where 00:02:12.430 --> 00:02:16.060 is the relationship between this kind of aggression 00:02:16.060 --> 00:02:20.470 against the traditions of art and the violence that's 00:02:20.470 --> 00:02:21.595 taking place across Europe. 00:02:21.595 --> 00:02:23.761 BETH HARRIS: Well, I think the answer that's usually 00:02:23.761 --> 00:02:25.660 given to that is that this sort of emphasis 00:02:25.660 --> 00:02:29.965 on rational and on human reason was part of bourgeois culture 00:02:29.965 --> 00:02:30.707 that had created 00:02:30.707 --> 00:02:31.873 STEVEN ZUCKER: The violence. 00:02:31.873 --> 00:02:34.360 BETH HARRIS: The violence and the irrationalness 00:02:34.360 --> 00:02:37.420 of World War I. But what strikes me also 00:02:37.420 --> 00:02:40.726 is just the irrationality people-- because this 00:02:40.726 --> 00:02:44.600 is something created according to the laws of chance. 00:02:44.600 --> 00:02:46.674 And people are being called to the war. 00:02:46.674 --> 00:02:47.590 They're being drafted. 00:02:47.590 --> 00:02:49.410 They're sent to the front lines. 00:02:49.410 --> 00:02:50.815 They live, they die, they suffer. 00:02:50.815 --> 00:02:52.190 STEVEN ZUCKER: It was all chance. 00:02:52.190 --> 00:02:54.850 BETH HARRIS: They get legs and limbs amputated, 00:02:54.850 --> 00:02:57.425 all basically on a roll of the dice. 00:02:57.425 --> 00:02:58.258 STEVEN ZUCKER: Yeah. 00:02:58.258 --> 00:02:59.746 And Arp would have seen that. 00:02:59.746 --> 00:03:01.514 The number of veterans that came back-- 00:03:01.514 --> 00:03:02.722 BETH HARRIS: Everyone saw it. 00:03:02.722 --> 00:03:04.710 STEVEN ZUCKER: --who were deformed, who had-- 00:03:04.710 --> 00:03:04.800 BETH HARRIS: Post-traumatic stress syndrome. 00:03:04.800 --> 00:03:07.805 STEVEN ZUCKER: --limbs blasted, who had been exposed to gas 00:03:07.805 --> 00:03:09.494 and been disfigured, was extraordinary. 00:03:09.494 --> 00:03:11.160 And then those that came back unscathed. 00:03:11.160 --> 00:03:14.480 BETH HARRIS: Right, what rules are there in life? 00:03:14.480 --> 00:03:18.850 Where is the rationality for what happens to who 00:03:18.850 --> 00:03:19.880 for what reason? 00:03:19.880 --> 00:03:22.310 STEVEN ZUCKER: It actually makes the absurdity of this 00:03:22.310 --> 00:03:24.760 object somehow much more profound. 00:03:24.760 --> 00:03:26.500 BETH HARRIS: Yep.